Crusade chapter 9 (standard:science fiction, 1488 words) [9/11] show all parts
Author: St George	Added: Mar 11 2003	Views/Reads: 2520/1878	Part vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
chapter 9

Although the mission was a success the battle was a disaster, the
alliance suffered more than 80% casualties. Crusader who's projector 
had been destroyed had to be towed back to Heretic by an Anduril 
freighter as nothing else had a hyperdrive powerful enough to make a 
portal that she could fit through (though Alecto, naturally had to 
perform the hyperjump calculations). 

Extract from Captains log: “The last time Crusader returned to friendly
space it was in triumph, this time it is less so. We are heavily 
damaged and under tow to Heretic, the station has facilities to repair 
most of the damage. Alecto tells me that her nanobots have already 
completed repairs of several minor systems and her factories have begun 
to manufacture parts for a new portal projector.” 

Despite Alecto's self repair capability Heretic had much better
facilities and was able to complete the repairs in under a week, 
however Crusader was not called on again for action for another 22 
days. 

Extract from personal log, Carver, R: “During the time spent at Heretic
I have been able to catch up on news from home, and I'm worried. A few 
weeks ago a bomb was discovered and defused at the Nova Technologies 
campus in Aachen and a group calling itself Stellar Peace has claimed 
responsibility. Apparently they feel that humanity should not be 
involved in a private matter between the Andurils and Megaerans, worse 
yet it seems that this group is just a more extreme symptom of quite 
widespread isolationist feeling, not unlike that which spread through 
the United States during the second World War. Whilst I'm on the 
subject of civilians, the Aachen pact prevents the navy or Neo Mir from 
giving away spacefaring technology but it doesn't prevent other 
organizations from operating interstellar craft and keen to exploit 
this loophole NASA has leased the 400-meter cutter SS Event Horizon 
from Neo Mir. There is some good news, today a new starship was 
launched, the first of the Sovereign class battle cruisers. The 
Sovereign class is in a different league completely from the Sword 
class medium cruiser, I should know I co-designed both of them. Back in 
the pre-war days Nagumo and I and our team drew up plans for every 
class now in operation (except the Phantom class) and with the launch 
of this new ship every class is now represented. I don't know who they 
were intending to put in command before the battle of Heretic but they 
made the right decision when they installed Captain Cassandra Adams, 
its no secret that I and everyone aboard Crusader owe her our lives and 
in addition they have assigned all surviving members of Broadsword's 
crew to her. The new ship has been given a name rich in history, as a 
reward for our services as lead designers Nagumo and I were given the 
honour of deciding the name of the first Sovereign class vessel. We 
flipped a coin to decide who would name her, I won; her name is SNS 
Royal Sovereign, when her sister-ship is built she will be called 
Yomato, Nagumo's choice.” 

With the end of the battle of Heretic came the end of the first phase of
the war, it proved that the alliance was not invincible, although 
Heretic had been saved the alliance victory tasted as bitter as defeat. 
It was soon after this fiasco that for the first time a human ship went 
into battle alone. The tiny SNS Phantom crept behind the enemy border 
and struck a harsh revenge destroying 13 freighters in three convoys 
before returning to a hero's welcome. In revenge the Megaerans sent 
another of their singularity carrying freighters on a kamikaze attack 
against a mining installation in an asteroid rich solar system, killing 
800 Anduril civilians; not strategically useful to the Megaeran war 
effort but they felt, by destroying lifepods, Phantom had made 
civilians a legitimate target. Despite the fact that they were the 
first to employ such tactics, the alliance attempted to back down from 
this new height of war and a precarious deal was struck with he 
Megaerans; neither side will attack civilian targets unless they have 
military value, as a sweetener 800 Megaeran POW's are released by the 
alliance. The agreement though frail is a breakthrough in negotiations 
but little more comes of it. 

Meanwhile at a secret testing field in deep space Neo Mir was testing a
new weapon. The cutter SS Eurema's Dream lay in wait, as soon as it 
registered a contact on epdar the ship activated a miniature 
hypershifted graviton accelerator which caused Eurema's Dream to act 
like a gravity well to hyperspace corridors, all corridors within 2 
light minutes (just over 22 million miles) were closed down. On board 


Click here to read the rest of this story (69 more lines)