Crusade chapter 7 (standard:science fiction, 2006 words) [7/11] show all parts
Author: St George	Added: Mar 11 2003	Views/Reads: 2582/1866	Part vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
chapter 7

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

create something not un-akin to a singularity. Alecto's library 
contains no mention, but I will send this thought to the Admiralty as a 
possible line of inquiry, if we could create singularities at will, 
that would be a potent weapon. On a lighter note, earlier today the 
‘Sector Seven Hawks' beat the ‘Sector Two Pirates' 16-13 in the final 
of the unofficial ship-wide low-grav basketball tournament which has 
been going on recently in one of the empty hangars, with hoops fixed at 
25 feet. Under normal circumstances I would have put a stop to an event 
like this, but due to our situation I decided to turn a blind eye so 
long as it didn't interfere with the running of the ship, God knows 
moral needs all the help it can get right now.” 

The return of Broadsword and Crusader, to friendly space was welcomed by
those both on board and at home. Like it or not, the news that the 
pride of the human fleet had destroyed her second battleship (the fact 
that she was part of a fleet both times didn't dull the glory) secured 
both Crusader and her Captain a place in the hearts of  a world; this 
was brought home to Carver during a talk with Captain Adams. They were 
on the dock station which both had been protecting just a few weeks 
ago. “Do you know what they're calling you?” she asked Carver. 
Genuinely surprised that ‘they' were calling him anything Carver 
answered, “No.” “Richard the Lionheart” “You're joking!” “No, its in 
today's Express: ‘Return of Richard the Lionheart'.” Carver was aware 
that he was he was famous, as were all of the first six, but he had 
always thought of it as trivial pursuit question fame, rather than 
front-page fame. 

It seemed that no sooner had Crusader arrived in port that she was
leaving again, this time bound for ES-11478, a two planet solar system 
that was right on the front line and a major staging area. Naval 
intelligence suggested there was an assault planned for the station 
(codenamed Heretic) there. Hunter Six became Battle Six; as well as 
Crusader and Broadsword, the fleet was strengthened by Broadsword's 
newly launched sister ship SNS Cutlass under Captain Alexis Vablatski. 
Not part of the fleet, but accompanying it and under its protection, 
was SNS Tyrant. She had no EP canon and no torpedoes but what she did 
have made up for it, she was a carrier and fielded 550 fighters and 100 
torpedo bombers. Apparently the carrier's agenda was the reason Battle 
Six was dispatched so quickly: the carrier was needed at Heretic 
station and the fleet was the only escort available. Despite the 
necessity for an escort the actual danger was small; the enemy had so 
far failed to penetrate the border, guarded as it was by the stations, 
codenamed Heretic, Zealot, Infidel, Evangelist, Missionary, Acolyte, 
Disciple, Messiah, Prophet, Oracle, Minister, Mullah, Rabbi and Apostle 
(the Andurils hadn't been idle during peacetime). The stations used 
hypershifted graviton accelerators to close down hyperspace corridors. 
The stations were arranged in a giant geodesic sphere surrounding the 
Anduril home solar system and many of their key worlds and 
installations. In this way they prevented ships from coming within two 
light weeks (just under 225 billion miles) in hyperspace without 
clearance. The vulnerability of the system was the stations themselves: 
each had a range of sixty percent of the distance to the next station, 
so if one is destroyed then there is a gap in the wall; it seemed that 
the enemy was targeting Heretic, so a defensive force was being amassed 
there. The other problem with the system was that, although it lay 
between earth and Megaeran space, it did not encompass human territory 
and this is why all missions involving human spacecraft are staged from 
within the sphere, to keep the secret of the human home world safe. 

For the first time Carver found himself in command of a fleet rather
than just one ship, not that this made a bigger demand on his time 
during the first seven days of operation, the time it took to reach 
Heretic. 

If Crusader was huge, it was nothing compared to Heretic: the station
was titanic, dwarfing the ships docked with it. The reason was that it 
hadn't been built but excavated, it was a hollowed out asteroid nearly 
thirty miles from end to end. When viewed with visual sensors it looked 
as though the asteroid was suffering from some sort of disease the 
symptoms of which were virulent metallic growths on the surface of the 
living rock. The reason for its unusual construction was the enormous 
graviton accelerators necessary to impose real-space at the required 
range. The station was also a fortress though, equipped with 12 EP 
canon turrets and innumerable blasters and warhead launchers. It also 
was home to 768 Xetâl fighters and now, thanks to Tyrant, was 
strengthened by 550 of the more powerful Super Hurricanes and 100 black 
Widows. Despite all this, the station was not a starship and could not 
stand up to a concerted attack; its arms were designed only to allow it 
to hold out long enough for help to arrive. Evidently the Alliance 
considered Heretic extremely valuable. 

As the fleet dropped into real-space, visual and epdar sensors showed
the station and surrounding space swarming with starships of every 
class and description: already docked with the station was the second 
of the three Sword class cruisers SNS Bayonet (Broadsword and Cutlass 
being first and third respectively), docked a (relatively) short way 
away was the mighty Rathporr, the newly returned Anduril flagship, she 
had just docked for re-supply having completed a cruise similar to the 
one from which Hunter Six had just returned. Regrettably she was not to 
be part of the defence force, battleships were too valuable to 
concentrate in one operation such as this. Wherever she was going after 
re-supply Carver didn't know, he had no reason to. 

The defence force was divided into four fleets comprising 15 ships in
all. Its size wasn't the only thing which made the station unusual, 
there was also an anomaly amongst the station personnel; there were 
over six thousand crew, of which more than four thousand were 
Tisiphones. Although as a nation they had been destroyed by the 
Megaerans, some of their people had survived under the protection of 
the Anduril government. Because they were on average five feet tall 
they were unable to serve aboard Anduril starships, however because of 
the space available on the guard stations, corridors and rooms had been 
made large enough to accommodate them. All of the guard stations were 
predominantly crewed by Tisiphones and it was sometimes said that the 
whole race had become obsessed with revenge. They certainly made an 
impression on the humans who went aboard the stations. Standing five 
feet tall they looked very delicately built, this was a misconception 
though. They were almost humanoid with four limbs, but each limb split 
into two branches about halfway along, each branch split into seven 
digits, five fingers between two opposable thumbs. They walked on all 
four limbs except when they were carrying something, and had skin 
ranging from dark ochre to crimson. Their frail construction was an 
evolutionary adaptation to their home planet's (by human standards) 
heavy gravity, this meant that despite their appearance they were 
remarkably strong in the 0.8 G Anduril environment due to small but 
numerous and very efficient muscles. 


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