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.In fact, according to the currently known laws of physics, no such jump point could possibly exist so close to a planetary mass.Reacting instinctively, Kizzara quickly engaged the ships experimental stealth generator and initiated the startup sequence for the Hayles-Zinder kinetic shields.Can that be an Alliance ship? It can’t be…it’s the wrong configuration.If it was the Alliance they must have detected her stealth spacecraft and followed her to the Castor System.Kizzara swore vociferously, invoking the ancestral deities of her race more out of custom than superstition.Her parent’s devotion to the Old Gods had rubbed off on her and familiar habits were a balm in times of severe stress.Merel grant me victory and safe passage.Ajura guide my steps swift and sure… She murmured the prayers over and over as she scanned her instruments for any sign that the massive ship was launching weapons towards her.Her instruments were negative.The large ship of unknown origin was descending, much on the same flight path as herself.She quickly altered her trajectory to veer away, not wanting to chance that the behemoth wasn’t still after her.The ground crew boss and his unit were lounging around the tools and machinery that supported the starships when they came in for fittings and repairs.The facility was unusually slow for this time.Usually it was bustling with all kinds of ships coming and going.The intense bright white light of the binary Castor system beat down on the men even in the early twilight of morning.The planet Harmony had just enough breathable air for the men not to wear environment suits, though it was unsuited for colonization due to the tremendously violent storms that cascaded throughout the temperate zone of the planet every month or so.Harmony made for an ideal refueling and drive discharge station as it was situated in the middle of six nearby jump points all of which led to systems with important agricultural or industrial worlds.The men were dressed in the uniform of Dynamic Space Development starship mechanics.At first the maintenance workers didn’t notice the huge alien ship that had appeared roughly a kilometer above their way station.When the sonic boom arrived, they all looked up to see a swarm of smaller landing craft approaching their station.The foremen of the mechanics frowned as he addressed his subordinate.“Hey Jase, aren’t we expecting a DSD craft any moment now?”“Yeah, they’re scheduled to come in for a drive core discharge in ten minutes.We have them slated for bay twelve.Over there.” He pointed to a rather large docking facility that could easily swallow a ship two hundred meters across.“That’s what I thought.Then what is that thing up there? I’ve never seen a ship configuration so…weird.” The large ship was gargantuan in size and had strange bulbous protrusions sticking out from the hull every fifty meters or so.The hull was a strange metallic green unlike the normal durasteel plates that made up the hulls of most starships.The size was hard to gauge, but when smaller fighter size craft began to disembark it became obvious the thing was at least two kilometers long.“Jesus! Look at the size of that monster! I don’t like it.Get someone at control to tell those jokers to get out of our airspace.” The foreman was angry and a bit panicked.He hadn’t had anything go wrong on his watch in over two months.His anger turned to fear when two of the smaller ships thundered overhead in a fly-by with violet energy beams lancing out to vaporize the gangway he was standing on.Other crew members scrambled for safety, but he foreman knew it was too late.As he fell to his death, the foreman screamed.A few hours later, the Dynamic Space Development outpost known as Harmony Starship Facility Fifteen was a smoking ruin.Only a single frantic distress call had been sent from the control room of the facility.Minutes after the first attack had begun, the signal had been picked up by Kizzara Amara Vis Sala.She had watched in horror as the unknown assailant had laid waste to an entire starship facility and hundreds of sentient beings.She had her ship’s computer record everything that had transpired as she drifted, cloaked in the stealth field that kept her from being discovered.Kizzara had taken a big risk and performed a flyover, recording everything she could.It seemed that the aliens, whoever they were, had left.She detected no activity of any kind.She decided against landing, deeming it too risky.She pulled the nose of her sleek star fighter up and headed up and out of the gravity well of the planet.She kept the stealth system activated the entire time it took her to make the jump out of the system.CHAPTER 6She glanced at the data files that depicted the personnel records of her team.The ship’s computer had all ten bios displayed as discrete points of data in a three hundred and sixty degree pattern around her head, hovering at eye level.Angelis, Arneson, Delantus, Grant, Jorstad, Okoro, Stone, Sutton, Visalis and Zang - all of them had distinguished themselves in combat.All of them had been under fire and in combat zones dozens of times.All of them had been hand-picked by herself and Admiral Hargrove.She had been in the Majestic’s operation room for only a few minutes and was early.The room was spare as the rest of the ship, functional but bare-bones and devoid of any decoration or color on the walls or furniture – just bare plasteel walls with a five meter long table situated in the center of the room with a dozen chairs arrayed all around it.A barely perceptible hum filled the room with a low level noise generated by the fusion powerplant, more a feeling then a sound.All star-faring ships had such noises - she paid it no mind.As she waited for the rest of her team to show up, Eris touched one of the displays…zooming in and displaying more material for her to digest.The computer queried if she wanted even more intelligence displayed on the subject.If she had had neural implants, this would be even easier, as she would have a mental picture of the information and merely thinking about topics would make them appear in her mind’s eye.Her team was set, orders had been to embark on the TEC cruiser Majestic and head out to the Verge where her destination was the Shaedra system and the planet Domovik.The ship had just made its first jump since leaving Kanpur and the Mintaka system.Eris thought over the mission orders.Director Sahin had been precise; she had been emphatic that once orbit around Domovik had taken place, the Majestic would set down on a small continent near the northern polar cap of the large M4 rated planet.The poisonous atmosphere would require her team to wear armored spacesuits with rebreathing equipment [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]