NationStates Jolt Archive

Somewhere outside of Home Space
Zhmivod Sector
Reconaissance Space-going Aviation-capable Vessel Vezhtek

Friedman was wrong. There certainly is something as a free lunch, Captain Petrosov reflected as he bit into his sandwich. He paused for a moment and looked around. Who the hell was Friedman? He shrugged. It was not his job to think about those sort of things. His job - or at least a part of it - was to look for new planets to spread the Glory of Socialism to. He considered himself a pioneer, and according to the propaganda posters, radio broadcasts, and television "shows" he had come accustomed to, everyone else considered him that, too. He was, however, hardly a hero. The Vezhtek was, for all intents and purposes, unarmed, an old DVKS ship converted to a reconaissance-carrier, its weapons removed for propulsion and observation purposes. Indeed, if he met any foreign fashistskoy pigdogs, they would probably be able to swat his pathetic little craft out of their way with no trouble at all. Finishing his sandwich, Petrosov leaned back in his seat and looked at the stars flash brightly. He had often wondered who would be the Dneprdanii people's first contact, what they looked like, how they behaved...

"Comrade Captain, we are holding orbit over the planet."

This was the big day. Their first discovery had come onto the scopes last week and they had been travelling to their destination ever since, as fast as their engines would take them. An apparently untouched planet, with a fully working atmosphere. Probably a rarity... or maybe not. Who knew? The Captain withdrew a bottle of vodka from a drawer in his command desk, and began pouring the clear substance into a little glass. "Bring us into the atmosphere, Comrade Myagovsky." The ship was rather small, but definetly cramped, and it was normally of reconaissance ships to have extremely tight crews, occasionally resulting in a breakdown of discipline or protocol. It hadn't happened on the Vezhtek, but Captain Petrosov was aware of other ships were the crew treated each other in the most egalitarian fashion. He at least knew the names of all of his 42 crewmembers, but he ran a fairly tight ship compared to some. None of his crew had ever complained though - at least to him, anyway. The Captain sat and watched as his crew brought them down through the atmosphere of the planet, with sirens sounding throughout the ship and the gravitic stabilisers kicking in.

As the ship descended through the clouds and looked over the bright, rolling expanses of the world, observing a fully active ecosystems. Bluey-green seas washed over rocky cliffs and huge beaches, breaking into rivers which snaked inland through untouched fields and through forests, spreading into huge lakes where the sun's generous rays bounced off the water's surface and spread their life-giving properties to the foreign plants around them. "Yob tvoyu mat..." the Captain murmured, standing up and look down over what he could see. The rest of the crew, too, were in a similar degree of awe. "Comrades. Behold." Still maintaining control of the ship, they halted and hovered at eight klicks above the surface. The whole crew who were not directly involved in the process of running the ship looked out over what they could see. It was like a very lucid dream, but nobody was going to snap out of it. Not yet, anyway. Rubbing his brow, the Captain turned to his Aviation Officer. "Prepare the landing craft, Comrade." The Officer gave a weak salute and no response and left the room silently, still taking in the new sights to his eyes.

Detaching from the belly of the ship, where previously the huge anti-shipping rockets had nestled, a single transport helicopter with a landing team began its course down to the surface. Upon landing, the wheels of the helicopter digging into the soft mud, they raised the Dneprdanii flag on the planet, its soft materials barely capable of movement in the warm and windless habitat of the new prize.

Emptiness. That was all that had greeted them, day after day, week after week, as they had moved through the vast expanses of the cosmos. Empty and black as the final night, the faint pin-pricks of distant stars enlivening the scene just enough to remind them of the tremendous distances they had already travelled, and take a grip on hearts and minds that already longed to see home, to step through fields and hear new voices, and deprive them of good cheer.

There were nearly a hundred of those hearts and minds, ploughing silently through the vacant void between the stars, confined about the hundred-metre bulk of the light cruiser Yuragani. Not that she was a particularly badly-appointed ship; her designers had recognised the need for leisure aboard a ship spending so many months away from home, and had tried to accommodate the need as best they could in her lithe hull. The days of physical training on the deck had long since passed (largely because sweating in a spacesuit was one of the least pleasant experiences any of those who had to endure such torture had ever had), so the ship had her own gymnasium; she also carried, nestled between the two substantial shafts of her crude teleportation field generators, a small botanical garden-cum-zoo, complete with a small band of resident animals; she even had her own beehive, which had been known to cause havoc if the bees became more curious than usual and found their way through she ship’s ventilation system. Many were the men aboard who recalled torrid afternoons spent watching for small swarms of bees, hoping that they would not be the luckless individual who felt the fullness of their wrath.

Nonetheless, and despite these helpfully-provided distractions, she was in no way comfortable. Eighty-nine men resided within her hull, itself packed with the accoutrements of her trade; her twin fusion reactors, her engines and steam-raising plant; the barbettes for her coilgun and beam driver turrets, the key elements of the ship’s fighting strength; her torpedo launchers, and their payload of nuclear torpedoes, each painted solemnly with the instantly recognisable three-bladed fan symbol for “radiation danger”, and usually avoided with fearful glances and mutters of, “they go bloody green, the lads in there, you know!” by new hands; magazines, stores, galleys, communication systems, all took up a huge proportion of her already limited internal space. The result of this was that her crew, though not by any means unhappy, could rapidly grow restless in the absence of something to do. After all, when one’s personal space consists of a hammock and a footlocker (coming to a princely thirty square feet between them), it is hard to pack in the things required to keep a mind busy and a body in shape, when not engaged in the thousand and one routine tasks of a ship at sea.

Or in space, not that this fairly major change of surrounding had ever motivated the Oyadan Imperial Navy to change its terminology; the men were still seamen, ships still “went to sea”, and the engineers, despite the fact that their ships were no longer powered by boilers, still somehow contrived to emerge from each shift oily and with burns. Oyadans had always liked to keep their traditions; even Yuragani still looked like a cruiser of old, save for the trainable torpedo launchers mounted along her keel; and, as the ships of her ancient ancestors had for centuries, she still carried on her prow the gleaming golden sunburst that had been the Navy’s emblem since the founding of their nation, now encompassing an entire planet. Navies, in the view of many in the Oyadan staff, were built on tradition, which was the reason why it was the duty of some luckless seaman to proceed forward, every morning, and solemnly polish up that round golden crest, inevitably cursing in whispers as he did so.

It was something that had often been a bother to Yuragani’s captain, who stood on the bridge, hands clasped behind his back, carefully watching through the reinforced windows as the latest unfortunate was led forward to commence the routine of “cleaning her nose”. He was Captain Aran Vannerman, and he wore his uniform with pride. Yuragani was his first command as a Captain; he had risen rapidly through the ranks of the OIN, mostly by filling dead men’s boots and by being, on the whole, bloody good at his job, if he did say so himself. Which he did, but only very occasionally, and only when alone. He knew that Yuragani represented a valuable opportunity for him; he had won the chance to command her by luck and dedication, and he was determined not to waste either, even if he was unlikely to see any action on his present station and unlikely to be in a position to succeed if he did.

For Yuragani was an old ship. Not obsolete, nor even obsolescent; but old, nevertheless. Her armament, though still potent, was comparatively light for her size; her engines were ageing, increasingly prone to failure. Her teleporter could only manage short jumps; to do that, moreover, the ship had practically to shut down everything else in order to generate enough electricity to power the strange and unpredictable device. More than one ship, crippled by enemy action, had been lost when her desperate or over-confident commander attempted to teleport to safety, only to discover that he had no steam left to do so, or be riven with fire before she could complete the lengthy charging process; in fact, Yuragani’s predecessor on this station had been lost to a teleporter error which had seen her jump straight into the centre of a system of planetary rings, to be pummelled to death by flying boulders and drag what was left of her crew to a horrendous death, roasted alive in the gas giant’s atmosphere as she plummeted from the heavens. No armour plating could possibly withstand such a battering, and Yuragani’s had seen so much fighting it was a wonder sections of it did not simply fall apart.

She was overdue, in Vannerman’s opinion, for a serious refit, but the Outer Rim stations rarely had the facilities or the funding for such luxuries. In any case, they were very seldom necessary. Oyada was at peace; it had been at peace since the great Wars of Unification, which had finally brought the warring nation-states of the planet together under a common crown and founded the Oyadan Empire. There was still fighting aplenty to deal with, of course; the various off-world colonies and stations in the Inner Rim were plagued with piracy, which was infernally difficult to stamp out and the field in which Vannerman had earned his honours, and the Outer Rim colonies had evidently not quite settled down to the notion of unified government. But Yuragani should, as Vannerman had told his Executive Officer, nonetheless have a relatively peaceful time of it out here, a sentiment which had led to a somewhat crestfallen look on the young man’s face. Vannerman smiled at the thought of it – him thinking of anyone as a “young man”, himself less than thirty years old.

The helmsman caught Vannerman’s smile and returned it nervously. “Looking very cheerful, sir,” he prompted, snapping his head straight back round to stare at the view beyond and glimpse his bridge sensor repeater as Vannerman turned to reply, the smile undiminished.

“An amusing thought, helmsman.” He looked the man up and down. Young again, and wearing the attire of an ordinary seaman; probably no more than eighteen. His old ship, appropriately, had a new crew to head into parts unknown with her. His nervousness was understandable; Vannerman could only hope that they would bed down in time. He was working on that, naturally; he planned to call the crew to action stations in an hour’s time and indulge in some gunnery practice.

“I- I see sir,” the helmsman stuttered, as though unable to believe he was having this conversation, or his own audacity.

Vannerman’s face crinkled into a broader smirk still, his neat row of white teeth showing against his tanned skin, the result of a month’s leave while a new ship was found for him. “No, you don’t, helmsman,” he replied with a chuckle. “If you did, it’d be most improper of me, since it concerns one of your officers. Don’t you agree?”

The helmsman groaned inwardly at the position he was in – either prying for information he wasn’t meant to hear, or criticising the Captain. “Yes sir!” he said quickly, never taking his eyes from their proper place. His gratitude to the Chief Electronics Officer, responsible for the ship’s electronic warfare outfit and her communications, was eternal as he appeared on one of the bridge monitors.

“Bridge, Electro here.”

“Electro, bridge,” Vannerman replied smoothly. “What’s on your mind?”

Chief Electro, whose real name was Sannoro Tekanai, sucked the room’s stale air in through his teeth. “Message from Outer Rim Command, sir. Orders for the attention of the Captain only.”

“I see. Well are they marked Top Secret?”

Tekanai hesitated, confusion sweeping momentarily across his round, point-chinned face. “No sir, but it’s for the Captain only and--”

“And the Captain has decided that unless it’s absolutely top secret, in which case you wouldn’t have even been able to decode the order saying it was for my eyes only, he doesn’t mind you putting it on this monitor,” Vannerman replied cheerfully, sweeping aside an overlong strand of his dark hair and reminding himself to get a trim. “So see to it, please, ‘lectro.”

The officer grumbled, shaking his head and muttering about orders, but the message eventually appeared on the monitor. Vannerman looked at it for a few moments, unaware as his expression swung between curiosity, excitement, disappointment and finally diffident acceptance. “Hrrum. Oh well,” he muttered, cursing inwardly as he once more betrayed a little too much of his inner thoughts to those around him. The Captain must always remain aloof, indeed! he thought dryly as he patched into the ship-wide communications system. Many, Tekanai included, frowned upon his habit of giving the gist of any non-security-critical orders to his crew; to Vannerman’s mind, it was a means of bonding them, and of getting the best from them.

“Attention!” he began, coughing loudly and fishing around for a pack of cigarettes. “This is the Captain speaking. I have just received some new orders from Outer Rim Command.”

In the communications room, Tekanai groaned and dipped his head to his palm, watched by the grinning Chief Petty Officer (Communications).

“We are to proceed to a certain planet, which ORC has identified as being of potential interest. It seems, therefore, that gunnery practice is off for this afternoon, for which you will no doubt be glad.” He heard a slight spurt of laughter rippled around the small bridge and pressed on. “However, we will be conducting a landing on the planet, if we deem it necessary, to see if there’s anything worth looking at on its surface. Therefore,” he said magisterially, “I will be conducting gunnery practice early.” A collective groan ran through the ship at the announcement, as Vannerman switched off the screen and nodded to the Executive Officer, Commander Uroa Deijan. Seconds later, the klaxons were sounding and men were busily rushing to their stations, most of them probably cursing his name. But if they became a better crew by cursing him, Vannerman didn’t mind.

*****

It was some two hours later, following a frantic and extremely unwelcome gunnery drill, that Yuragani finally managed to find the time and energy to jump into the general area of the planet. She crackled into existence again a mere three thousand miles from its surface, and while the engineers and their men made their usual checks to her precious engines and generators, her sensors reached out and began to explore what they could of the alien world, caressing its moist, refreshing atmosphere, searching through its forests and fields, trying to pick out life or settlements through the dense clouds that swirled over much of its surface. And while the electronics sought to glean information from the reluctant world, Yuragani’s crew, those of them not bound by duty to their posts, did as all men do, regardless of whether they are permitted to or not, and made their way to scuttles and viewscreens, to gaze in wonder at the alien place below; to marvel at the different-yet-familiar beauty of its patterns of blue and green and white, and to muse on what wonders – and pitfalls – awaited those chosen to go down to its surface.

Three months after colonisation
Zhmivod Sector
In high orbit above Petroplaneta
Gunnery and Aviation Torpedo-capable Frigate [i]Rezvy(frisky)

A whistle.

“Captain on the Deck.”

“Good Evening Tovarisch.”

Captain Sprokovich nodded to his Executive Officer, who managed a disciplined returning salute. The Captain observed his uniform, its dark green fading into the darkness of ship's hull. Indeed in night-time it was Dnepr Voenno-Kosmos Naznacheniya protocol to run the ship in reduced light conditions. Of course, if night-ops were being run then the lights would come on, but normally it made for peaceful nights, occasionally reminiscent of home. The Captain sighed as he took his position at the helm of the bridge, overlooking the planet. No signs of life were visible from space, the Dneprdanii settlements too small to be seen yet. Things would change, though. Soon they would be massive spires, reaching out to touch the clouds, soon smoke would belch into the atmosphere covering the inhabitant's settlements with a thick layer of partially corrosive smog. Soon huge pads would be visible from orbit where partially constructed spaceships lay dormant, being pieced together slowly by a combined army of drones and workers. Another planet to be consumed by the Dnepr Kosmos Sovetsky Federatsiya.

“Morning, actually.” The Captain said, looking down at his watch. 00:01. He was late by a minute. Nevermind, its not like there was anything here anyway. Brushing some sleep from his eyes, the Captain undid his top button, and as soon as he had sat down withdrew the telltale vodka bottle and pouring glass from a sliding tray underneath his desk. "You may want to hold off on the vodka, Comrade Captain."

“Hm?” He looked up, tired eyes blinking at the EO. “What're you suggesting, Comrade?” The Captain's eyebrows slowly broke line astern as one fell out of formation, slanting sarcastically down over his right eye.

“Ground based sensors picked up a ship jumping into this planet's direct space-zone twenty minutes ago. You were probably showering, actually.” The EO remarked casually. Captain Sprokovich frowned, and then corrected his facial manner. Better not let them know how long you actually spend in bed, Comrade. "Small contact, receiving regular ping responses. Orders from the ground are to intercept with the Ryany. Vezhtek, Chamschav, and Podyav are in support. Probe their intentions and if necessary, be prepared to engage. Target has not appeared on scopes as of yet, she’s currently holding position on the other side of the planet.” It was indeed true – glancing down at the sensor reading on a foldup console, Sprokovich noticed the frigate and the three lighter vessels forming up on his starboard. The three smaller ships would be entirely useless in a firefight, but Ryany was packing the same sort of firepower as Rezvy – eight torpedo tubes, five small-calibre magnetic-acceleration turrets, and a number of smaller autocannons and missiles. Both ships had an aviation section with a small amount of interceptors, but they would probably be swatted out the sky by a well-armed enemy.

“Understood Comrade.” The Captain rubbed his hands together. The ship began to jerk itself into action and slowly set a new course, over the northern sphere of the planet. Captain Sprokovich began to wonder, his mind beginning the slow, pondering process of considering combat and its unavoidable results. He would certainly be the first Commanding Officer in the history of the DKVN to take a fleet into live action, if it resulted in that – and what a weird thing it was that he was assuming it would, he thought. Unless the ship has some sort of godlike power, though, he did outnumber it and Command did say it was only small… Captain Sprokovich shrugged and commenced the vodka-pouring. There were still quite a few hours left, anyway, and if there was any luck, their ship would perhaps be as rusty as his.

On the planet however, Fleet Command was debating fiercely what was to be done. Keeping in touch with the Motherplanet, they decided there could be two options – destroy the enemy ship, or not destroy it, and any other options that appeared logical were only a part of the choice between these two larger plans. At first it seemed, to the Admiralty, that the obvious and the most traditionally Dnepr thing to do would open fire after ascertaining that the ship was hostile, i.e, it hailed from a nation which was not in total agreement with the Federation over all forms of policy. Then, the Politburo had said that they should let the newcomer open fire first – and then they changed their mind, ordering the Surface-to-Orbit nuclear weapons on Petroplaneta to be prepared for possible action – and then again they changed their minds, telling Fleet Command and Petroplaneta Command to hold fire until the very last minute. So rigid and lacking in initiative was the system of communication and decision making that it was not until the General Secretary was woken up that he could suggest to the Politburo and Navy Command to open dialogue.

Petroplaneta’s Navy Command lay a kilometer underground, a semi-temporary arrangement that would at some point be standardised with the motherplanet’s system of orbital, surface, subsurface and subterranean command and control. From there, to communicate with ships and satellites in orbit they used an (apparently) ultra-secure fire-wire system to talk to the Satellite Control Network, which then communicated to Satellites, the primary method of Communication, since Dnepr Surface-to-Orbit Communications technology was at best pathetic. The man in charge of delivering the message to the Oyadan ship was a one Admiral Gennady Rachupoy Cheperenko. Well aware of the responsibility lying on his shoulders, he took to the microphone to record the message that would be delivered to the Oyadan vessel – in English, as it happened.

“My name is Admiral G.R Cheperenko of the Dneprdaniskaya Voyenno-Kosmos Flota. You are entering territory formally annexed by the Dneprdaniskaya Soviet Cosmos Federation. Please be aware that this territory is, at this time, restricted entry and if you continue further than the zones our navigation crews will designate to you, you will be committing a hostile act towards our nation. At this time were are in the process of continuing to establish relations with new nations and therefore request to parley with any diplomatic staff onboard your ship. Admiral Cheperenko out.” The process took three minutes to send the message to the Oyadan ship, and by that time, Captain Sprokovich’s squadron was sneaking over the tip of the planet and about to meet, directly, the Oyadan vessel.

Yuragani was at rest, her long, bluff hull hanging nearly motionless outside the new world’s orbit. On the bridge, all was quiet. The officer of the watch, who was in fact the Commander Deijan, had an easy time of it for the present, keeping his ship in position while the landing party was prepared. He looked down the length of the ship’s bows, whistling softly to himself as he let his eye roam over the two forward gun turrets, of which the second, designated B, aimed squarely at the bridge on which he now stood, a fact which always caused slight disquiet among men new to the old ship. The grey gun stared back towards him, unmoving after the recent gunnery drill. Deijan enjoyed gunnery drill; in his opinion, it was both a good way to bind a crew and the closest thing he was likely to see to action around these parts.

Still, he reflected as he gazed over the gilded prow, now pointing almost directly at the planet’s north pole, this could be a beautiful world to see. That was worth something.

Behind him, a voice coughed; he turned to see the worried face of Tekanai, part of a hand appearing and disappearing like a conjuror’s rags as he saluted. “Bridge, Electro.”

Deijan frowned an annoyed salute, turning the monitor’s sound up. “Yes, Chief Electro, what is it?” he snapped irritably.

“We’ve picked up an unknown signal, sir. Coming from the planet.” Tekanai’s dark eyes flicked off the screen to look at his instruments. “It’s scanning us, sir,” he added pensively. “Doesn’t smell like a tracking or fire-control set, but it’s looking at us anyway.” He sucked the air in past his teeth again, turning away momentarily to check his instruments and converse with a petty officer nearby, who nodded anxiously, his close-cropped blond head a little dancing bullet. “The good news is it’s only coming from once place, at least.

Deijan breathed hard. “Well that’s a goddamned help, isn’t it!” he wheezed into the monitor. “How good’s your fix?”

Tekanai looked back at him helplessly. “Not great, sir. I can pin it to an area about… three hundred yards square maybe, if we’re lucky.”

Tekanai considered this for a moment a moment. “Good enough. Keep listening to it, record it. We might need to jam it before too long.” Tekanai nodded and returned to his desk, his back flashing out of sight as the monitor replaced his image with its customary sensor readout. Everywhere he turned, Deijan thought angrily, a fierce scowl beneath his thin, dark eyebrows twisting his face into a furious visage, there were sensors’ numbers and letters parading across screens, and yet none of them were the first bit of use when he needed to know something. And what was worse was that he couldn’t really do much to change that. The knowledge made him curse silently as he looked out on the beautiful planet far beneath him, suddenly hostile, waiting to swallow them whole into its jungles, drench their burning remains with rain and leave them to fast-growing tendrils, plants that would burrows through men’s flesh to feed in the soil below, or be some damned alien beast’s repast. And to think he had been complaining of boredom! He raised one of the bridge interphones and jabbed a button with a long, slender finger. “Captain to the bridge!”

*****

Vannerman and Deijan stood over the main sensor plot, brooding; Vannerman enveloped in his own cigarette smoke as it drifted unwillingly towards one of the vents. There wasn’t really much to see: just a single dot, blinking regularly in time with the tick of the chronometer that gazed solemnly from its case on the wall. But that single dot could have many meanings, and some of them were very worrying indeed. Of course, this was the Outer Rim; there was no telling what some outlying governor had decided to do, or what a company with lots of money and spare time had thought to see in the blue world in the distance. That would be the best outcome; most likely the sight of an Imperial Navy ship heaving into view would convince them that the idea had been a bad one and that going home was the best option. But that was the best outcome.

Deijan shook his head, puzzled and still concerned. “Who could it be?”

“It could be just about anyone, Mr. Deijan,” Vannerman replied quietly, his usual affability gone. “However, it seems unlikely to me that they’re one of our usual suspects; we know most of the sets used out here.” He took a drag on the cigarette, breathing the smoke into the already uncomfortable room. “Which suggests that we may have made contact with someone else.”

Deijan looked up from the map, outwardly calm, inwardly tenser than an anxiety-prone coiled spring during an episode of Terror most Exquisite, a show broadcast throughout the Empire and reputed to have caused at least three hundred heart attacks per year every year of its transmission. “Someone else, sir?”

“Indeed, Mr. Deijan. Tell me, did you ever own a parrot?”

Deijan flushed slightly, barely visible beneath his tanned skin. “My apologies, sir.”

“I jest, Mr. Deijan, I jest.” Vannerman took another drag, grateful for the wonderful feeling of relaxation the little white sticks brought him. “However, it’s clear we must find out who our little friends are, and perhaps take measures to avoid any ire they may direct our way.”

“I see sir. Should I have Chief Electro jam their signals?” Deijan asked hopefully, eager to be doing something more than sitting before another’s gunsights. But Vannerman shook his head steadily.

“Not yet, Mr. Deijan. For now I suggest we proceed into the planet’s shadow. If they wish to fire upon us we will be out of sight on the horizon before too terribly long.” He finished the cigarette, stubbing it out carefully against an ornate lacquered ashtray, and turned to the bridge windows. Deijan took up position next to him, looking at the beautiful, lonely planet as it spun through space.

“Your orders, sir?” he asked quietly, unaware at that moment of anyone else on the bridge.

“Engines ahead full, Mr. Deijan. Sound action stations and close up. Emissions control for the present, I think. No need to give anything away to any listening equipment they might have done there.” He waited a moment, then turned to the Commander, an almost affronted half-smile accompanying his raised eyebrow.

“Ah – yes sir!” Deijan responded lamely, and began giving the usual flurry of orders to the relevant stations.

*****

Deep within Yuragani’s hull, the engine rooms lay. Protected by feet of plate armour and carefully subdivided fuel bunkers – for Yuragani’s fuel was deuterium and tritium, rather less flammable than the fuel oil of her forebears – the tiny, confined space was home to Chief Engineer Warrant Officer Samuda Takeo and his staff, comprising twenty-eight of the ship’s entire crew, of Petty Officers, artificers and engineer ratings. Their task was vital: they were the ship’s heart and lungs. The bridge and command centre might be the brain; but the ship’s two fusion reactors were her lungs, drawing her breath from the fuel she stored in her compartmented hull, and her engines, permitting her to move. Within the machinery spaces also lay the ship’s beating heart – her generators, her switchgear and circuit breakers, the equipment that sent power to every part of her bluntly-shaped hull. Without them, the ship was a dead thing, no more than a slab of metal ploughing at a snail's pace through space.

Ruler of this small, hot and humid kingdom, perpetually punctuated by pulses of steam and tinged with the mellow tang of oil, was CEWO Takeo; tall, lean, with a prominent gap in his worn front teeth, he spoke with a perpetual whistle and could usually be found prowling the spaces, chewing noisily on a sweet taken from a stash he kept so well hidden nobody had yet found it and seeking with a keen and practised eye any even slight failure in the standards of his machinery. He was a man who would brook but little drop in his meticulous care, and his ratings and artificers rightly feared him; even the POs had been known to get a severe rollicking from Takeo if they failed to keep a weather eye on a gauge or a piece of machinery cleaned to his benchmark, or were averse to taking risks with their own safety often unacceptable in other ships. It was precisely this which had aroused the engineer’s annoyance at this moment, and he was engaged in explaining, firmly, to an artificer the importance of checking the temperature of his turbine bearings.

“All right, so what’s the moral of the story?” he asked cantankerously, his frame stooped awkwardly to fit beneath a large steam pipe, whose heat made his head sweat vexatiously.

“Always check the bearing heat with the back of your hand as well as the thermometer, sir,” the artificer answered, defeated. They had never taught him this one in training, no sirree. In fact, if the training college engineer trainers could have seen him sticking the back of his hand to the end of the turbine spindle as it rotated at an even thirteen thousand revolutions per minute, they would probably have had a heart attack, less from shock than from shouting at him.

“About damn time!” Takeo grunted. “All right, carry…” he stopped mid-sentence, hearing the distant ring of the bridge telegraph above the din of machinery, and grumbled.

The artificer looked to him, uncertain. “Er… carry on, sir?” Takeo turned back slowly, eyebrow raised, and bared his teeth.

“When I need someone to give me orders for me I’ll damn well ask for them! And yes, carry on!” he shouted as he clambered around a particularly awkwardly-placed switchbox and ducked under another pipe, a fuel feed line to one of the two reactors. But before the artificer could thank his stars for a moment’s peace, it was gone again – Takeo was waving him to approach from the far end of the passage. Grimly the young man clambered over and around protruding pipes, boxes and wheels, managing to make it almost all of the twenty yards before finally catching his forehead on a helpfully unlagged steam pipe and colliding sharply with a control wheel, earning himself a badly bruised knee to join his badly bruised and somewhat burned head. Takeo looked on, unamused.

“Learned to avoid those things, then, have ya? By the Stars, I thought not!” He stooped and picked the young artificer up,. “Come on, you’re all right,” he mumbled, gently shoving the young man towards the wheel he had just caught. “Remember what that is?”

The artificer stood hazily for a second, struggling to make his brain work again, before thinking, through a haze, of the answer. “Master blow-through valve, telemotor cylinders, sir.”

Takeo suppressed much more than a slight smirk. “Right. Well lad, I suggest you open it right up and then keep an eye through that port. We’re moving, and it ain’t you who gets the blame if we can’t steer for frozen condensate in the cylinders.”

*****

Yuragani began to edge forward, swinging slightly to starboard under the influence of her precisely-controlled engines, accelerating swiftly as the planet passed beneath her. It was not for some time, however, that the message from the Dneprdani managed to filter its way to her receivers; and by the time it had been received, it was already unnecessary, for Yuragani had become aware that she was very much not alone.

Back on the bridge, it was Vannerman’s turn to look uncertain as he examined the distant warships in his electro-optical feed. Two, perhaps three of them looked small, though not small enough for his liking. But there were two more that were at least the equal of his own ship, certainly from a cursory perusal. He could tell nothing of the really vital ingredient, of course – what lay within their hulls, the skill of their crews, and the abilities of their commander. But he could look at their bristling, if seemingly slightly small, gun turrets, and what seemed on at least one to be torpedo tubes, and worry. If they turned hostile, he would need to give himself an advantage.

“Mr. Deijan!” Vannerman called, lighting a cigarette.

“Sir?”

“What is the position of the planet’s star, Mr. Deijan?” Deijan turned to ask the Navigating Officer, who removed the pencil from between his teeth and called clearly across the bridge.

“Port quarter, sir, and thirty deep of us.”

“Thank you, Mr. Peckett.” Vannerman gestured to his left with his head. “Mr. Deijan, hard a'port and bring us to a level with that sun.”

“Sir,” Deijan began, suddenly flustered, “I don’t know if that’s wise. We’ll be silhouetted against it!”

“Have you ever tried looking into the heart of a star at a distance of… oh, at a guess, seventy-five million miles, Commander?” Vannerman asked pleasantly.

“No sir.”

“I thought not. Trust in me, Mr. Deijan. In the absence of a good asteroid belt this is probably the only help we’re going to get, for now.” He turned to watch the distant ships as the Commander gave his orders.

With a bit of luck, that’ll keep the bastards’ eyes blind for a little while, if it comes to that. Might even spoof an IR sensor if we’re really lucky. But Vannerman knew that was not likely to happen.

Yuragani turned away to port, her hull rolling and diving swiftly as the steam telemotors shifted her thrusters on their axes, gradually assuming a position where she was backlit beautifully by the planet’s distant star. It wasn’t much, and Vannerman couldn’t even be sure that she was even backlit at all; the star was a bit larger than average, to be sure, but he could only guess. For all he knew he had, in fact, just given the strangers a solar eclipse in miniature, nothing more. But it might be enough, and it had given him some time to think, at any rate.

Ten minutes later, Yuragani, now well out of the line of sight of any transmission from the ground, managed to send her reply to the newcomers. Vannerman had tried to make it as polite as he could, but he still felt it was somewhat lacking, though he could not quite discover where. He’d run it past the executive officer, the CWOC and two of the bridge crew, and none of them could see the problem, but it still felt wrong. Still, he had to do something; and so, simultaneous with sending a dispatch to the Imperial Navy Headquarters on Oyada, he sent his own transmission to the Dneprdani ships now waiting with such menace in the far distance.

“In reply”, the message began, with the OIN crest emblazoned on any monitors the Dneprdani might have, “to your communication, we are the light cruiser Yuragani under Captain Aran Vannerman, and it is my duty to inform you that you are at present trespassing within the Outer Rim Territories of the Oyadan Empire.” The message paused, an unbidden pause that Vannerman had been unable to remove in any of the recordings, and had eventually left in as making him sound more sincere, assuming the foreigners could even understand his somewhat accented English. “While we are not of a necessarily hostile intent I must request that you halt any operations upon this planet until our respective governments can… er… make contact and discuss the matter.” Another pause as Vannerman looked at his half-written script. “Oh, and if your intentions are peaceful or you require any assistance we will stand by accordingly. End message.”

Vannerman kept thinking about it. Something in there felt hostile, out of place in a placatory message. Something was slightly wrong, but he couldn’t figure it out. Eventually he gave up, and went back to watching the distant ships; and throughout Yuragani’s hull, men did likewise. They watched them through the sensor suites positioned atop her bridge and her flimsy-looking after mast; they watched them through scuttles and cameras and hastily-commandeered monitors in cabins and mess deck. They watched them through Director computers, which carefully kept the gun turrets and torpedo launchers trained on them as best they could with the information to hand.

And within the gun turrets, despite the fact they were essentially automated, were small crews, kept there to observe the guns and work them manually if need be; and they watched through telescopic and stereoscopic sights, watched the figures projected onto those sights concerning velocities, ranges, directions of travel, and waited for the moment when all those data would mean the difference between a hit and a miss, life or death; and felt the chill in their hearts, as any men would. But they still sat, and watched, in spite of it tearing their nerves like barbs; for what else was there to do at a moment like this?

“Starbust system disengaging now.” The ensign said as he tapped the dial on the screen of glass that was the console board in front of his plush leather chair on the bridge.

Space began to fold in around them, it was a slightly unpleasant experience, to anybody watching the piece of space previously occupied by stars it was suddenly replaced with what could only be described as a tear of some form, the ships emerged from it first looking like bare frames, before the rest of it then came into existence quickly. They were sleek designs, designed purely for moving through space and atmospheres with ease, on them were various open ports for missiles, presently closed to the elements, or lack thereof. Slightly shapely turrets also sat atop them with gentle ease. It was the meeting of two design ethics, back in the days when the Midlonian Aerospace navy was largely built and designed by non-Midlonians and the new days since they had switched to a more “isolationist” approach, which adopted more sleek and carefully thought out designs, shamelessly in some cases, mimicking other great space faring nations.

The second ship followed soon after, it was a slightly older design and slightly bigger, a triangular prow slightly reminiscent of the Greek warships of ancient times, turrets along it’s body of slight different sizes and missile ports. It was an older destroyer pattern alongside the slightly newer cruiser. Both seemed worlds apart, they were in fact built that far apart also, one at the ship yards near to Mars, the other at Neptune in the centre of civilisation. Sol.

Captain Jenkins of the leading cruiser, the Silver Arrow stood up. “Excellent.” he said looking around to the bridge crew with a smile, the new system worked at least, and they had survived, the Physicist from Victoriana grinned also, before turning back to his console that had monitored the system when the chief engineer tapped his shoulder. He suddenly turned a little pale.

“Dr Foster, something wrong?” The Captain said, turning to the scientist as he lit a celebratory cigar that he had saved for the trip, normally protocol didn’t allow him to smoke on the bridge, but.. Well, it was his ship and he was damned if he wasn’t going to enjoy such a momentous occasion.

“Well, yes and no. The system works, that’s for sure.” Foster said, glancing at the console and to the engineer again.

The Engineer, a young Birchestese man rolled his large almond coloured eyes and stood forward, his burred accent suiting his darkened skin perfectly. “He means there has been a navigational error of 0.004%, Captain.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.” Jenkins said, raising his salt and pepper eyebrows. “Heck, when we first did Faster Than light it was something like 5% out.”

“Yes sir, I am aware of the history.” The engineer replied. He was a younger candidate than the captain, who was nearing retirement age. The Captain felt wounded by that for a second, before simply brushing that off. The engineer was right, it was history.

“You see, this navigational error is 0.004% per light year,” he emphasised the words. “Effectively we’re a lot off course, check the star charts.”

“We’re what?” Jenkins spluttered as the cigar dropped from his mouth, swiftly caught by one hand at the hot burning end, the pain not noticed from the shock. “So where are we? Navigation?” he turned to the navigational office also present on the bridge.

The officer, a man named Douglas shrugged. “The computer is trying to reconfigure itself to the new location. Seems to be struggling with some astral sign locations.”

“So we don’t know, how are sensors running?” The Captain turned again to another console.

“We’re reading a single planet capable of sustaining life, reading a couple of large metallic objects, nothing definite, might be ships, might be moons of high density metal. The sensors also need to reconfigure to the starburst.” The Sensory officer said, looking up briefly from his console before putting his face back down to the slight glow.

“So, at least we know the drawbacks to the new bloody system.” Jenkins sighed and chewed for a moment on the now extinguished cigar. “Fine, get down to engineering, and sort that damn navigational problem.” he said dismissively to the doctor and the engineer. Who both hurriedly left, the Doctor grabbing as many of his data slates on the system as possible as he rushed to the lift that’d take them down a couple of decks away from the bridge, they’d have to walk the rest of the way to the engine rooms at the aft of the ship.

“Sir, the objects appear to be moving against the gravitational field of the planet.” The sensory officer said, his face still lit by the gloom from the console. “Seems they may be ships.”

“Ahead on a steady speed Ensign Jones.” The captain said to the young blonde ensign as he settled back into his chair. “Signal the Bright and Beautiful and order her to follow. Seems we’re investigating while we’re here.”

The Cruiser gently drew ahead before the larger destroyer followed steadily behind. Both ships bore their GRN numbers and the Bird of Peace soaked in Blood on their main bodies, no fancy flags or emblems on the front or their prows, it was an old custom that didn’t really work in these days, Midlonian engagement ranges were measured in thousands of miles, it wasn’t like they’d see the bloody flags or anything after all.