Re: Dawn
2405.9
Haphik warp point...
...onboard CDS Southampton...
The voice was soothing. Feminine. Almost alluring.
Research demonstrated that such a voice was comforting in times of stress.
Like, well...now.
The operations officer turned her head when she heard the voice. Lieutenant Katherine O’Rourke knew the voice. Somewhere inside her, she wondered why it couldn’t be a strong, comforting male voice, but those thoughts were pushed aside as the soft voice beckoned for attention.
“Warning. Warp point breach imminent. Warp point breach in thirty seconds.”
O’Rourke opened a channel to the Southampton’s sister ship on patrol with her.
“Southampton calling Dover, Lieutenant O’Rourke on duty. Captain on the way. Dover, are you getting this?”
O'Rourke had to make sure the computer wasn't generating a false breach...
...onboard CDS Dover...
“Southampton, Dover…we confirm warp point breach in…twenty seconds…missiles set and...”
The duty officer followed protocol. Haphnik was quarantined – as was all of Dawn space. No one was to get into the area until the corporation was ready for them. That point was about to be made with emphasis.
“Southampton, this is Dover – we have missiles away, repeat missiles away!!”
Then, Dover began to pull away from the warp point. She probably had a longer combat reach than whatever was coming through the point, but there was no sense in sticking around to find out.
...onboard CDS Southampton...
Captain Harrison arrived on the bridge to hear the voice announce what everyone knew would happen.
“Warp point breached.”
Lieutenant O’Rourke filled her captain in:
“Sir, we have an unknown breach of the warp point. Dover has already released missiles and is pulling behind us. We are ready to fire on your orders. Our position is 150km from the point, sir.”
Captain Rodney Harrison took the report in and winced. His initial thought was that some poor Cue Cappa bastard is not going to have a nice day today.
He was wrong...
...onboard the Sergetti frigate Celea...
The Sergetti commander had heard the rumors about the Haphnik warp point. About ships that entered only to be not heard from again. He didn’t believe the stories, but more to the point he was sure his frigate would be able to handle any challenge. He had the second generation of weapons his race had developed. He realized his mistake when, upon entering the system, he found two missiles bearing down on his ship.
The Sergetti point defense fired when the missiles were in range...
...onboard the CDS Southampton...
Lieutenant O'Rourke brought her ship alongside Dover, with about 10,000 meters separating them. Together they pulled away from the intruder...
...onboard the Sergetti frigate Celea...
The point defense did well, knocking out one missile and almost knocking down the second. It was a microsecond too late...
The missile impacted the bow of the Sergetti frigate, and the resulting heat generated burned almost all of the ship’s armor away. The shock to the ship was measurable, and the crew wasn’t able to respond for a few seconds after the explosion...
...onboard the CDS Southampton...
Captain Harrison was the senior commander, and assumed tactical command of both ships. He ordered a second salvo as his little fleet began to pull out of weapons range of the target...
...onboard the Sergetti frigate Celea...
The captain was about to order a pursuit when his own display showed four missiles now closing on the ship, with his targets outdistancing him at a speed he would have found impressive; had not he been contemplating his own death at the moment...
The frigate tried to heel about and run from the new set of missiles, but they had too much residual energy from the warp point jump - although the impact from the first missile hit helped to bleed some of that energy away. The crew had finally recovered and began to turn the frigate when the point defense cannon automatically fired at the first missile...
...onboard the CDS Southampton...
Lieutenant O’Rourke watched the display as the four smaller dots closed with the one larger dot. Suddenly, one of the four smaller dots disappeared. The three remaining dots continued on their way – oblivious to what had just happened or what was about to happen – and they merged with the larger dot. Then, the screen went blank...
The Colonial Dawn had just said hello to the Sergetti Empire. And another race of sentient beings would try to figure out what kinds of creatures would react in this most peculiar way...
...Nekkar Research Center...
It was just one of those days.
The calculations couldn’t be wrong. They were rather simple, and the technician had gone over this very formula many times before.
The problem was how to improve the range of the detector in the combat sensor array used by the ships defending the corporation. Basic modulation techniques were first used, but the power required to generate such signals would be prohibitively large for a space vehicle. Then, low power algorithms were discovered, and the system worked. A simple binary method of coding the transmissions provided a rudimentary sort of identification between transmitter and target. If the target replied with the right binary code pattern, the system recognized the target as friendly.
But today, the technician was working out a way to code the code itself. Or was trying to. And failing. Miserably.
It was just one of those days everyone has. Nothing worked. The technician questioned himself and his abilities. He knew better, but today it just wasn’t working for him.
In a rare show of emotion, he grabbed his formula sheet off of the desk and tore it. And again. And again.
“Feel better?" querried his partner.
The technician looked a bit sheepish as he realized he wasn’t alone. Then, his demeanor changed to fear once he realized he had taken out his frustration out on not his failed computations, but on the monthly report for the Department of Sensor Technology for the Nekkar Research Center.
In a panic he gathered the pieces off of the floor and began to look at each one as if trying to figure out which pieces went where.
His partner was still laughing when he chided him and simply printed out another copy of the report. It was good-natured, and the technician was about to reply with a jest in kind when he froze in his tracks.
He looked back at the pieces of paper on the floor and realized...
“It can’t be...” he breathed…
His partner was curious and looked at the paper scraps on the floor and back at the technician.
The technician looked at his partner and began to smile. Broadly. He knew. He knew!!
It was just one of those days...
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