From the Begining New Chapter Added (9/12/06)

[Starhawk]

2400.8-9
HMS Saber proceeded from the Telcosus nebulae to the Licha In, warp point to make her second exploratory jump.
“Approaching Licha In warp point…..ETA three minutes.” Helmsman Johan Burke announced in a bored tone as he watched the chronometer on his panel count down the minutes to jump.
The sensors were showing that wondrous blue vortex growing in size fast as the Saber closed in at 6 gees.

“Thank you helmsman.” Commander Pallins was bored as well, it had been two weeks spent in this nebulae and although it was a beauty it was useless to the expansion of Icara and the crew was getting frustrated with the constant monotony of day after day of nothing but soup in the visual displays and nothing but battle drills and card games to keep them busy for two weeks.
The lift door slid open and Captain Ross stepped onto the bridge still buttoning his tunic and wiping the sleep out of his eyes desperately trying to look like three hours of sleep was enough as he took over the Last few minutes of the watch so he could oversee the warp jump personally.

Three minutes later the grav field began to glow against the warp point and the familiar nausea swept over the crew for the moment they were in warp space, seconds later the Licha In system lay ahead of them.
Licha was a massive system by Norvor standards with 15 planets of varying size and Ross felt a massive wave of relief come over him as he noticed the readout, finall something for his crew to do after weeks of boredom, now they could do their job and survey the planets of an actual star system.

Meanwhile in Icara’s shipyards the massive form of another colony ship set course for the Swift system to colonize one of her two inhabitable worlds, and shortly after their launch the keel for HMS Repulse was laid, and her crew completed their training..

A month later HMS Repulse launched from her berth and took up stationary orbit of Icara to protect her while the other two frigates of her class explored star systems in an effort to expand the Icaran’s borders.

[Starhawk]

2401.0
The massive colony ship entered Sparta's atmosphere and formed a massive fireball as her heat shielded mass met the higher then normal friction of Sparta's thick atmosphere.

Duke Leonard Panowsky had used his own personal wealth the massive colony ship and he didn't let colonists or his peers forget it.

As he strode onto the command deck of the massive vessel he sneered at the privately hired civilian command crew, they were little more then ants to him but for the moment he needed them and he hated needing commoners to do anything for him and they knew it.

But as he saw the surface of the planet as the ship broke through the cloud layer he couldn't help but smile, not at it's inherant beauty for Sparta was rather devoid of any attractive land features as it was mainly rock with a few "forests" that were little more then moss covered oxygen producing swamplands, no he was smiling because this ugly world would be all his it would give him prestige to back his "honorary" dukedom not to mention an actual realm to rule over as back on Icara he was little more then a merchant and was looked down upon by the land owning nobles but no more.

An hour later the massive colony ship landed and squads of heavily armed scouts left her bays on ground effect speeders to make sure there were no predatory creatures near their landing zone. Meanwhile armed engineering crews began loading up the prefab defense walls onto the large Anti grav trucks so that when their scouts reported back they could construct the perimiter of their new city.

Sparta city would be unlike most cities on Icara for three reasons, the 36 million inhabitants was larger then most Icaran cities housed, it's buildings were all prefabs, not a single one of them bore the distinctive stonework of Icaran architecture and the third reason was that her perimiter would be surrounded by a three meter thick bLasteel wall with automated defense laser cannons to protect the city's inhabitants from the many predatory animals that were spotted during the initial surveys of Sparta including the elephant sized beast known as the Kraken after a mythological beast of old Earth.

Meanwhile :

The charting of the Tempel and Akritri star systems brought new possibilities for Icara as several colonizable worlds were discovered, mostly they would need domes but they were all rich in minerals and other resources vital to Icara.

2401.3
Sparta's sister world New Caldonia was colonized by a government funded "pathfinder" expedition to establish military and resourcing facilities on world as soon as possible.

2401.4-7:
Exploration continued but nothing of major value occured within the Spartan heald territories. The colonies reported their first "homeworld" births and exciting reports of new resources began to pour in to Icaran Merchants and government agencies back home on Sparta.

2401.8 New Discovery and a New Threat
HMS Repulses' Captain and crew were were expecting a routine jump as they entered the Fornax Warp point so most of the crew was off duty or asleep.
Captain Bradley's crew had proved themselves many times to him and he thought proudly they had proved themselves to the Admiralty by charting not one but two star systems so he always allowed non essential personal to relax when not conducting drills or charting worlds especially during the late hours of the night like this.

As he looked over the Last shift's report Bradley felt a slight twinge in his stomache and noticed that they must have entered the warp point's field, Bradley was one of those few people that was not effected by the warp jump effect and by the way some of his crew had described the experience he was glad of it.

As HMS Repulse slipped out of the warp point all hell broke loose on the bridge as the lights turned red and alerts hooted throughout the ship, computer controlled tactical systems suddenly displayed not one but two sources of energy in system and without needing orders the tac officer swung into action running advanced scans.

"Tac what the hell is going on?!" Bradely snapped as his executive officer and the marine Seargent ran onto the bridge at the same time.

"Sir I am reading a vessel in system, as well as a planetary source of energy." Tactical officer Leona Simmons said coldly as she fed her scanning information to the Captain's display.

An energy signature that could only belong to a ship of moderate size was at a distance of 10 light minutes out from his own frigates' position but more worrying there was a world that was only 1 light minute out that was showing signs of habitation.

"Helm lay in a course for that world, I think we should try to make contact.....Commander Ripley launch a messenger drone to inform Naval command that we have a first contact situation." Bradley took note of the energy signature and swallowed hard as he realized that no human power plants could produce that signature, at least none that he knew of and that likely meant that this really was a first contact and not simply a contact with another Human group.

Twenty hours and twelve minutes after Repulse had set course for the unknown colony they were in communications range.

"Comns open all frequencies." Bradley's voice was steele and to his suprise he felt no anxiety or fear, afterall this was his job, he thought to himself.

The comn officer nodded to him and Bradley stood up to make the speech he had been tought back in the academy but just as he was about to speak an alarm at the tactical station buzzed, as he jerked to face Ensign Simmons, the look on his face made her wince as she punched a few buttons.

After a moment the young woman looked up at her Captain oviously fearing his wrath "Sir, they have accessed our communications database, I tried to put up firewalls but I've never seen anything like this before." she looked down again and kept punching in codes frantically.

Bradely didn't doubt that she was telling the truth about it being nothing she had ever seen before but he also found the "covering my ***" tone oddly amusing.

Just as the alarm stopped and Simmons sighed in relief beleiving she had finally blocked the access the comn officer just about jumped out of his seat as he set the comn net to bridgewide.

A very alien voice began to echo across the bridge and the entire command crew sat stunned as the eery voice made it's demands.

You have entered Phong Federation space and violeted the boundries of one of our outPosts you will stand down all engines and weapons and turn yourselves over to us at once, if you do not we willl destroy you.....you have five minutes to decide your fate.

"I'll be damned first." Bradley snapped to himself as he personally cut off the comn circut.

"Cocky sonofa***** isn't he?" Commander Ripley said in a grim tone as he sat his station next to the Captain's command chair.

"Indeed mister Ripley, I think we can safely assume that ship we detected is a warship." Bradley's voice was as cold as ever but his eyes burned with anger, how dare they demand his surrender, he'd be damned to the lowest depths of hell before being the first Icaran navy captain to surrender his ship to anybody much less an alien race.

"Tactical officer I want to know what that outpost has right now." Bradely said as he nodded to Commander Ripley to sound general quarters.

"I am reading thrirty-six million I repeat three-six million inhabitants, multiple mining operations and nearest I can guess a spaceport faciltiy sir." Simmons hands moved skillfully over her controls as throughout the ship klaxons and drumrolls brought the 130 navy officers and Ratings and 20 marines running to their stations.

"Gunnery crews report ready, missile tubes loaded, all hands reporting ready at battlestations Captain." Ripley announced with a satisfied tone.

"Very well, aquire targets on surface....and get me an ETA on that warship." Bradley continued issuing orders as his crew perpared for the first combat action of an Icaran starship in recorded history.

"Sir, they say our time is up!" Comns announced hoarsely as the alien message came in.

"Sir ETA on that warship's intercept is 200 hours." Simmons said as she aquired target locks on planet.

Captain Bradley restled with his emotions, killing 36 million people would ensure that his ship and crew was safe but it was 36 million sentient beings...he looked around at his bridge crew, from young face to young face and then considered the billions back home that could be threatened by this race, and his duty to the Praetor became clear.

"All guns fire, missile tubes one and two fire, level that planet!" At his order the crew silently snapped into action, all three cannons and both missile tubes fired.

As the three ultra high speed cannon rounds slammed into the surface outpost massive craters were cut into the domed facility inflicting heavy losses on the populace but even that was nothing compared to what happened when the two fusion missiles slammed into the planet's surface...massive spheres of energy plumed from the city laying waste to miles of buildings and killing millions n their immediate vicinity. Thousands more would have died of radiation poisoning had they had the chance, fortuneately for them they would not get the chance as the next volley of cannon rounds leveled more buildings and killed hundreds.
After five minutes and a third volley of cannon fire the second volley of missiles was on it's way and then a fourth cannon volley.

The Last few Phong that had survived the initial onslaughts were massacred as the second wave of missiles blew the Last parts of the outpost away....the only question now was what would the enemy frigate do?

[Starhawk]

2401.9 Interception and Battle
Captain Bradley and the crew of HMS Repulse were on edge as their the enemy frigate's light signal drew closer on the tactical display.

"Sir we're gaining on her, we should get her before she reaches the warp point." Commander Ripley's voice was anxious as she watched the chronometer and counted off the speeds of the two warships.

Meanwhile Haden supply base had been established on the Phong Frontier to establish a forward base for any ships in that region.
Another supply base had been established on the opposite edge of the frontier to keep ships on exploratory missions for a longer period of time.
The Phong Frigate was no faster or slower then it's Icaran counterpart under normal circumstances, but these were not normal circumstances as the Icarans had the advantage of slingshoting themselves around the planet using their forward GFG to repulse them off the atmosphere and then kicking in their after GFG to shove them along at nearly 100 gees, from that point on all they needed to do was coast along on their normal drives to overtake the Phong.
The chase had been going on for the Last two days with the Repulse slowley overtaking the Phong warship and now it was down to a matter of an hour before intercept, the entire crew was at battlestations her missile tubes had been loaded, and her cannons charged, even though with their enemy still 200,000 kilometers off a hit was impossible from either weapon.

The Phong were headed for the warp point and if they made it physics would take over, there would be no way Repulse could catch up to her, and for all Ross knew that enemy warship would head streight for Icaran space, afterall the Norvor system (home system of Icara it's self) was only three jumps away and with her fleet out exploring Icara would be utterly defenseless.

"Captain we are closing, in weapons range in five minutes." Tactical officer Simmons announced as her eyes remained fixed on the light dot that represented the Phong warship.
With a sudden gasp her voice chimed again "Captain! make that two minutes she's turning about to engage us!"

"Thank you Lieutenant my compliments..." Ross smiled to himself as he noticed how startled the young officer was that the enemy Captain would turn about to engage her hunter.

Two minutes passed as the warships closed on one another but finally Repulse was in range and she could do what she had been built for, fighting another warship of a hostile power.

"Guns, launch missiles from tubes one and two." Ross said coldly as the enemy frigate came in range.

Two massive fusion missiles launched from their tubes and began closing on the enemy ship at .4c. Both missiles were equipped with a "compressed control fusion warhead" which generally meant that it was a nuclear bLast focused into a "bottle" that could blow a nice hole in a starship or within an atmosphere it could level entire city blocks while keeping radiation to a minimum.
As the two missiles closed the enemy ship suddenly jerked to her right and fired two tiny cannons in rapid vollies until the first missile exploded, thousands of little slugs sprayed at the second missile but it was already in too close and moving to fast...

"Got a hit captain!" Simmons voice was jubilant as the main display showed a brilliant flash on the hull of the enemy frigate, debris and atmosphere spilled out of the whole but still the enemy came on.

"Sir they are in cannon range......they're firing!" Commander Simmons sounded tense as the monitors showed three fast moving cannon rounds closing in on them.

The Phong frigate was armed with four Depleted Uranium cannons, one of which had been blown apart by their first missile impact.

Three was enough however as the three slugs slammed into the hull of Repulse and the frigate rocked as fire sprayed from the breached hull and debris spilled out into space.

"Sir we've had a hit on decks A and B, we have a hull breach." Commander Ripley switched her personal disply monitor to the damage control camera's in the effected area and almost vomitted in her preasure helmet as she saw bodies smashed against the bulkhead or thrown into space as the atmosphere of the entire section was sucked into the void.
The ones that had been sucked into space still had hope as the crews of Icaran warships were equipped with vac suits just in case of hull breach but those who had been slammed into the bulkheads had been torn apart by the force or had been speared by flying debris.

"Sir cannon two is gone, I'm reading damage and casualty reports from the effected areas." Comns Officer Thompson sounded suprisingly calm for a man of his young years but his eyes flashed rage as he read the casualty reports coming in.

The Repulse maneuvered into position where she could fire her surviving two cannons, as she closed on the Phong, silver flares announced the firing of both her cannons and two resounding bLasts on the Phong's hull showed two direct hits. Hull plating and atmosphere sprayed into space, bodies and wreckage drifted free from the frigate as the enemy ship continued to close.

"She's down to one quarter speed, I am only reading one cannon intact." Simmons voice was almost cheerful as the Icaran frigate moved out of range of the enemy frigate.

"Finish this, fire missile tube one and both cannons." Bradley's voice was pure venom as he gave the order to destroy the ship that had killed an unknown number of his crew.

Seconds later the missile impacted followed swiftly by two Depleted Uranium shells and the Phong frigate began tearing it's self apart from the inside out as explosions rent her hull....flares of energy and wreckage burst forth as the Last intact remnants of the hull blew apart.

The victory was sweet clear but Repulse had paid the price for it, one of her cannons, her comn systems and even her forward grav field generator were destroyed by the enemy shots that impacted her hull. Twenty crewman had died and another ten were wounded in the attack meaning that almost a third of the crew, and that made Bradley feel sick.

HMS Repulse limped her way home, it would take months and she woudl likely run out of all supplies as she made it into the Norvor system but at least she had emmerged victorious.

2402.0-2402.5
The Icaran exploration expeditions continued in ernest as the Royal Navy began searching regions of space for suitable colony sites to expand.

Meanwhile the HMS Repulse had returned home a hero, and was towed into port for repairs and remanning.

[Starhawk]

2402.6 Welcome to the fleet.
Commander Sandra Fowler stood in front of the large viewport in the off duty rec area aboard HMSS Wycoff orbital shipyards and looked out upon the two famous Saber class frigates that were in port with awe.
HMS Repulse was still undergoing heavy repairs and the massive hole in her port side stood out like a sore thumb on such the grey hull and Fowler couldn't help but wince when she saw such a beautiful ship scarred so badly.

Her attention drifted a little to the stern of the damaged frigate and her mood brightened a little as she saw HMS Saber herself docked in port, her gleaming grey hull with that unscarred perfection, the shimering pure white prow with the Royal blue trim at the front of the ship made Saber look almost like a dagger to the newly promoted Commander, the sight filled her with confidence as she remembered that she would Command such a vessel some day soon.
She tried to remember what she could about the Frigate's when she had first been assigned to the orbital shipyards and one paragraph stood out in her mind.

(The prow of a warship was not simply decoration, it was where the forward gfg was located and perhaps almost as importantly it was where the ship's two missile tubes were located, hidden under armored plating as she waited in port. Her dagger shape is in fact why the frigate recieved her name.)

A slight click behind her snapped her attention back to the present as the young captain turned around and tensed to attention, reflexivley saluting the man behind her. "Sir!" her voice trembled slightly and she couldn't help but reproach herself.
The older man simply saluted back and smiled politely, he wore the gold tri-star of a Rear Admiral on the cuffs of his space black tunic and the dark blue troUsers wore the red stripe of a "non-combat" officer as apposed to the white of a fleet officer.

"At ease Captain......we need to talk." his voice sounded lighthearted but his eyes considered her seriously as he calmly walked next to her and looked out of the viewport.

"What about Admiral Ralley?" her voice was finally under control but her nerves were not, somehow even though Ralley always came across as fatherly he always made her very nervious, ever since her days at the Academy.

"Well Commander I have good news for you, but you'll need to meet me in my office at 0500 hours if you want to find out. "Ralley smiled at her again and without even giving her a chance to ask him another question he walked of down the corridor.
As Fowler realized what time he had mentioned she groaned to herself quietly, still four hours away by the station's clock....she figured she'd better get a little sleep first and walked casually to her quarters.

*****

Commander Fowler walked into the office of Admiral Ralley rather cautiously, as if she were walking into a room full of tree vipers and stopped up short when she noticed who sat at Ralley's desk with him.
"Captain Ross!...." Fowler said rather sheepishly as she snapped to attention and saluted as smartly as she could manage.
Ralley made her nervious enough because of his rank but now she a bonified hero sitting in front of her, Ross hadn't seen any combat action like Bradley had but he was a hero none the less and Fowler noted he wasn't much older then her.

"At ease Commander" Ralley said with a smile as Ross stood and offered his hand to the young woman, she took it out of reflex and shook it crisply before letting go just as quickly (mainly to hide the fact that when she got nervious her hands trembled a little).

Ross showed her to her seat and looked over to Ralley with what could only be called a grin on his holostar handsom face. "Well Ralley you are right, she is young." his voice was more human then Fowler had expected.
She almost blushed at the remark before remembering what Ralley had told her back in the Academy, something about no officer ever got anywhere blushing like a Feldoni Peakock.

Both her superiors laughed softly a moment before Ralley focused on her, those peircing grey eyes seemingly sizing her up.
"Sandra Captain Ross is going to be transfered from his command in two months to a new ship that the Shiptech boys beleive is the (wave of the future) or some such like that." His smile grew broader and Ross grinned back.
"Well anyway Commander, he was given a list of all available officers that had the seniority or grade to command a ship of their own and we were wondering if you had any sugjestions for his replacement?" Riley's smile disapeared instantly and he looked at her quite seriously.

The youung woman's mind raced as she began considering all the officers she knew of that were of the proper qualifications and grade when Ralley suddenly started smiling again.

"Relax Sandra, he chose you after I told him what a good officer you are, congratulations Commander, though it won't be official till Ross takes command of his new ship." Ralley had always backed the cadets from his class but Sandra was a special case to him, she was almost like a daughter to him because of all the hours he had to spend with her, helping kick her butt into shape so she could graduate the academy, and the swell of pride in his eyes could have made the room light up.

After a few seconds of letting it sink in Sandra too began to smile and thanked her superiors for almost twenty minutes streight before Ross offered to give her a tour of her future command.

Enterprise
The "new command" Ralley had been talking about was a new class of starship that had been designed at the Wycoff's own Shiptech bureau, they called it a destroyer.
The Enterprise class was 50,000 tons more massive and half again the size of a 300m frigate. More then that she packed an extra missile tube, a fourth cannon and a new weapon called a "sprint missile" launcher which was a close in high speed weapon designed to increase the close in killing power against Point Defense weapons.
The first ship of the new class HMS Enterprise would be finished in two months and when she was launched she would be the largest ship in the Icaran navy (for a time anyway) and she would be Captained by a living legend.
With the new threat on the frontier these new warships would be more necessary than ever now.