Strike Range

Ch 5: Prime Target

"The worst enemy is the one long thought dead."

Admiral Davison on the Black Fleet, January 5, 3255

    It seemed to be an ordinary day for the controllers at the last stronghold of the Alliance.  The fleet wasn't expected back for another couple of days, and everything had at last settled down.  Even the frenzied search pattern of the Ohansu fleets had at last stopped.

    Then, something blipped on one of the controller's screens.  Something big, and headed their way at ludicrous speed.  The alarm was sounded, ships were scrambled, and the home fleet got ready for one last desperate defense.  Then, the Metamor dropped out of transwarp.

CSS Flash, Bridge, 14:30 FT

    The now rather well-aged Flash dropped out of transwarp nearly on top of the Prophet and Shi'ran as they broke formation.  Her shields sleeted every from of radiation imaginable as the ship arced out of the way, dumping momentum, kinetics, and all the other assorted nonsense particles she had picked up in the high-speed journey.

    To the outside observer, the light of the Flash, and the other ships dropping out of transwarp, was the only illumination for the scene.  Base 193's hiding spot had been picked because of the intense pockets of sensor-refracting ores in the Oort cloud objects of the system, and the extreme remoteness in the middle of a dark nebula.  

    The ships finally pulled into formation, very faint lighting from the system's primary gilding some of the larger ship's hulls.  The base beckoned to it's dependents, welcoming them home.

    "What in the heck got into Davison's thrusters?!"  Captain Marthan had a scowl the size of a small asteroid on his face.  His ship's antiquated sensors had not picked up the imminent threat, and he had been left in the dark during the quick and desperate series of transwarp jumps.  "Why in the blazes would he just jump us all out like this, in the middle of a salvage operation?"  He pushed out of his chair, his boots stomping angrily on the badly patched floor.  

    "Perhaps the Metamor's sensors picked up something we didn't.  Our sensors aren't up to their standard yet.  Supposedly, they can scan over sensor horizons."  The science officer shrugged with a bit of worry over the implications.  "I'd hate to find out that the city-ship's cover has been blown.  If an Ohansu fleet was dropping in, they likely picked up our biggest secret weapon."  He pivoted in his chair to watch his captain's pacing around the room.

    "Well, that insufferable captain had better hope so.  I'm not in the mood for some blasted gallivanting around the galaxy."  Marthan paused at the lift doors.  "Make a note to remind me to have Davison's hide if this was a false alarm.  Get us docked at the base as soon as possible."  He stepped through the doors with an exaggerated stomp, finding it hard to stay angry, with the possibilities that his officers had raised.   Yet, at the same time, he couldn't help but wonder if perhaps that annoying fox, Captain Diess, had anything to do with it...

    "Figures.  One of these days he's gonna put a boot down like that, and fall through the floor."  

    "I heard that!"

CSS Long Shot; Bridge; 14:45 FT

    "Captain, may I ask  what in the heck has you so freaked out?"  Andre leaned over his duty station, looking at his highly distressed captain.  Ever since the call in from Admiral Davison, she had just sat there, trembling slightly in her chair.  "I mean, something has you to the point that you look like a fluffy plush doll."

    Akalia had to turn her whole chair around, because her head was only stopped from trembling by the back of her station.  She shut her eyes for a minute, trying to fight off the shock of finding out that an evil blast from her past had come to haunt her just 45 minutes before.  Her reply was a single choked word.  "Trouble."  She steadied herself, rising to her slightly shaking feet.  She couldn't hold the pretense of being in control for much longer.

    It took that one second for Andre to put together the information.  "I take it that Admiral Davison is going to be here in a few minutes or less."  He drew himself to attention, ready to give his mother someone to lean on.

    "Yes."  Akalia didn't care anymore what the bridge crew saw.  She slowly creeped her way to her ready room, stopping by the door. The various officers looked at her, surprised by her behavior.  "Notify me the instant the Admiral beams aboard.  He is going to be coming up to consult with me."  She started to press the open button, before stopping.  Her tail flicked for a moment, with her ears.  "And no-one is to enter or disturb me until then.   I need to put things in order, and I'll not take fools."

    Andre let out the breath he had been holding, as the door shut behind the Captain. The bridge was silent  for a moment,  the officers all looking at each other, wondering if any of them would escape a situation that had the most inflappable captain they all knew shaking, literally shaking in her boots.  The odds they were all silently tallying were not good.

    "Has she ever gotten as freaked as this?"  Andre hoped that some of the older crew could answer, but it was only Melony and Wang who would respond.

    "No"  Melony insisted firmly.

    "Yes, of course."  Wang said it for the sake of being contrary.

    Andre had to keep from rolling his eyes at the intermingled responses.  He bumped himself off his station, starting a slow, lazy pacing around the starboard side of the bridge, away from Melony.  He didn't want to squelch her parade, but he did have a personal interest in slamming the cookie jar lid on Wang's fingers.

    Melony looked at Wang for a moment, long enough to give him a slightly prolonged look of annoyance, before expanding her reasoning.  "In the short time I've known the captain, she's faced a core meltdown, flown the most insane and inspired bit of piloting I've ever seen."  

    Wang shook his head, thinking of a more recent event.

    "No, you idiot, the flying through that micro-passage.  No ship of any size had ever even attempted a run of that type before, and lived to tell the tale."  Melony chuckled grimly under her breath, swiveling her chair slightly.  "Plus, fighting at least 2 Ohansu battlefleets so far, and all the other exploits I've heard legends and myths about." Melony smiled, thinking of a particularly interesting one.  "Heck, I've even heard of one tail involving her in the 23rd century, and that great war."

    Andre knew Melony was striking closer to the truth than she knew, and tried to get her off-course.  "Bad pun with that tail bit."  He was halfway around the room, and almost to Wang's station.  "But, what does this have to do with her current fit?"

    "Frankly put, if something has her completely and totally freaked out, it's bad beyond all belief.  We're talking evil total psycho from her past type bad."   She reached behind herself, slapping a button just as it's alarm went off.  "Blasted miscalibration..."  She pressed a few more buttons, the habit of fixing the miscalibration already ingrained in memory.  "Anyway, if she's as scared as she seems to be, then I bet, that those guys are likely elites, and they're also the guys in command of the empire.  Something is up, to get an ice queen like her freaked."

    Andre wasn't happy with the joke, but he got the point.  "Crude, but illustrative.  And you do have a point.  Anyone who can live through an encounter with her on the wrong side, has got to be impressively good."

    "Ah, you guys read too much into it.  If you haven't noticed, she's a coward."  Wang had not been happy with Akalia from the beginning, so his opinion was not surprising.  However, the vehemence that he spoke it with was rather alarming.  

    Andre didn't give him the chance to finish off why exactly he felt the way he did.  In one quick motion, he introduced Wang's face to his fist, then to the Operations console.  The dazed officer could hear Andre's furious voice echoing through his pained fugue.

    "I will not have such talk about the captain passed around.  Or any other captain for that matter!"  Andre would not be surprised if the people on the next deck down did not hear him, or if Captain Diess popped her head out of her office.  "Such talk is disruptive to the fleet, and the next time I hear it, I'll throw you in the brig myself for insubordination!"  Andre's fire cut off any protest that Wang could wring together.  Few people had seen the fire and brimstone side of Andre yet, and it put the rule of silence back onto the bridge.

    The stars glided around outside the screen for a moment, as the silenced reigned.  The bridge crew looked at each other, wondering if their captain was as competent as they thought, among other things.  Someone coughed in a corner, getting a few twitches.

    Melony's tail-tip twitched, in worry and in amusement over Wang's predicament.  "A little protective, aren't you?"  With nothing else to do for the moment, she had taken up slowly spinning around in her chair, taking the sight of the entire bridge staff in.

    "Maybe I am a little over the top, but it is dark days like these that require a totally unified crew."  Andre continued his pacing, passing his mother's office.  "The Ohansu is a nightmare that is threatening to finally end civilization.  We must be united to stop them."  He kept his distance from Wang, to keep from getting into a fullscale brawl.  Along the way back to his station, he had time to whisper into Melony's ear.  "Be wary, kid.  That guy is trouble.  At the least, he's a snitch in the making."

    The starboard lift deposited Admiral Davison onto the scene. His uniform was in slight disarray, as if he had been running in a major hurry.  His look of concern upon noting that Captain Diess wasn't where she was expected to be was noted by a few of the crew.  "The captain, where is she?"

    "In her ready room.  She expected you for some reason, and went to prepare for your arrival.  Sir."  Andre kept his tone neutral, while paying a side-long glance to Wang to keep his mouth shut. He stood at his station, waiting for perhaps another request from the Admiral. "She seemed rather nervous, so I expect that it's urgent."

    "Thanks."  Davison flashed a brief smile and wink to Andre as he passed, which was reciprocated.  Bypassing the lock on Akalia's office, he took a deep breath to catch his fleeing heart.  Everything that he had fought to avoid was quickly coming true.  He passed through the briefly open doors, into darkness.  

    "It's about time you showed up."  Akalia turned away from the window, and the view of the base to face Davison.  Her every signal betrayed her inner mood, her control temporarily lost in the worry.  Davison was no less open, the same worry visible now on his face as well.  "Get over here, I can't get the inner vault open without a little help from you."  She motioned Davison over, shoving her desk back slightly to make room.

    "Wait, no, nevermind, I know exactly how you could tell."  Davison rounded the desk, remembering the stash of materials and data that Richson had once put under the captain's desk of one of the Long Shot's sisters.  Akalia had taken no cost-cuttings to remake this ship into a reflection of her home.

    "Yep."  Akalia's sage quip got a brief, thin and grim chuckle from the two. They quickly sobered up, in view of the odds against them.  "There are few things that panic you, and there is only one fleet that can send you screaming at the merest hair of them.  I know it has to be the Black Fleet that you saw coming over the planetary horizon."  Akalia removed a deck plate under her desk, revealing the already unlocked outer vault.  "I picked up the updated records from Richson's stash, along with the whole vault.  All of the old mission data, even the stuff after we got lost in time, is here."

    "Good."  Davison punched in his code into the keypad on the upper surface.  "You know as well as I do the problems with that fleet.  If they're back, you can bet your bottom credit that a new Citadel is likely on the construction list." He got ready to hide the chip with all the known records of the Black Fleet.  "It's a good thing Richson prepares for even the most remotely unlikely event.  And thank god almighty that he managed to kill off Giovanni once and for all in that last battle."

    "Yet, he's still found a way to get his own brand of revenge across time." Akalia popped open the vault.  She looked around, re-arranging the compartment's contents until she found the stack of optical chips.  She ran her fingertip claws along them until she found the set needed. "Here we are.  Every bit of information, intelligence, encounters, every last known scrap on the supposedly dead Black Fleet.  Take care of it."

    "It's out of date, but it helps."  Davison was surprised when she pulled out a dozen chips, each so densely packed with data that the chip itself could not be seen for the pathways running over it's surface.  "It would be exactly like Giovanni to leave a fleet in some kind of time-warp, to try and get revenge on Richson's decendants, so don't count that out either."  He stuffed the set of chips into various pockets on the inner side of his uniform jacket.  

    "Yep.  He was a spiteful little bugger.  No way he's alive though.  You simply cannot fake a death of getting hit by the cannons off an Avenger in the middle of the single most epic battle in Earth orbit since The battle."  Akalia shook her head, thankful for one small favor. As Davison got back up to his feet, she slammed the vault shut, hoping that the secrets of old locked inside of it would stay locked up.  "And thank goodness that the Canis are banished away for all eternity.  At least that's one problem no-one in the multiverse will have to face again."

    "Those fools would have been the last ones I'd ever want to see joining up in this war."  Davison started to move to the door.  "But, the worst enemies are the ones long thought dead.  The black fleet, the Canis, the Hythan Imperium, I don't think we've seen the last of any of them."  Davison had a wry smile.  "But at least now we've got the guns to put them all on ice if they show their slimy faces again." He noticed a few oddities about the desk.  "You salvaged your office furniture from the Salu?"

    "You might say that."  Akalia started towards the doors, with a few last bits of advice on her mind. "Make sure you cap every last one of those black fleeters!  It's already been once that not checking for their last stronghold has let them live."  She shoved Davison out the door, and got every fiber of her being ready for what was quickly becoming the fight that would forever more echo throughout the universe.

Captain's Log, CSS Long Shot; January 5, 3255

    The Black Fleet.  I hoped that those war-mongering villans would die, but it seems that the universe is not quite beencourteous

  enough to get them to.  With their renewed threat, the galaxy has slid even further into total war and chaos.  But, their return could be as much as weapon for us, as a weapon against us.  If they have just blundered into this mess, we may yet get them to lend their firepower to our cause, and their secret home in the Black Isles system.  Wherever it is.

    But, if they are leading the Ohansu, then we may have a fight to be remembered on our hands.  If we didn't already have one.

    But, this whole sordid mess has brought the hope that the Ohansu haven't killed everyone in the galaxy. With their recruitment among the peoples, we grow even less certain of who they truely are.  They may already be among us.  Who they truly are, remains to be a revelation of another day.  For now, the Admiral and I must get the next city ship started, for I fear it may be needed sooner than thought......

End Recording

TBC