Legions of Orion (Star Crusades Nexus, Book 1) (5 page)

“Admiral Anderson, my forces are ready
and awaiting your go order.”

Anderson nodded and
looked over to his team for confirmation on the stability of the
Spacebridge. All lights appeared to be green, but there was a
nagging doubt in his mind about the viability of the one-way rift.
He looked back to the display and the patient face of the
Commodore. He watched for a moment, and his attention was drawn to
the odd movement of the officers in the CIC (Combat Information
Centre) of the ship. They moved with slow bounces that reminded him
of the ancient but famous footage of mankind’s first steps onto the
lunar surface of the moon back in the twentieth century. The
Crusader class were all making use of the experimental
gravito-magnetic drive developed on Terra Nova. It could only
provide about one-fifth of normal Earth gravity, but it did allow
the crew to go about their duties, without drifting around the
spacecraft. The final indicator on the main display flashed several
times and then settled down to a steady green.

This is
it,
he thought.

“
Commodore, the
S
pacebridge is ready and stable. You are
cleared to commence the operation.”

There was a short
pause, and for the briefest of moments, he wondered if his message
had failed to reach the Commodore. He was about to speak again when
he received a response.

“
Excellent.
Congratulations to your team, Admiral. This is an auspicious day
for the Alliance and for humanity itself.”

From their position
in orbit around Prometheus and directly alongside the rift
platforms, they had a perfect view of the assembled ships. ANS
Dragon was the closest vessel to the Rift and the largest warship
present. As the eleventh ship in her class, she represented the new
Navy, one that was smaller but substantially more flexible. The
ship was one of the new multipurpose warships being built for the
fleet to replace the few functioning cruisers, battleships,
transports and war barges still in service. She was more powerful
than the old cruisers used. She was faster and had the capacity to
carry up to five hundred marines or a similar sized flight group;
almost half of the capacity of a dedicated transport like the
venerable ANS Santa Maria and ANS Santa Cruz. The remaining six
ships included a motley collection of destroyers, each due for
imminent replacement by the growing fleet of Crusader class
warships.

“Look, there it is!” called out one of
the media people. It was a young man, barely out of his twenties
but dripping with enthusiasm and excitement. Anderson was hardly
surprised, this was one of the biggest ever stories for the
media.

Anderson knew
immediately that they had spotted ANS Beagle. She had been hidden
from view as she was positioned out of sight behind the structure
of the station and guarded by three of the destroyers. She was
substantially larger than any other ship present and of a bizarre
design that included dozens of gantries and modules that seemed
hastily attached to her fragile boom shaped hull.

“
ANS Beagle,”
a
nnounced Admiral Anderson.

“
As you all know,
there is no point in us launching a mission over a thousand light
years away if we have no ability to return and send data back. ANS
Beagle is the first completely self-contained, mobile rift
generator, and as such, she is the most advanced vessel ever
constructed.”

He paused for a moment, letting that
sink in.

“
In fact, there are
many that suggest the Beagle is the greatest engineering feat in
our entire history. At more than a kilometre long, she can build,
manage and power the reverse end of the Spacebridge for up to three
months. Assuming the bridge is viable, we will be able to send
engineers through to create a more permanent station that can
manage a long distance bridge indefinitely.”

Everybody in the
room watched the massive ship as she used her manoeuvring thrusters
to position herself to face the entrance of the bridge. The
entrance itself was substantial, but at the approach of the ship,
seemed barely adequate. The outer sections of the entrance fired
their own thrusters and moved apart at an incredibly slow speed. It
took almost a minute before the hole had enlarged enough for ANS
Beagle to safely fit.

“
Sir, systems
stable, bridge is secure and power systems are holding. We can keep
it open for seven minutes, maybe eight with our reserves,”
confirmed the Chief Engineer.

“Good, send the signal.”

It was the biggest
problem with not having a rift generator at the other end to lock
down the Spacebridge. Whereas the bridge could operate for minutes,
it would need an entire station to power it. Once hardware was
installed at both ends, it could be operated for months and with
far less power while a permanent monitoring station was built at
the other end. The longer the tunnel, the greater were the energy
requirements, and the distance factor to the Orion Nebula was vast
compared to the paltry distances so far used in the
Alliance.

The mighty ship
activated its main drive engines and pushed to the Rift at a crawl.
In fact, it was almost impossible to identify the movement of the
ship as she started her maiden voyage.

“
Admiral Anderson,
ANS Beagle is starting her run,” said Commodore Lewis before
cutting his video link. Anderson watched the small flotilla of
warships change their position so that each ship was stationed with
its thickest armour and maximum amount of weapons facing the Rift.
None of the civilians noticed, as they were all too busy watching
the bulk of ANS Beagle move ever closer to the Rift. It moved
passed the station at a crawl, but with the slow speed came the
added drama and excitement of such a behemoth moving to the gate.
He noted ANS Dragon swivel on the spot and point her bow railguns
directly at the Rift itself. As the previous XO of a Navy
battlecruiser, Admiral Anderson was very familiar with the
weaponry, and even he knew that these new weapons were
substantially larger and more powerful than the weapons he had
access to during the War.

If
anything comes through the bridge
, they’ll handle it.

The front of the
g
reat vessel slipped inside the Rift and
flickered and pulsed before vanishing from view. It took just
seconds for the rest of the vessel to enter in its entirety and
then it was gone. Admiral Anderson looked about the room and
watched the look of confusion on the faces of the small group of
press. This was in stark contrast to the large number of
technicians and engineers who were busy maintaining the energy
levels of the bridge.

* * *

ANS Beagle moved out from the violent
exit of the Rift to the sound of emergency alarms blaring away. The
structure shook and vibrated from the uncontrolled exit, and
several parts of the vessel had ruptured and broken away. From his
position in the CIC, Lieutenant Davies of the Alliance Marine Corps
watched in confusion at their arrival. He had been placed in charge
of the small contingent of a single platoon of marines to provide
security for the vessel. It was a tiny number of people for such a
great structure, but the risks of losing the ship had made it
difficult to find more that would chance their lives on what could
be a one-way mission.

“
Captain,
d
o we have a problem?” he asked Captain
Raikes, the commander of the vessel and one of the Alliance’s most
experienced engineers.

More flashes rippled
through the room, and a display sent shards of glass flying across
the open space. Like most of the older ships, she made extensive
use of a rotating section to produce artificial gravity, but it was
flawed in execution. The pieces seemed to follow bizarre arcs and
managed to strike two crewmembers in the face. Captain Raikes
shielded his face and shouted out to the officers and crew in the
CIC.

“I need a full report, now!”

He then turned to
look back at him.

“
This is just the
consequence of an unsecured spacebridge, nothing for you to worry
about.”

With that short
burst, he turned back to his crew and continued trying to get the
situation under control. More flashes signalled the death of
another display, the shuddering stopped, and the vessel appeared at
peace, adrift in space.

“
Sir, we’re out of
the Spacebridge. R
eports are coming in
now.”

The Captain wasn’t
looking as he was much more interested in the video feed on the
main screen. It looked as though he was looking out of a large
window, like the bridge of an ancient water-based vessel, but in
reality the image was a projection from external camera feeds. This
meant the CIC could be placed deep within the ship for security and
engineering reasons.

“
Just look at that!”
he said with a tone of awe and reverence in his voice. Lieutenant
Davies looked to the display and gasped at the view. Not only was
the left-hand side taken up with the massive shape of a burning hot
star, but also directly in front of them a planet surrounded by
thick rings. The Captain glanced over his shoulder to the
technicians.

“
Look at
that!
You are the first people to ever
look upon the planets of the Orion Nebula. This is truly a great
day.”

Silence greeted his
words as they watched the shining orbs of light out in space. Many
of them had visited other planets but few had travelled outside of
Alpha Centauri, apart from those with long tours on military ships.
This was a journey unlike any taken before by man, and every single
one of them knew it.

“Sir, the gate is closing!” called out
the Chief Engineer.

Captain Raikes
looked at the display and watched as the Rift in space flickered
and then vanished as quickly as it had been made.

This is
it then,
he thought.

“
You know what you
need to do, people. This station needs to be operational, and I
want it done carefully and by the numbers.”

The crew went about
their duties, and he relaxed for just a moment. It had been
expected that they would take some damage while heading through the
Rift, and that was one of the main reasons for bringing so much
spare equipment. Until equipment was installed at both ends, it
would be impossible to keep the bridge open for more than a few
minutes. Even worse though, until his ship was made operational
they had no way of getting home. In theory it should work, but
there was a possible and very real chance they could hit problems.
Nothing more was said for several minutes until one of the
engineers called out after spotting something on his
display.

“Uh...Captain...this isn’t right!”

Captain Raikes
barely even noticed his words until he noticed two more of the
technicians moving over to the man’s desk to look at his screen. He
turned around and looked directly at him.

“What is it?”

“
The nearest
moon...I’m...well, Sir, I’m picking up a coded radio signal from
its surface.”

Captain Raikes was dumbfounded at the
news. The only way any coded radio signal could be sent was if
something or somebody was there and had sent it. There was no
possibility it could have come from them, they were the first
visitors to this system.

“Sir, we’re being scanned by
something!” called out the same man.

Captain Raikes
snapped to attention, his initial surprise now starting to worry
him.

“
What the hell is
it?” he asked to the surprise of the rest of the crew. “Get me a
long range view of the moon on the main screen.”

It took just a few
button presses to bring up a direct feed from one of the many
stabilised camera mounts on the ship. The moon filled the display
and looked like most moons, small, barren and desolate. He looked
at it in detail but nothing of note appeared. He looked back to his
crew that seemed equally perplexed.

“
Get to
work
, I need a working rift and
fast!”

Command
is going to want to hear about this
,
he thought.

B
ut even more important to him was that he wanted to know
they had a way back home. The thought of being stranded out in a
star system this far out was the greatest fear any of them had on
the ship. The only backup plan was that the Rift could be recreated
back in Proxima Centauri, but that would not occur for another
twenty-four hours. In the meantime, he had a damaged ship to
repair, a rift to create, and a strange foreign signal to
investigate. He looked back at the image of the moon and tried to
imagine what could be transmitting. None of the options were
particularly appealing to him.

“Lieutenant!” he called out to the
nearest science officer.

“Sir?”

“Prepare a reconnaissance drone. I want
orbital scans by the end of today.”

Admiral Jarvis first came to
public significance during the attack on the Titian Naval Station.
Her command of the Confederate counterattack has become legendary
in the annals of the Navy. Her flagship, the battlecruiser CCS
Crusader fought a long and bloody battle like none that had been
seen for generations. She w
as present at
the start of the War and her selfless actions at Terra Nova helped
end it.