Ancient Hunter

I stood on the bridge in my combat armour this time running security for Xenai. She was seated in her chair watching the main screen. The tension in the air was palpable we were counting down to exit. Thorda stood beside one of the three combat consoles her eyes on Xenai.

“ETA to exit?” Xenai asked the Fandaren on the navigation console.

“Fifteen minutes ma’am,” the Fandaren replied.

I was impressed by the crews’ professionalism. As the time wound down I felt the tension rise.

“Three minutes ma’am!” the Fandaren called out.

Xenai tapped a button on her chair. “Sound battle stations. Prepare to exit.”

Red lights flashed around the bridge and a klaxon sounded. I glanced at the main viewer it was still showing the greyness that characterised hyperspace. The lights flickered as the ship changed from travelling through hyperspace and entered normal space. It was the first time I had seen this. Normally I was in the bowels of this ship as it exited. I appeared to me as it we were coming out of a tunnel. The ship eased into normal space without incident. In the far distance a single star glowed at the centre of the viewer. We had exited beyond the edge of the star system too far to be detected.

“Unlink now!” Xenai ordered.

“On it ma’am, “ the Fandaren navigator replied.

“Comms open a channel to the fleet.” Xenai told the female T’Arni on the comms console.

“Comms open ma’am.”

It wasn’t even a flottila if you looked at it by Imperial standards. Besides Captain Skerifa’s Valkyrie ship. Three more alliance ships, the Gerthea, the Hood and the Rodney had joined us. The latter two being ex-Imperial River Class frigates, older ships with small crews and if my memory served me due to be retired from service. They had appeared an hour before we were going to leave Demeros. The Confed ship Constance had travelled with them. Six ships going into whatever awaited us in the system ahead.

“Bring the fleet to a stop!” Xenai ordered. “Sensors get a lock on the signal?” Xenai asked the Sensor Operator. A dark skinned Human with curly hair.

“Yes ma’am plotting location now,” the Sensor Operator replied.

The man had a strong Imperial accent a lot more pronounced than mine was. I had been told mine was strong but his was on another level.

“Located?” The Sensor Operator sounded unsure. “Putting it on the main viewer now.”

A star map replaced the view of space. It had a sun and an asteroid belt a lot of odd blobs. To me it looked like a collection of ships more than enough to fill several fleets. What troubled me was at the centre of the ships if I could call them was a larger shape. It had the shape of a Confed ship a blunt nosed wedge. Imperial ships were more dagger shaped. The size of this ship was too ridiculous to be a ship. Not even the mighty dreadnoughts that guarded Earth were that huge. I thought it was a glitch in the system.

Xenai drew a sharp intake of breath I looked at her concerned.

“Is too much to ask if the signal terminates in the Goliath?” Xenai said to herself but it was loud enough for the bridge crew to hear.

“Goliath?” I asked. I guessed it must have some significance to the Confeds from the anxious faces I could see.

“The Confederacy’s greatest folly,” Denassi said tersely.

I hadn’t heard him come onto the bridge. “What is?”

“I’ll fill in the details later,” The Ezaran said to me.

“Is the ship active?” Xenai addressed Denassi.

“We’re too far out of sensor range,” Denassi said. “We can’t tell until we get closer.”

The Sensor Operator nodded in agreement.

“Can they detect us?” was Xenai next question.

“Not this far out,” Denassi said with a glance to me. “I’m not so sure about Ulkoi technology?”

I didn’t either the only one that could tell me would be Jennifer. I doubted any of the remaining Keepers would be able to.

Xenai spoke again. “Sensors I want constant monitoring. If the Goliath starts moving I want a instant alert?”

“On it ma’am.”

Xenai touched the console on her chair. “All ships I want a conference in thirty minutes!”

I followed Xenai to the conference room close to the bridge. It was crowded with a lot of officers from the Valorous Star and their holographic counterparts from the other ships. I was only there as Xenai’s security detail. Xenai sat at the head of the table. I stood behind her looking the part of her security. I listened passively as she detailed ship tactics with the captains of the flotilla.

“I want the Hood and Rodney take point they have a lower EM profile.” She glanced at the holos of the two captains in question. “ Captain Hawke, Captain Blower can your engineers mask your EM signature further?”

“We’ll give it a good try,” Captain Hawke from the Hood replied.

“And we can launch a sensor cluster closer to the edge of the system,” Captain Blower said. “It will give us a heads up?”

“You’ll need to put in on a tight comms beam,” Xenai’s chief engineer enthused.

“That was the intention!” Blower replied.

“Comms have you been able to lock onto any of the relays?” Xenai asked her Comms Operator.

“That’s a negative ma’am all the relays have gone dark.”

“So we proceed with caution navigating the asteroid belt is going to be a nightmare without them,” Xenai stated. “Captain Zanderas you and Captain Skerifa flank the Hood and the Rodney in a staggered formation. We’ll hold the centre since we have the largest EM signature. The Gerthea will shadow us. ”

That made a lot of sense to me. All ships put out a Electro-Magnetic signature the bigger the ship the more pronounced the signal. Ships sensors could detect that.

“Any questions?” Xenai asked.

There was no answer.

“Dismissed you have your assignments!” Xenai ordered. “Captain Lessolas you and Captain Skerifa stay for a moment.”

One by one the holos blinked out leaving only Skerifa’s holo. Lessolas sat back down. I wondered why Denassi was still here. Jervic was on duty with Thorda, which was why he wasn’t here. Kelli was helping out with various Medbays dotted around the ship. Despite the use of Cell Stitchers there were too many crew waiting to be treated by them. Had this been an Imperial ship all those casualties would have to have been left behind on Demeros. The Cell Stitchers meant injured could be back working in weeks or days.

“Do you have a plan for boarding parties?” Xenai asked her Marine captain.

“Several ma’am but I can’t plan for something I don’t know about. I know most plans don’t last beyond the first contact?”

I had to admit he was being honest I could understand that.

“On that,” Denassi interrupted. “I have the last known schematic’s of the Goliath.”

That got me interested. The central holo system map changed to a blunt nose wedge the standard design of all Confed warships.

“For your information the Goliath has one thousand seven hundred and thirty-three decks.”

That shocked me. Just how big was this ship?

Denassi did something and the image filled with red lines. The decks of the ship was my best guess.

“Of those only fifty have direct access to the bridge, computer core and the engine room,” Denassi said.

“I can live with that,” Lessolas said thoughtfully. He looked carefully at the holo.

“Entry points?” He directed his question to Denassi.

The lines disappeared to be replaced with several red dots. The holo grew larger more detailed.

“Best try these points?” Denassi indicated a handful of red dots.

I studied the holo along with everyone else. I had a gut feeling the answers to my questions would be found inside the ship.

“Good,” Xenai said. “Co-ordinate with Captain Skerifa. I want a plan in place by the time we reach the Goliath.” She glanced around at the remaining crew. “Dismissed.” She turned to me still standing there. “Gwen as head of my investigation team your work is vital.”

I sensed a ‘but’ in her words I was dreading being left behind I had to get on the ship.

“Xenai?” I ventured.

“Be careful out there. I’m going to assign Sergeant Hollen and her squad to you. If there’s any danger fall back and left the Marines deal with it.” Xenai held up her hand. “You’re not invincible.”

“Meaning even though I’m with the Valkyrie Silver Guard. I’m not capable of handling difficult situations?” I hadn’t meant to be so sharp with Xenai.

“You’re more than capable. It’s just that…” Xenai sighed. “Sorry I didn’t mean to demean you. I just want you back alive.”

“As do I,” I replied. “I can’t find the Keepers if I’m dead.”

“Keep that in mind,” Xenai said. “No dangerous stunts.”

As if, danger found me not the other way around. “As if I could avoid them.”

“That’s all I ask Gwen. Stand down I’ve a ship to run and you have a team to brief.”

Denassi was waiting for me as I exited the conference room.

“I expect you have questions?” he said directly to me.

“About the Goliath, yes.”

“Denassi smiled. “Now that is a tale to tell.”

“And?”

“The easiest part is where they decided to take the basic Confederacy ship design and scale it up.” Denassi shrugged. “That was the first mistake.” Denassi continued going into more detail.

I listened to him half in shock and half in amazement at the audacity of the Confederacy. The ship they built was one hundred kilometres long and sixty kilometres wide at the widest point. The ship was at least ten kilometres deep. The engine room was large enough to fit the whole of the Valorous Star and still have room to move. The hull was about fifty metres thick at points. I began to see why Xenai wanted a boarding party. Heck you needed a small army to take the thing down.

“It was designed to crew at least ten thousand and could hold at least two hundred thousand troops. It was like a small planet with gardens and parks.”

“That’s a lot of people?” In fact it sounded like the pre FTL colony sleepers ships the Earth was thinking about building. That was before the T’Arni had come and given us hyperdrives.

“It is.” Denassi continued his tale.

I was learning a lot about this ship. Much of what he was saying went over my head but I did catch the gist here and there. Like the weapons systems. The main rail gun fired rounds the size of river class frigates. It out ranged any of the current Imperial and Confed ships. There were enough point defence railguns to equip an entire fleet.

“The down side was the poor turn speed.” Denassi added.

To me it sounded that it had been an over ambitious endeavour. “Why build it in the first place?”

“As a deterrent to the Terran Empire. It was a total failure.”

I was an Imperial despite everything that had gone on in my life. “I think that’s an understatement.”

Denassi nodded. “It cost trillions of credits to build and was slow and cumbersome.”

I tried to imagine what Denassi was telling me but couldn’t.

“The power to weight ratio was a nightmare even the Fandaren gave up of the calculations. It came down a blame game and the Fandarens withdrew from the project.”

Fandarens were the foremost mathematicians in the Confederacy they were found on nearly every Confed ship plotting the jumps to hyperspace.

“Finally it was decided to scrap the ship and cancel the project with the ship quarter built. The Senate at the time decided to send it here not knowing the danger.”

Denassi had me intrigued. I began to see why it had been kept a secret although I doubted the Empire’s Military Intelligence was ignorant of the ship.

Denassi continued enthusing to his subject. “The first jump caused so much distortion it destroyed a small moon.”

I stared at Denassi shocked for a moment I thought he was joking but his face stayed serious, “That happened?”

“Sadly yes. It took them ten years to reach the Graveyard. When it finally arrived they stripped out the engines first. It’s taken decades to scrap even a small portion of the ship. There’s a team of four thousand Ezarans working of it?”

I was again surprised than I shouldn’t have by now.

Worry wrinkled Denassi’s face. “Four thousand Ezarans we cannot contact. To top that all we might have to deal with an ancient species older than the Rhosani in control of it?”

“Your afraid they’ll make the Goliath a mobile fire base?” I could well imagine that scenario.”

“If that happens were all screwed.”

I winced at the bluntness of Denassi’s statement. On that depressing note I ended my conversation with Denassi and hurried back to my quarters.