Nathan held his breath.
“Initiating…”
Outside of the ship, a pale blue wave of light washed out from shield emitters that were scattered strategically about the hull of the ship. In a split second, the bluish light grew into a glowing ball that encompassed the entire ship. Suddenly, the light turned white as it fell back into the ship, erasing her from view. It all happened in an instant. One moment the Aurora was orbiting Jupiter, and the next she was gone.
Inside the bridge, the main view screen showed the blue-white flash, flooding the entire bridge with a ghostly flash of light. It was like being caught unexpectedly by a really bright camera flash, causing spots in front of the eyes of all those unfortunate enough to be looking forward during the event.
“Transition complete,” Doctor Sorenson announced. “Verifying position.”
Despite the big blue-white blotch floating in his field of vision, Nathan frantically scanned the view screen for any signs of obstacles directly in their path.
“Position?” the captain asked.
“We are exactly two meters off our projected arrival point,” Doctor Sorenson announced. “The transition was successful,” she added with pride.
A man who cared little for emotional outbursts, in such professional situation, Doctor Karlsen simply put his hand on his daughter’s shoulder and gave it a loving squeeze. She knew that coming from him, in their current setting, it carried far more meaning than anyone around them could understand. Inside, they were both beaming with pride as the culmination of ten years of work on what had started out as an energy shield project, was about to change the course of humanity.
“She’s right, Sir,” Cameron assured the captain. “We’re at the designated position, on the outer edge of the Oort cloud.
“My God,” the captain exclaimed. “Sensor contacts?”
“The board shows clear, Captain,” Commander Montero reported.
“Sensors may be inaccurate, Sir,” the officer operating the long range sensor station advised. “I suggest we run a full diagnostic to make sure that they were not affected by the transition.”
“I know I was,” Nathan mumbled, still blinking repeatedly as he tried to make the big blue splotches leave his field of vision.
“Very, well. Get on it,” the captain ordered as he turned to face Doctor Karlsen. “Congratulations, Doctors. You may have just saved the Earth,” he added with a smile.
“Contact!” the sensor operator announced. “Just came on the screen, transferring plot to tactical!”
Nathan felt a cold shiver pass over him.
“I’ve got it, Captain,” the commander announced from the tactical station. “Running ID check against the intel database.”
“Helm,” the captain began in a low and controlled tone. “Slow and easy, turn into the contact’s bearing. And keep your thrust low to avoid detection.”
“Aye, Sir,” Nathan responded. “Coming to port, slow and easy, minimal thrust.”
“I’ve got a probable match,” the commander reported. “Jung patrol ship, smaller than us, lightly armored, missiles, rail guns and shields-no energy weapons. Not much fire-power really.”
“Maybe, but in our current state, without any shields and limited fire-power of our own? I’d say we’re evenly matched,” the captain observed. The commander nodded in agreement.
“We’re pointed toward the contact, Sir,” Nathan reported.
“Very well.” The captain turned his attention back to the commander. “Have they spotted us?”
“Not sure. But if we flashed outside like we did inside, our arrival would’ve been kind of hard to miss, don’t you think?”
“Maybe, but we did come in behind them. If we’re lucky, they’re doing directional sweeps forward.”
Commander Montero grimaced suddenly as the information on his contact track changed. “No such luck, they’re changing course and accelerating. They’re headed our way.”
“Comm! Unlock all internal communications and sound battle stations! And get the deep space comm array back online! I wanna know if that Jung ship tries to send out a message!” The captain spun back around as the battle stations alarm sounded and the condition lights on the bridge changed to red, casting an eerie, faint red tinge on everything in the room.
“Helm, full speed ahead, bring her up to quarter-light fast! I wanna close to weapons range before she has a chance to take action!”
“Aye, full speed ahead, coming up to one-quarter light.” Nathan brought the ships main engines up to full power, instantly feeling the acceleration push him back in his seat despite the attempts by the inertial dampening systems to compensate.
All about the bridge, the crew struggled to maintain their balance as they worked under the force of sudden acceleration. Doctor Karlsen, who had been standing behind his daughter at the auxiliary station nearly fell over, but was caught by one of the marines guarding the starboard exit.
“Her shields are up, Captain!” the commander announced from tactical. “And she’s deploying her missile batteries!”
“ECO! Start jamming her, full frequency spread, don’t let her missiles lock onto us!” The captain turned back to tactical. “Load all forward torpedo bays and prepare to fire! Let me know when you have a solution.”
“Captain, she’s transmitting!” the comm officer reported. “Tight beam, aimed for Centauri space.”
“How long?” the captain asked.
“Three point five years, assuming nobody intercepts it along the way and relays!”
“I have a firing solution, Captain!” the commander reported. “Tubes two and four are ready to fire.”
“Fire two and four!” the captain ordered.
“But Sir,” the commander reminded, “they haven’t fired on us yet. They’ll see it as an act of aggression and use it as an excuse to…”
“…If they get away and FTL it back to Alpha Centauri, they’ll be invading us in months, Commander, not years!”
“Aye Sir, firing two and four,” the XO responded, feeling guilty for questioning his captain’s judgment.
Along the forward, starboard edge of the Aurora’s massive propulsion section, two small doors slid open to reveal a pair of tubes. A second later a torpedo leapt out of the uppermost tube, followed a moment later by a second from the lower. Riding on massive tails of white hot thrust, the torpedoes sped away at fifty percent the speed of light, helped by the fact that the Aurora herself was already at nearly a quarter light.
“Torpedoes away! She’s launching countermeasures!”
“They’re not stupid,” the captain observed.
“Velocity at one-quarter light,” Nathan reported. His head was spinning as he tried to keep track of everything that was going on. It was nothing like the simulations, which of course had seemed so real at the time. But now, there was so much more happening, so much more to think about, he couldn’t understand how the captain was able to keep track of it all so easily. Nathan tried to concentrate on just his job, and shut everything else out, but could not.
“They’ve launched missiles!” the commander reported. “Six inbound. ETA thirty seconds!”
“Are we jamming?!” the captain yelled.
“Yes Sir! On all frequencies!” the Electronic Countermeasures Officer reported.
“Torpedo impact in fifteen seconds!” the commander reported.
“Time to gun range?”
“One minute,” Cameron reported.
Nathan looked over at Cameron to his left. She was still so calm, with no hint of stress in her voice.
“Bring the rail guns online, point defense mode! Knock those incoming missiles down!”
“Rail guns coming online!”
Outside, at a dozen different locations about the forward half of the ship, doors slid open and rail gun turrets quickly popped up into place, spinning around to come to bear on the inbound missiles. Not more than a few seconds after they deployed, they opened up in auto-fire mode, sending point-defense rounds out along their launch rails in a bright sparkle of blue current that leapt from their rails. The rounds were designed to break apart into hundreds of smaller explosive charges that would spread out and detonate, creating a wall of explosive kinetic energy designed to obliterate the incoming ordnance before it could reach the ship.