StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Strange People

I know my english sucks, but I just had the urge to write this.

The Sol system on the 6th of April 1291 NGZ.
Battle of the Cosmic Factory WAVE against the fleet of the League of Free Terrans.

Paratron-shields proved as useful as paper mache as a beam from WAVE hit the battle cruiser DEFENDER and the ship vanished in a bright detonation.

Trevor Carmichael cursed the High Powers, the leaders of the LFT and the Immortals inwardly as the mother-ship of the KNIGHT OF THE DEEP cased to exist.
"It's time to get the hell out of here!," screamed Martin Dove from behind his console,"Nearly the entire guard-fleet and most of the Transform-fortresses have been destroyed and we did not even scratch the paint of WAVE."

Trevor nodded. "Alex initiate FTL-flight," Something hit the light cruiser KNIGHT OF THE DEEP as it began to enter hyperspace and a powerful hyper-shock knocked him out.
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His head felt worse than any hangover he had ever known, even worse than after the last last New Year's eve when he downed an entire bottle of Vurguzz, something poked him and the headache went away.
He opened his eyes and saw that five medo-robots were busy treating him and the other bridge crew members.

"What happened?" The syntronic of the ship answered immediately,"A hyper-energetic beam from WAVE hit the ship while the Metagrav was amplifying the Hamiller-point and overloaded the Grigoroff-field,"
A holo with diagrams appeared, the syntronic went on,"The field collapsed and we were forced out of hyperspace at an unknown time and in an unknown universe, it's impossible to say more because nearly every sensor system is down."

Trevor swallowed,"Well it certainly beats dying." He looked at a medo-robot."How is the crew?","No heavy injuries, a few are still unconscious but they should wake up in a few minutes."
Martin, Alex and Mory had been following the conversation.
Alex said nothing, the only thing that interested the Emontionaut was flying the ship, he would not care if the universe cased to exist around him.
"As you said it beats dying," said Martin with barely visible tears in his eyes. Trevor remembered that the Oxtornian had family back on Terra.
"We should start repairing the ship" said Mory and to the syntronic,"Damage report!"

"Many of our hyper-crystals were destroyed when the Grigoroff-field overloaded," began the syntronic,"The Grigoroff-field generators are irreparable which means that the ship is will never enter hyperspace again unless we reach a shipyard or a repair ship."
Trevor slammed his fist against his console.
"The Paratron-shield generators are damaged, however we can repair the generators for one shield layer if we salvage parts from the Grigoroff."
A holo of the ship with way too many yellow spots appeared and a with a read spot for the Grigoroff.
"It's possible to repair the other systems including most sensors with the spare parts and the hyper-crystals we have on board, estimated repair time 61 hours, 92 hours if we use the parts of the Grigoroff to repair te Paratron-shield generators".

"Which systems are not damaged?" asked Martin.
"Power generation, high-energy overload shields and the ATG-field generator are fully operational"
Trevor wasted no time, he activated the ATG from his console, he smiled at his crew-mates."Just in case that there are unfriendly people out there, it's better to stay hidden until we have our eyes and our teeth back."

"Syntronic tell the rest of the crew when they wake up that they should go to the main conference room as soon as possible, there a quite a few things I have to tell them and that we have many things to do."
He looked at the others,"Let's go" and walked out of the bridge.

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The KNIGHT OF THE DEEP 12th of April 1291 NGZ.
Main conference room.

Trevor looked at his crew, the fifty men and women under his command, they had worked harder and more disciplined than he had expected and he had allowed them one day of rest after they repaired the last damaged system of the ship.
He began to talk,"Fellow Terrans, we have repaired our ship, although we lost the ability to enter hyperspace and only one Paratron-shield layer remains".

"As all of you know We have left our home universe and are now in another universe".
A map of the galaxy appeared. Trevor resumed to talk,"We are not very far from Sol only 512 lightyears."
He went on with a sad faraway look on his face","Not very far if we sill had a working Grigoroff and if this Sol would be our Sol."
"We don't know if our friends and kin are sill alive, maybe we will never know."
Some of the crew members started to cry others had blank looks on their faces.
"Many of the people we love are beyond our reach, however we can do one thing, we can remember them and hope that we will return to them some day."

The map of the galaxy disappeared and the holo of a binary star system appeared in the middle of the room.
"Our sensors are working again and we know now that we are close to a binary star system, a star system inhabited by humans, they call the system Manticore."
A planet appeard. "There are three inhabited planets in the system, we are one light-month from the the planet closest to us which the natives call Sphinx."
"The KNIGHT OF THE DEEP has already accelerated to 0.9c and we will make contact with these people."

"However I plan to change a few things before we make contact with them, we depend on their goodwill because we only have food for about six months on board."
"They have strange views of discipline and chain of command and it's likely that they will not like the idea that a powerful ship full of undisciplined lunatics is lose in their system."

Trevor grinned,"We all know that there LFT uniforms exist and we will start to use them."

Chief engineer Merena looked at him with a grin, he had often shared a bed with her."I knew you are kinky Trevor, but uniforms?"
"That's lieutenant Carmichael for you Chief engineer". She laughed.

Other crew members started to complain. Trevor sighed,"it's not up to debate."
The crew members looked shocked, most of them had never heard something like that.
"Just think of it as a game, we have enough time to train until we reach the planet, although I think the natives will detect and intercept us before we reach it"

He went to the door and left the conference room. Lieutenant Martin his 2nd in command followed him.
"Martin do you think this will work?" Martin smiled, "Sure" and clapped him gingerly on the back.
The blow almost toppled Trevor. He smiled back and said with a grin "Your word in Rhodan's ear!"

PR Glossary:
NGZ: Neue Galaktische Zeitrechnung = New Galactic Time. The year 3588 A.D is the year 1 NGZ.
Oxtornian: Humans from a planet with 4.8g created by genmaipulation.
Vurguzz: Green beverage with an extrem high alcohol content(100%+60% in hyperspace). A joke the authors included in the original PR-issues.
ATG: Antitemporales Gezeitenfeld=Anti-Temporal Tidal Field. I can not explain it in english, just think of it as a device which hides objekts in a pocket universe.

They noticed a little too soon, that they had left their own universe.

May i ask, what kind of ship the "Knight of the Deep" is? Aside from a battlecruiser i mean. And shouldn't such a ship have more than fifty men crew? Even for a NGZ-ship?

FTeik wrote:They noticed a little too soon, that they had left their own universe.

May i ask, what kind of ship the "Knight of the Deep" is? Aside from a battlecruiser i mean. And shouldn't such a ship have more than fifty men crew? Even for a NGZ-ship?

I did not want too include too much PR-technobable.

Travel too other universes is nothing new in the PR-verse.
The syntronic knew the hyperspace coordinates of the ship before the Grigoroff-field collapsed and time-coordinates and so called "Strangeness"-coordinates for the postion in the multi-verse are part of these coordinates.

It's a CERES-class light cruiser(100 m) the battle cruiser was the mothership.

Luzifer's right hand wrote: Travel too other universes is nothing new in the PR-verse.
The syntronic knew the hyperspace coordinates of the ship before the Grigoroff-field collapsed and time-coordinates and so called "Strangeness"-coordinates for the postion in the multi-verse are part of these coordinates.

It had been established that the calculation of the Strangeness coordinate is a somewhat more lengthy procedure involving the detailed measurement of quite a few natural constants, beginning with the speed of light.

Jawawithagun wrote: It had been established that the calculation of the Strangeness coordinate is a somewhat more lengthy procedure involving the detailed measurement of quite a few natural constants, beginning with the speed of light.

It was not very difficult to measure that the "Spindelwesen" had a differnt Strangeness IIRC. It's difficult to measure the exact Strangeness value but not to dedect that an object or universe has a differnt Strangness value IIRC.

However I must admit that I read the cycles in question quite some time ago.

Though, with "nearly every sensor system down" I guess even collecting enough information to say "We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto" would take somewhat longer. What is keeping you from saying "information not available" at that point and letting them find out the different universe stuff later on?

Jawawithagun wrote:Though, with "nearly every sensor system down" I guess even collecting enough information to say "We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto" would take somewhat longer. What is keeping you from saying "information not available" at that point and letting them find out the different universe stuff later on?

I just did not think about it. I also forogt about the Strangeness-Shock thing:)
Time to post the next part I hope it does not suck too much.

The KNIGHT OF THE DEEP 30th of April 1291 NGZ.

On course for Sphinx traveling at 0.9 c.

The numbers on the multifunction-wristband were changing way too fast. "Active time dilation correction?" Martin Dove shaked his head. "Sometimes I think Trevor is insane."
"Hmmhm" was Alexs Hale response and resumed monitoring the ships critical systems.

Both of them were wearing the new green uniform in the style of the ancient Solar Imperium, they were quite comfortable and extremely robust and even overred limited protection against radiation and vacuum.
Martin thought this were nice features for the rest of the crew but he did not really need them and the shield generators in their belts provided far superior protection anyway.

They were alone on the bridge, Trevor was sleeping and Mory was working with a few other crew members on a small FTL-capable craft by dismantling four lineartorpedos and mounting their drives on one of the STL-Gliders.

He cursed while he was reading the inventories, they had expended most of their heavy transform cannon warheads during the battle against wave and only a handful 2000 GT bombs remained, there was still a large number of other bombs but mostly low yield warheads, 10GT and even lower yields.
At least thanks to the hyperspace-tap they would not run out of fuel.

"There are non-human intelligent lifeforms in this system" whispered Alex.
"What?" said Martin with more than mild surprise.
Alex created a holo of the planet Sphinx, they had scanned the system and it's planets thoroughly with active hyperspace sensors during the last few weeks and received many light-speed signals with the passive n-space sensors and already knew many things about it.
"I looked thru the sensor logs and found this," blue fields showed up on the surface of the planet.
"These are weak telepathic signals, the sensors have detected many of them and they are not of human origin".
Suddenly Alex had a strange look on his face."As you know I'm a weak telepath".
"We are still way too far from the planet and I can not feel the signals myself, we will know more when are a few thousand kilometers from the planet."
Alex closed his eyes again Martin knew that the conversation was over.

The KNIGHT OF THE DEEP 12th of May 1291 NGZ.
One lighthour from Sphinx.

The image of one of the ship of the humans native to this universe was on the main screen, a cylinder which as about 250 meters long and 40 meters in diameter.
It was stealthed and Trevor doubted that they would have detected it without hyperspace sensors.
Trevor pointed at the ship."I think 3 million km are enough","Make us visible to their sensors Martin".

The only FTL sensors the natives seemed to use were gravity based and gravity was unable to penetrate shields since the ancient days of the first HUe-shields and it was also always necessary to shield the Hamiller-point of the Metagrav-drive or it could cause heavy damage on nearby planets.
Also the Paratron-shields worked by removing energy and matter from n-space and did not reflect the signals of radar and similar systems.
You could of course still see the vessel if you looked directly at it.

At his command Martin erected a force field a few meters before the first Paratronlayer which immediately started to reflect the radar signals.

Commander Payne Anderson on the Destroyer HMS HELLFIRE was reading a report about an accident on the hanger deck when the alarm was sounded.
"A spherical object with a diameter of about 150 meters has appeared out of nowhere 3 million km from our position Sir." reported Serena Peters.
"We get a signal from the objects Sir, audio and visual."
Payne nodded and a man in strange green uniform, olive skin and long black hair appeared on the main screen.
"I'm Lieutenant Trevor Carmichael of the League of Free Terrans, we come in peace" the man smiled and added "Inform you leaders that we will wait here for their representatives, we have much to explain and we need your help, Carmichael out."

Glossary:
Metagrav: Gravity based FTL+STL drive.
Uniforms: Color(I have no clue what lindgrün means in English ) Late SI uniforms [male] [female] (The cloak is optional)
Solar Imperium: Ancient human empire(1990-3460)
Transform cannons: Weapons which teleport warheads into targets(yields from <kg TNT equivalent to low TT TNT equivalent) and sometimes exotic warheads.

HMS HELLFIRE 17 of April 1920 P.D
One lighthour from Sphinx.

"Lieutenant Peters inform Home Fleet that we have been contacted by an ship which claims the be of an organization called League of Free Terrans and add the transmission we just received."
"Has anyone here heard of this League of Free Terrans before?"
"No Sir" said Lieutenant Watson.
Payne looked at the his screen, they had been testing an improved FTL-com system and their nodes were cold, they were warming them but there were still 22 minutes to go until they were warm enough to bring the impeller wedge up and that would take another 15 minutes.

"Well it's time for an answer." He nodded to Lieutenant Peters "We will send a transmission on the same frequency as they used."
"Ready Sir"
"Lieutenant Trevor Carmichael I'm Commander Payne Anderson of the Royal Manticoran Navy, what kind of assistance do you need?"
Now it was time to wait 20 seconds or more. Payne shrugged. The more time the nodes of the ships had the better.

"Incoming Transmission Sir," Lieutenant Trevor Carmichael appeared again.
"We had a little accident with our FTL-drive." The Lieutenant seemed to think for a few seconds and exchanged a few words in a language unknown to Payne with someone off screen.
"As you may know, or not know there are countless universes in the multiversum, we are not from this universe, our FTL-drive was destroyed during this accident and we can not use it to return, we are stranded in this universe"
"I ask for refuge for me and my crew"

Another universe? Well this guy knew how to drop a bomb in a conversation.
"I understand Lieutenant, I will transmit your massage to my superiors and I'm sure you will understand that I need to wait for orders"
"One more question," he added "Is your ship armed?"

50 seconds later
Carmichael looked a little bit uncomfortable.
"You asked if my ship is armed, the KNIGHT OF THE DEEP is a CERES-class light cruiser and heavily armed for a ship of it's size"
"We have scanned your ship and other ships in this system and I must tell you that this ship employs technology far superior to yours."
"However I assure your that we mean not harm, we are a peaceful people and we use our weapons only to defend our people and our allies."
Carmichael had now a very sincere expression on his face.
"We know from transmissions that your are at war, we can be very useful to you if your government decides to help us."

That was getting better and better, first onther universe now superior technology.
Aynway he could do nothing else than to wait for a massage from his superiors.

The KNIGHT OF THE DEEP 15th of May 1291 NGZ.
One lighthour from Sphinx.

"Are your people ready?" asked Trevor the man on the screen.
The Negotiator of the Manticorans on board of the giant ship which had brought him here nodded.
"Alex, Martin.. these people are here for a good show, we should not disappoint them"

The KNIGHT OF THE DEEP vanished of the screens of the Manticorans as Martin deactivated the force field around the ship an it accelerated with 1230 km/s² away from the SD.
"Fire at will!"
The sensor looked on the stealthy target drones the Manticorans had released and the transform cannons teleported 100 Mt warheads directly into them.
There were many of them but the KNIGHT OF THE DEEP destroyed all but one of them in a few minutes.
The last traget was 13 million km away.
"Time for overkill Martin!" said Trevor with a grin.

The Negotiator of the Manticorans was already communicating with his superiors as the light of the 2000 GT warhead which destroyed the last target reached the SD.

The KNIGHT OF THE DEEP 17th of May 1291 NGZ.
One lighthour from Sphinx.

The pinnace docked with the strange spherical ship and Lieutenant James Masters of the Royal Manticoran Marine Corps stepped on board of the it.
Two man and one women in green uniforms waited for him, two roughly cone shaped objects floated behind them, they carried nothing he could identify as weapons.
He stepped aside and a man in civilian clothing followed them, James Allison the Negotiator the government had quickly sent after the people which claimed to be from another universe had sent a map to the HMS HELLFIRE
which showed all ships in the Manitcore System, including stealthed navy ships.
This evidence had led credibility to their claim that they had technology more advanced than the technology use in the Star Kingdom.
"Welcome on board Lord Allison" Said the one which they already knew under the name lieutenant Trevor Carmichael and shock Allison's hand.
He pointed at the big broad-shouldered man next to him, the man had light brown skin and no hair except for big eyebrows and at the lean women which shared his olive skin tone and long black hair.
"My 2nd in command lieutenant Marin Dove and lieutenant Mory Tremain, she is responsible for the sensors and a very capable hyperspace-technician"
Allison shock the hands of both of them.
"I'm pleased to meet you finally face to face lieutenant Carmichael"
"It's a pleasure Lord Allison" said Charmichael.
"We have already talked much from screen to screen and I wanted to meet you face to face to inform you that my government has agreed to allow your to enter an orbit around the Planet Sphinx."
"You have convinced me and them that you are trustworthy people and the demonstration of the firepower, maneuverability and stealth of your ship two days ago makes us sure that you could help us a great deal with our war effort"
"It's good to hear that Sir, will we resume our negotiations on the surface of the Planet?
"Ah your other request, we will of course allow you to make contact with the tree-cats."
"It's more my pilot who is interested in them," said Carmichael.
They proceeded to show Allison and after two more hours the returned to the pinnace and Allison left the Ship.

The were just a few minutes back on the Home fleet SD which brought them here when the KNIGHT OF THE DEEP activated it's STL-drive and accelerated with more than 120000 gravities towards Sphinx.
Lieutenant Masters overheard Lord Allison talking to one of his aides.
"The Peeps are in for a nasty surprise If the negotiations go as we have planned"

Interlude: 22th of April 1920 P.D

A ship is holding position on the edge of the Manicore System. It's a cobalt blue cylinder, seven kilometers long and one and a half kilometers thick.
The master of the ship is pleased with himself. His employers had no sense of humor and did not know the meaning of fun, he however had the urge to take a little break from time to time.

The KNIGHT OF THE DEEP 17th of May 1291 NGZ.
In orbit of Sphinx

Martin looked at the pictures of his brothers back at home, and thought about his life.
In his youth he had worked for the WIDDER resistance during the rule of Monos. No many of his kind had survived this dark age which lasted more than five hundred years.
He had lived as a treader after the death of Monos and did many things he had always wanted to do.
His ship visited Arkon, Gatas, Topsid and many other plantes. He watched the mobile star cluster called the Swarm appear in the galaxy more than thousand years ago and visited Andromeda.
Unarmed combat was one of his hobbies and he had trained in old Oxtornian martial arts and often sparred with other Oxtornians and even with his Halutian friend Domo Kalon.
The raise of the new arkonide empire had motivated him the join the fleet of the LFT a few years ago, because he felt it was a threat to the people of the galaxy and he was sure that they would have to fight for their freedom again in the foreseeable future.

Martin looked at the box with the food supplements all Oxtornians needed. The devices which he had used to synthesize had been destroyed with the DEFENDER.
He would survive not much longer than one month with the supplements in the box.

Martin thought about death.

Sphinx 23th of April 1920 P.D
On the surface

Shadow Chaser watched to human machine land in a clearing.
He had seen quite a few such machines in his life and watched with curiosity.
Two humans steeped out of the machine.

One of them looked directly at Shadow Chaser who was well hidden.
Suddenly the mind glow of the human brightened, he had never felt such a powerful mind glow even by his people.
Shadow Chaser started to feel dizzy, however the feeling vanished quickly.
Than a heard a mind voice, a mind voice unlike any mind voice he had ever heard before. The mind voice of a human.

<Hello Shadow Chaser>

Sphinx 30th of April 1920 P.D
On the surface of Sphinx.

Trevor was breaking his fast in the room Lord Allisons had provided for him on his estate and waiting for the Lord.
He had talked with him many times during the last three days.
Trevor had realized many days ago that it would be impossible to build hyper-energy based technology here after their sensors showed no traces of hyper-crystals in the system.
It seemed like that hyper-crystals did not even exist in this universe, at least the Manticorns and other humans in this universe had never found such crystals.

One of the first things Trevor explained to Lord Allison when they met for the first time on the surface of the planet was that they could not help them with improved technology against their enemies.
Lord Allison was at first dismayed, however the man had a shrewd mind and had pointed out that the KNIGHT OF THE DEEP was a small vessel and that it would be not very difficult to build a ship which could carry it to other star systems.
The Lord Allison had left early yesterday to inform his superiors about the result of the negotiations.

Trevor and his crew did not like the idea to attack the people of the Republic of Haven especially because such a battle would be too similar to the battle which had brought them here.
No the KNIGHT OF THE DEEP and it's crew would not partake in massacers.
He had agreed that the KNIGHT OF THE DEEP would travel with a small Manticoran Task force on board of a modified Q-ship to critical systems of the Republic and scan the systems. Than they would transmit the data to a hyper-trans communication device which would remain in the Manticore system.
The sensor data and the fact that they would get it without the normal communication lag would give the Manticorans many advantages over their enemies. The crew of the KNIGHT OF THE DEEP would immediately get supplies and after the end of the war the manticoran citizenship and sizable amounts of money.

Trevor had just finished eating when someone knocked at the door. "Come in!". Lord Allison opened the door. "Good morning lieutenant Carmichael","How are you today?". "I'm fine, please take a seat". Allison sat down.
"Did your superiors accept my offer?" Asked Trevor straightforward.
"The agreed lieutenant" Allison smiled,"however with one additional condition, the Queen and Prime Minister would like to meet you and the members of your crew on Manticore".
"That it's certainly possible, but do we have the time?"
"It will take some time to modify the Q-ship with a hanger for your ship and the fastest drive possible, it will be nearly as fast as battlecruiser when ot's finished and the escorts will consist only of a one battlecruiser and a few light cruiser". The smile on Allisons face changed."We are sure that you can defend the Q-ship and your ship against any threat with you own ship if necessary.

The KNIGHT OF THE DEEP 1st of May 1920 P.D
On route to Manticore.

"Martin do you have any clue how to talk with a Queen?"
Martin looked at him."No, I always thought that my closest encounter with monarchy would include ships of the crystal empire and transformcannons".
Trevor laughed.

Trevor looked at Alex who sat on his chair with the alien called Shadow Chaser on his lap, he was stroking it. "What do you think about Alex new friend Martin?"
Martin answered "Well I remember a saying about small fury telepathic aliens from on of our Immortals, it was: but me back on the ground our I will strangle you!"He grinned "However I doubt it would be a good idea to stun and space Shadow Chaser like Bull sometimes wanted to do with his special furry friend." "I agree that it would be most unwise to infuriate our pilot."
Trevor stood up."The bridge is yours Martin, I will visit Mory and her little toy".
Martin showed him his tongue. "Aye Sir!"

The KNIGHT OF THE DEEP 1st of May 1920 P.D
In the hanger.

The small glider looked more like a small Posbi Cube than a proper ship of the LFT. It was a roughly cube shaped clutter of aggregates.
Mory had manged to create a small FTL capable craft with the linear-drives of four torpedos and a glider. The linear-drives of the torpedos had been cheap short ranged devices and the craft had only a range of 200 light years, at least it could pull 40 million times the speed of light, two TARA-V-UH battle-robots would travel on the hull of the unarmed glider to give it at least a little bit of firepower in the case of an emergency.

Mory was just crawling out of the thing as he reached it. "Does that ting really fly?" Mory kicked his shin."Hey it was just a question."
"We have not tested it but I have no reason to assume that it will not work like in the simulations".
Trevor looked again at the craft."You know how much I trust simulations"
Mory sat down on the floor her back against one of the few falt parts of the craft."Don't worry, it will work","When will we reach Manticore?"
"In about thirty minutes". Mory pulled him down.
"I suggest we do something useful in these thirty minutes," and kissed him.

The KNIGHT OF THE DEEP 1st of May 1920 P.D
Back on the bridge

"Good timing Trevor" said Martin as he steeped out of the antigrav shaft."We have just begun with the landing maneuver."

The KNIGHT OF THE DEEP descended with slow speeds. It reached a landing site for shuttles and descended until it was 10 meters from the ground. A small group of people was waiting at a building close to the landing site.
Trevor adjusted his uniform. "Martin, Alex follow me, it's time to meet a Queen."

Manticore 1st of May 1920 P.D
On the surface.

Captain Silvester Denton of Queen's Own watched the strange ship descend. The Queen was just five meters away from him and his man were securing the area, however he felt uncomfortable nevertheless with his Queen so close to these people.

The ship was descending fast, you could already see writing on his surface, strange letters unlike any letters he had every seen before. The sphere stopped ten meters above the ground, a hole opend on it's surface and three men, one of them carrying a treecat stepped out of it and floated down to the surface, the hole vanshied.
One of them waved in their direction and they started to move to the building where the Queen was waiting.
The man who had waved was of average height and had olive skin and long black hair, the man with the treecat had similar skin color however he had only short brown hair, the third man was bald and looked like a brute. All three wore green uniforms and carried no weapons as far as he could tell, however the treecat had a small device around it's waist.
He spoke into his micro,"Lieutenant Sears can you identify the object the treecats is carrying?","No sir, it's no weapon or bomb built with materials we know, but we know next to nothing about the technology of these people."

"Welcome on Manticore, I'm Queen Elizabeth" said the Queen, the three man bowed."It's a honor to meet you Queen Elizabeth, I'm Lieutenant Trevor Carmichael and these are my 2nd in command Lieutenant Martin Dove and Alex Hale our pilot with his new friend Shadow Chaser."
Ariel the treecat of the Queen looked interested the man and the treecat.
"Please follow me into the building, we can get something to eat and to drink and than you can tell me about where you come from and about your people".
"As you wish". Said Carmichael with a warm smile. The Queen turned around and the three man started to follow her. "Captain Denton can I have a word with you," said the man with the treecat suddenly.
Denton looked with surprise at the man, how could he know his name? "Of course, sir"
The man pointed at the device around the waist of the treecat."You do not need to worry about this device, it's a micro-gravitotor which creates the same gravity as on Sphinx, it's important to me that Shadow Chaser is comfartable","And before you ask, yes I can read your mind." The men smiled at him and followed the other two into the building.

Manticore 6th of May 1920 P.D
In the City of Landing.

The had decide to have a little bit of fun while the Manticorans were modifing the ship which would carry them to the systems of the Republic of Haven.
Martin, Trevor and the rest of the crew except Alex were busy drinking in a small bar, the only other people in the bar were the security people of the Manticorans.
"You should have seen the look on the face of the Queen as Martin sat down and the chair collapsed, or the look of the man who tried to help him up," said Trevor the one of the weapon technicans.
He was so drunk the he laughed more about it than the other man. A few of the girls were flirting with the security people, the rest of the crew was already too drunk to do much at all.

"Well at least they have fun" thought Martin as he downed another bottle of whiskey. He decided to take a walk and started moving to the door. Two of the Manticorans to folowed him .
There were many bars in this part of the city and many drunken people were walking around.
Martin walked silently along a small street as the cloaked robot following him informed him that the Manticroans were not the only people shadowing him. He did not trust the Manticorans and their technology and it was never wrong bring some extra protection along, he was sure that the Manticorans would not like the idea of robots with enough firepower to level the entire City of Landing in less than a second floating around in said city.

Martin activated his deflector and vanshied in the same instant as the robot started to project a holographic image of him. He looked at the holo as it walked away, the two Manticorans followed shortly afterwards.
He deactivated his deflector as a women moved around the corner and looked directly into her eyes, she did no seem surprised and a tried to run away
The Oxtornian moved quickly and lifted her of the ground."Who are you and for what reason are you following me?"
She looked with open eyes at him but did no say a word. Martin pointed a small psi-beamer at her.
"You will see that we know how to make people talk." He pulled the trigger.


The KNIGHT OF THE DEEP 7th of May 1920 P.D
In orbit of Manticore.

"You are sure that she told the truth?" Martin pointed at the psi-beamer on the table."They have no means to protected their people from psi-powers"
Trevor leaned backward on his chair and the force field followed his movements."She was no spy for the Republic of haven, she was a spy of one of their own allies."
"I honestly do not see your problem Martin, they just allied because the needed allies to survive, it's nothing it all like our longstanding alliances with the Posbi or the Halutians more like our alliance with the Arkonides." Martin frowned.
"I don't trust or like these people, their ancestors settled on a planet inhabitated by another intelligent species, they singed a case fire without talking with their own allies, Alex told me that their Queen hates the people of the Republic with every fiber of her being, despite the fact that people which were responsible for the assassination of her father do not longer rule the republic." Trevor looked at the face of the Oxtornian, however he could not read his emotions.
"What do you suggest?" Martin gave the syntornic an order and a holo of the ship which would allow to move between star systems appeard.
"I suggest that we take control of this ship when it's finished and move as far away from this war as possible.","I thought about moveing to this system"
Another holo appeared."They have slavery here and this system is very important for the slavers, we could move in, free the slaves and get a place to live at the same time".
"The syntronic predicts that we could do it with few casualties thanks to our non-lethal weapons, their ships are no threat to us at all, not even the ships of the so called Solarian League."
Trevor felt quite uncomfortable, he had watched Martin getting more and more aggressive during the last few days.
"Relax Martin, I will think about, there is no need to hurry it will take at least two more weeks before the ship is finished."
"I will remain on the bridge Martin, I think it would be a good idea for you to get some sleep."
Martin looked at him as if he wanted to say something, than turned around and moved out of the bridge.


Interlude: 7th of May 1920 P.D
A warhead appeared out of nowhere on board of the Superdreadnought DEFIANT. The warhead look like a protuct of the LFT and it had the same yield as the heavy warheads use by the KNIGHT OF THE DEEP. It was waiting for orders.
Somewhere outside the Manticore system a being laughed, it was a warm laugh full of joy.

The KNIGHT OF THE DEEP 27th of May 1920 P.D
Near the Manticoran Q-ship HMS EXULTANT

Trevor finished donning his SERUN-suit.
He, Martin and ten crew members were waiting behind twelve battle robots and more than fifty medo-robots which would board the Q-ship as soon as they would dock with it.
Trevor did expect that the paralysis beamers of the KNIGHT OF THE DEEP would be able to take the entire crew of the Q-ship out, however there were often injuries when people collapsed when paralysis beams hit them.
He and his people were carrying psi-beamers which they would use to control the crew of the Q-ship.

The lights went off. Instantly, the emergency lights came on.
"Red Alert" said the syntronic."An unknown effect has emptied the gravitrav accumulators and the hyperspace-tap is not responding","The two main back-up reactors are also down only the self-supporting systems are still active."
"What the fuck?" Trevor jumped into the next transmitter and appeared on the bridge. "What's happening Alex?"
Alex looked at him."I have no clue, I have never seen anything like it."
A white flash appeared on the main screen. "A 1000 GT warhead detonated inside a Manticoran ship" said the syntronic. "All communication devices just went offline".
"We need to get away from here","I'm trying but we are only accelerating with ten gravities" responded Alex.

"The Manticoran ship and forts are powering their weapon up, the back-up shield are too weak to protect us against these weapons".
Trevor looked dumbfounded at the screen, he knew what he must do but it was nevertheless hard."Fire at will, we need to take them out before they can destroy us".
"Multiple Missile launches detected, their lightspeed weapons have opened fire."
They were just 300000 kilometers from the next Manticoran SD, Trevor knew that it was over when the signs which showed light speed weapons showed up on the screen.
The SD which was next them and a dozen more detonated as the transform-cannons opened fire.

Than the first graser beams hit the KNIGHT OF THE DEEP and the ship cased to exist.

The End 27th of May 1920 P.D
Outside of the Manticoran System.

Alex and Shadow Chaser materialized in a small room. "Hello my new pets" Said a telepathic voice in his head.
"Who are what are you responded Alex". There was telepathic laughter. "You do not need to know my name toy".
"I am the one who protected your ship against the laws of this universe, I did this not to protect you but for my own amusement."
"New rest my pet". A paralyis beam hit Alex and he dropped to the floor.

The cobalt blue cylinder vanished from the Manticore system and appeared in the Haven System, annihilated a handful of Superdreadnoughts like a man could kill an ant and vanished forever from this universe .
"Nobody should complain that I created chaos, balance is important" Said the master to himself.