Chapter
3
For starters, Ivan Branatovich was bored. Not only was he bored he was uncomfortable. The Vashimir fighter, or Black Bat was not meant to be comfortable. Oh, it looked comfortable, with it’s main control seat semi-reclined, but after eight hours! No! Even at that, he would most likely not have noticed if he was actually flying the damned ship. Instead, he was merely station keeping near the bulk of his assigned fighter carrier.
Fleet duty, it was called. Feh! It was a damned fool notion to have a single seat fighter simply sitting in place while a carrier sat and did nothing. At least they could let the fighters patrol. For Podondrin’s sake, if he actually had to do something, his legs would be too stiff from inactivity to do him much good. This was a job for destroyers, not a fighter. His ship was designed to take on the enemy’s small ships, and to harass their larger ones. Unless the UFSA was sending out just fighters to take on his mother ship, then just what was he supposed to do with pulse lasers and a quartet of guided missiles.
There were twenty of the tiny ships arrayed near the bulbous carrier. In the distance he could make out another ship, and beyond that one more. He was on the outer edge of a considerable fleet, just on the outskirts of Glorious Arkonia’s traditional territory. With his own active sensors powered down, he could only pick up the nearest ships, including just a few out of eyeshot with his passive sensors. Once under way, he would not pick them up at all without an active scan. Arkonian ships were outfitted with electronic countermeasures to make them difficult to pick up without an active scan.
Foolishness! Damned foolishness! Why was he even out here if they would not even let them use their active scanners? There would be no UFSA ships here to detect them, and even if they were, there would be no way for them to miss such a large fleet. It couldn’t be to conserve fuel. The scanners could be run on the small photoelectric panels on the wings without even firing the engines. His commanding officer had said plainly that they would not fire their engines unless instructed to, they would use only control jets for station keeping and they would not use active scanning. Fuel must be conserved! They would say. Bah! A modern fighter with a fusion inversion drive like this could fly at combat speeds for days without refueling!
Fools were not trained to be combat pilots, but it seemed like they placed fools to command them. Like any good pilot, he could quickly figure in his head exactly how much fuel he carried. He knew exactly what weapons he was loaded with and what they could do. Even with the main drive powered down, he could fire the lasers several times, and the missiles could be fired at any time. Out of shear boredom he cycled through a weapons diagnostic. Perfect, just like the last ten times he had done it. He idlely thought about targeting some floating bit a jetsam, but that would activate his active scanners, and that had been specifically proscribed.
Movement caught his eye, and for the moment, it took his mind off the grinding boredom. An older model warship was drifting to a stop near his mother ship. It was somewhere between the size of a destroyer and a cruiser, too large for the former and too small for the latter. It was a type that was no longer used on the front lines, but often ferried officers of varying degree of importance. Most likely a full-blooded Master returning to the homeworld. Inbound ships always stopped at this picket line before proceeding to Arkonia. The reason had not been told to him, since the only ships he handled were not even capable of Hyperwarp speeds. It suddenly struck him that the ship was taking longer than normal to conduct whatever business it had to before proceeding.
“Fighter 29! Check your attitude! You are drifting! Look sharp you fool!” crackled over his radio. He did a quick check of his attitude controls. The fleet was maintaining a local orientation, which meant they were arranged according to the orbital plane of the planets that orbited the nearest star. If they were further out, they would use the plane of the galactic disk. That way, all the ships would have a specific up and down. Some pilots complained that none of this made sense in space, where there really was no up or down to speak of unless you had a local point of reference like a planet in visual range, but to Branatovich, it provided a welcome feeling of discipline.
He cursed under his breath without keying his mike. The slightest touch brought his wing back into trim with the fleet. He had only drifted one degree out of plane, but the thought that he was so simply distracted disgusted him. “Acknowledged and corrected control.”
“Be vigilant, 29. The Master’s eyes are upon us!”
‘Master’s Eyes?’ It took a moment for the import of that phrase to sink in. Colonel Korel was a full-blooded Master and made certain that anybody in his command knew exactly that. Branatovich was a captain, and that was as far as he was likely to advance, ever. He knew his father had been a Master, but all his life he had been taught that he would never even be able to claim that heritage since his mother was low born, and not married either. It had been through sheer will, determination and a constant demonstration of skill that had led him to this level in the first place.
Why would the smug flight commander use such a term now? Who was on that ship? Certainly no Grand Marshall would travel on something so decrepit. Unless it was to return in disgrace as some had recently. Grand Marshal Govel was most likely sent home this way after his inglorious defeat. Branatovich only knew about the disastrous battle since he had been there. Rumors about a super-fast American ship had filtered to him through the ranks, but it was another thing to see that bastard suddenly in the midst of their attacking fleet, firing dozens of weapons in every direction. The big ship moved proportionally like a fighter, making it hard for targeting systems to get a bead on it. One moment it was there, the next, it was someplace else. Plus, it was never alone. The more usual UFSA ships were dangerous in their own right, even those tiny, poorly armored things they called destroyers could bring down a bigger ship in the right numbers.
Everyone who had participated in that battle almost a year ago had been returned to home space and told not to discuss it with anyone. Not good for morale, his commanders would say. More like they didn’t want the notion that the UFSA could be getting the upper hand on them getting out.
Hah! His commanders could be fools, but Branatovich was not. He would dance around any of those American fools if they got close enough to him and he would make mothers on their home worlds weep for them. He did not even fear the big blue/black fighters they were sometimes encountering. They might be well armored and carry much more firepower than he did, but a nimble little ship like his would easily outmatch the clumsy “Blackhawks,” as the enemy called them. They would learn why his ship was called, what was it? Small Biting Fish? He would show them how his ship would bite!
The chatter was increasing on the radio. He was not the only pilot being chastised for some slight discrepancy. It was much more widespread to be about the small ship waiting to depart toward Arkonia. What was going on?
A flicker of light suddenly caught his eyes. His canopy did not curve enough and he had to crane his neck to see what was happening. Giving up, he keyed the rear viewer on his control console.
A shimmering ring was forming against the dark of space. He had to dial back the magnification several times to see it on his small screen. The glistening image stretched for kilometers!
“All ships, form up in presentation formation!” barked the colonel. In a fluid motion, he brought his drive to life. Little bursts from the throttle and he was moving rapidly into a new position in line with the rest of his squadron. Hundreds of other ships could be seen forming up as well. At least now he would have a better view of what was happening. He felt it likely that he was intended to see this.
The ring suddenly flashed as the center started growing inward, until it was a shining disk of energy in the heavens. He realized then what it was. Something was coming directly from Arkonia. Perhaps it was a new attack fleet, on its way to smash the American fleet. It was a ‘lens.’ He had no idea how it worked, but the Master could sometimes create a massive energy field just like those the Americans employed in their Stargates. Only, the Master’s gates were not constrained to massive stone circles. He had seen them formed far from the planet’s gravity field as the Master sent ships to distant corners of the universe to do his bidding. His faith in the Master did not question why he only did this occasionally, since employing it for the entire War effort would certainly smash the Terrans quickly. The fact they had their own Stargates was reason enough for them to protect the secret location of Arkonia.
Something was emerging from the lens effect. Yes! First three Cyclops class attack ships emerged, followed by others. Scores of destroyers, battleships and a veritable cloud of fighters swarmed out of the lens. Ship after ship poured out of it. This was it! It was the attack they had always been told about, when they would commit the fleet to the final push to claim their ultimate prize! Terra! Earth! The homeworld of his life-long enemy! The entire race of Arkonians would smash those smug lazy Terrans under their heal and the entire race of Arkonians would make themselves Masters over them. He clenched his teeth and fists, grinning in anticipation.
Something else was emerging from the lens. At first, he had to blink his eyes, as if he did not trust what he was seeing. Something was emerging that dwarfed even the kilometer long Cyclops class Gunships. He knew in an instant what it was, and it filled his heart with marshal joy to see it, finally freed from the surface.
It was massive, almost unbelievably so. Even here in space, with only it’s stupendous escort to compare it to, it almost filled his view. It was (12 miles) long and (7 miles wide), with a central tower stretching up a mile into the heavens. There was nothing that he could call an engine, though he had known his whole life that it was indeed a starship.
The Master’s Palace!
The work had started long before he was born. The palace itself was thousands of years old, from a time before the Masters themselves had come to Arkonia. Thousands of workers removed the old stone cladding with meticulous care. The process had taken the better part of the last century, but even by the time he was a child he could see the smooth gray metal skin of the ship revealed in its glory. Even then, they were starting to add more and more weaponry to its skin, until it looked like battleships piled on top of battleships. It was the ultimate weapon!
Beyond that, he knew the ship was a weapon itself. It had the power to destroy whole worlds! It was not like the huge Photic Energy Particle Drivers used by the Cyclops class ships, it was something else. Nobody he knew understood exactly what it was. It was perhaps an extension of the One Master Himself.
He spoke the name of his master aloud. Even in his joy and excitement he spoke the word as just a whisper, full of reverence and honest fear.
“Podondrin.”
The Master was finally going to reveal himself. The enemies would be crushed! The dark days of War would soon end and a new golden age for them would begin!
He chanted the name, louder and louder as the battlefleet sped up and entered a new lens. It had begun.
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