Chapter 1
Aboard the research vessel Cauchy the captain was announcing over the intercom to every single researchers and tech aboard the ship "Today marks the day of the Kharak's firestorm! Today will mark the begun of a new era! At 0900 I want everyone to report in and prepare for the testing of the prototype!"
Cauchy herself was almost a destroyer size research vessel armed with a couple of energy cannons that some rogue Kiith had stole from the Kiith Sommtaw in their failed attempt at a military coup. The ship herself was a 2000 years old destroyer chases salvaged from the homeworld wars and retrofit into a specialized research ship. It had nearly every military weapon, equipment, and so on removed and replaced with an upgraded energy cannon for some self-defense. Then they also had token out the twin ion cannon and replaced it with high quality sensors system so that there would be more room in the main body of the destroyer for research project; high risk research project. Then the original fusion reactor and engine from the homeworld wars was replaced with a much more compact system also stolen from the Kiith Sommtaw's dreadnaught. The ship herself however still had her old but extremely tough armor planes and they thought it would be cheaper to just leave them alone.
Captain Kraal Sjet, one of the very few captains that can boast that they are among some of the better captain in the Kushian space navy forces. He was offered the command of a Qwaar-Jet Heavy Cruiser Mrk II that the Kushian has been buying from their allies the Republic of Taiidan. It was second only to the much feared but little known Archangel Dreadnought Mrk II of the Sommtaw. While it could easy beat the original Archangel Dreadnought due to several design flaw in the design, just a mere 18 month ago the Sommtaw announced that they had just finished construction of the first Archangel Mrk II Dreadnought that repaired its original multiple weakness and flaws. Now you rarely ever see the Archangel Mrk II. The only time you see it in action is in a major war and for the last few decades, there has been almost an uneasy silence galaxy wide. The Sommtaw says that they think this is only the peace and quite before the storm and as of now they're committing a massive military buildup. Also they has tighten the security surrounding their techlogy in light of the recent thievery of their advanced energy cannons and of their original Archangel Dreadnought engine design. However, Kraal turned down the offer for command of a Qwaar-Jet for the one only reason he gave; "I had served as captain of the kraal destroyer in the homeworld wars nearly 2000 years ago. I might had disliked combat but I still captained the destroyer because I had to, in time of war I'll gladly accept the offer but until then, no thanks."
"This is the captain, report to your duty stations immediately and prepare to launch the prototype. Activation code is omega 1987892" Cauchy who herself was in a slow drifting orbit around an distant red super giant started up her engine and begun to turn into firing position so the prototype would head out of the galaxy plane if the Tran hyperspace drive prototype didn't work as they thought it would. After a few min of rotating the engine went offline, so they could funnel more power into the sensor array. About 15 min later a smallish frigate detached from the destroyer it was a reconstructed Taiidan ion cannon frigate, they had removed the ion cannon and the hyperdrive and funneled all of the energy from its engine system its fusion reactor to power the prototype Transhyperdrive.
"This is captain Kraal. Send the code to the frigate now and make sure that all defensive weapons are online and targeted and that all the sensor arrays are all targeted at the frigate!" Kraal nodded toward one of the crew sitting by his station and he punched in the first activation code then he confirmed that it was starting up. Kraal speak into the intercom "Its starting up now confirm the status of the prototype." A respond drifted from the intercom "The prototype is charged up and ready to go." Kraal nodded to the second crew. Then the crew input his activation code confirmed that it was accepted and it was ready for Kraal to activate it. Kraal paused for a few second, and the crew said, "Captain?" The captain jerked awake from his trace, punched in his own personal activation code, and armed the self-destruction for the frigate.
Outside the ancient destroyer, the frigate was steadying it then with no warning odd plasma like lighting begun to run across the hull of the frigate then the frigate started to dissolve in patches there and there then with a final flash it vanished, the sensors calmly recorded it. The researchers reaction however wasn't that calm.
On the Sommtaw's Dream, the very first Archangel Dreadnought Mrk II a crew member was getting some very weird reading from sector 9,08,72 in the area where captain Kraal was testing his unannounced test of the Transhyperdrive.
"Sir! I'm getting some extremely weird signal from sector 9,08,72 and no one is supported to be in that area there is nothing of value there only a red super giant." The captain of the Sommtaw's Dream got up from her command chair which she was playing a strategy game on to pass the time on these boring patrols and walked over to the crew's counstile and looked at the odd signal that was on the screen. "This signal is a hyper signal right? Because it appears that it's only a few min old." Yes sir" was the respond, "It isn't familiar to any known type of hyper signal nor any of the known hyperdrive emmititation so I'll venture to say that it's probably either a new type of hyperdrive being tested or a new encryption on the hyper signal on top of a new frequency." "Hmm I thought no one was supported to be in that area it's a restricted area. Anyway, I think we should call to Sommtaw's command and tell them that were going to check this thing out." Yes sir" was the respond.
After about fifteen min of waiting they got a respond from Sommtaw's command giving them the O.K. to go ahead and do a course change.
"Change course to 89,79,197 then engage hyperspace for sector 9,08,72. Make sure you set to exit hyperspace right on top of the origin of the signal we want to surprise them and catch them red-handed!" Krrista calmly said, the captain of Sommtaw's Dream. Outside the blue window suddenly opened and moved forward to envope the ship then there was a final flash and the Sommtaw's Dream was gone from the known universe. Krrista hated these hyperspace jumps because it made her feel little sick to the stomach. The doctor said that some Kushian seems to be more sensitive than others are to the effects of hyperspace jumps. She got up and told the navigator that she would be in her quarters. Only a select few knew of her hyperspace jump sickness and she planned to keep it that way.
"Shit, sir! I'm getting a massive hyperspace signal coming from just above us!" Came the panicked cry of the sensor operator. Kraal jerked his head to the left to take a quick look at the data screen and then he responded urgently "Shutdown all of the research equipment and redirect every single erg of energy from the sensor arrays and redirect them all to the engine and put on maximum thrust out of here!"
"But what about the prototype Transhyperdrive frigate its not back here yet!" Drifted the panicked cry of one of the researcher out of the intercom. "Fuck the frigate we can rebuild it! Shutdown your experiments NOW!" responded Kraal.
Outside the destroyer as it suddenly with no warning surged forward gaining an impressive acceleration with its engine at maximum thrust, the hyperspace window begun to move and the districtive profile of an Archangel Dreadnought begun to emerge. Inside the destroyer Kraal cried out "Start manvering, roll the ship now!" Outside the Sommtaw's Dream just finished coming out of hyperspace and was beginning to turn toward the fleeing destroyer.
Krrista was sitting lazy in her command chair fidging with her nails then she calmly said, "Fire a warning shot cross the destroyer's nose with one of our ion cannon. I suspect if this is our normal rogue pirate they probably will veer off and this will make them lose some of their speed. Secondly from the look of their impressive acceleration they probably has a modified Archangel engine and possibly energy cannons." "Yes Sir!" was the respond from the weapon captain. Krrista felt a soft rumble as the main engine begun to reach fifenty (50 percent) percent of maximum acceleration, little bit later she felt another light thump as one of the ion cannon rotated to target the destroyer for its warning shot.
Kraal jerked as the fiery red glow of an ion cannon flew right over the top of the bridge almost close enough to rip though the bridge. He thought shit the Archangel is opening fire. "Can't you increase our maximum acceleration? The Archangel is starting to get in range!" "Well, we are funneling every single erg of energy from everything other than the gravplanes and the life support system and I wouldn't recommend that we mess with them, sir."
"Can you have every noncombatant crew cluster in a small area then shut off the life-support to almost every area other than the bridge, and a few select area? Also, what about reducing the gravplanes in the nonessicial area to near zero?" "Yes sir, we can do that." About one min later Kraal was pressed back into his chair as the destroyer gained another impressive boast to its already impressive acceleration; it was starting to gradually out run the Sommtaw's Dream.
Aboard the Sommtaw's Dream Krrista was watching the destroyer with interest, this wasn't what an average pirate would usually do it felt like something an military commander would do if he knew he was badly out matched. "Increase acceleration to eighty percent of maximum." She whispered calmly, as the Archangel surged forward. "Now let's finish this off have all of our ion cannon focus on the engine segment and fire."
Kraal gaped as he watched the Archangel sudden surge in its acceleration. Its impossible he thought an Archangel cannot do that kind of gain to its acceleration that fast! He thought. It must be an Archangel Mrk II, shit! "Turn right 87,97,09 NOW!" he practically screamed. With no warning four fiery red ion cannon flew right by and then it started to turn toward his ship. "Go Down 87,98,189 NOW!" and the destroyer turned downward and kind of slide forward as the thruster system was fighting the impressive intera of the destroyer. He felt a light thump as one of the ion cannon barely touched the top frame of the engine and burnt right though the hull in microseconds then suddenly the ion cannon died as fast as it had appeared.
Krrista blinked as she watched the destroyer's sudden manuver, hmm this must be either one of the few traitors that we haven't gotten rid of yet, or an extremely talented military commander. She grinned, this'll be fun she thought. "This time shoot the ion cannons one at a time, aim for the engine." Shortly later she felt a gentle thump as all four of the capital ship killer ion cannon rotated in their massive turrets to aim at the destroyer that was jerking all over the place. She could sense the massive energy stored in the dreadnought's massive energy cells waiting to be discharged in a fiery bolt of inscandent furry. It was a subtitle sense but she had a feeling that the destroyer would suddenly change strategy and she raised a hand, causing the weapon controller to stop targeting the ion cannon and put it on by stand. She smiled and said "Wait and you shall see." The weapon controller had a puzzled look on his face; she repeated, "Wait and you shall see." "Yes sir" was the uneasy respond of the weapon controller, the crew wasn't quite used to these oddity from Krrista, she almost seem like she can read minds.
Kraal was being slammed around in his command chair as the destroyer yet again changed direction violently, he struggled to get his breath back and barely whispered "see that lone asteroid go behead it and use it to keep the asteroid between us and THAT archangel." The destroyer changed direction once again and struggled to fight the intera of its impressive mass. After a few second it managed to get back under control and dived behead the asteroids just in time for one ion cannon to fly right by. "Shit, that was almost too close!" was the exclaim of one of the crew. Kraal was getting nervous, the archangel had fired its ion cannon only three time and each time it fires it seems that it was on purpose off aim, almost like the archangel was herding him in a certain direction. "Shutdown the engine and go into low power mode but do keep a sensor aimed at the archangel to warn us if it tries anything funny. This should offer us some time to repair some damage we suffered in our manvering and possibly work out someway to get around that archangel." Said Kraal as he was getting up.
"Shit, captain, it can't have hyperspaced out THAT fast!" cried one of the sensor controller. Krrista looked in his direct calmly with her piercing stare and responded "Then it hasn't hypered so what would the other logical conclusion be?" The sensor operator that had cried out gulped and very softly said "Wellβ¦ there's no cloaking field anywhere andβ¦. I don't know." Krrista softly said "If I was a captain in an old destroyer from homeworld era and can't hyper out before I'm destroyed or disabled, and there is only a few space junk drifting around along with a couple of asteroids drifting what would I do?"
Kraal was starting to get even more nervous now that the Archangel was just sitting right there like one of Kharak's ferocious predators waiting for its prey to make its move. "All right," he spoke in the intercom to the chief engineer "I want you to check the Transhyperdrive prototype to see if its undamaged then hook it up to the regular hyperdrive and disable the regular one." "Whoa!" came the surprised respond, "we haven't finished testing that Transhyperdrive prototype, and I'm not sure that you really do indeed to use it!" Kraal face became grim "We have no choice we can't outrun them with regular hyperdrive because we'll be dead before we can even open a gate, this is the only way I see of escaping this." Kraal ended up dozing away after a few min of waiting, only to be awakening almost three hours later by his navigator officer. "We have finished hooking up the prototype, and also finished repairing some fairly miniror damage to the ship." Kraal stretched and rubbed the sand out of his eye and yawed. "What has happened with that Archangel?" The navigator officer responded with a little undertone of nervousness "it hasn't even moved a inch at all, it's really strange." Kraal sighed; it is looking increasingly like it is on the hunt, waiting for its prey to make the wrong move. He then stood up, walked over to the intercom by the sensor, and waved his hand for every one to come in and join him. After the last of the bridge crew came together, he started to discuss his plan. "We got to damage that Archangel or at least distract them while we are preparing for the Transhyperspace jump. First thing we'll do is aim this ship toward 79,87,09 then put the engine at maximum acceleration then once were out of behead the asteroid we'll change direction as fast as possible. Next, we dive right under the Archangel, and fire our energy cannons as fast as possible along the middle of the Archangel, in hope of at least damaging it or distracting it then we trigger the prototype as fast as possible. Any objection?" There was none.
While Kraal was working on a way to get away from Sommtaw's Dream, Krrista was in the bridge, playing her strategy game that she loved to play to pass time while she was waiting for the destroyer to make its move. Without warning the sensor operator howled as the destroyer suddenly gained a huge acceleration and was flying around the asteroid at a tremmious speed that only an Archangel drive could do. Krrista smiled, Archangel Mrk I engine that is, shouldn't have a problem keeping up. Her smile turned sour as she saw the destroyer coming in their direction fast, she snapped "Target ion cannon one and two at the engine, and fire on my mark! Target ion cannon three and four at the two ion cannon turrets on the destroyer, and fire on my mark!" She could feel the rumble as the quad ion cannon begun to track their assigned target. "Mark!" she snapped, four fiery columns came jetting out of the turret and the first two impacted on the engine, burning though it in microseconds then without a warning the engine just died on the destroyer. Shortly thereafter the second set of ion cannon sheered off the twin ion cannons turrets completely off at its weak joint. The destroyer's engine was now dead and both of the ion cannon turrets was gone, Krrista smiled, this was a very clean kill. Suddenly without warning the Archangel was shoke violently as several energy balls impacted on her hull, searing right though her armor plane and damaging the internal system. Krrista was hurled boldly across the room only to hit her side hard on the walls of the bridge. One of the ion cannon misfired and the fiery column pierced the destroyer just little ahead of the engine and burned though, destroying massive amount of internal systems, vaporizing crewmembers. Krrista cussed as she struggled to get up the impact had knocked the breath out of her. She glared at the damage system screen and saw that the ion cannon activators were damaged severely, she cussed even more. "Fire all of the energy cannons we have!" She snapped at the weaponry officer who was struggling to regain his sense.
For Kraal, it was now or never! "Engage the transhyperdrive now!" and yet just as he said it the Dreadnought's ion cannon misfired and punched through one of the gigantic fusion reactors.
Time seemed to slow down it seemed as though the Transhyperdrive would never engage. Then suddenly there was a flicker on the very edge of his vision, he turned his head and looked in that direction only to see a piece of the hull starting to fizz away, no it was simply melting away into nothingness, "Well they hit the bridge! So this is what it is like to die." he thought as he watched the empty space creep closer ever so slowly. Feeling an odd tingle on arm, he looked downward. He almost fainted at the sight; his hand and half of his arm had vanished replaced with the cold bleakness of space. Kraal then realized that the transhyperdrive had kicked in and he was watching his own body simply vanish before his very eyes.
Kraal looked up and instead of the bulkhead or even the super giant they had battled under there was a darkness that seemed to be trying to swallow the ship. Space and time had been disrupted, as Kraal watched his helmsman leap slowly through the air, as if to get away from the great mouth. "Caaptaaiiin! Looookk ooouuut!" said a garbled voice as the floor vanished. Kraal looked around as the stars vanished and a field of blood red clouds red as the Soban robe replaced the emptiness. Almost instantly, he began to see images coming from where the giant star used to hang. Demons out of his past, treacherous nightmares he had pushed down, every manner of evil and vile visions appeared causing this normally brave man to shudder and cringe in fright. Off in the distance someone screamed. Kraal, tried to see the source of the deathly scream, but found that it was he that was screaming. Tears welled in his eyes as his mind shrunk from the sight. Suddenly all was quiet as the Darkness consumed him.
Krrista smiled maniacally, this will be the end! Just as several of the Archangel's energy turrets fired off a massive volley of brilliant white energy balls, they started to streak toward the destroyer. She looked toward the destroyer and was shocked by what she saw, part of the destroyer was covered with massive amount of what looked like plasma flirting over the hull, like a huge bolt of lightning. Before her very own eye, she saw part of the destroyer simply vanishing. Then just as the brilliant white balls of stolid plasma reached the destroyer, a huge brilliant white flash blinded her for a few seconds. She gaped at the brightness of the flash, and her hand flew to her face to cover her eyes, but it was to late she was temporary dazed. A couple of seconds after she recovered from being dazed she checked the sensor screen and was surprised by what she saw, the destroyer wasn't there, and there was no wreckage at all other than the severed ion cannons turrets drifting around. This was impossible! She thought, a destroyer should at least have left some kind of trace but there was nothing! While she was kind of in shock, both from being dazed for a few second and the fact that the destroyer simply vanished without a single trace other than a peculiar hyperspace signal, she checked the damage report of her own ship. The ion cannons was malfunctioning so they had shut them down, a few part of the armor on the bottom of the archangel was damaged but only two was completely bleached. Nearly every single internal system was working just fine the only system that was malfunctioning was the ion cannons. She slumped into her chair and sends a hyper signal to Sommtaw's command containing a record of the battle and the vanishing of the destroyer.