Chapter 3

Caal-Shto had been constructed by Kiith Manaan immediately after the war to reclaim Hiigara. Based on a solid, battle tested design, the fifteen-year-old carrier had since earned her crew and Kiith numerous battle-honors in the ongoing war against the Imperials and Turanic Raiders. Hence the Manaani had no plans to retire her in the foreseeable future. In fact, Caal-Shto had recently been returned to service after entering the mothership for a costly mid-life refit which had included the daunting task of replacing her hyperdrive module - a feat of engineering well beyond the capability of Caal-Shto's own crew.

Caal-Shto's enormous magnetically shielded hyperdrive module was mounted in the ship's after section. It's vertical height passed through several of Caal-Shto's decks. The pearl of Kushan engineering and its associated subsystems were monitored, serviced and operated by scores of highly trained crew-members organized into several departments working in shifts from a myriad number of control stations throughout the ship. The majority of Manaani hyperdrive technicians were not strictly fighting men or women, yet they considered it a privilege and an honor to work with the principal instrument of Kushan restoration.

Ironically, one of the few control stations from which even a portion of Caal-Shto's hyperdrive module could physically be seen was compartment 06H-1. 06H-1 provided access to the huge primary power couplings that received and distributed power from Caal-Shto's three industrial fusion reactors - these also powered the carrier's conventional drive - to the hyperdrive module. Though controls for the primary couplings were normally accessed and monitored elsewhere, the master controls were found in 06H-1 and the couplings themselves required regular calibration by a technician. Positioned about midway down a long maintenance-elevator shaft, the small, normally unmanned compartment had been designed with just enough headroom for an average sized technician to stand. Upon exiting the service elevator and stepping into 06H-1, however, on the opposite end of the compartment, a small section of the hyperdrive module's smooth spherical surface was immediately visible. Though an armored blast door could be lowered to seal the small compartment from the hyperdrive module, normally the opening was simply shielded magnetically - thus providing an invisible protective barrier.

The elevator doors opened. Any noise the doors may have made were immediately drowned by the pervasive drone of the Caal-Shto's conventional drives. A technician dressed in dark blue coveralls stepped into compartment 06H-1 and glanced at the hyperdrive module.

"Abomination," he whispered softly as the doors closed behind him.