Sixth Wonder

The next morning, I reported to Lt. Commander Cordova along with a few other new assignees and he welcomed us into the squadron. Once again, I spent some time with the new Perseus fighter to get a feel for an interceptor. It's not a bad little ship, definitely something of a relief to be able to freely move around as a fighter than as a bomber. It was like stretching my legs out in space again, although I did like being a ship killer...just not so much the fact that I was a big target.

The day went slow until we were called in for general quarters for an announcement from the Admiral. Takeda was right, we were heading back. The NTF had had managed to stage a surprise attack on several systems. One of our own campaigns had faltered and the we had lost over 75% of our forces in Epsilon Pegasi so we were being scrambled in to rejoin the fleet and assist in the defense of Enif Station there. Everyone's face was like stone during the briefing. We just wanted to get into the fight.

When we arrived, the NTF were all over the place. An enemy Leviathan cruiser, the Cato, was busy attacking Enif and was also taking potshots at the civilian transports that were attempting to escape in a repeat of what they did back at Cygnus Prime. They were treating everyone as an enemy. Several more enemy bomber wings jumped in to try and hit the station, even after the Cato was destroyed, but the Pegasus fighters we were assigned were well suited to taking out the bombs and the Zeus-class bombers that carried them. However, a Deimos-class corvette, the Hawkwood, jumped in and started raking Enif with beam fire, taking over from where the Cato had been forced to leave off at.

That was when IT jumped in. I didn't even think we could build something that huge, but there it was...the biggest warship any of us had ever seen in known space...the Colossus.

It came in and destroyed the Hawkwood, turning it to slag in seconds. Afterwards, we were given a briefing on the Colossus and what led to its construction. None of us even knew about it until now. Keeping a secret like this couldn't have been easy, but Wilkins was smiling throughout the presentation when it was made available to the rest of the ship as if it were more proof that command had a few more aces up its sleeves. It was kind of hard to hide the fact that it was out there now and suddenly, everyone felt relief. Not just for being out of the nebula, but in seeing the Colossus as the ultimate guardian of our future here from the Shivans.

Only Studi wasn't too impressed by the ship. He was happy that it was part of the fleet and all, but he also said that we shouldn't put too much faith in one weapon, no matter how large it is. I remember watching an old sci-fi film on movie night with the rest of the pilots that demonstrated how a small fighter could fly in and destroy something much larger than itself, but I doubt that the Colossus would fall to one small torpedo.

And that's what worried Studi. He told me that he had a gnawing feeling in his gut that the Shivans are still out there, waiting, and that the Great War was only a scouting taste of what they expected to find. I told him he was being pessimistic and he laughed. He probably was, but also answered that it doesn't hurt to be just a little cautious.

Slaying Ravana

The new capital ship that wiped out the Actium and the Lysander has been designated the Ravana. One of the pilots in our squadron, Dakshesh, is a practicing Hindu and he just groaned when he heard the news. I asked him what the bad news was and he answered that Ravana is the name of the rakshasa king in the Hindu epic, the Ramayana. Without going into a lot of detail, rakshasa are what some of us would call demons. Great. We're going up against a ship named after a demon king, although I suspect that Dakshesh was just getting tired of command reaching for the Hindu epics every time a new ship class is found.

We were assigned to fly the Boanerges fighters which Dakshesh tells me are from what Jesus had given James and John in the Bible as surnames. It's supposed to mean "Sons of Thunder". I had to do a double take when Dakshesh told me that and he just smiled and said that he studied religions on Beta Aquilae before he decided on a career in the GTV. Some of the pilots in the group were thinking of other careers before they decided they wanted to be space jockeys like me, so I guess it shouldn't be too much of a surprise. I thought I wanted to be a farmer at one point, working one of the v-farm silos and earning a quiet living before I space drew me back in.

Anyway, the Boanerges was hardly something that I would call a Son of Thunder. It was packed with the Cyclops ship killer bombs that we would be using against the Ravana, but in battle, it handled like a cinder block with firecrackers for maneuvering thrusters. It was nothing like the Ursa in the simulations that I had practiced on, or the Medusa. Fortunately, the Vasudans had sent a capital ship to help us out and after a pitched battle of beams and flak, we took out the Ravana-class cruiser.

At the debrief, everyone that survived was congratulated on a job well done. Lt. Samsa took me aside afterwards and said that I would be assigned to the 242nd "Suicide Kings", an interceptor squadron aboard the Aquitaine that had a reputation for peforming some of the crazier missions that other pilots wouldn't take. I am to report to Lt. Commander Cordova first thing the next morning.

Wilkins laughed when I told him the good news and said that someone was out to get me. First for my aim by putting me in a bomber squadron, and now they were just out to do the job right by sending me out to chase missiles. Sheryl smiled and said that Cordova was a good officer and that a few of her friends were in the squadron so she'd make sure that I would get a warm welcome. I have a feeling that it wasn't going to involve drinks and a pat on the back.

Studi nodded his head and said that I deserved it and unlike Wilkins, was convinced that it was my skill that recommended me. "Now" he said "-you will need eyes looking both forward and back out there." I guessed that meant that I'd be surrounded all the time since I'd be in the middle of every battle that we were going to be thrown into.

Takeda just kept his mouth full of cheeseburger while we talked. He didn't have anything new to say, other than that the NTF has managed to make several gains on GTVA territory in the past few days. He didn't want to start any rumors (too late for that now), but he was convinced that we would be recalled to Gamma Draconis to rejoin the fleet very soon. I asked him why, and in between chewing his food, he mumbled that it was a hunch.

I hate it when he gets hunches like that. They're usually right.

Hunting Shivans

I don't know about Wilkins' idea that command is keeping us in the dark about certain things, especially after this mission. Maybe they might be with the Knossos and the NTF being out here before us, but after this, I think they're still in the same boat as everyone else. Everyone has secrets, but they're all here with us on the same ship.

We were told to head out and escort the Actium and the Lysander, two GTCv cap ships that were heading out to destroy two Shivan cruisers that were detected in the nebula by command. We were to provide fighter escort and screening while the caps were to blast the enemy into dust with their beam cannons. Everything was going fine and the pilots even took a few pot shots at the enemy cap ships as they were going down until another one jumped into our space just as we killed the last one. Whatever it was, it blasted both the Actium and the Lysander with heavy fire destroying both in a matter of seconds.

Command immediately ordered us out of the area and we were happy to leave. I also got the feeling that we would be heading back in to take care of whatever it was that destroyed both vessels. I'd never seen anything like it...it was as if they were there one second and in the next, they were gone.

Wilkins was quiet when I met him and Sheryl for lunch in the mess. His wing was tasked to another patrol out in the nebula and most of them didn't make it back. It was his first encounter with the Shivans and I could tell that he was still trying to find something smart to say about the whole thing but he didn't. A lot of my squadmates, especially the younger ones, were like that. Our time in the nebula has put everyone on edge. No one's sure what we're going to be running into out here, and the talk about the Trinity has already started to breed even more rumors among the crew. It's getting to where I can't walk down an access corridor without hearing people talk about the NTF and why they're out here, that we've jumped into the Shivan's home galaxy, or that command might not even be able to send us back home from this side of the gate. Lt. Samsa already debriefed us on the last mission and added that if we are caught spreading any kind of rumors, that he'll personally take care of the problem himself. In other words, loose lips sink ships. At least I think that's how it goes, I'm not too good with my history.

Sheryl's wing was tasked on another patrol and they didn't run into anything new which she seemed to regret. I don't know if she likes looking for trouble, or simply wants a challenge out here. Just being here is enough to make you wish for home.

Fighting Blind

A large number of eggeheads arrived onboard earlier in the day and Takeda tells me that even more are on the way to study our prize, but even he wasn't privy to everything that was being said about it on the bridge. He found out that most everything about it was classified at the highest levels leaving only those in the immediate system with any knowledge about why we were actually here. On one hand, it's kind of nice to be the fly on the wall for a change. On the other hand, the Shivans were just as interested in the thing as we were.

Admiral Petrarch gave us another personal briefing just as he did yesterday and let us in on more of what we had just saved. A science team led by Dr. Mina Hargrove was leading the effort in researching the ring, codenamed "Knossos", and they determined that it was incredibly old and may have been used to stabilize unstable wormholes or jump nodes. The implications are obvious: if the secret of the device can be deciphered, we might be able to rebuild the node back to Earth. The GTVA were sparing little expense in fortifying the system and in focusing all of their resources in doing just that. In the meantime, the Aquitaine will be jumping through the portal to see what's on the other side. Lucky us.

We jumped in just fine and ended up in what appeared to be the remnants of a huge supernova. Interference from the nova made communication and scans over large distances extremely difficult, so several wings were ordered to patrol the area to make sure that it was safe. I could hardly see anything outside of my cockpit and the only thing keeping me on track was thanks to the HUD targeting my wing leader. Everything seemed to be going okay until we lost contact with Kappa wing. That was when things went wrong. Again.

Finding Shivans in the nebula was something that a few of us expected. After all, it was the Shivans attacking in Gamma Draconis that brought our attention to the Knossos gate in the first place. Still, for all we knew, we had jumped right into the middle of a Shivan staging ground.

We managed to fight through them and we resumed our patrol hoping not to run into the capital ship that had brought them there and found another surprise: an NTC cruiser. Apparently, we weren't the first ones to make history by jumping out into the middle of nowhere. I don't know what was scarier...the Shivans that might be out there in the nebula, or the fact that NTF was already here.

It was the Trinity. The crew was still alive and the captain, Arthur Roemig, surrendered his ship to us in exchange for getting them out of there. The ship had suffered severe damage and they powered their systems down to avoid detection, but it didn't help. Both our rescue crew that was sent in to take them under custody along with the Trinity were destroyed by several waves of Shivan fighters that jumped in all around us. There wasn't anything we could do.

Roemig refused to answer any questions when we found him and I guess we'll never know what the NTC was doing there now that he's dead. At the mess, Takeda, Sheryl, and Wilkins were there discussing what else they had managed to find out. Wilkins' patrol didn't run into any Shivans and Sheryl was assigned to CAP so she didn't see any action. I asked Takeda about the Trinity and he looked at me with a puzzled face and said that no one was saying anything about it on the bridge or within intelligence. He'd heard about it, thought it would at least get everyone talking, but it was being treated like a taboo subject among the officers.

Takeda mentioned only one thing he thought was unusual and it had something to do with Admiral Petrarch. He was on the bridge when command identified the Trinity and saw him came over and watch the tactical screens as the battle unfolded around us. After we were told to withdraw, Takeda says the Admiral ordered a private encryption channel be set up between him and GTVA headquarters for immediate use. Whether it had something to do with the Trinity or not, he couldn't say, but the smart money is that it did.

On my way back to the barracks, I saw Studi in one of the rec areas, watching the nebula from the window port view that was there. I asked him if he thought we were a few light years or a few hundred light years from home. We might not even be in the same galaxy for all we knew. Studi just smiled and said that he hoped to see the stars wherever we might be. I wished that I could be that easygoing. Right now, all I can think of is what on one of my wingmates had said to us on our way out there...that we didn't sign up to fight Shivans.

First Encounter

It's already been a few hours since we had seen action and my hands are still trembling as I write this. I had my first encounter with the Shivans today.

They weren't anything like what I had learned at the Academy. Nothing prepared me for going up against what my parents had to live with in fear nearly more than three decades ago, the red glow of scattered splotches drawn across their organic-looking hulls flying in the darkness at us. We should have expected it, but expectations and the actual act of seeing what it looks like up close are two different things. Your gut shifts, the adrenaline starts to flow, and at that point, a world of possibilities open up to you. In my case, it was to grit my teeth and pull the trigger while trying not to get killed. I half expected myself to freeze up when facing the Shivans, but we also had come a long way since the battle with the Lucifer.

The 107th Ravens welcomed me in and I learned that Studi had been with them before several years earlier. Lt Samsa didn't waste any time at the welcome briefing in telling us about the history of the squadron and what we would be using, the Hercules Mark II...an improvement over the original Hercules that served in the Great War. Admiral Petrarch was expected to make a shipwide announcement later that day which gave me a few hours to brush up on my Herc training. It's not a bad ship, I had trained on one back in my academy days. It's maneuverable for a missile platform and has a decent gun loadout, but when put up against faster fighters, it struggles to keep up. Still, it has improved armor and shielding, and you can fill it up with plenty of missiles.

We were all called in to the briefing room for the Admiral's address to the ship and that's when we found out what we would be facing. Earlier that morning, Shivans had launched an attack at Gamma Draconis, destroying the GTC Vigilant with all hands presumably lost. Looking at the other faces in the room, I could see that several of them turned as white as a sheet at the mention of the Shivans. Mine probably looked the same. No one expected to face them out here.

The GTD Carthage and the GTVC Dahshor were quickly scrambled to the system to deal with the threat which they had managed to do, discovering something else in the process...a huge, artificial ring generating a subspace portal and a significant Shivan presence there. Previous surveys of the system made it out to be something that was a barren wasteland and the last one fifteen years ago by the GSC Erikson didn't turn up anything new, much less a giant spinning ring of alien technology. But there it was, and the Shivans were sitting on top of it.

Our wing was sent out to destroy the fighter escorts surrounding the Rakshasa capital ship that was sighted there while the Carthage and Dahshor were to rendezvous with us to finish the job. The Herc did okay, but the Shivans also had a few new ships of their own like the Mara which looked like something of a cross between a beetle and a spider, with striped red markings. It didn't help that it could fly rings around the Herc, but the barrage of missiles we'd send its way still helped to give us a slight edge in the fight out there, even when another Shivan cruiser jumped in. I still can't believe we'd won. Not everyone came back though and some of the pilots that did left a little something for the crews to clean up on the flight deck once they got out of their cockpits. Most of the older pilots, however, just frowned and came away from the experience without another word. Either they didn't know what to say, or there was simply nothing to say at all. We were alive and that's all that mattered to any of us.

I caught up with Takeda and Wilkins in the mess after debriefing. Wilkins' imagination was in overdrive again, thinking that this was just more proof that command knew a lot more than they were telling us. Why didn't the Erikson find the gate fifteen years ago? He says that maybe they did, and were told by command not to tell anyone else. But I don't know...it's kind of hard to hide a discovery like that by swearing everyone on a ship to secrecy, but Wilkins is convinced that it was just a cover up. With the Shivan attack, there was no more reason for it to stay hidden anymore. Takeda just shook his head.

Conspiracy?

We were scrambled out of our beds earlier this morning to intercept the NTF Iceni, the name of Bosch's ship that escaped the depot yesterday. Command had apparently identified it and we were rushed out to intercept him before he could escape again. But for whatever reason, we were jumped in at coordinates that put us several clicks behind Bosch's flag. I pushed my engines to the breaking point, but it wasn't enough. The Iceni escaped.

My wingmen weren't happy, none of us were, and one of them, Booth, said a lot of things that got us thinking. It did seem as if Command wanted the Iceni to escape. Bad coordinates, little support...I really don't know what we would have done if we had caught up to Bosch. It's not like we had enough anti-ship missiles or anything that could even slow a ship like his down. It also didn't help that he left us with a message, questioning the "wisdom" of our leaders. I'm not sure if that meant the wisdom of not believing his NTF rhetoric, or something else entirely, and that bothers me.

On the other hand, it could be that Command was too embarrassed to admit that they had screwed up. I hope Takeda is alright. He can't be taking this well. I know he's up against Bosch and he isn't exactly a pushover, either. After leading the NTF for eighteen months in open rebellion, the man has to have more than a few tricks under that Admiral's cap of his. So far it just seems as if he knew we were coming and planned out to be two steps ahead of us every time. Takeda hates to lose. We probably might not see him around for the next few games.

After Bosch jumped out, we got caught in the middle of a rush of ships from the NTF making for the same jump node. Fighters and cargo freighters don't last every long against something like the Myrm, but the two cap ships that jumped in at the end weren't something that we had expected to engage outside of the Iceni. Our fighters threw every Tempest we had at them and the Vasudans also sortied the Psamtik back into action to help. Both were destroyed, but we were left with a lot of questions.

Debrief was quick and Lt. Loukakis told me that I would be transferred over to the 107th Ravens. Wilkins said that meant that my aim wasn't as good as I thought it would be so I'll be dropping bomb rockets on larger targets to improve my score. Sheryl laughed when she heard that, but congratulated me all the same. Studi simply said to make sure that when I fire my capship killers, to be out of the way of the explosion.

It looks like I'll be heading back in for more training modules, then.

No medals for crate killers

We were given orders to attack an NTF depot and given the usual speech as how it might not win any medals, but will help in strangling enemy supplies. A ship short on weapons is pretty useless in a firefight. I thought that it would be a nice change of pace from the harrowing baptism by fire we had yesterday, but I was wrong. So wrong. And this mission is where things started going weird for a lot of reasons. I don't know if I'll be able to write about what I've seen here, but I'm recording it anyway for myself to help sort out what the hell might be going on.

The depot was located in a small asteroid field and was like most any other I've seen before when chasing down pirates and raiders on the frontier, a bunch of containers floating in space and protected by a few static defenses like turrets. A few Loki-class fighters from the NTF engaged us, but things began going south when Beta wing couldn't complete their scans of the cargo. Every container was shielded for some reason. I should have known something wasn't right at that point, but we still had a job to do. After clearing out the fighters and destroying the containers, we got word that there was a strange energy signature deeper in the field so we went to investigate it. It turns out that the NTF had a hidden base built into one of the asteroids and we were told to clear out the fighters for the bombers that would be arriving.

And that's when we received a communication from Admiral Bosch.

That's right...THE Admiral Bosch of the NTF, rebel leader and traitor to the GTVA. He was on the base! But that wasn't the end of the surprises. Command denied that he was onboard and said that he was elsewhere, but we knew damn well who we were hearing over our headsets. He was trying to negotiate for the safety of the base by agreeing to pull his forces from Deneb, in effect, giving up an entire system for one base. Whatever was on there must have been incredibly important for him to suddenly decide to sacrifice the battle there.

But Command didn't want to hear any of it and ordered us to destroy the base anyway. That's when it burst open, revealing a frigate hidden inside of it. It activated its jump drive and escaped before we could do anything else, but Bosch left us with an ominous warning that what he was doing would be the key to saving humanity. Whether or not any of us believed it was quickly swept under the rug by Command that quickly ordered us back home for debrief.

Back on the Aquitaine, we were all told not to discuss what we had witnessed at the depot and everything was classified top secret...like this personal journal that we're told to keep. After Lt. Loukakis was done with us, I saw Admiral Petrarch, the ship's commander, Gloval, and several other officers come in as we were filing out, closing the door behind them. While playing poker, Takeda had come down as he usually does, but his face wasn't the calm facade of an intelligence officer that we had gotten used to. He looked a little ashen and we asked, off the record of course, if it had anything to do with Bosch being somewhere else he wasn't supposed to be.

He whispered back that HQ was just as puzzled as anyone else, but they had managed to recover a few materials from the depot strike. He couldn't say what they found, but apparently, it was considered incredibly important that they sealed off one of the cargo rooms in the lower decks where they were stored and placed it on 24 hour guard...under the Admiral's direct orders. He couldn't say anymore than that, only that they were to treat this incident as if it had never happened.

It didn't take long for Wilkins to start yammering about Shivans and for Studi to shut him up by robbing him, and the rest of us, blind with a full house. I swear, that guy has the perfect poker face.