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.