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.