Unity

Chapter 21

"That is truly unfortunate," I replied.

Once we were a good distance away Admiral Jones started running drills. We timed how fast we could deploy the whole fleet. We averaged between seven and ten minutes. Considering there were over eight hundred ships, it was impressive. Docking all the ships took longer than deploying. The fighters took the longest. We were halfway to our destination when someone from the navigation desk said, "Admiral Jones, we have unknown contacts headed our way sir."

Everyone froze. There weren't supposed to be any ships out this far besides us. Admiral Jones stopped what he was doing and put the ship on alert. "Tell all ships to dock with the Unity but keep the engines hot in case this gets ugly," he commanded. "Navigation, I need more intel on those ships. What can you give me?"

The navigations officer said, "There are five ships. We've never seen this design before. They were floating out here waiting for us. They'll be in weapons range in twenty minutes."

"Wouldn't it be prudent to launch the fighters and use them as a screen?" I asked Admiral Jones.

"That would be standard SOP under normal circumstances, however, I doubt these ships are packing anything that can harm the Unity. We are more likely to incur casualties if we launch ships."

Admiral Jones stood up and walked to the holotable. He was inspecting the surrounding area. "Only five ships against our whole fleet," he muttered. "If they are hostile then they are throwing their lives away." He turned and called out, "Comms, see if you can get any kind of response from them. Inform them we will be forced to destroy them if they don't stand down. Nav set an intercept course. Gunners, ready the rail guns. No need to waste a missile for this sorry group."

Everyone was tense, surely nobody would be stupid enough to try to attack such a superior force. "Five minutes to intercept," said the navigations officer.

Admiral Jones looked up from the holotable. "Any reply to our messages?"

"Nothing yet sir," said the communications officer.

"Fire a warning shot. Make sure it's close, but don't hit them...yet." Admiral Jones started pacing. He turned to me and said, "I've got a bad feeling about this. We can easily handle five small ships, but something doesn't feel right. Why would they wait for us out in the open?" Admiral Jones was talking to himself. I kept quiet. I didn't have any insight anyways.

The ships kept moving forward, even after some very near misses with the rail gun. Once they reached effective weapons range Admiral Jones looked around. "Open fire on enemy ships," he commanded with a sigh. "Disable them if you can."

Several shots were fired, but the ships dodged them at the last second. Everyone was shocked. There was no way the ships could have dodged munitions moving that fast. Admiral Jones was upset now. "Don't just sit there, try again," he yelled. After several more shots were fired, it was obvious the rail guns weren't going to get the job done.

"Should we launch the fighters?" I asked tentatively.

"No, I don't want to have casualties on our first mission," he responded. "There is no way they could be carrying enough munitions to hurt the Unity." Admiral Jones was so focused; he was unaware he was being redundant. "Cease fire. Wait until they are in range of the laser batteries and open fire. Let's see if they can dodge something that moves at the speed of light."

We didn't have a chance to see what effect the lasers would have. Right before they came into range, a large section of the ships broke off and fired off several missiles. "Pilots, put some distance between us. Weapons, don't let those missiles get close to us." I watched as the engines were put to full power. We quickly put distance between us and the enemy ships, but the missiles continued to close the distance.