untitled (as of now)

Chapter 1

As soon as the external sensors recovered from the effects of the warning blast from the closing ships they abandoned the observations they were in the middle of and had run for the Wormhole as fast as the cruiser’s powerful engines could push them. Across tens of millions of miles of space the two unidentified craft played cat and mouse with the small four man cruiser. Never allowing them the time required to establish their own Wormhole. Every twist and turn the ‘Griffin’ made brought the two unidentified pursuing craft closer to them. The ‘Griffin’ was still a good ten thousand miles ahead of the pursuing craft, verging on the boundary of the Wormhole and safety. The Captain, watching the pursuing ships, trying to get some kind of handle on where they were from, thought he saw the flash of enemy fire fractions of a second before they crossed the boundary into hyperspace.

As the cruiser ran into hyperspace the power of the energy weapon discharge followed them in and sought them out, it had been very selective. The electro-magnetic blast the ‘Griffin’ had been caught up in had disrupted the main linkages for both computer and power systems and caused the ship wide systems’ to overload leading on to progressive failure, leaving only life support and environmental systems isolated from the rest of the shipboard controls, and still functioning.

Just when the Captain thought they were far enough inside the Wormhole to be able to turn the anxiety level down a notch, the proximity burst of energy from the pursuing ships had detonated close enough to the ship to push them aside and further on through subspace before dropping them back into normal space, way off their specified route and instantly killing all the ship’s controls. The slashing of their forward momentum from faster than light speed in hyperspace down to zero felt, to the ship’s occupants, like they had ran into a planet.

In the brief peace that followed the storm surrounding their of leaving hyperspace at high speed, Captain Tarrant stalked his bridge in the silence. In the first two minutes he issued instructions across the ship wide comms band to his crew as if he were a machine gun and his orders, bullets, then he allowed himself to take stock. He still had no idea if the rest of his crew still lived somewhere behind the blast shield that protected the command module from the rest of the ship. Fortunately Gyal had been in his position at the Science Officer’s desk when the blast had struck. Of the other two, right now only the gods knew. He hoped that comms were down and not that he had lost the rearward section of his ship. That could prove awkward to explain to his Commodore. Having had his own four man cruiser for the past fifteen years he knew that he had heard, and used, just about every excuse he had thought existed for every possible eventuality. He may, assuming the ship got back, just have to come up with a brand new one for the current damage.

On his route across the bridge from the engineering console where he had previously been working before the ship had been hit. Intent on his ship’s safety he needs to see if any activity had appeared on the sensors view screen. Along his path he side steps, unthinkingly, to avoid his First Officer’s legs and feet. Apart from his extreme height Gyal looks human, in form at least. Two arms attached to what appear to be shoulders, and two legs attached to what appear to be hips. What spoils the image is the seven foot length of him that can be seen protruding out of the open hatch below the main computer console.

“How long before we’re on line with anything again?” The Captain stands before the view screen with his fingers resting gently on the keys of pilot’s console and the soft sound, in his ears, that the ‘Everstick’ soles of his slippers made catching the fine fibers of the flooring cover that kept his feet firmly on the deck, as he rocked gently back and forth on his heels, an unconscious habit he had successfully kept from childhood.

For Gyal’s comfort and convenience the gravity on the bridge is less than a quarter that of Earth normal. The rest of the crew are more than prepared to put up with the inconvenience to themselves in exchange for Gyal’s technical wizardry. The air surrounding the three foot of torso from Gyal’s midriff to the console he’s working under, is filled with floating tools and replacement computer modules. His gentle voice quietly chides “About five minutes longer than the last time you asked me. The reason it’s now going to take me five minutes longer to find and fix all the blown links is because you’ve stopped me twice to ask me the same question. Believe me when I find what is wrong, I will fix it. You will know, I promise I wont keep it hidden from you.”

The ‘Griffin’ is hanging inert in space. Sections of her, usually matte black, outer hull are still glowing from the hits that got through the ship’s heavy shielding, as if further proof, other than her laying dead in space, were needed of the battle she had just been through. The more minutes John Tarrant spends hanging inert in space, the shorter his temper becomes and the more frequently he scans space through the forward view screen. From any distance, the ‘Griffin’, hanging inert in space would normally not be seen against the black backdrop. The resultant hot spots caused by the damage the blasts from other vessels had inflicted means she now stands out like a beacon against an otherwise black sky.

The Captain has to drag his attention back inside the ship, as his First Officer’s voice impinges on his imaginary view of his battered ship from the outside. His slow response betrays the depth of his inattentiveness. “Yes Mr. Gyal, I’m sorry, you were saying..?”

“Can you raise any life at all from communications? There doesn’t even seem to be any radio static in the area. There would seem to be an absence, close to zero, of background radiation in this part of space. No radio stars or pulsars. Apart from the places on the hull where we were hit, we fit in perfectly. There seems to be as much radio activity in this area as there is currently in our shipwide neural net .” Gyal’s voice drifted out from the hatchway.

The Captain spoke as he turned away from the view screens and towards Gyal’s position. “Instruments that still work read no activity outside this ship. All local readouts are completely flat.” When his eyes found Gyal he noticed there were fewer ‘things’ floating round Gyal than there had been a few minutes ago, “Praise the Lords, he must be on his way to being finished”, he thought. He also felt encouraged by the sight of an extra foot of Gyal’s length uncoiling from the hatchway, leaving only his head and shoulders inside, that allowed access to main control junctions that relayed the computer’s instructions from the bridge all over the inside of the ship.

John Tarrant knew he had tripped the detector beacon as he left M473 by entering the Wormhole. He needed to be sure that the attacking ships had been also recorded. Just because he hadn’t picked them up on his sensors did not mean the beacon had not registered the expended energy of their passing. Right now he needed to know that somehow the ships that had, so viciously, attacked him without warning, would be identified, found and captured. He wanted, very much, to meet the crews. But, most of all, right now, he desperately needed Gyal’s mental calm. He had known many Oryons through his life and had yet to find a set of circumstances that could disturb their fabled unflappable equilibrium.

What had those two craft been reacting to when they appeared and began powering up to attack? His mind started to follow the possible tracks offering explanation. Each path led to the same conclusion, they had to be pirates. The ships had not matched any known configuration, either on record or projected as being in development. They appeared totally functional, slab sided and totally without grace. The frustration he felt at not knowing so much would, if he didn’t do something, drive him insane.

He knew that he just had to back off. Gyal and his two other crew members, if they were still with them, were doing all that could be done. None of the four wanted to die, not now, not ever. Especially not in a lost, cold corner of space where nobody could find the ship. There weren’t even any stars to offer the hope of a planet, or even an asteroid with a stable orbit and enough flat surface to put down on, where the ship could land for repairs. So far, nothing seemed to have followed them out of the Wormhole. Perhaps the ships that fired on the ‘Griffin’ thought they had destroyed her and had no interest in debris.

John Tarrant would have liked to have taken the opportunity, the ship floating dead in space, offered him to review the scan records of the ‘meeting’ they had so unceremoniously run from. The records from the independent eyes that float and watch continuously around and in front of the cruiser, recording everything they observe. Had they captured any images of the attacking craft. A review was the only way he could know for sure. He would not be able to access these recordings until everything that had blown had been replaced.

While the Captain and Gyal struggle to recreate some order out of the chaos of the control room, Orville and Tez, contrary to their Captain’s worst fears, work their way towards the command module through the maze of systems that give control to the rest of the ship. Re-establishing control of the engines and scanners is the first order for them. Terry had various detectors attached to his coveralls and is carrying on a running commentary, to his maintenance files and expert systems, with the computer through a direct line to his throat mike.

Orville works methodically to restore engineering control, in total silence and on the opposite side of the main walkway to where Terry is working. This walkway is the main artery that runs the length of the ship allowing the crew access to all parts for maintenance. Orville is as squat as Gyal is long. Having been born as a sixth generation natural birth on a heavy gravity planet, Orville stands a little over five foot and has a strength far beyond that of anyone born on a normal gravity world. His bones are four times more dense than normal and they are also flexible. Orville’s home is a place called, with no little irony, Samson’s World, that orbits in a figure of eight around a binary star. Samson’s World is a rarity in stellar space. Star, planet and star are equidistant from each other. The star appears to be twins, so alike are they, that the planet is trapped in a constant orbit.

The core of Samson’s world is liquid iron kept fluid by the thermal dynamics created by the orbit of the planet. Its days are just under twelve hours long because the globe spins quickly. This fast spin allows the world to keep close to it a very dense, and necessarily protective, atmosphere, protecting the surface from the hard radiation from both of the stars that hold the planet in its eccentric orbit. This allowed humans to colonize the planet, without having to terraform it first, and that planet became known as Samson’s World.

To the people that live on its surface, Samson’s World has the most beautiful scenery ever. Only a handful of people born on Samson left from each generation. Due to the gravity on the planet natural born Samson's are always in great demand and they have the choice of more employment than there are people to fill them. They have an unequaled strength with the intelligence to make the most of what they have.

Terry, like John Tarrant, hales from Earth. There any similarity ends. While the Captain strives to remain as fit as he possibly can in artificial gravity a quarter of Earth normal, the only muscles that can be seen as to have developed on Terry, are on his jaws. They never stop moving. He is forever either eating or talking. Quite often both at the same time. The most unusual thing is that he never looses as much as a single crumb.

Even though Terry, better known to one and all throughout the Service as Tez, is squat in appearance, this is only due to his lack of height and the over large coveralls he wears continually while on board ship. They hang off his slender frame like sails, Terry’s reasoning for resembling an unmade bed is that he needs the room, and the additional pockets, to carry all the equipment he needs to do his jobs. Anyone else would tell you he needs the extra room to carry the dozen or so emergency food bars he always has secreted around his person. It means that he has both hands free if he carries his toolkit hung about his person. Every shift on every ship that Terry has ever worked on remembers well, and have some strange tales to tell about, Terry’s favorite food. For some inexcusable and inexplicable reason there is one member of Griffin’s crew who actually likes, nay, relishes, emergency ration bars.

Orville has often remonstrated with Tez about the trail of food bar wrappers that lead from where he is now back from which ever shipboard replicator Tez was last adjacent to. Never expecting to have emergency food bar wrappers strewn about the decks it was not a thing the programmers had hardwired into the cleaning droids to cope with. Orville didn’t object to Tez eating the bars, he just wishes that he could train Tez to understand that if a cleaning droid starts with smoke from under the shell, you turn it off and remove the food bar wrapper, or ten, from its congested suction tubes.

Back on the bridge Gyal carefully and slowly withdraws himself, very carefully and very slowly, so as not to disturb any of the jury rigged fixes he had created. He unfolds as he emerges from the hatchway and replaces the safety cover. “All we require now is for the rest of the ship to function and we could go.” Gyal stands fully erect and stretches his arms above his head. The nine foot high cabin ceiling, ample height for the tallest human, forces him to bend his elbows at ninety degree angles to the vertical while his elbows themselves form depressions in the foam material that makes up the cabin’s inner protective covering. The crew comfort and safety had been paramount in the design and construction of four man cruisers. That was before Oryon had been discovered.

Gyal had traveled off his world many times and in many different forms. The symbiot had outlived four hosts and Gyal was proving a very pleasing number five. Knowing that you are virtually indestructible gives an outer calm that is almost soporific in the face of danger.

John turns to his first officer, “Can I talk to either of them yet?” Gyal has every faith in his handiwork. “Please be my guest.” He performs an elaborate bow, guiding his Captain to the communications desk, to emphasize his well founded confidence.

“Bridge to engineering. Talk to your Captain, Orville. He is demanding your attention. Can we re-establish control over anything?”

“Yes-sir, Captain,” Crackled back through the console as though in response to prayer, any contact, even one not yet up to normal, was an enormous improvement on none at all. “Please, Orville, report, and make it one I want to hear.”

“Yes-sir, you’ll enjoy this. We’re looking at thirty hours minimum to find and report on half of what is shot to bits down here. Thank the Lords that life support and environmental controls were segregated and undamaged. Captain, I think we are going to be very interested in finding out how they survived, intact, in the midst of all the wreckage in areas back here.”

“Captain, in about ten hours we should be far enough up on the damage and repairs reports back here for us all to hold a meeting.” Terry’s voice emerges from the shipwide comms system.

“I take it that you, Terry, would like Gyal and myself somewhere other than on the bridge, doing something other than lounging around looking out at the stars that aren’t there.”

“I roger that sir.” Came the reply from Terry, who, for once, had his mouth empty and his words could be heard clearly. “We need to decide which systems we will need and which we can do without, not because we can’t fix them. We can. If it’s all the same to you guys I want to be on the move again as soon as engines are linked to any control system, right now I’d be happy with waste control. Those two ships frightened the hell out of me, and I don’t mind telling you. It may well help you to account for the indecent haste with which the jobs that will need to be done, will be done.”

“Good reasoning, Commander.” Apart from the Captain himself, all other crew on any four man cruiser were captains in their own right. As a ship can only have one captain at a time it had been agreed when the command structure was being laid down, that there would only be one Captain and three Commanders per vessel. Should the Captain be killed or disabled and unfit to command, there were three alternatives to choose from. “Where do you want us? It’s undoubtedly somewhere cold, dark and dirty and uncomfortable. ”

Chapter 2

Leaving And Romida was as deceptively easy as the arrival. In and out without being detected meant that the pilot would be in for an extra bonus. The Captain was good at his job, his current employers knew it and appreciated his rare talents. The Captain had held on to the same crew for the past ten years, in fact the crew had been together longer. Tony, Zaphir and Carl had been a team before the new captain came on the scene. Carl, Tony and Zaphir were part of the same intake for flight training. They had been put in the same dormitory and formed a team that set records in the Fleet. Both for doing well and for finding new and previously untried ways to do anything the wrong way. Ten years later and that new Captain was ‘Skipper’ and the best, by far, any of the three had ever worked with before. Dave Rourke had proved his loyalty to the crew and ship more times that any could remember.

The last time anything had came close to catching them had been over three years earlier. Since then the crew had not been placed in a position where they had to fire the ship’s impressive armoury on anything other that meteors, asteroids or practice targets. The more devious your ‘Skip’ the more risky the assignments, the more risk, the more secure the crew. In target practice the crew score 100% kills consistently. They lived a good life and did not want it to end because someone they depended on had been careless or inefficient. If trouble ever found them ‘Starfire’ and her crew would not let their ‘Skip’ down.

‘Starfire’ and her crew were one of over two hundred small cruisers that had been charged, by Star Command, with roaming the Human inhabited sectors of the galaxy to prevent any problems occurring. They were responsible to Earth Centraal for reporting any situation too large for any one, or combination of many, ships to resolve.

The And Romida data collection had been the last mission on this tour. The ‘Skip’ had a couple of extra bonuses in the bank to share round that he hadn’t told anyone of yet. He handed the bridge over to Carl as he came on duty and ‘Skip’ headed to his cabin and a well deserved rest. He walked into his cabin and through into the personal refresher area. David Rourke caught sight of his reflection in the Everbright surfaces. He was still twenty one, and that was the only thing he wasn’t wholly honest over. He was thirty eight, grey eyes that could change from dove grey to the darkness of gunmetal in less than a second, depending on his mood. His full head of straight, dark blond hair, still thick enough not to lay down when cut too short. At 185cms he was tall for a spacer. His frame was solid and the muscles and tendons that were visible looked like whipcord, almost every spare kilo of his weight was toned and conditioned muscle.

David smiled at his reflection satisfied that he was holding the aging process at bay and headed for his panoramic viewer. From his first voyage at faster that the speed of light David watched the Doppler effects of red and blue shifts in the spectrum of stars he passed. Facing forward, red stars shifted even redder as he approached. When the rear view was on screen he could stand for hours watching the stars start orange then turn to blue as they faded into his past and were left way behind his ship. The view of space and time in front of him, cocooned in a bubble of silence, as usual he reviews the plans he has for his future.

Being part of a galaxy wide industrial/military conglomerate that kept peace between star systems and patrolled the trade lanes had proved profitable. The ship he flew was his, he paid his crew and although they all wore the same uniform the four man long range patrols were free to follow whatever actions each Captain feels is appropriate at the time. Spending so long away from home forced the Service to give these Captains full autonomy over their actions. David owns his ship, pays his crew and collects his bonuses but always following his Admiral’s orders, no matter how unspecific. Whenever the orders are disobeyed a very good excuse has to cover the breach of discipline. The idea of a private individual owning a Navy ship while its still commissioned seemed crazy at first.

As Star Command came to grips with the reality of the vastness of space to be patrolled, the idea of not owning small, fast cruisers sank in. A Navy could not have a ship in space it could not control, these ships would be out of communication for months at a stretch. The pay structure for the Captains cum Ship Owners was both fair and equitable. Most of the Captains owned their vessels. At best a quarter of the fleet still belonged to the Navy and was flown by Navy career officers.

The cruiser, ‘Starfire’, dropped back into orbit around the home world. The blues of the water, changing from very dark blue where the water was deepest to a much lighter blue as the continental shelves rose. The greens and browns, edged in the gold of beaches, of the dry land as well as the clouds of water vapour in the upper atmospheric envelope made for a very impressive approach. As the ship moves into the planet’s shadow from the sun large areas in between the black of the land below twinkles as lights illuminate the night time darkness.

He knows well the sights that await him at landfall. Tall, slender towers and muted pastel shades as well as lighting effects being a part of the architecture, blend the buildings into the surrounding countryside and disguise the true size, and scale, of the San Angeles conurbation. When the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco had grown sufficiently, and ceased to have any open land between their individual city limits, they joined and became one place. From Oakland in the north to San Bernardino in the south was now one vast housing estate and the main residential area for California.

The Disney Space Port, named after the old twentieth century leisure/theme park that had originally occupied a corner of the area where the space port started off by taking over then expanding to become the ten square miles of reinforced concrete that was where the ship was heading. The entire complex lay thirty miles into the farm land that made up the remainder of the State. From the Rocky Mountains in the east to Oregon in the north and down to New Mexico in the south, California, due to its size and climatic spread, could grow and produce two crops every season of any crop native to Earth and a lot that weren’t.

The ship came in from the north having taken an orbit that followed the terminator line between day and night across from east to west traveling north to south. This route of approach was thought the most spectacular. This route required that you enter the atmosphere over the Antarctic and making one orbit to loose speed while crossing the Southern Ocean heading for the East African coast. Flying over North Eastern Europe then through the Arctic air to descend from North Eastern Canada and across North America sinking south and west at the same time and landing in mid California.

Since the stabilizing of the San Andreas Fault removed the fear that half of the state could fall into the Pacific Ocean development had gone ahead unchecked and the state and the country had prospered. The people of the state felt as if they had a second chance. Over the decades the Councilmen had reorganized the way the state was governed. When Earth started to colonize space, the state’s population settled at an ideal twenty million people. A good three quarters of which lived in San Angeles.

The approach, as usual, was handled by Ground Control and once the ship’s identification had been checked its final landing was passed to the military. Once the electronic handshake was complete the ship’s on board computer dumped its entire core back to Sec-Corp at Earth Centraal, who flashed a message back catching Dave just as he left the bridge. “Dave, Sec-Corp would like to talk to you.”

“Thank you computer, on screen in my ready room.” “Carl I’d like you along as well.” Dave finally managed to get off the ship’s bridge, without any more interruptions, with Carl following close on his heels. Dave took his seat at the desk, Carl sat, or rather lounged, opposite. The projection that appeared on the desk in front of him, after he placed his handprint on the computer’s touch screen hand pad, was of the Earth Centraal building signifying it was direct computer to computer communication.

“Captain Rourke,” came the computer generated voice that was virtually indistinguishable from its human counterpart’s. Whoever she had been. “We are presently missing Captain Tarrant’s ship. From the messages we have received it appears the ‘Griffin’ disappeared somewhere between Star system M473, her last known beacon position and Support Station B2214 where she should have reported on her return to normal space. That did not happen and we want to know why.” A star map appeared in place of the E.C. building and two star clusters were highlighted. As the ship board computer downloaded the information Dave took the time to consider the amount of space in between the two points. The computer’s voice continued to drone away in the background “Captain Tarrant’s ship appears to have been in some kind of an action judging by the small amount of debris we have been able to recover. Amidst the recognizable debris is also a small amount of an as yet unidentifiable substance.”

“We very much wish for you to be back in space within twenty four hours. We would appreciate your assistance in the hunt for the good Captain and his gallant crew. It presents no problem for scheduling and your on-board computer tells us you had a lot of down time on a very quiet tour.” No matter how politely it was phrased, an order is still an order and the ship would lift off into orbit, with or without her crew twenty four hours from two minutes ago. Instead of reporting in, as this was now unnecessary, Dave had to tell the news to the others, so with Carl the Captain joined the two remaining members of the crew who had not been invited to the Captain’s ready room and were consequentially plotting their despotic Captain’s overthrow together, using exaggerated stage whispers, whilst they had occupation of the observation lounge below the bridge.

Zaphir and Tony were sat, in a conspiratorial huddle, right at the front of the observation room. The force field that held the air in the room was perfectly clear and yet you couldn’t tell the actual image, in this room, from the view screens on the bridge. They were going through the ship’s technical manuals to find some way of improving long range targeting systems. The further they were from any danger the happier they were. The further out from the ship that you could stop things from hitting you, the better.

As they were both sat on the same side of the table, facing the force field, they didn’t have the benefit of any reflection and didn’t see Carl and Dave approaching. They continued ‘discussing’ an arcane point in spatial mechanics (Hyperspace Theory). “We have to find a new way of regulating and redirecting the energy flows through the anti-matter chamber to be able to increase the power output ratio.”

Dave coughs politely to drag the two engineers back to more mundane matters, while thinking “Its all gobbledegook, they still hope to confuse me, well, maybe one day.” “Sorry guys, Carl’s got some bad news for you.” And wonders how he managed to keep hidden the grin he felt trying to escape onto his face as he full well knows the reaction Carl will receive when the news that they are shipping straight back out again becomes known.

Since leaving his ready room after the transmission Dave hasn’t said a word to Carl about anything, least of all about what he wants him to tell Zaphi and Tony. Carl goes across to the chilled shelf and pulls a fresh bottle of beer to give himself a few extra seconds of life, takes more time opening and pouring the bottle and turns away from the bar to find himself facing a minor mutiny, even before he has said anything. It is only by the ship’s outfitters good graces Carl’s arm, that he holds up instinctively to protect his head and eyes, is not broken by the hail of light, unbreakable, drinking glasses launched from the people sat at the one occupied table in his direction. They know what is coming, they have been here before.

Dave steps in “O.K. fun’s over. Star Command has just finishing telling me, through E.C. that they believe we’ve lost the ‘Griffin’, John Tarrant’s ship, and we’ve been asked to join the search party to help find its wreckage. We all like John so it’s a bit special. I don’t like where we’re going to be looking. It’s the area between Galaxy M473 and the Deneb to Arcturus Wormhole. You’ve got as much time as you want to plan, carry out improvements and ready the ship for a long, heavy tour. Nevertheless, the ship leaves orbit in twenty four hours, well, actually less than twenty three now. So be ready and be on board, we are not in control of our take off. Oh, one very good point in our favour, Isnor’s on our side in a big way.”

They schedule the shipboard shifts to coincide with their arrival at Deneb and Support Station B2214 where the rest of the search fleet is assembled and ready to begin. Thirty six hours, ship time, from his receiving the order the search for the ‘Griffin’ is under way. Watching a fleet of ships enter a Wormhole will remain an impressive sight until we find another way of crossing space.

Having arrived at station B2214, Dave and his crew had been told to start their part of the search from the Isnorian end of the Wormhole and to be on alert for any ‘odd’ energy readings in or around the Wormhole and the assumed flight path of the ‘Griffin’. As yet no-one knew what had happened to the ‘Griffin’ other than she had not arrived at her destination. The consensus of opinion in the fleet was that she had been left without power and was lying dead somewhere outside her planned route.

The Wormhole emerges half a billion miles from the edge of M472 and the Homeworld of the Isnorians. ‘Starfire’ emerges into normal space with her sensors probing out as far as high gain will allow. They find the hyperdrive trace that matches the ‘Griffin’s’. At least they now know that she had reached the Wormhole and entered. ‘Starfire’ links her computer to the beacon and downloads the data from the ’Griffin’s’ passing. They also find weapons discharge traces from a new source. No weapon currently known left residue like this trace.

As the ship sits in space linked to the beacon the data begins to be decrypted. There is evidence to support the attack and chase theory that covers the loss of the ‘Griffin’. Now ‘Starfire’ needs to find ‘Griffin’. Intact with the crew alive if possible. If not, then the recovery of the ship data logs becomes essential if the story of what happened to ‘Griffin’ is ever to be known.

Chapter 3

It had been Voral that had ordered the SSP, Space Security Patrol, out from Advanced Base Sigma. He had a ‘feeling’ about this region of unexplored space that there could just be something of interest to the Confederation laying undiscovered over the horizon. Voral Tor’s family had long been respected by the Board of Directors of the Confederation for their outstandingly long service and loyalty and he had been the first member of the Family to have earned the command of an Advanced Base. It had been a great day for his House and much Honour had been heaped on the Coat of Arms of the Tor Family, it was a big step along the path toward his own personal Directorship and the honoured Seat on the Board.

As the Base Commander he held the absolute Authority of the Confederation for the entire sector. A great deal of power and control that could be wielded with practically total impunity. The Directors had to be sure of the people it appointed to such high office as they had the freedom of action to commit the Confederation to a particular policy and the Directors were bound by their word.

Back at the beginning of recorded time, a hundred thousand arn earlier, the Confederation had started as a trade protection organization in a small town on a small planet circling a minor star. Yet within a few hundred arn the Confederation of Traders were voted as the organization to run the world and cure the corruption that flourished under the ruling military dictatorship. The Directorships of the Confederation became an inherited position as the scope of their influence expanded.

The idea of the Confederation, as it offers equal start for all then rise by merit, gains acceptance galaxy wide as its representatives went from world to world talking down injustice as well as government after government. Drawing land by land and planet by planet into a vast industrial empire that now holds together thousands of star systems. As the Directors begin to believe that their position is a right and forget why the power became inherited. Forgetting the inherent responsibilities that coexist with inherited position, the Board of Directors look out on ‘their’ Trading Confederation and rename it an Empire that they alone rule.

The Empire’s borders are always fluid due to continued expansion which established the high and trusted position of Advance Base Commander. These Bases were the new roots of the Confederation’s system of expansion. This is where any new thrust forward is generated. The bases build up strength by accumulating ships built from local taxes and crewed by conscripts.

When enough firepower is gathered together to overwhelm any foreseen opponent, scouts go out to find the fertile ground provided by a spacefareing people. Trade always from superior knowledge, selling on the Confederation’s old technology to less advanced people, with the intent of technological bondage. Trading with people holding advanced weaponry to your head is always threatening. Subject people never had any say in what happens to them, thus local conscription fed the cannon fodder into the lower ranks.

His ships, adhering to orders, report the action they were involved in as soon as they are back in the security of Confederation space. Both his ships commanders have followed their orders implicitly. Standing Orders instruct that all ships engage any unidentified craft entering space near a Confederation property. This includes the ships. Before any combat can occur all recording devices are activated automatically. Tactics are deduced by relating incoming data back to any local Mother Ship which transmits back, directly into the pilots console with information and tactics relating back to past victories.

The craft whose flight to the Wormhole they recorded caused Voral a pause for thought. His scouts had been far out in a sector of unexplored star clusters and a spiral galaxy with this strange craft heading for an insignificant arm on the far side. Voral had personal doubts if the ship ever made it through to the other end after his craft fired on it.

After taking time to check, then verify, then check the facts again, he decides it will be safe to go with a small fleet to find the damaged craft and explore its technology and the biology of the occupants. He writes a personal message to the Board of Directors telling them of his discovery and his intentions and dispatches it with a personal courier. He suspects that his appointment to the Board can’t be far away. Not after he returns with the discovery of a new spacefareing race to his credit.

This new race could, unfortunately, become worthy adversaries. The craft was almost fast enough to escape his scouts. The small ship had not fired on them immediately they saw his ships drop into their normal space… Why not? He would have as soon as any ship dropped into his space. Destroy the ship’s offensive / defensive capabilities first and ask questions of the survivors later. If there were any survivors, that is. They had seen his scouts, hadn’t they? Now that opened an interesting line of thought to follow on his trip to where this ship had been first encountered.

He issued orders to his favorite ship commanders. The word went out. “Get equipped, we are hunting ‘trading partners’.” As he climbs from his conveyance into the command bridge of his space yacht, heavily armed and armoured as it is, it is a yacht none the less.

The rest of the ships he is taking along are all similar in one respect, the look of total functionality. These were ships designed to move through empty space. No-one is going to stand outside a spaceship and say “Doesn’t she look pretty”. Slab sided and massive, the medium cruisers he chose to act as his escort had selected and embarked with their cargoes of commandos as well as their attack and defense squadrons of single pilot space fighters.

Voral Tor has good feelings about the journey ahead of him. All things being in his favor, his next planetfall should be on The Board of Directors. He hears his victories being sung about, in the echoing halls of his ancestors, for generations to come. He replays the data storage pods from each of the attack ships time after time. Hoping to find something new that he can add to the meager store of information already extrapolated from the recorded meeting.

Chapter 4

The Wormhole from Deneb to M473 loops around the edge of the spiral galaxy. It cuts a distance stretching millions of light years across in time and space down to a manageable one lasting only days. It allows trade between two totally diverse races. M473 has within it a star system that has twelve inhabited planets orbiting round its primary star. All these twelve different planets are inhabited by only one race. Before the people achieved space travel each thought that their planet was the only source of life in the entire quadrant. When the first travelers into space arrived at their closest neighbour they found that the people on the next world were the same in every way as they were. They found the same society on the same level as they are, just a step or two behind. They found the same religion. They went from planet to planet, that orbit around their sun, throughout the eleven other worlds that make up the planetary system they found the same. One solar system had one race developing simultaneously on twelve individually separate worlds. One civilization and, most surprisingly, one religion. Suddenly the faith the people had increased many fold.

The clerical hierarchy held sway over the people. The Temples were full every day. Belief flooded back and gave new life to the entire race. The people felt that their faith in the future was reinvigorated and deepened. The Religious Caste reorganized the people into a more inclusive and caring society that had an uncommon inherent strength. As the Isnorians carried their belief outwards through the surrounding space, Religious Temples built alongside trade missions assured everyone of Isnorian Ethical Trading. Isnor, one name for one race on twelve planets with one civilization gained in strength and honour by giving strength and respect.

The Twelve planets that made up the one world of Isnor were overseen by the Twelve High Priests, one from each High Temple on each planet. These Twelve people had reached the pinnacle of their chosen profession through their wisdom, benevolence and kindness. The people were filled with a soul deep yearning for peace and it was visible in their faces.

On the Missions outwards Isnor would occasionally meet with some resistance to its ideas of peace and harmony. Not everyone wanted to give up violent or antisocial behaviour. When such a race or clan of people were found to want to resist, then Isnor would ignore any contact. These people would not find themselves able to land on any planet under the sway of Isnor. Not that anyone said they could not land. No Isnorian would be so impolite. It just seemed better not to take unwanted views to any Isnorian World.

Then one day, their ship would land and the people inside had undergone a change of heart to come around to the majority, Isnorian, view. Isnor would have nothing to do with violence; If there was any disagreement Isnor simply sat and waited, people generally came round. Should they choose not to, when they grow bored with being ignored they would just go away.

When the Humans first opened the Wormhole from Deneb, Imran, First Speaker of the Twelve, declared it a sign that the Gods were pleased with their work and wished them to travel further. Isnor was still celebrating the First’s Decree. When a few days later after the Wormhole had stabilized, the visitors had emerged, it was a joint Trade and Diplomatic mission from Earth and Deneb and they touched down on the outer planet of Isnor to an unexpectedly tumultuous welcome.

The Isnorians had expected their God’s messengers to speak in ‘strange tongues’ as their Holy Writings had predicted. And for the first time in longer than memory extended backwards, they were to be disappointed. It transpired the visitors had intercepted some transmissions from Isnor whilst still in the Wormhole, and their onboard language translators were able to give landing parties a working knowledge of the language a few hours in advance.

At first the visitors thought they had found a civilization that had kept its technology, but traveled backwards with their society to a simpler, more idyllic time in their history. Some even thought to take advantage of the Isnorians perceived simplicity. Somehow, no matter how complex the scheme, it always seemed to flounder or fail very shortly after it was first implemented. In some quarters the Isnorians gained the reputation, somewhat unjustly, of being shrewd business operators. To the rest of the societies they came in contact with they were just nice people to do business with, who always just seemed to get the best deal, without pushing for it.

The Isnorians never asked for anything, they were too polite. They seemed to make their requirements known in other ways, They’d tell you a story from one of their religious texts and somehow you’d know what they came into your shop or office for. The stars of Deneb and Arcturus, are both in the same constellation as seen from Earth, it’s known as Orion, were the first systems to fall to the Isnorian Religion. The Isnorians were improving all the time. This part of their velvet conquest took less than five hundred years. All the inhabited planets in the region fell under the sway of the gentlest people ever to be found surviving in this universe.

Once the High Priests realized the scope of the universe they had entered into through the Wormhole, they began to change the way they did business. At first, very subtly and only to a few selected clients. The trading centers attached to their Temples began giving goods away in exchange for services and excluding any financial settlements. Initially, this led to these favored companies having the ability to undercut their rivals into bankruptcy. This attitude deeply troubled the Isnorians sense of fair play until local priests had a word with their favored customers, individually, and prices, star system by star system, slowly declined until money became of less value than somebody’s word. Exchange of skills became the new ‘gold standard’ for barter.

The one constant that surprised everybody, during this transition, was that no business ever actually failed. In fact the expansion of production required to service the need of Isnor’s growing influence turns Plato’s philosophical thesis ‘Republic’ into a modernized, galaxy wide, reality. Everyone had the option to do the work that they wished to do. The only positions that had to be filled by appointment, were the military, for the defense of their way of life. Since the twelve planets of Isnor became one, the Isnorians had never lost anything.

This was the beginning of the future coalescing of many different societies into the dream of one universe wide civilization that Star Command was created to support and defend.

As Humanity, along with hundreds of other different species, succumbs to Isnorian influence, exploration becomes more aggressive, in the nicest possible way. Expansion is, of necessity, risky. There are too few Isnorians and too many planets found. There was still a requirement for the steel fist within the velvet glove. Star Command’s whole purpose was to ‘support’ expansion should it be needed anywhere the Way was being challenged by people and races that enjoyed trouble.

Chapter 5

Three full, very full, days have passed on ‘Griffin’ and she is ready to test out the power linkages for the tenth time. On each previous firing, the engines have powered up to almost full capacity then the linkages blew again. And again. And again. Each time it blows more of the internal systems go down to stay down. Terry’s voice works its way out of his mouth having worked its magic on getting past the food bar filling every last cubic inch of empty space in his mouth as he munches. “Once more and she will be in dry dock for a month while her systems get replaced or refitted. When we get back I’m taking a holiday.”

All who hear him know he is joking. Tez could not take a holiday, he had tried once, a long time ago. Orville had been certain Tez would die from food bar withdrawal while he was off ship and been genuinely pleased and surprised by his reappearance. Tez had ended up maintaining a Rest and Recoup Asteroid for a month when he should have been relaxing. Once he returned to ‘Starfire’ he vowed never to leave her again. He even had the deck plate behind which he wanted his ashes deposited, inscribed with his epitaph. All he left blank had been the date for his death.

After four days without any signs of life outside ‘Griffin’, everyone jumps when the proximity warning goes off. A jump gate opens in space off their bow and in full view of the crew section below the bridge. Jump gate closes and vanishes leaving only the welcome sight of ‘Starfire’ pointing at ‘Griffin’s’ nose.

After lots of ship to ship noise and congratulations Dave and John gather the crews on ‘Starfire’s’ aft deck and decide to tow ‘Griffin’ back to dock. While the crews talk technologies the two Captains review all the data ‘Griffin’ collected during the encounter with the unfriendly ships, by applying ‘Starfire’s’ computer to boot up ‘Griffin’s’. From the ‘eyes’ cameras the entry of the other ships was clearly visible.

The space going cubes had no beauty in their appearance, no recognizable distinguishing marks that the two Captains could identify. No squadron badges, or splash of color or light anywhere on either hull to relieve the solid black, slab sided craft that the remote eyes watched. Using the computer to carry out the complex math required to backtrack a trace through hyperspace, Dave and John put together a list of possible starting points the vessels could have hailed from.

They decided to take the problem home and pass it on to the bright boys in research and development. The Captains did not like where the possible paths were leading and wanted to move the responsibility away from their commands and on to someone else to send ships out across the void between galaxies. Especially going after two ships that had successfully taken on a Star Command cruiser and came off best. Even with the odds in the attackers favor at two to one, that should not have been good enough odds to enable the attackers to incapacitate the four man cruiser with such ease.

Amid the jumble of data that had been collected they isolate samples of encrypted voice to voice communication. Because of its narrow band width and low power output they assume that it is ship to ship conversation, and set the computer to decrypt the messages.

It took the combined power of both ships computers many trip hours of off-line number crunching to gain any sense at all from the encrypted jumble that had been collected. Meanwhile the tractor beams were in place from ‘Starfire’, and with the auxiliary power transfers locked in, the two ships started the journey home in tandem. Not that either Captain was prepared to have the ships arrive in the same fashion. It was simply a matter of Pride for the two crews. For the next twelve ship hours the two crews worked non stop to complete an overhaul on the ‘Griffin’ that would have taken the best shipyard days to accomplish. By the end of the tidying up both crews had more than earned the others respect.

Apart from three maintenance droids, the motors destroyed by having sucked in carelessly discarded food bar wrappers. Tez redeemed himself by repairing the ruptured fusion coil, that had blown the ‘Griffin’ out of hyperspace in such an unseemly fashion, in record time.

Not that anyone ever heard about it. Officially, at least. By the time both ships emerged at Station B2214 the incident never happened. None of the ships called in had been there, they were now all somewhere else. When the two computers first linked they also transmitted back to the command ship at the Station. More powerful machines were put to the task and a form of transcript could be made available to them on their arrival. Their own machines had only found a thousandth of the information here.

Now that they knew what to look for, more transmissions had been intercepted. Lots more. The bulk of the traffic had been tracked back to where the ‘Griffin’s’ logs had the interception by the two other ships happening. There also lay, in the midst of all the scattered audio jumble, a single, direct carrier wave traveling in a straight line across a series of beacons pointing, like an accusing finger, out to the furthest reaches of this galaxy and beyond into the still unknown. Back, it is thought, to the attackers Home Planet.

Both Captains, independently, made the same request. When a scouting mission is being set up, and if I’m to be included so is the other. The two crews were seen out for rest and relaxation always in each others company, to the exclusion of any other. One day a commander ventured into a flight crew training holo-program and found six crewmen in a four man cruiser. He watched for about ten minutes in amazement. He had never seen any team work like this.

The holo-craft had been set at reduced gravity for Gyal’s convenience. It had not taken the tall Oryan long to prove his worth if he was comfortable. Now the five other men acted as though one quarter earth gravity was something that they had all grown up with. Their individual dexterity had improved through challenging each other constantly. They shared one aim, to stay alive as long as possible. To manage that in space you had to know and trust the team working with you. These two crews had clicked.

The commander left the program softly and reported back to the admiral while the two crews were quietly celebrating their victory over the watching commander.