The Voyage of the 'Kleopatra'

“Approaching the Warp Point now, sir,” intoned Lt. Joshua Reid in his monotonous, aged voice.

Captain Edward Pierce, Solarian Federal Navy, gave a brisk nod, and tried his best to settle in his command chair. He’d been a captain in the Federal Navy since the “Druschka War” eight years before, and he’d seen more combat than most people would ever want to see in their lifetime, yet no matter what, the prospect of jumping through this warp point still jarred him a bit. Nausea was a common side effect of the jumps, but that wasn’t on his mind and causing the tight, Boy Scout quality knot in his belly.

“Cap’n, incoming signal from the ‘Antigonus!’” called out a too-cheery-for-the-moment voice, and Pierce turned to his Comm Officer, the impishly youthful Lt. Sarah Branford. ‘Kleopatra’ was her first deployment, and her eagerness to do anything showed it. The warp point glowed iridescent blue on their viewscreens, and Pierce felt his knot tighten a little more. He barely hid the glare he wanted to give her.

“What is it, Lieutenant?” he said slowly, a stern tone creeping into his voice. Unperturbed, Branford announced with a smile that Rear Admiral Hayashi was wishing them the best of luck.

“Very well,” Pierce’s scowl finally broke through as the knot turned Gordian in nature. Idle chitchat with a flag officer wasn’t his idea of quality use of his time. Not when he wanted to review situations with Tactical.

Not when he was blindly jumping into an unscouted warp point with no data on what lay beyond.

Normally this would have been a role for the Coronado class exploration ships, but they were elderly and slowly being phased out. ‘Kleopatra’ had a sensor suite that was actually slightly better than the scout ships, and she came replete with a missile bay, a gamma pulse torpedo bay, and an anti-photon gun – powerful armament for a ship her size. The Admiralty, in their infinite wisdom, had decided ‘Kleopatra’ would be a better choice to scout the new system – despite few on her crew having any experience in first contact situations.

Despite Pierce’s protests the crew, especially the command staff, were too green.

“Henry, are the tactical systems running programs Delta Rho One and Chi Epsilon Four?” Pierce asked, seemingly for the tenth time. He already knew the answer, but the act of asking set him a tiny bit at ease. Heinrich Meier, Lt. Commander and tactical officer, did not even turn from his station.

“Yes, Captain,” he said in the voice of the exasperated and weary. “I don’t see why you’re complaining so much about this. I mean, if we were jumping down the opposite warp point in system…” His voice trailed off – no one needed to mention the events two months prior, when ‘Kleopatra’ had been on picket station with four other frigates on that warp point when two Sithrak destroyers had tried to force past the warp point and into the Wuyut system itself.

“I just want to make sure,” Pierce said, once again for the tenth time.

“They are, Captain,” Meier reassured his commander. “The ship’ll be at a hairtrigger on the controls when we exit the warp point. In the very UNLIKELY chance there is something nasty, we can start getting the heck out of their even before you give- ”

“Preparing to enter the warp point,” Lt. Reid interrupted again. Everyone on board strapped themselves into their stations – and just as with any other warp point, the ride through was bumpy and flashy. The ship rattled and jumped as she tunneled through space-time, the bright blue light of the junction flashing and streaming around them.

After what seemed to be an eternity – the ship’s clocks showed only a minute had passed – the bumpy, rocky ride calmed to nothing, and Pierce and his crew looked onto viewscreens of the outside that was the purest black, save the speckled points of thousands of stars and the blinding blue light of the system primary.

“Sensors coming back online,” Meier said, as Pierce waited tensely. He wanted to chew on his fingernails, but he’d purposefully cut them short to keep himself from that un-captainly bad habit. After a few moments, he saw Meier’s eyes go wide, and Pierce’s Gordian knot tripled in size.

“Captain…” Meier said slowly, as Pierce quickly shifted the display on his command chair to repeat the tactical sensors. The tiny green dot of the ‘Kleopatra’ sat alone in the center of the screen – arrayed in a semi-circle around her were twenty-six orange blips, blinking. One by one, the blips flared, as the 26 unknown ships fired up their engines…