The Dark Talon was a Kessler-class vessel, often referred to as a mini-battleship. It had an impressive array of weapons and tactical sensors. It was specifically made for this kind of solo penetration mission. The bridge crew was made up of a mission leader, pilot, tactical officer, and gunner. Each position overlapped the others so that there were at least two crewmen able to handle any given function at any given time. Their stations were fanned out in a half-circle with the mission leader’s position in the center. This allowed the mission leader to keep on top of what was going on and communicate freely with his crew. Once I had boarded, I took my seat in the mission leader’s chair and asked, “Is all ready for departure?”
“Yes, sir,” was the pilot’s reply.
“Computer, execute program Vydor Final Departure, authorization code Victor - Igloo - Nancy - Charlie -Eggplant - Nancy - Tango. Pilot, as soon as the way is clear, launch the ship. There will be no clearance to launch from the command, since we do not officially exist. At first possible instant, engage full stealth and take us out of the gravity wake of the fleet.”
“Yes, sir,” came the reply.
The planet was still almost three days away, but the Dark Talon was equipped with the newest generation of microjump drives and could dramatically reduce that distance. Indeed, we would be in orbit in about an hour.
There was a slight lurch as the craft was released from its moorings, and ahead on the viewing screens I could see the bay doors opening and a rush of air escaping the bay as the energy screens dropped. The pilot gracefully accelerated us out of the bay and into open space. As we cleared the doors all the computer displays dimmed as the shipped slipped into the low-power mode associated with complete stealth.
“We have cleared the bay doors, accelerating to the tidal exit point now,” reported the pilot.
“As soon as you can, make the jump. Target the jump’s exit so that we come out in the moon’s gravitational shadow,” I ordered.
“Yes, sir, path already laid out. We should be able to jump in twenty minutes,” replied the navigator.
I wanted to get to the planet as soon as possible to give us the greatest amount of time to complete our mission and get out of there before the planet was destroyed. This, of course, made the next twenty minutes feel like an eternity. Finally the pilot called out, “Jumping in three, two, one …”
Jumping inside a star system was a tricky business, and something only a smaller ship like ours could pull off. A larger craft like the Dragon Claw, or most of her fleet could only jump in interstellar space, and even then they needed to be at least a couple of weeks away from any major gravity well at both the entrance and exit points.
Long ago it was discovered that the speed limit of the universe was equal to the speed of light. There was no way to break it, but it needed to be broken or interstellar travel would be impossible. This brought on the invention of the jump drive. It was a very strange technology that I did not fully understand, and I am not sure anyone does. It grew out of the discovery that gravity could bend time. It seems that everything that we know of is affected by gravity, nothing is immune. The jump drives take advantage of this by using a gravitational bubble to force the ship out of time while still moving through space. Since the ship stays stationary with respect to time, but moves in space, it effectively bypasses the speed-of-light limit. To say the ship moves through space is not quite true because it is a half step out of sync with reality while jumping. This technology allowed us to take the most direct route to our destination without worrying about small things in our path. Big items which create large gravity wells are a real problem and need to be avoided. This is why we needed to get out of the gravity wake of the fleet, as any large gravity well we passed would pull us back into time, and would place us directly in the center of mass for that well. In most cases this would be catastrophic for all involved.
The jump drives make interstellar travel possible, but it still takes a very long time to travel. The distance each ship can jump is limited by the size of the gravity bubble it can create, which is a function of the amount of energy the ship can generate and the size of the ship’s own gravity well. Fleets of ships can combine their gravity wells and link their drives for extremely long jumps, but on the scale of the galaxy it still takes many jumps, with significant time to recharge the drives between each jump. A naval fleet is not expected back to her homeport for several years at a time.
While traveling in jump space time has no meaning. This has as-yet unexplained effects on matter. All physical matter is frozen and unable to be affected by anything. For example, if there was a pot of boiling water at the beginning of the jump, during the jump it looks like it was flash-frozen with all the steam and bubbles trapped in their exact relative positions until the end of the jump when it returns to boiling as if nothing had happened. That is not the really odd part; what is strange is that sentient beings, even though their bodies are unable to move, have a complete awareness of their surroundings. It is almost as if something about life is not part of the physical world.
Whenever I jumped, I looked back over my shoulder and my constant companion was always there: a tall, dark figure with a sickle, dressed in long, black flowing robes and with a skull for a face, sunk deep in a black hood. He always stood there patiently waiting for me, as if to say, “In time, you will be mine.”
This time was different; there was another being with us, one I had never seen before. This was a being of pure light. He differed completely from the dark figure in every way. This new being held his arms open wide as if to say, “Come to me.” As I studied him, he and the dark figure faded away and time slowly took hold of us again.
“We are clear of the jump, all systems show green,” came the call from the navigator. How did they recover so fast? I was still working my way back into reality. As I regained all my senses I saw the Dark Knights already at work making sure all was as it should be around the ship. Exiting this close to a major gravity well was very dangerous. Parts of the ship could have been pulled into it. “All Clear!” came a call from behind me. Good.
“How do you recover so fast from a jump?” I asked as I finally regained control of all my senses.
“Sir, you are the only other pilot on this mission. Should something happen to me, you will have to take over. I ask you not to share this with anyone, but you should know in case we have to fight our way out. The secret is meditation, sir. That’s why I do the countdown. I set the computer to make the jump for us, and we all slip into a meditative state just before the jump. When the jump is finished we have no ill effects,” answered the pilot.
Amazingly, they had just let me in on one of their most closely-guarded secrets. They had often used their extremely fast recovery as a major advantage in combat, jumping right in the middle of a fight and coming out with guns blazing. It was an extremely effective tactic that many tried to mimic, but without the nearly instant jump recovery of the Dark Knights, no one could pull it off.
“Thank you, I will keep that secret safe. I am honored you have shared it with me,” was the only reply I could give. I was sure I would never forget this moment. I had no more time to think about it, as suddenly the ship’s alarms went off.
“Five incoming fighters,” came the call from tactical.
I felt a wave of fear pass over the ship. I knew it could not be from the five enemy fighters. We could take them, but nonetheless everyone was very much afraid. Suddenly the honor guard, and others I had seen who were seemingly immune to the fear weapon, came to my mind. Larath’s comment finally made sense. “FOCUS! That’s the key!” I called out. “The Magi have found us! Dark Knights, listen to me very carefully, FOCUS on my words! The Magi have brought their deadly fear weapon against us; you must not let it overcome you. You can beat it. Everyone who is not needed for the dogfight, go into your meditative trance; it should protect you from the weapon. The rest of you, FOCUS! Focus is the key defense. You must focus everything on your job and push out all other thoughts. You can beat this weapon. You are the Dark Knights, the best of the best of the best!”
I looked around and most of the crew was buckled in and looking almost asleep, but each of the three bridge officers was hard at work at his station. “Tactical, report,” I ordered.
“Five Peregrine class fighters, sir. They know we are here but cannot target us. I suspect they will soon begin firing at random to draw us out,” was his report.
“Where did they come from?” I asked. “The colony did not have any shuttles, never mind any combat vessels.” Peregrine class fighters were light attack ships. They were designed to be extremely fast, nimble and work in small groups. Their primary attack plan is to fly in unpredictable patterns around their target, making themselves as hard to hit as possible while continuously firing on their own target.
“Best guess would be a moon base, sir, but I see no sign of one,” was his answer as the fighters began to randomly fire in our general direction.
“As soon as you get a solid lock on one of them, break stealth and take them out,” I ordered.
They brought the Dark Talon around and moved towards one of the fighters while still hidden. Once they closed the distance, I felt the Dark Talon roar out of its low-power mode and the swishing sound of two antimatter missiles launching. Immediately after firing those, they banked the ship hard and fired the ship’s forward high-energy particle cannons on a second ship, quickly destroying both craft, probably before they had even noticed our attack. The three remaining fighters came at us from three different directions at once, all guns blazing. The pilot throttled up the Dark Talon’s engine to full thrust and turned away from their attack. The Peregrines quickly closed the gap and came up behind us, which was exactly what the Dark Knights wanted them to do. Immediately I was slammed forward in my harness as the ship’s rear engines were cut off, and the forward braking thrusters were fired at maximum power. All three fighters flew past us, and right into a spread of weapon fire that the Dark Knights had laid out. One fighter was quickly destroyed, a second damaged but the third escaped unharmed.
The Dark Talon’s primary engines were brought back up to speed and they quickly moved to take out the wounded Peregrine. They were able to down that one quickly, and moved to engage the last fighter. Before they could, the tactical officer called out, “Fifteen more Peregrines just appeared at 270 degrees, in a tight bravo formation.”
A bravo formation? That meant they had just jumped in and would still be recovering! Apparently the Knights realized this too as they broke off their attack and headed towards the new group of fighters, launching a large spread of antimatter missiles and all forward weapons firing. Eight of the enemy fighters were destroyed before they could take any evasive action, but that left us with eight more to fight.
“This makes no sense! Where are they coming from?” I asked.
“Sir! Five Falcon-class ships just came out from behind the moon!” called out the tactical officer.
This was bad. We could take the Peregrines, but we would be completely out-gunned by the five Falcons. Undaunted, the Knights moved to engage the Falcons when the tactical officer called out, “Sir, a Condor class destroyer has just jumped in!”
“How is that even possible this close to the planet?!” I exclaimed. “We need to get out of here. Disengage the enemy and come about to Z minus 90 degrees, maximum thrust, full weapons spread to the rear.”
“Yes, sir!” called out the pilot as he executed my order.
“Navigator, prepare the jump drive. Charge it to 18.473% and target the far side of the moon; prepare to execute on my mark. Pilot, I am counting on your ability to come out of the jump with all your senses. As soon as we clear the jump you will need to take control of the ship and keep us from crashing. At the first instant that you can, re-engage full stealth mode.” I carefully watched the ship’s tactical displays. This course we were on must have looked like a suicide dive right into the planet. Only the Peregrines were keeping up with us. My timing had to be exact on this. “Execute in four … three … two … NOW!”
When I finally came out of the post-jump confusion, I noticed that we were safely on the far side of the planet in a stable orbit. “Excellent work, pilot.”
“Sir, if I may ask, how did you know that we would be thrown over here? There is no way you could have tried this before,” said the tactical officer.
He was right. The move was impossible without the Dark Knights’ ability to operate immediately after a jump. “I stumbled upon it in a video game that allowed me to use your post-jump recovery skill. Later I tested it in countless computer simulations and it worked every time, but this was the first time I was able to try it in a real situation.”
After that I began to look over the battle logs for some indication of where all those ships had come from, but something was wrong with the logs. “Tactical, can you check the logs? My screen does not show any enemy craft at all.”
“Sir, there must be something wrong with the computer. My logs show the same,” he replied as he frantically worked at his station, trying to find the problem.
“Okay, wake up your crewmates …” I started.
“Sir! Fifty Peregrine-class ships are coming into range!” called out tactical as I felt the fear weapon hit us.
“Do not break stealth, do not engage.” This made no sense at all. I just could not believe there were this many fighters here. Just as I finished that thought the fighters disappeared from my screen. “Of course!” I called out, “Dark Knights, we know the Magi can sow fear, so why not hallucinations, too? Those fighters are not real; once you realize that they will disappear. That is why we have no record of fighting them, because the computers are not subject to the hallucination. Pilot, bring us to the landing site of Lieutenant Tom’s squad. If there is anything left of their ship I want to read its logs.” At first the Dark Knights seemed uncomfortable with that order, but one by one they seemed to get it. “Once you have beaten the hallucination, wake up your crewmates and train them to fight the fear weapon and the hallucinations.”