War Games (Mission Impossible -30)

Unlike what one would have expected, the simulations were much more realistic than the mock-battles they had practiced on the ships. The simulators allowed for huge numbers of Jexx ships to be built into the simulation. . They practiced and repeated their maneuvers until they were perfect. Formations were much quicker, and Dranke could see that the pilots had now figured out where they needed to be at each part in their defensive measures. Gone were the jostling-for-position movements which had horrified the top brass just some time back. There was now a much lighter touch - each ship moved in concert with the others in a synchronized dance. Dranke felt better seeing that, he was proud of the effort his teams had put in.

Since all Dranke's Captains were now linked via the Jen subroutine, they continually chatted about where they were and how things were going. It now seemed impossible to work without the subroutine. It was also very cumbersome in hindsight. Dranke watched Niket's ships which were much slower, and knew that the subroutine had a lot of do with it. Her captains were not on the subroutine. Niket did not trust the Jen subroutine, even after she herself had got the enhancement. He empathized with her. He did not trust it fully too, but it was a crime not to use something which gave such a huge advantage. Niket was standing next to him watching the crews of her fleet work in tandem with Dranke's fleet "I know what you're thinking. You want me to enforce the subroutine on my captains." Dranke smiled "It's your choice. You know it helps us work almost like a single unit." Niket nodded grimly. It could be the difference between life and death. She knew what she had to do.

The 'night' was almost upon them as the ships lights dimmed in the corridors. Fenie kissed Niket hello and nodded to Dranke "Admirals, we have some interesting news. The Hnnet ships have a small upgrade this night in the docks. We are adding the Hnnet controllers for remote control operations. By tomorrow, we will be able to fly the ships right from these simulation consoles." She was sitting on a simulation console, using it almost like a game. It was a stand-alone console, so she could pull apart all the controllers and use them in ways not built into the consoles.  She practiced an impossible maneuver.... the ship flipping over itself as it dove straight for 'Earth' and then moving away at an acute angle. It was unreal. Dranke watched in interest. Niket was transfixed, watching Fenie as she used the gravitational well of the 'Moon' to slingshot away and then reversing the engines to spin around and arrive at a wide angle back to the Moon. She 'jumped' away suddenly as she approached the Moon. It was too close for comfort. Only the Hnnet technology allowed them to do such things. How much could they push this technology? It would be frightening to do this with real ships. Dranke couldn't help but ask "Fenie, what is the performance we can get with these ships?" Fenie grinned "We don't know yet. But with the remotes, we can try things which we couldn't with manned darkmatter starcraft. They decided to join in her game - this was serious buiness.

Later in mess, General Selin walked into the the crammed mess, dressed in a casual grey singlesuit. All the fresh recruits stood to attention as they saw him, drawing grins and amused shouts of derision from the older vets. The fresh-faced youngsters were not aware of shipside protocol. General Selin sat with Niket and Dranke and spoke to them "The games are going well, and the Hnnet have agreed to help us understand the darkmatter ship enhancements through the Jen subroutine. We need to know every single thing they can do." Niket nodded "We were just talking about the same thing with Fenie, and were putting the ships through their paces." General Selin told them of the plan.

Without warning, the klaxons started to blare. When they stopped the silence was deafening. It was only punctuated by the sound of feet running as the crews ran towards their ships. Dranke and Niket watched the swarms of Jexx ships rising from the false horizon created by the Earth. They were moving before the General whispered "Good luck." There was not a wasted moment. Darkmatter starcraft were leaving their docks like winged insects leaving their nest, detaching and speeding towards the Jexx fleet. Dranke watched from the bridge of the Raven, Sette and Dex taking over the piloting of the ship as they joined the formation with their fleet. Dranke knew they had been preparing for this, but it seemed to be too soon. He watched as Niket's ships joined formation.

There was no more time to wonder. The Jexx ships broke formation, they were in the thousands and they bore down on the human fleet.





Pic courtesy: Via Wikipedia NASA/Ames - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_in_science#mediaviewer/File:Kepler186f-ArtistConcept-20140417.jpg

Full Circle (Mission Impossible -12)

Considering they were now communicating with Earth with a three week lag, even with the communication 'packets' being through the same jumps which the darkmatter starcraft was performing with relative ease, they could not wait for spacecommand to come back to them with instructions. Instead, as trained, they acted as an independent command. And it all fell on the shoulders of the captain. Dranke, who though relatively young himself, had trained his whole life for this kind of situation. Multiple simulations had been run to prepare the captain. However, Dranke decided to ignore his training and do the unexpected "Lets ignore the probe which just visited us. That is a distraction. Let's instead look at what is going on in this solar system."

Dranke and the crew of the Raven were looking for an alien fleet which they had tracked across the Milky Way, but it was like finding a needle in a haystack. Spacecommand had tasked the Raven to search the neighboring galaxies for the mysterious alien called 'Ed.' The search continued in a solar system with an artificial planet.

Fenie and Piteer were on the job before Dranke had even finished talking and they were plotting a path directly towards the place where there would have been the missing twin of the binary star system. Every indication was that there was something there since the artificial planet they had visited had this strange orbit which only another star could account for.

Fenie gestured to Sette and Dex as she explained what she wanted from the engine room. They would have to find a way to bypass the penchant for alien species trapping the darkmatter starcraft. They were at a disadvantage since they did not quite know what was the technology that both the Hnnet and the probe had used. But they needed to have a way to neutralize it's effect. Maybe using a combination of the fusion drive and the jump drive would help to overcome whatever was holding them. She asked for the improvement. Both Sette and Dex left with Vaxe down to the engine room.

Dranke was beginning to double guess himself. The search they had undertaken so far had been frustrating and had yielded nothing of material value. But they did know that there were other alien species in the neighborhood. Humanity was far from alone. So far, humans had not been able to actually travel the distances that the aliens had traversed. It made him feel like a beginner at the game. He gave the do ahead to follow the flight plan. Fenie grinned and pushed the manual drive. And everything went nuts.

The darkmatter starcraft shuddered and stopped and shuddered again before stopping abruptly. Alarms went off in every corner as the engine started to overheat with the stain of trying to break its shackles. Dranke calmly said "Turn off everything but life support. I have a feeling we are on the right track." Fenie gestured with a thumbs up.... her body language showed that she was not sure of what was coming next. Dranke had kind of expected it, but the hologram which came onto the deck surprised him as well. It was Ed. The Hnnet had taken on a fully human shape and it grinned at them "Very good captain. You found our outpost and our robotic sentry. But we have to ask you not to proceed further. All star systems after this are protected under the Hnnet treaty, and as a new space-faring species, you are still not inducted into the Hnnesset. Any further intrusion will end in you being towed back to Earth." Ed kept smiling in the hologram. It was a little unnerving, but Dranke was getting used to it.

Vaxe asked cautiously "What do we do to be inducted into the Hnnesset?" Dranke nodded imperceptibly asking her to take the lead. Ed said "Oh, its decided by me. You need to be mature as a species. I don't think humans are there yet, but you are very enterprising." Vaxe continued "And what would change your mind?" The alien answered "We can't tell you that. But you have still not moved from the concept of commerce. Most advanced species have no use for such a concept."

Dranke said "When can we expect our leaders to meet you? They are very keen to know more about the Hnnet." Ed continued with his grinning "All in due time human. As of now, your species is of interest to us. Nothing more or less. You do have a lot of time to go before you can join the Hnnesset. But you may not kill, murder or maim any species knowingly. Neither may you annex any planet which is inhabited. If you do, we will notice it."

It sounded like a threat. Dranke thought about asking more.... but the hologram vanished. The ship was no longer in the vicinity of the strange solar system. They were transported to a place much closer to the Milky Way. It was time to go home. Spacecommand would not be happy.

Pic Courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech via Wikimedia commons. http://goo.gl/172pqg

The Edge (Mission Impossible -10)

Unaware of what was transpiring with the Mescieans, Dranke saw that his crew had already plotted a path to another star system which was very close to the jump exit. The star system was unremarkable by itself, but something had attracted Fenie and Piteer's interest. It had a very strange exoplanet, which seemed to circle not the central star, but was circling another area a little way off from the star. By itself, the planet was unremarkable. But its very behavior was puzzling in the extreme. The exoplanet seemed to have a mind of it's own.

After looking for the elusive Hnnet in the nearby Sagittarius satellite galaxy,  Dranke, the captain of the Raven had pushed his crew to chase down the technologically superior aliens in the vicinity of the Milky Way galaxy. Starcommand had tasked the Raven and her crew to track down the alien species to their homebase, which was easier said than done. Dranke had chosen the Sagittarius satellite galaxy as the most likely candidate, and after visiting a number of planets, they had refined their search so that they could track down the elusive 'Ed'. During their explorations of a planet which had seemed to be an outlier, they were oblivious of having met an intelligent species called the Mescieans.

The star system sat on the edge of one of the arms of the galactic disk and right next to it was the Omega Centauri galaxy, which beckoned to them invitingly. Dranke almost decided to make the jumps required to leave Sagittarius behind. But he decided to follow the plan "Does the planet show any electromagnetic emissions?" He was getting to be a little testy from his tone. He caught himself. Dex was now in charge of the scans and he replied without looking up from his console "Pretty sure there is nothing. But it could be shielded." Dex always double-guessed himself in case he was wrong. Vaxe grinned "Dex is right. Nothing there sir. What should we do?" Dranke looked resigned "Land I guess. We need to strike this off too."

Fenie was already getting ready for landing, her face a study of concentration as she looked at the atmosphere composition, temperatures and external conditions. Piteer was busy getting suited up as the autopilot had taken over and he was now a veteran of landings, needing very little preparation. One was very similar to another. Dranke checked to see that the blue ringed exoplanet that swam into view was not a gas giant, but the core seemed solid. Time to suit up. He got to it.

They had found a good landing spot on a crater and Dranke and Piteer stepped out the airlock to see the crazy movement of the planet. Since it did not actually circle the central star, and it had a very fast rotation, it had very short 'days.' They noticed a faux 'sunset.' Sette, the new cadet was also suited up and out the airlock and she got to analyzing the crust. She turned to them both "This is weird. It seems that the crust of made of a single compound." Piteer rechecked. She was right. It was all Calcium Carbonate......chalk.

Fenie sent out a robotic probe though the airlock. the contraption was quite useful in geological surveys. Dranke picked a spot and 'shot' the probe into the ground using an air pressure expulsion tube. The probe was a small ball which had a tough shell and held nanobots which would disperse into the soil and carry out analysis deep into the crust. They 'ate' their way through the soft soil and scanned their environs, dispersing widely into the crust. In a short while, they were able to send a visualization. The scans were accumulated and reconstituted in the Raven's bridge in holographic splendor. Fenie was staring at the holograms in consternation as they spun around lazily in the center of the deck. Her voice carried in their suits as she said shakily "Captain, the planet is artificial. I repeat. The planet is artificial. The core is a construction."



Pic courtesy: http://goo.gl/Vg4iun (NASA Goddard Space Flight center. Artist's impression of Exoplanet HR 8799b).