Ad Astra Per Aspera

"Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say..." quipped Smythe.

Smythe was a gangly, pimple-faced early-twenty-something midshipman, who by appearance alone stood out on a bridge full of former professional operators. His father was a board-member of the original charter, and therefore, the kid had found his way onto Chung's crew.

"I'll find that comforting when I'm blasting you out of the outer bulkhead airlock," Richardson shot back over the intercom, snidely.

"Quiet, both of you." Captain Chung's tone brooked no argument. "We have no idea what's waiting for us on the other side of the fold; I expect everyone to stay sharp--and that includes you, Richardson."

Chung looked over at Nemur pensively. It was a small miracle to maintain the veneer of professionalism on the bridge with a female CON Station Chief who had curves that could make a low-end privateer's skivvies look mouth-watering. "Nemur, how long to come out of the fold?"

Nemur responded in an accented monotone: "approximately 80 seconds, Captain."

Chung punched the ship intercom and stated flatly "all crew, brace for the snap, approximately 75 seconds."

"Smythe, I have no more use for you for the time being. Get your fourth point of contact back to Life Support--smartly."

"Yes, Captain." Smythe anxiously beat feat down the service gangway.

Chung sat in the rolling Captain's Chair and leaned forward, gazing deeply into the forward bridge bubble. The inside of the bridge cabin was upholstered a spartan off-white; outside, all that was visible was the rolling, bluish-tinted white that appeared almost like television static--the only thing the human eye could perceive of traveling in the fold.

Because, of course--traveling wasn't really the word for it. Technically, SKORPION VI wasn't really traveling, at all--that would be impossible, at the "speed" and over the distances the corsair was intended to travel.

"Sir," Nemurs purred--"It's time, 2o seconds."

"Ok, punch on the Master Command on the mark, you have the CON" Chung stated flatly.

"I have the CON," Nemurs repeated. Within seconds, Nemurs pushed the hotkey for the Master Command that released the Alcubierre drive. In an instant, the 25,000 ton commerce raider came out of her self-generated singularity and "snapped" back into space-time. The sudden effect of humming, rotating gravity generators, aft of the bridge, pulling his feet down with additional force he hadn't felt for days was so overpowering it made Chung feel sick, and he bent over momentarily.

"Haven't done a run like that in a minute," he muttered.

"Here's to hoping no one else has, too recently," responded Nemurs, smiling weakly.

"Yes, it would be nice to just babysit for once, wouldn't it?" he jested.

Looking out over the bridge's wide-arced window, Chung, Nemurs, and the three technical specialists on bridge crew team could look out to the port-side, below beam, on the beautiful red dwarf Trappist-1. Directly in front of them, still a good thousand miles away, but closing, was the picturesque blue-white exoplanet: XB-F20; the Helen of Troy, what would become, perhaps one day, the next great objective of another coalition war. Even at this range, it was obvious that the planet was substantially larger than Earth.

Back to the business at hand.

"Jansen, Richardson, I need monitoring on all wideband, I need passive and active RADAR and LiDAR, all scopes for the next two minutes. Pay attention to anything in English from the drones out of Libra--I need to know if we're in for a surprise. When they're up, let me know when Weehawken and Monroe are ready for comms."

"Yessir," Richardson responded robotically.

Chung waited stoically for a minute. "Anything?"

Richardson seemed agitated. "Weehawken and Monroe are ready to move, Skip, but I don't pick up anything, active or passive, yet."

"Very well, but keep looking. But you know we're in the sticks today. There be dragons..." Chung chuckled nervously, trying to put Richardson at ease. He was a great Tactical Information Center Chief; but he was right to be nervous. There could be a fight here any day, and Skorpion would be in the vanguard.

All alone. "No peace beyond the line..." he muttered to himself.

"What was that?" Nemurs inquired.

"Oh, nothing...old saying about pirates in the Caribbean, 5...maybe 600 years ago."

"Not funny." Nemurs groaned at him.

"Weehawken 6, Monroe 6, this is Skorpion 6" Chung blasted on the short-range.

"Six...Weehawken...Six, Monroe."

Andersen and Daladier were fine to work with, but they were both Merchant Marine--neither appeared to have a lick of Federation Army or Navy time--and they were relatively nonchalant about everything. Chung resented it. Their tramp freighter crews were necessary, but they made the whole mission more dangerous for him.

"Weehawken, stay to my 135, starboard, and 35 below my beam. Monroe, 225 at 35. Acknowledge."

"Roger," Anderson and Daladier chirped simultaneously.

"Crisp, are you on station?" Chung followed up on intercom, expectantly.

"I'm at the core, aye, Skip" declared the Propulsion Chief.

"Good. Put me at 105 on the reactor for the next 20 minutes and put that into ion. Don't argue with me, I want us out ahead of the freighters if something goes down."

"Aye, Cap" the American responded without hesitation. The ship lurched forward nominally faster, at roughly 100 spacial kilometers an hour, Chung imagined the ion jets blasting protest with the additional stress.

"Nemurs, solars rigged for battle."

"Aye, Skip." A barely perceptible click as the main and mizzen solar masts started collapsing into the upper hull, while the aft "spankers" and foreward "jib booms" stayed up in case the ship caught a solar wind it could use for maneuvering during combat.

Every little bit helps...Chung tapped his fingers against the console desk anxiously. He had no idea why he was so apprehensive...

On the Atlantic Federation's primary high-orbit battle station, Waterloo, Chung had received his first ever "open-ended" letter of marque, authorizing any prizes he could crew back to Libra, himself, in conjunction with convoy duty for the 3M Interstellar Holding Company's claim-staking mission to XB-F20.

The planet was important--but not enough for a Federation Navy presence, and still not important enough for a private contractor's dreadnought fleet.

The Federation had no idea what resources the exoplanet actually contained, whether it could viably be farmed or terraformed, or even... whether the Russians, Indians or Chinese were out here yet.

That single fact bothered Chung. Not enough to turn down his crew's 50 million euro commission, or the letter...

But it bothered him. Was it a "babysitter"...or something else entirely?

For the time being, it would be impossible to tell. Neither long-range RADAR nor LiDAR could penetrate the dark-side horizon of the exoplanet. If there was something on the other side...it could be hours before Chung was aware.

In the meantime, the exoplanet began to loom larger as the Skorpion knifed through space. The corsair's sharp lines at the bow dressed off to a sleek, aquiline steel-gray fuselage, widest at her midsection, culminating with her bulbous bridge, sitting in a reinforced knob roughly 100 feet above her uppermost decks. The bridge tapered down to the bow and stern in descending "levels," each with a knob of its own, hiding the two fore and two aft turrets.

If the Skorpion's lines were beautiful, like a trimmed down, sleek World-War-I battleship of the air, then the Weehawken and Monroe were two dirt clods with ion jets attached to them. They drifted roughly 15 kilometers behind Skorpion before Chung directed Crisp to reduce to standard.

They were ugly, and ungainly, but of course they had massive crews, massive reinforced life support, and substantially greater cargo holds than Skorpion maintained.

"Do you think if they decide they can secure a colony, that we'll get a new charter or at least get a bonus?" Nemurs asked hopefully.

"I highly doubt it. My entire adult life, I've never known rich people making money hand over fist so much that it let them feel like they could stop from exploiting everyone and anyone around them," Chung shook his head cynically. "My personal take is, we focus on this mission, right here, right now, we get these guys down there, they take a look around, dig their holes, take their tests, and then we scoop 'em up and get the hell out of here."

"You're not too fond of this place, are you?" Nemurs jested.

"I'm not too fond of anywhere that's 12 weeks from resupply and the cavalry." Chung's tone was dismissively final, brooking little room for debate. The crew would never suspect the two had been an item for years.

Minutes went by, and the bridge crew drifted into a certain level of comfort that usually wasn't possible during the final stages of a "fold" because they could see what was going on around them.

The approach to XB-F20 was so gorgeous because its orbit sat so much closer to the red dwarf than any potentially habitable planet Chung had ever heard of before. Many of the outer colonies were on "ice planets" just the right size, but with orbital patterns so far outside the system that their temperatures were barely preferable to Neptune.

Trappist loomed in the background, ever larger, to the left and below the bridge crew's line of sight as they approached the planet.

It was a beautiful sight. The planet itself, second in the order of orbit around Trappist, looked like one of those children's pictures of Earth in the days of Pangaea.

Virginal, untouched continents in shapes unrecognizable to Chung; massive swirling storm systems over truly massive ocean layers.

But then, as Chung fixated on the planet--something already seemed off. From what appeared to be a high-orbital or extra-orbital position skipping off the atmosphere from the southernmost end of the planet, as they approached, Chung saw what he swore appeared to be the glitter of reflected star light flicker back at the Skorpion.

Huh. That seemed odd.

Chung barely had a second to ponder.

"CON, TIC, CONTACT BEARING 350 AT 21 BELOW BEAM WITH HEAT BLOOM AND ASPECT CHANGE, 850 clicks!!!!" Richardson had been anxious, but now his adrenaline had him razor-focused.

So here it was. The answer to all his questions of the day. No babysitting job.

"TIC, I need a 10 digit solution on that vector in case he's not friendly! Ping with everything on LiDAR you have--I need to know who he is, why he's heading toward us, what business he has here!"

"Aye, Cap." Chung knew Richardson did not need to be told this. The problem was, of course, that SONAR was useless in space, and therefore, any determination of what the mysterious spacecraft was would have to be done via carefully studied light-signature monitoring: LiDAR in the infra-red, gamma and visual spectra.

But of course, these systems could be thwarted by a skilled enemy. Solar masts could be configured with countermeasure devices; engines could be rigged with towed arrays for sub-fold tactical operations. There were all sorts of tricks of the trade to evade detection until you could get close enough to rake the enemy with a surprise volley.

Fortunately, it didn't appear like that would be the case today.

"CON, TIC, it's a Russian make. Armed bulk freighter. Probably oil prospectors from Gazprom or Rosneft."

"Keep pinging her, TIC. We need to be sure. Sooner or later she'll identify us, and I have no idea if we're even authorized to shoot first at this point. But if she so much as twitches a turret bay, you let me know immediately."

"Aye, Skip." Richardson was active-pinging as he toggled the intercom.

"Rodriguez, 6, I need Weapons status for Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta. I need every bank of Phalanx bay doors lowered. I need the scramjets fueled for bow torpedoes 1 and 2. Smartly. If this guy shoots first, that's one thing...but we're not going to get killed for lack of shooting back. Report in 5, out."

"WEPS to CON, acknowledge all." That was Rodriguez' typical brevity.

"TIC, CON, report on unknown contact aspect and time to close."

"CON, TIC, target is now oriented aspect 135, our bow, from current vector 355 at 22 below the beam, roughly 55 spacial kilometers an hour."

The Russian was trying to bring herself broadside to Skorpion. Whoever she was--she had a pretty good idea who they were, and she wasn't friendly. She didn't want Skorpion to close the distance without being able to bring all her guns to bare.

As though to underscore Chung's promptly deduced conclusion, Richardson blared into Chung's ear.

"CON, TIC, IR heat blooms fore and aft deck, she's going to fire!"

"Aye, TIC, keep it steady."

If she was already staging to fire, at 500 km or more, then she was clearly packing a heavy cruiser's guns. She'd be firing her rail gun turrets at Mach 10 or more, and if she scored a direct hit, the Skorpion would be shuddering from the slugs before Chung had ever known the Russian fired.

"WEPS, CON, COUNTERMEASURES!"

"CON, AYE!" Chung could hear the pop as the reflective aluminum spray shot out forcefully from the tube on the port side solar jib. It was impossible to generate enough heat to throw any IR system from Skorpion's ion drives, but Skorpion was bow-ahead to the Russian, and so any firing solution the Russian generated would be from RADAR or visual LiDAR pinging--and from this distance, a little aluminum skipping sunlight from the nearby star was potentially just enough to throw the Russian's visual scopes off.

"TIC, CON, range to target?"

"CON, TIC, 550 km and closing fast."

Gesturing to Nemurs, Chung quickly directed, "Jean, bring us around starboard 35, down 15 at the bow, we're gonna beat this guy to the punch."

"Aye, Skip." Nemurs mechanically pushed the wheel rightward, slowly, deliberately, until Skorpion began to roll slowly to the right in a gradual dive toward the bottom of the deep-blue colored XB-F20.

Snaps like a bolt of lightning in the distance. It looked like a small thunderstorm in the middle of space.

The Russian had gotten off a volley first. And he had at least two single-gun turrets.

But he had missed. Now he'd have to reload. The Russian's solution couldn't have been too sharp, because the Phalanx system had not deployed. Admittedly, as often as not, rail guns fired too fast for the Phalanx to respond. But at this instance, the 5 Phalanx 40mm rail guns on the port bow would have probably had the opportunity to fire at--and hopefully break up--the incoming tungsten sabots.

"TIC, CON, do you have my solution?"

"CON, TIC, pushing to WEPS now."

"WEPS, CON. Where we at with my guns?"

"CON, WEPS, I have good solution. Turrets Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta powered."

"WEPS, CON, open turret bay doors, match to target and FIRE AT WILL!"

"CON, AYE! OUT!"

Within the course of a handful of seconds--what seemed like eternity--the low grade hum of the ion jets and the gravity wells was completely drowned out by the rumble of the heavy turret bay doors sliding down, and the four main turrets that defined Skorpion's existence rumbled into an orientation almost perpendicular with Skorpion's port-side.

The turrets' rails extended. They were massive 45 foot long barrels. All of a sudden, the crew could hear the sharper hum as the gun crews directed 45 megajoules of energy--like an entire super-sized power plant on Earth--into each of the four double-barreled turrets. Then, the loud, cutting shock as Alpha turret fired. Then Bravo, then Charlie and then Delta in rapid succession. Each double-barreled turret fired a projectile the size of a full-size pick-up truck. Each tungsten projectile traveled at Mach 12, or 4,100 meters per second.

It appeared like Alpha missed, then Bravo, and then Charlie.

But Delta's shell obviously connected with something. There was a visible, small spark of something exploding in the barely perceptible distance of space.

"CON, TIC, sharp aspect change bearing 15 off our bow and 25 above the beam. She's also transmitting uncoded in wideband on unknown frequency."

"TIC, you just get me that 12 digit solution. We're not out of the woods yet, if she's still rolling."

"CON, aye."

"WEPS, I need up-status on all four turrets ASAP; I need distance to close with Scramjets. I want to board her but we may have to put her down."

"CON, WEPS, aye, out." Chung didn't mind Rodriguez being brusque because he was effective. This was as much as Chung could ask of anyone on his crew.

"CON, TIC, I have a 12 point with one boat-length spread for Alpha and Delta turrets. Much easier to target when she's waving her rear in front of us, Cap."

"TIC, CON, aye, plug to WEPS ASAP." It was true, most ships were dismembered or blown up when they tried to escape, because the heat bloom from their ion jets gave such a juicier target for an opposing ship's IR array to focus on.

"CON, WEPS, turrets up, I have good solution."

"WEPS, CON, fire for effect!"

The ship visibly shuddered from the expenditure of 180 megajoules of raw electromagnetic energy in the space of a moment. All of a sudden, there was a blot of yellow in the distant sky.

A nuclear explosion. One or more of the tungsten sabots had connected with the Russian's reactor. The ship had been consumed in a fiery death; presumably vaporized beyond recognition, and all from beyond a range where anyone from Skorpion could have physically seen it before it exploded.

At least it was quick for them.

"CON, TIC. Negative contact on the active scope. Scratch the Russian."

"TIC, CON. No time to celebrate. You keep pinging that active and looking around. That Russian captain wasn't pushing radio to hear the sound of his own voice."

"CON, TIC, aye."

All of a sudden, it occurred to Chung that he had entirely forgotten about Weehawken and Monroe.

"Weehawken, Monroe, Skorpion 6. Damage assessments, are either of you hit?"

There was a pronounced silence over the radio...