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  When the Epsilon violently swung its nose to port, Rais watched as his control panel prepared for the jump to sub-light speed. A green bar on the left of his display screen started to light up as the ship's engines readied, but the ship's flight systems had still not locked in a destination, almost like spinning a car's tires with the brakes applied.

  Seconds later, the target had been plotted, a flight course back to Earth, and then, they were off. Racing away from the asteroid field at 150,000 kilometres an hour. Every member of the bridge crew was slammed into the back of their seats as the inertial dampeners failed to function properly.

  And just as fast as the ship had rocketed away from the Raider and the asteroid field, it came to a stop, a slow and gentle stop as the engines cut out, and the ship glided to a halt. Dead in space.

  For a moment, no one on the bridge said a word. Other than the sensation of stillness, it soon dawned on those on the bridge that they were also no longer being attacked.

  "What the fuck happened?" Joe asked, getting up from his position, he moved to the rear of the bridge to where Rhea was sitting. "You okay, baby?" he asked, brushing some hair off her face.

  She looked up at him and smiled. "I'm fine. Just a little rattled."

  Looking back to the front of the bridge, "What the hell happened Ranix?" he demanded to know as he started walking forward.

  "I'm not sure yet. Jonas, what's the status on the Raider?"

  "It's gone, or it is still on my screen, but in several different locations."

  Joe looked at Jonas. "Destroyed?"

  The Detection Tech looked up at the human. "Very."

  Joe looked back at Ranix. "How is all this possible?"

  The young officer just shrugged his shoulders.

  "Sentinel Commander." Rais said quietly.

  "What do you mean?" Joe asked.

  "It must have been him."

  Joe looked around the compartment, then back to Ranix. "Where is the big guy?"

  Ranix looked past Joe to the Detection Station, "Jonas, where is the SC?"

  "Searching." Jonas hit several keys at his station and checked his monitor. "His transmitter is off-line, but his emergency beacon is transmitting."

  Ranix quickly turned and walked back to his command chair. "Feed those coordinates to Rais, and let's go get him."

  Ranix sat into his command chair and hit the broadcast system. "This is the bridge. Send damage reports and casualty reports as soon as they are available."

  By the time Rais was able to turn the ship around and return to the scene of the collision with the Raider, everyone on the ship had learned of the death of Doctor Lau, while Master Engineer Sulvan had been injured and was receiving medical treatment from Prure in the med-lab.

  The worst news was that the ship's engines had been severely damaged, and would need substantial repair once they landed back on Earth.

  "Sir, I'm detecting the residuals from a small jump field." Jonas reported.

  "From what?"

  "Unknown. The signature is too small for some form of escape pod. Possibly a beacon or distress buoy of some kind, but it appears that the Raider launched something before its destruction. Either way, at some point, the Coalition are going to want to know what happened to their ship." he reported.

  Joe looked to Ranix. "If they sent a distress beacon, how long could it take to reach Coalition space?"

  "It could be there now, or if there was damage to it, who knows." came the reply.

  "Sir, I've located the Sentinel Commander's beacon. It is 2 kilometres off our port bow." Jonas reported.

  "Rais, do you have him?" Ranix asked, looking towards the main view screen.

  "Scanning." Toggling the forward scanning systems, looking for specific triggers that would identify the giant robot. "Got it." Rais locked on the machine and brought its image up on the view screen.

  "Jesus." Joe let slip as he saw the machine on the screen.

  The machine was drifting slowly away from where he had destroyed the Raider. The once mighty machine had been cut diagonally in half, leaving only his right arm, shoulder and head intact.

  "What is the status of his reactor?" Ranix asked.

  "It's offline." Jonas reported.

  "Okay. Rais, bring us alongside him." Ranix hit the Sentinel communications switch. "Sentinel Two, this is Ranix."

  "Sentinel Two online."

  "You are now the senior Sentinel. I need you to download current mission, and action logs and retrieve the Sentinel Commanders remains and put them in the hanger bay."

  "Understood."

  Ranix looked at Joe. "This is not good. If the Raider got off a distress beacon to its fleet, reinforcements could be arriving at any moment, and with the Sentinel Commander out of action, we are more vulnerable than ever."

  Joe shook his head. "We're going to have to inform people on Earth of this if they haven't figured out something has happened already."

  59

  By the time the Epsilon had landed back on its pad on Lasqueti Island, the world had been informed of the encounter past Mars. The American President, plus several other heads of state were extremely distressed at the possibility that hostile forces could be drawn to Earth. The planet was not ready to be dragged into an interstellar war.

  When Joe and Rhea stepped down from the hanger bay, the team of representatives from NASA and the European and Russian Space Agencies were waiting, and all had concerned looks on their faces.

  The head administrator of NASA, John Riley came up to Joe with a disappointed look on his face. "Joe." He tilted his head and started walking towards the rear of the ship. "Looks like you guys ran into some trouble up there."

  As they reached the rear of the ship, the actual extent of the damage became apparent. Large sections of the side panelling had been damaged, and one of the rear thrusters appeared to have been completely destroyed. Master Engineer Sulvan, Master Engineer Class 3 Valerex, and Sub-Engineer Venko were already at the rear of the vessel examining the damage.

  Joe looked back to the hangar bay, where two of the Sentinels were carrying the Sentinel Commanders remains to the SETI Liaison building. Riley's jaw dropped when he saw what was left of the Sentinel Commander. "Is he completely destroyed?"

  Joe shook his head. "No. Valerex said that his neural net is still intact, but they don't have the equipment to recover it."

  "What about this jump field that the ship detected?"

  "We're not sure. The best guess is some form of distress beacon."

  "So we can expect more Coalition ships?"

  "Possibly."

  "And I suppose that giving aid and comfort to their enemy won't be helpful if they show up in force."

  "You're probably right." Joe said before Rhea came up to him and put her arms around his neck and gave him a light kiss on the lips.

  "Nice to be back on the ground." She released her grasp and shook her head and looked at Riley. "Quite a scare up there, John."

  "Yes." The NASA man looked at Rhea, and then back at the ship. "Looks like you had quite a scare." He shook his head. "Quite is an understatement. It'll be interesting to know how long they expect the ship to be down for."

  "Yeah." Joe looked at the three engineers who were gathered at the rear of the ship with one of the Sentinels.

  Joe started walking towards the SETI building knowing that President Bednarik would be calling him shortly. The implications that this situation presented were indeed grim, and John Riley was 100 percent right when he suggested that Earth would be viewed very harshly by the Coalition if they did return in force. And if they did, Earth would be defenceless.

  60

  Admiral Taark was taking in his monthly health check when his aide burst into the room.

  "Admiral, we've just received word that a ship near Jaxos has picked up a distress call from the Epsilon."

  Taark sat up in the examination chair, pulled a series of electrodes from his chest and stood up. "Does Smid know?"

  "Y
es, it was one of his ships that picked up the transmission."

  The Admiral buttoned his blouse and grabbed his command data-pad and moved towards the exit of the suite. "Sorry Doctor." He shoved the door and charged through the reception and onto the adjoining hallway on the massive space station that housed the Alliance Navy's 7th Fleet.

  "What forces are in port?"

  "Checking." The aide checked his data. "In addition to your command ship, the Second Assault Squadron, 3rd Landing Squadron, elements of the 3rd Recon Squadron, and elements of the 13th Survey Squadron.

  Taark let the information sink in. "Ready my command ship. Tell Commodore Fellennis to ready his Assault Squadron, and inform Commodore Smid that I want him to accompany me aboard my ship." Taark checked his wrist system that was sewn into his uniform. "I want confirmation that all ships have their reactors hot in 45. I want all ships off the station and in Jump Formation Three in 55, and I want to jump in sixty." As his aide attempted to transmit those orders to the appropriate commands, Taark started jogging down the hallway towards the ship docks.

  By the time Taark had reached the bridge of his 20-kilometre long warship, reports were coming in from the 2nd Assault Squadron that most of its twenty-six ships were ready for launch, and were starting to take their positions in one the Jump-Box’s off the Traxis space station.

  "Status?" he asked of the commander, Ship Master Yakari.

  "Admiral, our engineering department has reported that the engines are warming up, and we will be ready to depart for the Jump-Box in five minutes."

  "And have you calculated the distance to the Epsilon’s reported position?"

  The Ship Master moved to a display screen on a large partition. An image of the known galaxy was displayed. Coalition worlds in red, Alliance held worlds in green. "As you can see Sir, we are here at Traxis, and the signal from the Epsilons came from this sector here, roughly 1000 light-years away."

  "What do we know about that zone?" He asked looking at the area as it was zoomed in on.

  "The system comprises one star and eight planetoids. The signal originated from the third planet from the star." Yakari stepped away from the screen. "I'm afraid that we have not conducted a complete survey of this system yet, that is as far as Alliance records show.

  "Very well." Taark looked around the bridge, which was massive, taking up almost 600 square yards with several moving sideways, which helped members of the bridge crew move swiftly around the stark, white bridge, which was fitted with all the newest command and control, surveillance, battle management, and communications systems the Alliance had to offer.

  The command ship, simply name Seven after the fleets numeric designation, was one of only ten command ships built at the primary Alliance shipyards orbiting Mechcharga, but at 20 kilometres in length wasn't even the largest ship in the Alliance fleet, being dwarfed by the ancient Imperial Command Ship, which once served as the senior vessel of the Empire, which was over 100 kilometres in length, and was 20 kilometres in width at some points, but required such colossal fuel loads to jump, that it had not seen action in almost 80 years when the Empire was threatened by an external threat.

  Moving to his command chair, the admiral sat down and hit a key on the side of the seat which brought up a virtual display screen. Keying in his access codes, he pulled up Doctor Prure's personnel file. The Admiral remembered how his first command had been cut short by a serious injury that he sustained in combat, and the only reason he was still alive was because of Prure, which was a driving factor behind launching such a large rescue mission.

  When Commodore Smid finally reached the bridge, he looked a little out of breath. "Sorry, it took me so long Admiral. This ship is too big. I had to run."

  "That is quite acceptable, Commodore. I think that it is time to go find your missing ship."

  The Commodore smiled, and went to a position just to the rear of the Admirals command chair and tapped a small green dot on the floor with the tip of his boot and stepped back as an additional command chair came out from the deck.

  "We are ready to move to the Jump-Box, Sir." Came the report from the Ship Master.

  "Take us out." Taark ordered as the massive ship started to move away from the station.

  The Jump-Box was an area of space located 300,000 kilometres from the station where formations would gather before jumping to their destinations. Jump Formation Three which was going to be in use was considered the most aggressive, with the forces that were jumping set to arrive and immediately advance towards their destination.

  The Seven took up position in the middle of the formation, with the 2nd Assault Squadrons two carriers bracketing the massive ship, with a screen of three cruisers above and below the Seven. The 2nds eight frigates were deployed far out from the command ship and provided picketing protection along the flanks. Once the fleet jumped, the destroyers would instantly fan out and secure the main assault force. The 2nds remaining ten ships, consisting of a variety of support ships were huddled around the rear of the Seven where they would have maximum protection.

  "Ready to jump, Admiral." The Ship Master reported. "All fighter squadrons report set to launch on the other side."

  "Start the clock."

  "Jumping in 30 seconds. Slave jump drives to Seven." The order was given, locking all the ships jump drives into the main drive computer on the Seven to make a coordinated leap, with the destroyers jumping one second ahead of the rest of the fleet to screen for threats.

  61

  It was Rob's first shift of the week at Siding Spring Observatory, and he was still a little weary from his weekend in Sydney, and the six-hour drive to the NASA-funded facility he had to make that morning, but the warm cup of tea he was sipping on was helping to ease the pain.

  The previous shift manager had left a copy of the Telegraph, whose lead story had been the revelation that the Epsilon had had a battle with another alien spacecraft in the asteroid belt, with rumours suggesting that the Epsilon had barely escaped intact. Rob shook his head in disbelief and wondered how long it would take for more aliens to show up, and really cause havoc.

  Taking another sip from his teacup, he glanced up at the electronic tracking board, which had a series of lights indicating the current status of observatories tracking efforts, which normally should have been all green, but one of the lights had flipped over to red.

  "It's too early for this, mate." He told the machine, setting his coffee cup down. Rolling his chair over to the old system, he looked at the recent Near Earth Object analysis, and couldn't believe his eyes.

  "Jesus H Fuck!"

  By reflex, he grabbed the phone next to him and called Huston.

  "Mike, it's Rob in Siding Spring. Good mate, look, I'm sending you something now. I think you'll want to check it out."

  62

  "We need to call the SETI guys at once."

  "We need to call John Riley first, tell him, and then call the President's Scientific Advisor." Charles was scrolling through his list of phone numbers. "Anyway, isn't John with the SETI guys in Canada?"

  Mike just shrugged and when back to the printout they had just received from Australia showing what looked like more than twenty objects in between the Earth and the Moon that weren't there an hour ago.

  "Does the ISS have line-of-sight on this yet?" Mike asked.

  "Jesus."

  Mike snapped his head around to look at Charles, "The Russians are scheduled to launch a Soyuz mission from Baikonur today!"

  63

  "Jump complete."

  Admiral Taark leaned forward in his command chair, looking at the multiple monitors to his front and out the glass view screen at the blue planet to his front.

  "Hold all ships at current positions." He ordered. Too close, he said to himself, they had jumped in too close. "I need analysis on all ships in the system, plus commentary on this world, and location of the Epsilon as soon as possible."

  Smid got up from his command chair and moved up next to the Admiral.
"Looks like a rather undeveloped civilisation. I don't see any ships."

  "Sir, we are tracking an object leaving the planet's surface on a trajectory towards a station orbiting at 400 kilometres." Shouted one of the detection technicians located around the bridge.

  "Any weapons signature?" Asked the Ship Master.

  "Negative."

  The Ship Master looked at Taark. "Considering their level of technology, this could be a routine launch."

  "Bring up the object on the monitor." Taark ordered.

  When the Soyuz capsule was finally brought up, Yakari, Smid and Taark couldn't help but chuckle.

  "It appears to be some form of multi-stage rocket. Very primitive." Yakari commented.

  "I agree." Taark seconded. "Any luck on a signature for the Epsilon?"

  Yakari walked over to one of the tracking stations on the large bridge and peered over the shoulder of the individual at the station. "Well?" He asked in a hushed voice.

  "There are traces of a signature of a fusion reactor in the northern hemisphere."

  "Any other signatures on the rest of the planet?"

  "No."

  Yakari righted himself and walked back to the Admiral. "I believe we have found the Epsilon, Sir."

  "Send a fighter on a high orbit reconnaissance. Keep all other ships at their current positions."

  "Yes, Sir."

  It didn't take long for the commander of one of the Seven's fighter squadrons to launch and make a beeline to a point in orbit above the Epsilon. The sleek little fighter dashed away from the massive command ship and made its way towards its destination without incident.

  "On station." The report came in over the bridges communications system.

  One of the bridge techs fed instructions to the squadron commander. "Please send a live feed of the target area."

  Almost instantly, an image of North America was on several of the bridges monitors. Taark looked at the landscape with intent as the picture continued to zoom in towards until it showed a tiny island off the coast of Canada and finally stopped when the Epsilon finally filled the screens.