Memoirs of Kitty Siam Ch. 45

The hanger bay doors groaned as they slid open, and once the green light on either side of the door illuminated I took a deep breath and activated the anti gravity system, followed by the sub light engine. I applied power slowly and eased the Tenshi out of the bay. Once clear of the doors I slowly added power and aimed the nose toward the sky. As the craft gained speed and climbed higher I heard a loud bang followed by a brief shudder, which caused me quickly to look down at the instruments. I was relieved to find out that the disturbance was nothing more than the Tenshi breaking the sound barrier. It had been so long since I flew a high performance craft in an atmosphere that I had forgotten all about that. As I left the atmosphere Sheba's electronic voice came over the communication system and announced that Neko had been contacted and advised that I was on my way to Anora.

Sheba already had the calculations laid in for me to make the trip, but I was not in a great hurry to engage the Doyon FTL drive. I made two orbits of the planet and checked out the critical systems and the maneuverability of the ship before I felt comfortable setting off for my final destination. I even tested out the weapons as I passed by the debris field left in orbit from some long forgotten battle. I was impressed by the power that this new design was able to supply to the standard Annunaki weapons. This was major improvement in firepower over the older ships that were still powered by HE3 reactors, but the question was how they would perform against the craft that the Zetas were currently using.

Before I engaged the FLT drive I made a check of the tactical scanners that were installed in the Tenshi. Since I was going to be traveling in normal space, I needed to know that the ship's scanners could detect an object in my path and give me enough time to react so as to avoid a collision. I knew that the slower craft would never see me coming as their scanners and sensors would not be designed to look for anything traveling as fast as I would be. Sheba assured me that the tactical scanner range was just a little under two parsecs. That made me feel much better knowing that I could detect anything within about a two light year radius. Sheba must have read my mind because the next tidbit of information she gave me was about using my weapons with the FTL drive engaged. She displayed the math on my heads up display to emphasize that the ship is capable of flying much faster than the bolts fired from the twin plasma cannons. I made a note of that and thanked Sheba for that valuable safety tip.

With that little worry out of the way I selected the pre-programmed destination on the navigation console and engaged the FTL drive. I kept my eyes focused out the front of the canopy and watched the star field beyond stretch as the stars looked like short dashes of light before the ship was enveloped in an eerie blue light. The blue turned to white then was gone. I felt the inertial dampeners struggling to keep up with the rapid acceleration of the ship. With in a few seconds the dampeners had fully compensated and all sensation of motion had ceased, but I the ship was still moving, and moving faster than anything I had ever been in before. Stars and solar systems flew past at a high rate of speed and for the first five minutes of so I could do nothing but watch in awe as the heavenly bodies sped past.

I was hypnotized by the rapidly passing star field and it took me about ten minutes or so into my voyage to snap out of it and turn my attention to the scanner and the technical read outs. If something were to go wrong I knew that there would be an audible warning, but being that this was the maiden voyage for this craft I felt better monitoring the readouts myself for a while.

About an hour into the voyage the tactical scanner alerted me to a large moving object about four astrological units (AU) ahead of us. I calculated its position from us and tracked its movements and determined that we would pass close to it but not close enough to be a problem, but I just could not help cutting in the sub light engines and having a look at the object. As we got closer the tactical scanner identified it as a freighter moving at sub light speed. My ship was moving just below the line that separated faster than light and sub light speeds, and yes, I was just showing off a little bit as I blew past the slow moving hulk. Once a safe distance from the freighter I put the ship into a steep bank and circled around for another pass. As I made my second pass my tactical readout identified the freighter as a Plovarian heavy transport. I had no idea who the Plovarians were but since they did not take a shot at me I activated the FTL drive and resumed my course toward Anora Prime.

So far everything had been working as planned and for the few minutes that I had dropped out of FTL I sent a message to Sheba to begin construction on a second ship similar to this one but using more of the Koloth class configuration. During my first hour of flight in this craft I thought that a reconnaissance version would be a good addition to the Annunaki fleet I planned to build. When I made my request to Sheba I asked for a two-seat version to be built that could carry a pilot and an Electronic Warfare Officer (EWO) that would handle the sensors, scanners, weapons, and communications. This would free up the pilot to concentrate on keeping the craft out of sight and off of the enemy scanners. As I thought of what the capabilities of this craft would be, my mind struck on an idea for the perfect crew... Jarro would its pilot and Neko would be perfect as the EWO.

The next time the tactical scanner's alarm sounded there was more urgency to the tone and for good reason. My flight path was taking me into what looked appeared to be a battle zone. I could see immediately that there were two smaller craft attacking a larger vessel. A second screen activated next to the tactical scanner and pulled up a display that showed an image of one of the attacking craft. The craft was identified as a Zeta Javort class raider. Information on the display showed that it was crewed by at least thirty, and was heavily armed and armored. The narration on this vessel was that it was normally part of a pack and was used to attack larger vessels that did not have the capacity to fend off smaller fast moving attackers.

The vessel under attack was not listed in the Tenshi's database but as I got closer and conducted a visual scan I recognized the ship as being a Franklin class merchant ship registered to the PGC. As I looked over the scans something did not look right. The EM signature was way too high for a simple cargo vessel, but the bigger mystery was what this vessel was doing way out here so far from Earth and the PGC.

It only took me a few seconds to ponder this out, and almost immediately after realizing that there was a human crew aboard I was disengaging the FTL drive, raising the shields and arming the weapons. I had seen too much destruction from the Zetas and now it was my turn to take a few shots at them and maybe ruin their day for a change.

As soon as I dropped to sub light speed the two Javorts broke off their assault and turned toward me. I began flying an evasive course the second they opened fire on me. The space around me was filled with disruptor fire as it streaked past my canopy. One bolt of red disruptor fire hit my left wing and caused the craft to shudder violently. A quick check of my systems told me that the shields had deflected most of the blast and the living skin covering the hull absorbed what got through the shields. As I looked at the impact area I could see the black scorch mark was already beginning to heal and return to its normal white color.

My ship was more maneuverable and I used that to my advantage. I banked hard left, and then hard right and that put me in a position to flank my attackers. I lined the first ship up and targeted the fuselage just in front of what I had identified as the engine compartment. Annunak weapons are designed to fire in a three burst pattern, so given that my ship had two pulse cannons, the first ship was struck six times. All six shots impacted perfectly on target causing the Jovort's shields to glow but nothing more than that happened. My flight path carried me over the second ship in the formation, and the shots that I had unleashed against it had no better luck at penetrating its shields.

I was deeply disappointed that my weapons had little or no effect on these ships, but I was still determined to cause at least a little bit of damage in the hope that the damaged Franklin could make its escape. The two Javorts tried to turn with me but they were too slow. I kept the Tenshi just below the light speed barrier and swung around behind the Javorts. I targeted the engines directly from behind and this time as I made my approach I kept the cannons firing, but once again, the shields held and deflected my fire.

I was disappointed in the performance of this craft in battle and from what I knew of Annunaki technology the weapons should have done better than they did against the Javorts. As I pondered this out I engaged the cloaking system and resumed a parallel course to the Javorts. I knew it would be easy enough for them to reengage the Franklin but now they were searching for me. They were sweeping the area with multi phase scanners and setting off tachyon pulses in an attempt to disrupt my cloak enough to locate me. Thankfully this ship used a type of cloak that I had never seen before. While the PGC systems bent light and refracted scans to provide invisibility, this new system actually put the ship's hull out of phase with its surroundings. I did not understand all of the theory behind it, but I knew that I could see them and they could not see me. I was guessing that since I was out of phase with the universe, their weapons would pass right through me should they become lucky enough to hit me with a blind shot. It also meant that their sensor beams could not locate me either.

While I enjoyed my invisibility I went over the ship's weapons systems and tried to figure out why my weapons were no more than spitballs against their shields. I reviewed the specs and compared what was installed to the specs that were contained in my PDA and everything looked normal. The weapons that were installed were basically an upgrade of the ones that were installed on Galora One, except that instead of them being powered by the ships HE3 reactor; these were powered by the forced singularity that powered the engines.

My study of the weapons on my ship came to an abrupt end when the two Javorts altered course to return to their assault on the Franklin. As they turned I disengaged the cloak and came up behind them again and began firing. I knew that I could not hurt them but once again I targeted the engines and continued to fire until I got too close and had to break off. This time the Javorts opened up on me with their close in defense system instead of turning to aim their main guns at me. I got a little singed as I banked away at high speed. Once out of ranged I reengaged the cloak and kept and eye on them as they once again started searching for me. I suppose I was no more than an annoyance to them as I had yet to penetrate their shields or armor.

As I kept an eye on the Zetas I turned back to the specs on the ship and as I compared the power systems for this ship to the original design of the Tenshi I noticed that the original design routed power through the jump engines and used this connection as sort of a step up transformer that increased the output of the cannons. Since the jump engines and the weapons were never to be used at the same time this increased the lethality of the cannons. This ship did not have a jump engine but it did have the Doyon drive.

I made some quick calculations then asked the ship's computer to confirm my math, and after a few seconds I got my answer. I locked the ship on a steady course that paralleled the Javorts then switched the main console from flight to maintenance modes. Everything on this ship was interconnected and it was easy enough to reroute power feeds from one area of the ship to another. This redundancy was built in to assist a pilot in making emergency repairs should the ship take serious damage in a battle.

My calculations told me that the increased power coming from the Doyon drive would blow out the emitter relays should the weapon system attempt to fire in pulse mode as it was designed. The weapons were reconfigured now to fire in long sustained bursts. I figured that this would either burn through their shields or skip off into space. Once everything was rerouted and reconfigured I dropped my cloak and made another run at the Javorts. Once again I came at them from the rear but this time I came in from above with my ship angled downward.

The two Javorts turned in opposite directions and I stayed on the one that turned to port. Once the shot was lined up I opened fire. A continuous bluish white beam lanced out from both cannon pods mounted between the wings and the fuselage and struck the Javort just forward of the engine exhaust ports. The shield in that area sparkled for a mili second before the shield was penetrated. The fire from the Tenshi stuck the hull above the engines and burned its way through. As the twin beams burned two parallel furrows down the length of the Javort, fire and explosions erupted from the engine area and moved forward.

I did not count on causing so much damage so quickly and I found myself dangerously close to a burning Javort that was about to explode. The second Javort realized this just as I did and increased speed to escape the coming explosion. I put the Tenshi into a tight bank then engaged the Doyon drive for a few seconds to evade the blast. As the Javort exploded the second Javort activated its jump engines and made the leap to hyperspace. Unfortunately the Doyon drive cannot enter hyperspace and even if it could, only a fool would fire his or her weapons in hyperspace. It was unfortunate that I could not pursue and destroy the second Javort. I was safe in the knowledge that when the Captain of the Javort reported to his superiors, he would not be able to identify the origin of the craft that had attacked him.

I made a note in my PDA of the changes that I had made to the weapons system and added a few comments on things that I would like to have changed or redesigned once I got back to Angkor. After making my notes I found the Franklin and took up a position forward of the bridge on the starboard side and attempted to make contact. The crew was busy fighting fires and trying to contain the damage from the Zeta's attack. After several attempts a very military sounding young man that requested that I identify myself returned my hails.

I thought nothing of it, since they were just attacked and might want to know who I was and what my intentions were. I identified myself as "Annu Tenshi One" as my call sign. Next he requested my point of origin and destination, so I went through the whole spiel and informed them that this is Annu Tenshi One from Angkor Assault Squadron One bound for Anora Prime. I paused for a moment then inquired if any assistance was needed. I heard the bridge officer from the Franklin attempt to respond and as he started to speak an explosion was heard in the background just about the same time as a section of hull plating behind the bridge was ripped away from the ship. His transmission ended abruptly as I assumed his attention was focused on damage control.

While I waited to make contact with the Franklin again I dropped back and started a detailed scan of the ship to determine the amount of damage she had sustained. As I scanned the vessel with my sensors and my visual systems I soon found out that this was no ordinary merchant class vessel. Oh it was once a vessel of commerce, but it had been outfitted with high end tactical monitoring and scanning equipment. The ship was also fitted with heavy military grade shielding and point defense weapons. Unfortunately for the Franklin, it was attacked by two Javorts with standoff weapons that allowed them to stay out of range of the Franklin's defense grid.

As I surveyed the damaged Franklin I came upon a section of hull plating with the name "SS Konrad Siegfried" painted above a damaged military insignia belonging to the Earth military. Another oddity of this vessel was the number of sensor bubbles, and communications projections on the outer hull. The "SS" that preceded the ships' name stood for "Supply Ship" if it were truly a military vessel as the damaged unit crest suggested. With this information in mind I opened a channel to the Franklin again and this time I called them by name, "Annu Tenshi One to Supply Ship Siegfried."

The Siegfried responded, as they should have under applicable standards set forth in the PGC code for space faring vessels. The officer that responded this time seemed more experienced and older than the officer that I had spoken with earlier. I broke the ice and offered assistance but my offer was met with silence. The silence was broken by a woman's voice. She identified herself as Colonel Megyn Connors acting Captain of the SS Siegfried. She accepted my offer of assistance and asked if there was a medical facility near by. It seems that the explosion that I had observed was directly under their medical bay. They had many wounded and had no way to tend to their injuries as they had lost their medical staff in the explosion.

The data that I had on this sector was outdated by about 20,000 years so the only two places that I knew of that could provide medical assistance were Angkor and Anora Prime. The problem is that both of these planets were well outside their jump range given the damage that my scans had discovered. I asked the Colonel to stand by a moment while I consulted my astrogation database for another alternative. There were no alternatives and I could hear the sadness in her voice when I informed the Colonel that the closest inhabited planet with advanced life support was well over a month away even if their jump drive was functioning at 100%.

The Colonel and I discussed a few options and then it hit me to ask her if her ship was equipped with magnetic docking clamps on its landing struts. I think she was taken aback by this question and I had to ask again. During the pause before she replied I thought back to how we used the magnetic clamps on Galora One to attach to a hull section from the Cruiser Nagato in the debris field above the Mars colony to avoid detection from the Zetas.

While I was working out the math the Colonel responded that the ship was equipped with magnetic docking clamps that they were fully functional. Next I asked about the condition of her engines and the maximum thrust available given the ships damaged state. Again there was a long pause before she asked me the reason that I was asking all of these questions. Before I responded I thought to myself why people always have to be so difficult when you are trying to help them. Of course I wanted to reach through the sub space radio and slap the taste out of her mouth, but after counting to ten I told her that I was working on a way to cover the distance between here and Anora Prime in a much shorter time than her jump engines would allow.

When she replied I took the figures that she gave me then used the Tenshi's onboard computer to check my math and for once I found that my math was off just a bit, but the computer confirmed that my idea would work. I contacted the Siegfried and spoke again to Colonel Connors and informed her that my ship has a drive different than hers and that I proposed to use my ship's engine to get us to Anora Prime faster than hers could. I could hear the disbelief in her voice as she assured me that she has been traveling in space long enough to know that there was nothing faster than the jump engines that were installed on her vessel.