Euthara (29 page)

Opellissa had moved forward and Terri was now behind her. Opellissa’s elbow flashed back, trying to catch Terri in the back of the neck, but it found nothing but air as Terri rolled forward as she landed.

“I don’t have time for this,” Terri said. “My friend might be laying there dead or dying.”

Opellissa turned to face Terri as she spoke. Terri raised a hand palm facing out and uttered a few words. The air around Opellissa seemed to shimmer and then exploded inward towards Opellissa throwing her back across the ground. Terri dropped to one knee and shook her head as she took deep breaths. Terri struggled to her feet as the other women in red looked at each other in surprise.

Opellissa rolled over and got on all fours as she coughed a small drip of blood mixed with saliva dripped to the ground. She looked up at the slowly approaching Terri.

“Do you really want to die?” Terri said.

Opellissa watched Terri’s mouth move but the ringing in her ears made it impossible to hear anything. She reached up and stuck a finger in one of her ears and wiggled it.

“Hard to hear,” Opellissa said.

Terri slid the sword under Opellissa’s neck and asked her again only in a louder voice.

Opellissa hearing was clearing up by the second. “It’s the only way this combat can end,” Opellissa said. “I can’t let you go as long as I’m able to prevent it.” She looked up in Terri’s eyes and smiled. “Somehow, I don’t think I can stop you if I wanted.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” Terri said. “You’re my prisoner, I’m taking you back to the
Atlantis
. You can answer my brother’s questions and any other questions Deatra might have once I get her out of the palace.”

Opellissa’s eyes widened at the mention of Deatra. “Princess Deatra?” she said. “She’s alive?”

“Of course she’s alive,” Terri said. “She’s the bond mate to my brother. That makes me…”

“A Princess of Euthara,” Opellissa said as she finished Terri’s sentence.

By now the other women were talking quietly among themselves as they listened to the conversation. They had taken no action as per their laws regarding one on one combat. So, they were still observing what was going on and this wasn’t something anyone was prepared to hear.

“I tried to tell you,” Terri said.

“How do I know you’re not lying,” Opellissa said.

“Why should I?” Terri said. “I could simply slit your throat and walk away.”

Terri was monitoring Oojoung’s life signs with her nanites and he seemed to be getting stronger. However, the little machines were reporting major damage to his lung and liver. He would require surgery to try to repair the damage, or he might even need a transplant.

“True,” Opellissa said. “If it’s true about Deatra being alive then I wonder how many other lies we’ve been fed.”

“A lot I’m su…” Terri said.

Terri was cut short as a bullet tore through her shoulder and slammed into the ground next to Opellissa. Just as fast as the first one impacted another one found its mark as it slammed into her back and out through her belly painting the ground red with blood.

Opellissa rolled Terri over and covered her protectively as she motioned to her companions towards the shooters. However, before they could move a large beam struck the ground and twisted everything into a heap. Opellissa looked up as the combat drop ship appeared over the entrance to the Detention Center as it slowly moved into position over them.

“No one move or we will open fire,” a female voice said from the ship.

A door shifted open on the drop ship and in seconds there were twenty Marines slamming into the ground in powered armor. Their weapons immediately took aim at the women in red.

“We’ll offer no resistance,” Opellissa said. “The Matriarch and her Guardian are hurt and require medical assistance.”

One of the Marines reached up and touched the side of his helmet.

Two more Marines dressed in white combat armor dropped onto the ground and started doing an assessment of Terri and Oojoung. After a few moments one of the med techs said, “It’s not good we need to get them back to the
Atlantis
as soon as possible.”

The Marines had already stripped the women of all weapons and put them in restraints and had them in a tight group. They fanned out as the drop ship finally settled to the ground so everyone could be loaded. Exactly thirty seconds after touch down the drop ship took off then rotated before speeding off.

“
Atlantis
this is Shuttle Alpha Four,” the Pilot said. “We’re declaring a medical emergency.”

“Roger that Shuttle Alpha Four you have priority in landing zone three. Medical teams have been dispatched and are in route,” a female voice said.

“Let the Medical team know this is a top priority. The Matriarch and Oojoung have both been injured but are stable,” the Pilot said.

“WHAT!” Jon’s voice echoed through the com.

ADF Super Carrier Earth’s Revenge, Commanding Officer William Hawkins

Location: Patrol of Euthara System

She was the largest ship in the ADF fleet currently. Her fleet was supposed to contain four Battleships, eight Cruisers and sixteen destroyers, yet she was alone in space. Two of the cruisers for the fleet were currently in construction at Ghost Station. They were two weeks from completion and only one of them had half a crew. The destroyers and battleships had been put on hold until a time that the cruisers were fully manned and operable. There was no sense building ships that couldn’t be manned and would just sit at the station taking up space. The choice for the cruisers over the Battleships or destroyers was easy. Battleships took more man power and destroyers were weak when not supported by the cruisers, so it made the cruisers the simple choice.

The Earth’s Revenge was just over a mile and a half long and was basically a city in space. Her hull was dotted by various types of weapons from the smallest point defense weapons to the larger cannons used for ship to ship combat. She supported ten squadrons of light fighters and in addition to that she had three squadrons of heavy bombers. Supporting the ship was various types of electronic warfare combat shuttles.

The flight crew and bridge crews ran regular drills and could get three squadrons launched in under forty seconds. Which was no easy task considering the average launch time on a carrier was one minute a squad after the first squad launched from the ready position. A slight hiccup could push the time out to a minute or more depending on the degree of the problem. One of the things that had helped them achieve such a low launch time was they had moved the pilots quarters closer to the launch bays and set up a special section for them to live in.

Her listed crew compliment was just over fifteen hundred personnel. Her current crew compliment was six hundred of various mixed races. Two hundred of those were deployed on Euthara helping at Euroth and other locations along with half her fighter compliment and support.

Carbon bonded titanium armor plates protected the people inside and allowed her to endure the stress of jumping or folding. Triple redundant shield systems protected her from almost anything an enemy could throw at her. It used to be controlled by the Tactical Officer that watched the type of damage coming in and changed shields based on that. What that meant was that the ship then relied on its armor to stop anything else that would get through the shields. Dalliana now controlled that and could change the emitters at will now that she was back on line. The shields no longer had to be all synced and the incoming damage could be analyzed in seconds by Dalliana. This meant the damage ratio went from about twenty-five percent on the average getting through to about ten percent getting through and sometimes even less than that.

Dalliana, on the other hand, was a miracle herself. The Earth’s Revenge had been stripped of almost all holographic emitters which allowed her to manifest in any location or multiple locations if she wished. The computer core had been stripped down to little more than an assortment of useless parts. Her computer core had to be rebuilt from the ground up, something no one had ever done before. It took Mike and the techs on his team three months of studying the ancient blueprints and documents on Ghost Station to even get started. Most of the parts had to be built on demand in the station’s foundries.

A month later they had a working model and with the data salvaged by her back up systems, that had been remarkably intact, they rebuilt her core programs with the help of Ghost. Two weeks later they had the core in place and all the holo emitters replaced and fired her up for the first time. A week later they had all the bugs worked out of her systems and she was able to take her place among the bridge crew and start her old duties.

Before Mike left for Euthara he had left orders with his team to have several cores on back up and to work on a smaller secondary core that could be fitted to all ships to act as a backup in case something happened to the main core. This was a gap in the original designs of the Eutharan vessels and, unbelievably, it was a gap in all ships.
Atlantis
was the only ship that had a secondary core that could kick in and run the ship in case the main computer core went down. That little oversight was being remedied on
Earth’s Revenge
as they patrolled in the Euthara system.

Before
Earth’s Revenge
departed from
Ghost Station
and headed to Euthara a second full size core had been delivered and was currently being installed in a totally separate location. Since the ship was huge and had plenty of room they were able to install a second full size core with a backup data storage system. The system, once installed, would work in real time with the main systems so all information was kept up to date. If the main core went down the secondary core, which would be kept waiting in a stand-by mode, would kick in and take over in seconds.

Her main transport rails that ran along each side of her hull were being replaced with the transport tube system the
Atlantis
had. That would allow the crew to move through the ship at a much faster pace as they didn’t have to wait for the transport to arrive. The ship was a hive of activity as it patrolled. They would jump to a location and then proceed on sub light drives for a day or two while the crew worked on the upgrades. What it meant was the crew would get a full days rest every two days.

Next to the
Atlantis
, the
Earth’s Revenge
was the most state of the art ship in the fleet if you didn’t count the Ga’sahde and Drovasian vessels.

Bill’s office was sparsely decorated and he liked it that way, fewer distractions for when he was at work. The conference room that connected his office to the Bridge was even plainer as he wanted people’s attention when they were talking.

Bill sighed as he set the latest reports on the transport tubes down. They were two days behind schedule and Dalliana’s secondary core was about four days behind schedule. The good news was that the new fold engines were in place, powered up and having diagnostics run on them. They should be online in less than half a day.

He had to expect the slow down with half his engineering crew planet side and to be honest things weren’t as bad as he thought it was going to be. He stood up and stretched and popped his neck. He reached down and grabbed the Bridge’s com unit and settled it over his ear.

The Bridge on the
Earth’s Revenge
was half the size of a standard football field back on Earth. It had two levels to it and you needed to broadcast your voice to be heard. The upper levels are where the science stations and environmental stations were as well as ground communications for troops. The bottom level held the Tactical stations, four to be exact, one for each direction, aft, port, starboard and keel. Each station controlled the guns for that hemisphere of the ship. Dalliana could do it if she needed to but it was easier for her to feed information to the stations and allow the men stationed there to monitor the guns. The ship was so large that only the guns that could fire on a primary target called by the commanding officer were used. All other guns out of the fire arc were free to select other targets of opportunity.

Engineering stations were also contained there as well as space control stations that controlled the fighters that were constantly on patrol when the ship wasn’t folding or entering hyperspace. Helm was seated directly in front of the Captain’s chair and in front of that station were three different communication stations. The communication stations were very important as two of them relayed information from the various stations and one of them was used for any other communications.

Although it seemed confusing, but it ran smoothly and without a hitch. Bill had given orders that all stations beyond the helm had a limited autonomy to do their jobs. Before doing that the Bridge most days was complete chaos as orders or requests seemed to come non-stop.

There was a secondary bridge deep in the middle of the ship. Bill named it the battle bridge due to its heavy armor and location. It had bare minimum in the way of stations at its disposal, helm, communications, flight control, one tactical station and an engineering station that also controlled damage control systems. It took six people to man the stations and of the entire crew there were only twelve people highly trained enough to run that Bridge.

“Sir, incoming transmission for the Euthara Station,” a female voice said.

“Thanks Elisa,” Bill said. He sat back down in his chair. “Put it through to my office please.”

A screen blinked to life in front of him and his wife’s glowing face filled the screen.

“Hi honey, how are you and the kids?” Bill said.

“We’re all doing fine,” Kelly said. A smile crossed her face as she continued. “Andie has cleared me for duty for another week. I’ll be taking a shuttle tomorrow to join you and resume my duties.”

“Great!” Bill said. “Things don’t seem to run so smooth around here without you.”

“That’s because you worry about too much at once you big lug,” Kelly said. “I told you to push some of the duties off on your other officers and let them deal with it.”