Ship-leader’s log 5-9-8103 IK

My ship is currently on final approach to Fleet Central. Personally I would rather be with the thirty third fleet as she pushes into Valorian space. Of course two weeks ago when the official declaration of war was made, I was recalled to the capital. I have no idea as to why I am here, since no one told me. It has made the last two weeks a bit tough for me not knowing why. At least the trip was quick thanks to the Inversion Gate we used to get here quickly. Still it is nice to be back to the homeworld. It is always nice to see the glittering cities and the impressive starbase that serves as the headquarters for Imperial Fleet Command. My crew is also a bit antsy, wanting to be in the fighting rather than here on the rear lines. I don’t know how long we will be here, but I have taken the time to schedule some much needed maintenance for the port plasma distribution manifold.

Tika stepped of the gangway and entered the port proper to find her fleet leader waiting to meet her. Tulkor’s presence at the gangway surprised her a bit. She crossed the chamber and met up with Tulkor.

“Good to see you, Ship-leader. Better follow me we are in a bit of a hurry. The council is waiting for you and the session has already started,” said Tulkor.

“The council!? Meeting the council is a great honor, but why I am I meeting with the council,” asked Tika as she followed Tulkor out of the docking bay and down the corridor.

“Something involving a certain ship, has occurred and since you are the foremost expert on the Enterprise the council has summoned you as a consultant,” said Tulkor.

“What happened with the Enterprise?” asked Tika.

“I’ll brief you on the shuttle flight to the surface,” replied Tulkor. She followed him to the shuttle. A pilot was waiting ready to launch at a moment's notice. So the shuttle was flying the instant she was settled into her seat. Tulkor activated a display revealing footage of The Battle before the Storm as seen by the sole escort ship to escape.

“This footage was obtained by intelligence. As you can see the Enterprise attacked this convoy. However this wasn’t your typical raid, but rather a quick efficient strike. They knew exactly what the convoy was carrying and went for one thing and one thing only. This convoy was transporting a captured Voskar cloaking device to a more secure location. We were already aware of this convoy, but hadn’t located it yet. The Valorians were going to study the device so that they could better locate cloaked Voskar ships,” said Tulkor.

“In other words, it was going to be a real game changer for them. Which is why we were trying to find the convoy and deny the device to them. However the Enterprise beat you to the punch and now you want me to help you track down the Enterprise,” replied Tika.

“Close but not quite true. As you can see three new ships just warped into the engagement zone. Those ships are a new class of Valorian dreadnought, rushed into service thanks to the war. As a result these new Yinta class dreadnoughts as they are called have not had all their flaws ironed out yet. Still they are the first heavy capital ship designed specifically for combat that the Valorians have designed in nearly a century. Measuring ‘6100 meters’ in length with over four hundred decks and a crew of fourteen thousand. Along with three thousand banks of their new concussion plasma pulse cannons and four hundred heavy torpedo banks they can represent a serious threat. Fortunately the Valorians can’t field these ships easily due to their reliance on a rare variant of the Ephon crystal. As you can see the Enterprise was forced to engage those ships and took heavy damage in the process. Although she did prove herself superior destroying two of them outright,” said Tulkor.

“Two not ... OH!!? Is that the leading wave of a Hyper-Ion storm?” said Tika.

“Yes, the storm claimed both the Enterprise and the final dreadnought. Although I’m not sure why the Enterprise engaged this convoy when there was a nearby convoy being escorted by those new dreadnoughts,” said Tulkor.

“That’s easy, she likely didn’t know. Her sensors are quite good especially her short range sensors, but she likely wasn’t able to identify those three ships as dreadnoughts on her long range sensors. Besides most ships that size in the Valorian fleet are freighters. She most likely thought they were freighters, afterall you normally don’t assign dreadnoughts to escort a couple of freighters,” said Tika. As the shuttle was landing.

“Well the council will want to know if the ship survived her encounter with that storm,” said Tulkor.

“In that case, can I borrow a pad? I will need to do the math, and I will need the characteristics of that storm,” said Tika. Tulkor pulled one from his pocket with the characteristic already on it.

“My aide already had one prepared for you. You will need to add the Enterprise’s data from memory though,” said Tulkor.

“I can work with that,” replied Tika as she began the calculations and followed Tulkor out of the shuttle. The shuttle had landed at the pad nearest the council building so it was only a few minutes walk to the building and a couple more to be let in to the session. By then she had already finished the calculations and had the answer for the main question.

“Ah ship-leader Tika, you are just in time. I trust you have already been briefed on what happened to our good friends on the Enterprise,” said the chairwoman. The head of the female half of the council.

“Yes, fleet leader Tulkor was kind enough to brief me on the flight down,” replied Tika.

“In that case can you enlighten us on whether or not our friends survived?” replied the chairwoman.

“Almost certainly, the Enterprise is a tough ship even factoring in the damage she had taken the ship should have held together. Large sections of the outer hull may have buckled, and given the damage to her port nacelle it is highly unlikely that she escaped the storm before it descended back into hyperspace. Being a class twelve, and having calculated its age the storm should start dissipating in forty to seventy years. Given the damage they took and their estimated material reserves, they should be able to escape anywhere between fifty to eighty years from now. The storm is heading for galactic quadrant three, so they will most likely escape it between star sectors 249 and 2370. Of course that is assuming they survive the radiation,” said Tika.

“Radiation? What kind of radiation?” asked a council woman.

“Isanir radiation, a type of radiation unique to hyper-ion storms. Given the difficulties presented in studying such storms not much is known about it,” answered Tika.

“Could we help them? They have been good friends to us in the past, and it would only be fair that we at least try to help them. In fact my honor demands we at least try to help a good friend,” said the Chairman. A few others on both sides voice approval with the statement.

“We would need a class two hyperdrive, but yes it could be done. Assuming we could get said hyperdrive. Hyper-ion storms leave hyperspace roughly every ten years, if we can get one quickly enough we could chase the storm down, before it leaves the region and enter the storm. Given the size of the storm it may take any ship we send, months perhaps years to locate the Enterprise. However once they find the ship, they can use the hyperdrive to pull both ships out of hyperspace,” said Tika.

“I recall that the Rydi have some decent hyperdrives and we have good relations with them. Unlike the Malora and the Toral they aren’t at war, so they might be willing to sell us a couple of hyperdrives,” said a councilman.

“Well if we are going to do this, we must make sure the ship we send is properly equipped to handle any dangers we encounter in their and with the sensors to record any data. Being inside a hyper-ion storm represents a massive scientific opportunity, that can’t be ignored,” said a Councilwoman. Sparking a bit of a debate on the exact parameters of the mission before agreeing on what it was.

Tika was dismissed before they came to an agreement and Tulkor informed her that she had the next week scheduled as shore leave for her crew. She decided to take advantage of that to take care of the maintenance the ship needed.

Epilogue

Closing the Curtain

The sun was setting as Arlie finished telling the story for the day the sun was setting, and she was bombarded with questions. Questions she did her best to answer. One at time after listening to them.

“So you want to know who destroyed that planet. Well it was destroyed by a race called the Yokasi, but they had been destroyed because of it a thousand years before the Enterprise discovered the planet. Will the Enterprise survive the storm, well yes they did. Otherwise none of us would be here to tell the story. As for the Valorians, the was they are fighting won’t be the end of their civilization, but they will be devastated by the war. For the next thirty years the confederation will be embroiled in war. Their war with the Krall though is going to be brief, as in just under a year after the Krall formally declared war the Krall would occupy Valoria. Forcing their surrender to the Krall, who dismantled the Valorian Council and placed a new government in power. Her other neighbors however refused to recognize the new puppet government the Krall installed and continued to wage war with the Valorians.

The Krall of course moved to defend their new vassal from it neighbors, but they were only willing to commit so many ships to its defense. As a result the war would move little for the next three decades before those fighting finally came to the negotiating table. Ultimately the Valorians had little say in the treaty that followed and much of their territory was divided up. Leaving them with barely a fifth their previous size. The divisions mostly determined by who was occupying their worlds. Still the Valorians managed to keep the entirety of their core territories since those were the territories the Krall occupied. During this time period the Krall also purchase a pair of spare hyperdrives from the Rydi and outfitted a ship called the Hyketh with these hyperdrives and sent it on a dual purpose mission to both study the hyper-ion storm and rescue the Enterprise,” said Arlie.

“Did the Hyketh find the Enterprise and rescue the Enterprise?” asked a girl named Lily.

“What about Earth, surely there must be some survivors there right?” asked another girl who was her twin named Rose.

“Did the Hyketh find the Enterprise well you will find out tomorrow as I’ll be getting to that next. As for Earth, yes some people did survive the bombardment. Some are living beneath the surface in bunkers and caves, while the rest are struggling to survive on her contaminated surface. While many would die to the radiation, a sizeable enough population will survive, but will mutate a bit. Using what was left of Earth's rather impressive medical technology they managed to control this mutation. Keeping their appearance the same, but adapting their physiology to thrive in the contaminated environment they found themselves. Before long they would form fractured almost tribal societies that would spread across the planet. However they managed to keep a great deal of our knowledge. Eventually these clans as they became known would begin to war each other. Each having different customs and ideas on how to live. On how things should be done and even who should rule. These clan wars would last for centuries and change the very shape of human society. All of the wars ended rather suddenly when a Valorian exploration cruiser discovered Earth 575 SDE. By then humans now calling themselves Terrans were a highly xenophobic, and warlike race ruled by an empress and saw the Valorian presence and the results of said presence as an act of war. The Cathamari had been distorted over the years into what they called the Sky Demons.

The result is that in just over a year the newly formed Terran Empire readied a fleet of ten thousand warp capable warships and declared war on the Valorian Confederation. By then the Valorians had been released from her vassalage to the Krall and the Krall did not intervene in the war. The Valorians had not taken the Terran declaration of war seriously and been caught of guard by their invasion. Losing nearly twenty systems to the Terrans before they could bring sufficient force to halt the Terran advance to a stop. In any case this is really a story for another time where I can give you the real details,” said Arlie.

“Will the Enterprise ever build new escort ships?” asked a boy named Horon.

“Yes, she does, and by then our group of humans had designed some synthetics to fill the positions they needed to have filled. Especially since they decided they needed more ships than they could possibly man with people alone. We will hopefully get to that tomorrow anyway that is enough questions for today,” said Arlie as she dismissed her guests. The others leaving through her front door, wondering about the storm and the future of the Enterprise.