Chapter 17: An Enemy Returns Interlude

The communications officer of the Devastator reported to Stahl. “Sir we have no contact to Fornax Hub. The last message we received was a distress call and now it is silent on all channels.”

The old Admiral wished the huge ship could go any faster and glanced over to captain Harris, knowing full well that the ship was already pushing its engines close to the red line. He did not want to push them any further. The mighty Devastator would be of no help if she arrived at a crisis with damaged engines. Thankfully the Attikan Commonwealth was not only part of the Union now, but they had sent a full battle group to Fornax and all ships with the fast Attikan engines, but it would take them month to get there.

Attikan and Union engineers already worked on Attikan type engines big enough to fit the Devi but they would not be ready until next year.

The Devi still had the old Celtest Engines as well, but they had not been used in over 1500years, he had used them to fly the Devastator home, when he found that ship, but they had not been used since. As good and far advanced the Celtest technology was, age and wear affected it too.

He sighed and Harris reacted knowing his old friend to well and pushed the direct link to engineering. The Chief Engineer of the ship was one of the handpicked talents and he too already knew what his Captain wanted of him.” I ran some pretests. I think we can risk it.”

“Alright, Commander Dohan. Fire the old Celtest Engines up and give us what they got.”

Stahl walked up to the command balcony and sat in his chair on the left side behind the Captain. He trusted Harris, who commanded the Devi now almost twenty years and was her nineteenth captain since Stahl had brought the ship as he returned from his exile, and he was perhaps the finest Captain she had. Harris was more than that; he was one of the few real friends he had. He was afraid of making too many friends, because as an Immortal he had seen too many of them die.

In times like this he cursed the fact that he was an Admiral. He would much rather sit in the Command chair, heck he would not even mind manning Tactical. He was reduced to a passenger and he carefully avoided ever interfering with the Captain.

The Sirens of General Quarters sounded. The bridge was never brightly illuminated, but now the lights dimmed away and replaced by dim red light of battle stations. The Devi was 34 kilometers from bow to stern and almost as wide and over 9000 meters thick. It was an enormous machine and it carried the very elite of Union fleet talent. It took only three minutes and all stations reported ready. Captain Harris addressed the crew via Inter ship.” We are about to activate the Celtest Engines, damage control teams stand by.”