Chapter 2

Xi Pegasi System
Geneva – Earth Wormhole Terminus
14/02/41 NR 2115 Hours

“Contact!” A blood red icon appeared on the plot, and the tall commander turned her chair to face her tactical officer. “Designate as Bandit One!”

“Track and stand by weapons,” Taela Redding, captain of the Geneva Naval Service Frigate Raimella Davies, said quietly, and then she pressed her comms touchpad. “Commodore, we have a transit through the wormhole.”

Commodore Legrere looked up from her computer monitor and activated her own comm. “I’ll be there in five minutes.” There was no point in saying more; she had spent the last four days conferring with her captains, and they knew what to do. She pushed away from her desk, turned in midair, and pushed off toward her locker.

Five minutes later, Legrere pulled herself through the bridge hatch and settled into her command station at the rear of the compartment. The Davies was one of three frigates that had been designed as command ships, with the additional bridge station and communications equipment needed for the task. “Report,” she said calmly.

“We have three transits so far, and no one has said a word,” Redding replied immediately. “The squadron is cleared for action, and we have good telemetry on all the deployed birds. We’re still hailing them.”

Legrere sat back and regarded her displays with scant favor. Letting these ships into her space wasn’t the best tactical decision, but her orders were clear. The last thing the Council wanted was a war with Earth, and she’d been instructed to do everything in her power to prevent one. “Give me an open channel,” she rapped.

“Ready,” came the reply from the electronics and communications officer.

“United Nations vessels, this is Commodore Legrere, Geneva Naval Service. You are intruding in New Geneva territory. State your intentions.” She leaned forward in her chair as she awaited a response. As she watched, the four intruders drifted away from the wormhole in trail formation. Their ships were smaller than Legrere’s frigates; her force out massed them two to one. If they intended to fight and live, this wasn’t the way to go about it.

“Incoming message, Commodore.”

“Put them through, please.”

“Good day, Commodore,” a cultured baritone said from her speaker. “I am Captain Edward Knightley, of the United Nations Space Forces. We are here to secure this star system by order of the Security Council. Your ships have fired on ours without provocation, and we require you to stand down and allow us to proceed.”

“You have no jurisdiction here, Captain Knightley. We are an independent star nation with no ties to Earth, much less the United Nations.” Legrere kept her voice level as the import of what she was doing bore down on her. “Either stand down and talk, or turn your ships around and transit back to Earth. We have no wish to fight you, but we will if you persist.” “I’m truly sorry, Commodore, but I’m not in a position to debate this matter with you. Now, please shut down your radar and lidar, and destroy your mines. Don’t make this harder than it is.”

“New contact!” Davies’ tactical officer barked. “It’s ... holy smokes!”

Legrere stared at her display in disbelief. The new contact was a warship like she’d never seen. It was easily the size of the Wells herself, and it was bringing up its targeting systems as she watched. If she allowed that monster the time to localize her ships, they would be slaughtered. “Designate the new arrival as Target Alpha!” she snapped. “All frigates, engage! Divide Bandits One through Four among the scouts and engage!”

“We are still awaiting...” Knightley began.

“I’m sorry, Captain, I really am. Goodbye.” She made a cutting motion across her throat, silencing whatever the captain might have said, and turned her attention to the battle she had been unable to prevent.

Xi Pegasi System System Command 14/02/41 NR 2410 Hours

Admiral Peters turned away from his computer displays and looked out the viewport. New Geneva lay resplendent before him, but the vista hardly registered. He watched as a shuttle backed away from the station’s docking arm, its thrusters flaring a brilliant blue against the craft’s white hull. He wondered what the passengers had heard about the battle at the Earth wormhole terminus.

First Squadron was gone. Commodore Legrere’s flagship had been destroyed minutes into the battle, but only after she’d hit the enemy hard. They were truly enemies now, he reflected. The heavier ship, he had no idea what class it was, but System Command had called it a cruiser, had died hard, taking the last warships in the Xi Pegasi System with it. Commander Rogers’ crew had managed to repair the Evans in time to join the battle, and his frigate had been the last to die as he led the assault against the damaged cruiser. Now, the only ships still moving in the system were three ore carriers that were hastening to the terminus to search for survivors. None of the drifting hulks remaining from the battle were answering hails, and there were only a few lifeboat beacons transmitting.

The first ships from Delta Volantis would arrive in hours, but they would take four days to reach either New Geneva or the Sol terminus. If the UN had more of those cruisers to throw at him, or, God forbid, even larger ships, there was little chance of holding the system. At the moment, he had no choice but to try. Of the eighty-eight thousand citizens of the extended New Geneva colony, some fifty thousand of them were on New Geneva itself. Worse, half of the total population was children under the age of twelve.

The colonists had numbered four hundred and eighty-five persons when they made planetfall forty-two years ago. Once they had beaten the infertility issue that had nearly doomed the colony, they started having children. Lots of children. The medical staff, led by Doctor Faith Ozawa, had embarked on an ambitious program of ex vitro child bearing that saw practically every family having one child, and sometimes more than one, per year.

Even at that rate, the population increased relatively slowly in absolute numbers. Twenty years later, there were only six thousand colonists. Ten years after that, there were forty thousand. In another twenty years, the population would exceed one million people. Of course, not everyone wanted to care for that many children, and a few people had no offspring at all. If an evacuation became necessary, there was only enough shipping to carry five thousand people through the Delta Volantis wormhole terminus. Some of the older intrasystem cargo ships weren’t stressed for operations though wormholes, nor was the Wells herself. She had been fortunate to survive her single, unplanned transit from Earth.

Peters sighed and sat back down at his desk. The decision to evacuate wasn’t his to make, and he was profoundly grateful for it. Nothing about the UN ships’ actions made sense. The UN may have considered the colony a threat, but to attack without any attempt to parley was an ominous sign.

Now, he had to formulate a defense to keep the – what was it the newscaster had called them – Terrans - out of his home system. The UN cruiser had proven to be too much for First Squadron. The battle had been won - if a total loss of both sides’ combatants cold be considered a victory - due to Commodore Legrere’s idea to emplace some of her antiship missiles around the wormhole. Even though the Terrans had known about them, they had been unable to find them until it was too late.

The idea of hiding a ship in space had been touted for years in science fiction. While it was true that a ship could hide its electronic emissions and be made of materials that were undetectable by radar and visual systems, there was one emission that simply could not be hidden – heat. Power plants, engines, weapons, electronics, people; they all produced heat. Worse, the only way to dissipate heat in space was via radiation. All ships had radiators to remove heat from their internal environments. These radiators had to be extremely large to present enough surface area to open space, and they were also very fragile. They were stowed during acceleration, and then deployed to chill the coolant that constantly circulated through the ships’ environmental and engineering systems.