Novaporta system, Axdelian Interstellar Federation, late 2100’s
Illuminated with bright orange light from the turbulent red dwarf flaring in the systems core, the triangular silhouette of the slamgate was burned into the main display of the colony ship Gracie Smith. For three weeks she had been burning sunward on a precision course that would let her directly intersect the gate, and now she was running cold, silently speeding towards it at 2.5% the speed of light.
The Gracie was not alone, however. Three other vessels accompanied her, also running with their drives off and producing minimal thermal output. Lily Smith was one of these vessels, the Gracies’ sister ship. 600 meters in length with a bare, framework hull dotted with liquid hydrogen fuel globes and ring habitats for providing artificial gravity, headed by an angular command and engineering structure at the front. Thrust was provided by three sizeable military grade fusion drives salvaged and retrofitted from a scrapped high-speed cruiser, power provided by four fusion cores for redundancy. Behind the Lily, was the Fuuyama, a blocky mining transport which had been extensively modified for the trip alongside the two purpose-built colony ships. It featured just a single boosted and overworked fusion drive which promised to detonate if it was pushed for more than a few G’s of thrust and glowed with an unhealthy orange incandescence during a sustained burn.
Ahead of the worn, cobbled-together fleet of plucky colony ships, however, was the real star of the show. The Gorgo Epsonali, a destroyer who’s thickly armoured, angular, industrial hull was riddled by a total of fifteen 40mm point defense cannons along the sides and seven torpedo tubes protected by articulated covers on her frontal plate. Four blocky fusion drives separate from the hexagonal superstructure could provide continuous thrust efficiently up to G forces which would kill her crew in less than a minute and a warp drive to match. Her time to shine would come very soon, though, as Axdelian short range radar sweeps slowly began licking the quartet’s hulls.
[hr]
“We just got another EM spike,” shouted the scopes officer aboard the bridge of the Gracie. “Single wavelength, high intensity. Definitely a LIDAR tracking beam.”
Aboard the Gracie, Captain Lucio Martins walked from the tactical screen in the center of the cramped room and over to the officers station. Real time data was streaming in from sensors all over the ship, showing a pattern of beams dancing in mathematical patterns across the hull. Service ports did a similar thing to decide where a ship should dock on their station, though in this case the data was more likely being inputted into railgun targeting computers and torpedo guidance systems to decide what parts of the ship would be.
“Took them long enough, eh? Thought we’d caught them napping and something in life would be easy for once,” Martins Chuckled, heading back to the tactical screen where his executive officer Rebecca Verne was waiting. “Any new contacts yet?”
“No sir, just a few patrol vessels and workboats,” she replied. “And our new friend painting us with a laser of course.”
Seconds later a friendly tone burst out of the bridge speakers signalling that the Gracie was being hailed by a wideband transmission. Martins tapped the tactical screen twice to accept the request.
“This is the dreadnought AEV Chimera,” boomed a commanding female voice over the comms system. “Unidentified ships, you have entered restricted space. Activate your transponders and adjust your vector immediately. You have 30 seconds to comply or you will be fired upon!”
Martins looked over at Verne and smirked. “Start up the drives and prepare for a hard burn. It’s about to get loud.”
“This is Captain Steven Dawes of the Gorgo Epsonali,” Said another more sarcastic voice over wideband comms. “This seems very strange, we have a permit to pass through the slamgate right here! So if you’d let us by that would be just fine, no need to get touchy-feely.”
“What a prick,” Verne scoffed. “We’ve picked up 6 new drive signatures burning hard for the gate in a defensive cluster. We’ll be able avoid their railgun fire but their torpedoes will be a big problem.”
“Lets trust Dawes and the Epsonali,” said Martins. “We sold our souls for that destroyer so it’d better buy us passage through the gate.”
“Either way, it’s gonna be one hell of a light show out there in a minute.”
One by one, the quartet lit their drives, releasing plumes of plasma behind them and accelerating hard towards the distant slamgate. The Epsonali pushed ahead of the colony ships in a defensive stance ready to intercept any incoming projectiles.
“Gorgo Epsonali, your ships have not been authorised to pass through the gate. All ships, veer off now and decelerate for boarding!” Said the Chimera’s captain.
The quartet continued to burn, gaining speed and closing the distance between them and the gate even more. Moments later, the Axdelian warships had decided that they had gotten too close and opened fire, releasing dozens upon dozens of torpedoes on intercept courses from across the system. Verne cursed under her breath and mumbled something akin to a prayer. Martins gripped the console tighter. Minutes dragged on like days and millions of kilometers were travelled as the tactical screen showed the torpedoes inching closer to the flotilla and the flotilla inching closer to the gate. Eventually, the wave of torpedoes entered PDC range and the Epsonali finally retaliated. Thousands of tungsten shells streaked out from her cannons, shredding the torpedoes with efficiency and ease. Not a single one went closer than 500Km to the ships, the debris being harmlessly absorbed by their armour or avoided entirely. The mood aboard the Gracie went from grim to ecstatic in moments, cheers erupting from all witnessing the destruction.
“As I was saying,” Dawes laughed over comms. “We have a permit to pass through the gate, and his name is me!”
“Asshole,” Verne cheered. “We’ve got another wave of torpedoes incoming, though I don’t think we need to worry about them anymore!”
“I think this is when we break out the good whiskey,” Martins replied. For once things looked like they were all going well, and he returned to his seat to relax. Just as he did, everything went to hell.
“CONTACT, 100,000 clicks dead ahead!” Verne screamed, causing Martins to leap all the way from his seat to the tactical console. “No, it can’t be…”
“What’s going on!” he shouted, scrambling to look at the screens.
“The Epsonali’s been target locked by a ship which came out of nowhere!”
“Get Dawes on comms, NOW!” Martins ordered, though it was too late. The mysterious ship had already zipped by, putting a railgun round right through the reactor core of the Epsonali causing the whole ship to be instantly consumed in a violent burst of plasma. The three colony ships tried their best to avoid ploughing through the wreckage, though they were all hit with a shotgun blast of glowing hull shards. Not being as manoeuvrable as the other two ships, Fuuyama was subject to the worst of the debris field, colliding directly with one of the destroyers spinning thrusters.
“What the fuck was that!” Martins cursed.
“Must have been some kind of stealth ship,” Said Verne, regaining her composure. “I’ve heard tales from the AIF about their obsession with technology, though I didn’t know it’d be that good. Whatever it is, it’s behind us now and we’re moving too quickly for it to fire on us again. We still have those torpedoes to worry about but if we increase our burn to 3 gees we’ll make it to the slamgate before we get slagged too.”
“Relay that to Lily Smith and Fuuyama immediately. Make sure they know we’re not giving up just yet.”
Before they could transmit anything, however, they were hailed by Fuuyama, which had begun lagging behind the others and leaking liquid from a massive gash on her mid-hull.
“Martins, we can’t do this anymore,” the captain stated, broadcasting their message over wideband comms.
“What do you mean you can’t, we’re almost there!” Martins responded with disbelief. “You seriously don’t want to go back to the slums on Urth now do you?”
“The Epsonali is gone, our engine’s temperature is flaring wildly, and we’re leaking water rapidly from the collision. I’m sorry but I promised everyone on board that if something went wrong, I would not put their lives at risk for this dream. Your dream,” they replied, still broadcasting. “Chimera, this is the colony ship Fuuyama. We surrender and are diverting our-”
Martins cut the audio. There was a long pause only interrupted by the faint beeping of the tactical console.
“They’ve changed course,” said Verne solemnly. “Maybe they’re right. We can beat the torpedoes if we’re quick enough, but if there’s another stealth ship between us and the gate we’ll be sucking vacuum.”
“We didn’t sacrifice everything to give up like this, Verne. How long until we reach it?”
“About four minutes.”
“We’ll risk it,” Martins replied instantly. “Besides, Fuuyama was holding us back with her slow drive. Is the Lily still with us?”
“Affirmative.”
“Relay the order to increase burn. Remind them we have a whole galaxy waiting for us on the other side of that gate!”
The triple engines of both ships roared with power, leaving a high velocity streak of pink-purple plasma in their wake. The slamgate was now almost visible with the naked eye, its colossal triangular frame confining whatever arcane field effect phenomenon caused objects to be propelled superluminally into the stars. At the speed they were going, this would send the two colony ships perhaps thousands of light years away into uncharted space free from any threat of lawless piracy, bloodthirsty mercenaries or government annexation. Just as it looked like they would scrape through, the ships sensors began picking up yet more threats to their freedom
“New set thermal signatures around the gate, can’t tell what they are.”
“Are they more stealth ships?”
“No their spectral signatures are different, and they’re much larger than the ship which splashed the Epsonali”
“Prepare for evasive action, get everyone on the ship secured.”
As the distance between the two ships and the slamgate rapidly closed, it became clear what the heat signatures were. There were six objects orbiting in synchrony some distance from the slamgate in strategic positions. Small plumes of steam from RCS thrusters were visible around two of them, though the others were unmoved, revealing their sleek hulls supporting vast sensor arrays and gigantic railgun barrels many hundreds of meters in length. They were not stealth ships, but immense defence platforms.
Martins opened his mouth the moment a gigantic round from one of the platforms punched through the rear of the ship, skimming one of the reactors and instantly disabling two of the thrusters. The whole ship was slammed sideways by the momentum, sending it spinning off course under half a million kilometers from the gate. The Lily Smith fared much worse, however. The round had gone practically from end to end through the ship, bursting most of the fuel globes and causing the framework hull to shear and shatter. Her habitation rings held on dearly to what remained, but experienced a hail of shrapnel from the burst hydrogen tanks causing innumerable hull breaks. All of the leaking fuel caused the ship to veer off wildly away from the gate, thankfully in the opposite direction to the Gracie.
“Is the ship still operational?” Martins gasped, blood seeping from a wound on his forehead.
“Uhm,” Verne murmured. “Engines 1 and 3 are not responding, 2 is reporting no power. Other than that we’re spinning pretty bad but that’s about it.”
Martins’ brain raced for solutions. As he did, the torpedo barrage heading towards them whipped past harmlessly, having changed course now that they were no longer a threat.
“I’m going to point us towards the gate,” Martins said slowly. “Then, activate the warp drive.”
Verne looked at him, shocked. “You know what happens if we go into that thing at greater than light speed, right? We can’t fucking do that.”
“I know, I’m not saying that. But if we’re careful we can use the drive to push us at sub-light speeds safely through the gate.”
“But at that speed we would be propel-” Verne stammered, but Martins was already at the controls, correcting the ships spin and aligning with the slamgate.
There were seconds to spare before they would pass by the gate, and the railgun platforms quickly picked up on his desperate plan, preparing to fire on the Gracie again to fully disable her with a round through the fuel globes. Just as they were about to, the space around the ship began to warp, distorting the light behind her and accelerating too fast to comprehend. She plunged straight through the center of the gate, the field effect manifesting intense gravitational radiation thanks to her immense mass and speed, visibly distorting space along the plane of the gate for several minutes afterwards.
The three other three ships were recovered and any survivors detained and provided with a long sentence of prison labour on the capitol world of Aquanis. The Gracie and all her crew were never seen again.
[hr]
The warp drive whined in pain for over a week after they passed through the gate. Outside of the ship, space was so warped it looked like an event horizon. A few estimates from the engineering crew based upon how much energy the drive had consumed before they crossed the field effect of the slamgate gave them a speed of 0.99c plus or minus six percent. Nobody was sure if they had suffered the fate of those who passed through the gates at FTL speeds, or if they were careening outwards at many billions of light years per day. Eventually, however, the ship managed to decelerate. The scopes spotted a star cluster of some kind and a relatively calm area of space inhabited by yellow and red dwarf stars. Soon enough they located several systems with potentially habitable planets. A few tries found them a planet slightly smaller than Urth with 90% water by surface area teeming with basic aquatic multicellular analogues. The damaged ship carefully parked itself into orbit, and they put their supplies to good use, adapting their immune systems to the local fauna and setting up a new colony on the planet which orbited a pair of calm orange stars. They named their planned city New Epsonali after the warship which bought them their freedom, and looked up at night into the alien sky of a strange and foreign elliptical galaxy, far, far beyond the complications of ‘civilised’ space.
(OOC: this is just a single post intro kinda thing rn)