FanFic - DP/UF - Crossroads [11]
MegaZone
----------------------------------------------------------------ELEVEN
"Faster, meaner, smarter...man, I hate the technology curve."
--FastJack
"Where are we going, anyway?" asked Zoner from the back of the
Lovely Angel's cockpit. WarpZone had been taken in tow, and Gryphon's
fighter ensconced in the docking bay under the ship, so that they
could all make the journey to their common destination together.
ReRob and company were remaining back at Musashi, doing some
last-minute kludging on Phoenix.
"Might as well just show you," Kei replied, toggling the
cockpit windows out of their glare-guard opacity. Zoner gasped at
what lay before them; it was a huge silver sphere, its true size
impossible to determine, but immense, to be certain. According to the
gravimeter, they were in a star system's gravitational well; but there
was no star. It was then that he realized what he was looking at.
"My God," he whispered. "Is that a Dyson sphere?"
"Two points for the Zonermeister," said Gryphon from his seat
behind Kei.
"Who built it? Where the hell are we?"
They ignored him; Gryphon was too busy keying the comm system
online as Kei and Yuri plotted an approach and shifted the Angel's
systems to gravitic compensation mode.
"Planitia Control, this is Lovely Angel on final approach,
bearing zero mark zero on gate one four five. Request that you open
gate."
"Lovely Angel, this is Planitia Control. Gate is open.
Proceed with approach, docking bay fourteen."
"That's Utopia Planitia?!" Zoner cried, his jaw dropping.
The Lovely Angel swung in close to the silvery surface of the
sphere, stretching off so far now in the distance that it appeared
flat. Its radius must have been one and a half astronomical units, at
least, corresponding exactly to the orbit of Planitia itself. A huge
hatchway had opened in the side of the sphere, permitting the vessel
entry, and she swooped through. And MegaZone had the first view he
had ever had of the new Utopia Planitia Naval Shipyards.
Latticework spacedocks stretched from here to the end of his
imagination, off toward the star in the center of the sphere, so very
far away. Some vessels were moored to the surface, other floating
free, shuttlecraft flitting here and there. Most looked complete;
some were still in the final stages of fitting and preparation. And
the diversity! MegaZone counted among them Excelsior class
battleships, Bengal class carriers, Colonial Battlestars, Exeter and
Constitution class cruisers, even Alaska class battlecruisers--he even
spotted a couple of Klingon D-7s.
"There must be hundreds of them," Zoner murmured.
"Five hundred forty-six, at last count. 90% are ready for
battle right now; the rest need only minor fittings and adjustments,
and we're waiting for senior staff on a bunch of them."
While they were speaking, the Angel was navigating through the
maze at nearly one-quarter impulse power, streaking past vessels of
every shape, size and description, in a sweeping turn that would take
them to the far side of the star. And as they cleared it and came
about to the opposite side of the sphere, MegaZone found himself
looking at a ghost from the past. Huge, blue and white, with a long,
tapering foredeck and mighty thrusters aft; Bengal class carriers, two
of them, mounted on armatures port and starboard; a majestic and proud
flying bridge; railguns like spikes from the "shoulders" of the
armatures. The Wayward Son!
No, he corrected himself. It's not. It's too large, for one
thing. By the size of the other vessels around it, he judged the
vessel he was looking at to be over eight kilometers long. Much
larger than the Wayward Son, which had been only 3,800 meters stem to
stern. And its surface was different, marked with more small weapons
turrets and odd sensory bulges and things of function not readily and
intuitively apparent. And, he noticed, mounted on the rear of the
flying bridge, aft of the bridge windows proper, was the old Wedge,
looking like another sensor array among the many that dotted the huge
vessel's hull. Zoner's eyes slipped down its side, from the huge
impulse thrusters rearward, down the fighter carriers, to the tips of
the Tycho Naval Mass Drivers and out to the end of the foredeck, where
he could make out the words:
W.D.F. WANDERING CHILD SDF-23
Gryphon had risen to his feet behind him, and now he reached
up and touched his shoulder. When Zoner turned around, Gryphon was
pinning a small golden Maltese cross to his epaulet.
"Admiral," he said, "Your new command."
"Wait a second," Zoner cried, following Gryphon out of the
cockpit as Kei and Yuri made mooring arrangements, "Admiral? I never
agreed to any--"
"It's a fleet, therefore we need an admiral. Can you deny
that?"
"No, but--"
"And as the leader of the Wedge Defense Force, you should hold
the highest rank, correct?"
"Well obviously--but no one told me we were going to have a
fucking fleet! I mean Eve mentioned that we had more than one ship,
but a goddess damn fleet!"
"Trust me," Gryphon replied as they navigated the Angel's
corridors, "we're going to need it, if our intelligence data on
GENOM's strength is correct."
"Wait a minute--where are we going? Why isn't the Angel
docking?"
"Admiral, Admiral...you really must get acquainted with the
new technologies," Gryphon replied, leading Zoner into a room off to
the side. Kei and Yuri were waiting for them, having used the
turbolift.
"New technologies, what are you--?" Zoner stopped short as he
registered what was in the room: a control panel, facing a small,
three-walled alcove which had six round pads in a ring arranged in it.
"Oh, no. Are these what I think they--"
"Just step onto the pad, Admiral, and everything will be
fine," Yuri said with a smile, taking his arm and leading him up into
the alcove.
"Yeah, fine. Just going to scatter me about the cosmos. You
sure this thing can handle cybered Deitans?"
"What kind of goober are you anyway? It's matter, isn't it?
Shut up and get on," Gryphon snapped. "Geez, what a wuss."
Once they were all standing on the pads, Gryphon took a small
black device out of his pocket with a grin, flipped the gold grille
cover open, and said, "Gryphon to Planitia Control. Energize."
They were swallowed up by a blue glow; when they reappeared,
it was in another, similar, but much larger room, and there was a
large group of people waiting for them.
Zoner didn't notice them; he was too busy looking down at his
hands. "Wow! Transporter technology? Back in the old days we
thought that was just a pipe dream, how did--"
"You may thank your friend Dr. Petrarca for the transporters,
as well as many of our other improvements in matter replication and
transmission, Admiral," boomed a familiar voice. "Welcome, MegaZone.
Welcome back to the Wedge Defense Force."
Zoner's eyes widened. There, along with an entourage of
technicians and a group of familiar faces in uniforms that Zoner
recognized as familiar, but not WDF, was Lord Wolfgang Amadeus
Fahrvergnugen himself, black battlearmor and all.
"Wolfgang! How's it been? I haven't seen you in... what
sixty, seventy years? Last I heard you and Celine were missing. I'm
not dealing..."
Fahvergnugen strode up to take charge of his confused
compatriot, and, as he was leading Zoner out of the room with a
friendly arm over his shoulder, was saying, "There have been many
changes, my young friend..."