FanFic - DP/UF - Crossroads [12]
MegaZone
----------------------------------------------------------------TWELVE
"Think about it
Think about it
Think about it"
--Information Society
The next three months flew by in a blur for MegaZone and the
rest, as they immersed themselves in their work and forgot about their
emotions. The WDF had been a splintered group, its team spirit
shattered and its dynamic synergy of creative power destroyed. The
next three months were spent reforging that into an even more powerful
force.
And, in MegaZone's case, there was a hundred or so years of
catch-up learning to do.
Politically, he was pretty much caught up. He watched the
news; he was well aware that the United Galactica had collapsed under
its own bureaucratized weight seventy years before, replaced by the
trimmer, more dynamic United Federation of Planets. It did not
surprise him to learn that one of the driving forces behind the
organization of the UFP had been Celine. He knew that the Empire of
Kilrah was still a threat, and that the Klingon and Romulan Empires
had an uneasy truce with the Federation, too busy warring with each
other and the Klingon Republic to want a war with the primarily human
and Salusian Federation as well. He knew that the Discordian
Confederation was keeping the Kilrathi and the Cardassians off the
Federation for the moment, while the Fed dealt with this threat from
within. Unfortunately, the Cardassians and the Kilrathi had not had
the courtesy to start wars with each other like the Imperial Klingons
and Romulans.
He also knew that the GENOM fleet had flattened the
Federation's Starfleet at Wolf 359 before taking Earth back by force,
and was now on its way to Cygnus Beta to finish the job, once and for
all. That angered him, in a way that surprised him. He wasn't aware
that he cared anything for the planet of his birth, the Cradle of
Humanity as it was called these days; but there was a certain pride in
being able to say you were an Earthman, and it pleased him somehow.
He was pissed at GENOM for taking it.
No; the big catchup here was in tactics and strategy. He had
been the finest starship commander in space, but that was a hundred
years ago. Things had changed. And besides, he had an entire fleet
to command now. Granted, each vessel was commanded by a competent
officer; he had reviewed their records, all 546 of them. There were
also the new weapons and fighters to consider, including the new VF-2
Victory Veritech fighters (replacements for the time-honored Valkyrie
series, designed by Gryphon himself) and the experimental Gunstars,
and the concept of carrier battlegroups like Commodore Henry Decker's
Tiger's Claw and her entourage. The Federation Starfleet type ships
were a new thing as well; they fought differently than the slab-sided
navalesque ships Zoner was used to. The Republican Klingons allied
with them...well...they did whatever Klingon honor demanded.
For Gryphon, there was the whirlwind of construction
supervision on the classes of vessels he had designed; the Alaska
class battlecruisers and the new Confederation class megacarrier, the
Concordia, were his personal responsibility, as well as secondary
supervision on the Wandering Child, which was experiencing no end of
drive headaches. He was also picking out the flight crews of the
Concordia's fighter groups and assigning staff to the vessel, for it
was to be his command when the time came.
For Kei and Yuri, there were retraining seminars to reacquaint
them with their positions on the SDF-23's bridge, where they would be
until the crisis was over, and refreshers in large-vessel tactics and
the like.
Meanwhile, back at Musashi, ReRob and company stretched their
legendary ingenuity and imagination to their limits trying to make the
Phoenix as battleworthy as possible. Rob had heard of the SDF-23's
problems with the drive systems and thought he knew the answers, but
he had to complete his own ship before heading back to help them;
there was simply not time to send a pickup to take him to UP, fix the
problem, and return to Musashi. GENOM was on their way through the
Enigma Sector; they would reach Macleod Station within the week.
All in all, it was a hectic three months.
Gryphon and Zoner were on the bridge of the SDF-23, buried
deep in the side of the cosmocompass, as Gryphon tried to puzzle out
why the thing wasn't interfacing right with the drive computers and
Zoner absorbed information, when the turbolift doors opened and Lord
Fahrvergnugen strode in.
"Lord Fahrvergnugen on the bridge!" the Officer of the Deck
barked; the two officers pulled themselves out of the instrument panel
and turned to face their benefactor.
"My friends, GENOM has taken the Enigma Sector. They will be
here within the week. We're out of time. How long before this ship
is ready?"
"I don't know, sir," Gryphon replied, wiping grease off his
forehead with a rag and sighing. "Without ReRob here to puzzle out
that drive problem we're practically flying blind--he designed the
entire engine system."
"I have spoken with ReRob," Fahrvergnugen told him. "The
Phoenix is ready."
"Great...hey, Sparks, do me a favor. Punch up a tactical of
Enigma's border with this sector, and show me GENOM's course." The
technician at the tactical console obeyed, and the map appeared on the
main viewer. "Okay...now..." Gryphon murmured, perusing the screen.
"Sparks," Zoner said, "Highlight our position, GENOM's current
position, and Musashi." The tech did so. "Ah-ha!" Zoner cried.
"There it is. Look," he said, indicating, "GENOM will pass fairly
close to Musashi. Now, ReRob doesn't have a chance against that
battlefleet, granted--but the Phoenix is faster than they are, right?"
"Theoretically."
"Theoretically my ass. If Rob designed it, it's the fastest
thing in space, barring Hyper Valkyries and WarpZone. He can get in
front of them and lead them right to us!"
"Why would we want that?" asked Lord F.
"Look. Without ReRob, this ship can't fold. He's the only
one who knows what the hell is the deal with the fold drive. With his
instructions over subether, we got the impulse engines and the Reflex
furnaces to operating condition; for battle, that's all we need."
"Sir, we won't be able to fire the main gun without the fold
drive operational," Sparks cut in.
"I know that--but listen! GENOM will enter the system. Our
fleet engages theirs. ReRob beams over, tinkers with the drive while
we use the lesser weapons to fight a holding action. And then--boom!
We kick major ass!"
"I like this plan," Gryphon said. "The fleet has a couple of
other major weapons; hell, each Yamato class battleship has a
wave-motion gun, and the Concordia has the PTC-2."
"What the hell is the PTC-2?"
"It's a surprise."
"Oh, goody."
"Okay, look. We need to get on the horn to Rob and let him
know about this plan. In the meantime, I have to finish up
preparations on at least half a hundred ships, and you need to get
this beast as ready for combat as it can be without its chief
engineer. I'm up to my eyes in work...gah, sometimes I wonder why I
wanted to be a starship designer..."
"Thrill of creation?"
"Yeah, that's gotta be it." Gryphon started walking toward
the rear of the bridge. "I'm heading over to Planitia Control to
contact ReRob...coming, Admiral?"
"I hate that..."
ReRob's incredulous face leaned out of the screen, the aspect
ratio warping as he got too close to the camera.
"You want me to what?!"
"There's no danger, Rob, really! Well, except for the usual
dangers involved with being engaged in a war, of course."
"You're not making me feel better about this, Gryph."
"Look, it's simple," Zoner cut in. "You're faster than they
are. Stay out of their range and lead them here. Your bird enters
the sphere, you come across to SDF-23 and get those engines working
while the rest of the fleet keeps them off. I figure we can at least
fight a holding action if not push them back ourselves; the arrival of
the fortress should turn the tide decisively in our favor."
ReRob sighed. "Well...I can't say as I like it in
theory...but in practice, I think it just might work. We'll download
all the telemetry you have on the GENOM fleet's position, establish an
ETA, and let you know as soon as we finish crunching the numbers.
Phoenix out." The screen blacked.
"Well...he's not thrilled, but he'll do it. Now, it's crunch
time. Get back to your ship, Admiral--I've got a fleet to get ready."
Gryphon grabbed up his datapad and rushed off.
The Utopia Planitia Naval Shipyard swung into full-scale
action, a concentrated hive of chaotic-seeming activity.