Beyond Light

First Contact.

The bridge went silent for a moment, and the cheering grins that everyone kicked got replaced by frowning stares. Was the Lieutenant just playing a bad joke? from all the things that could have gone wrong in the mission, what she had stated was something that would not cross over their minds.

“What did you say, Hoffmann?” Captain Cortez turned his head to the Navigations Officer. “did I hear well what you just said?”

“Yes, Captain,” she responded. “I’m receiving lectures from at least eight objects of unknown origin moving to us in a straight vector. They are clearly of artificial origin judging by their heat and radiation emissions.”

Jay’s mind was petrified. Was that just a dream, and he was still during cryosleep? maybe his unresting mind was already generating a scenario of what would happen once he was on Vita Nova. He pinched his fingers and bit his tongue, but he was still in reality. He got up from his place and rushed to the navigation deck.

“Can you identify them?” he leaned on the back of lieutenant Hoffmann’s seat. “Do they match any entries in our database?”

“No, sir. We can’t identify them without the infrasensors running, We barely have power in the radars to detect their presence,” the young squeezed her lips and negated with her head.

“Hydra, you heard her. Put those systems back on work. Doesn’t matter if Adams puts any objections.”

“Sir Cortez, I remind you that the process of reactivating a system based on navigations could take from—”

“Just do it, Hydra! I gave you an order,” Jay swirled his eyes and bit his teeth.

To think that such an advanced artificial intelligence like her would end up being such an obnoxious obstacle. What were they thinking when they installed her on the Eternity of Return to work specifically alongside him? She looked like a model designed for cadets and students in the naval school, not for one of the most experimented captains on the INN.

If it weren’t by the directive —which Hydra also loved to remind him often about— Jay would have already put her on hibernating mode and made the old AI, Griff, get installed aboard once again. He was one-tenth of the stress and five times more useful than her, and his voice module was not as annoying to listen to.

“Captain,” Communications Officer Alberto Ramirez raised his voice. “Control Center is requesting to talk to you, quickly.”

“Responding. Try to establish a connection with our new friends with what we have, Ramirez,” Jay lifted his right arm and pressed the interface button on his wristcom.

A holographic screen sparkled light, and the connection on his terminal automatically synchronized to his portable device. “Captain Jay Cortez,” the technician on the Sol system spoke. “Please identify those vessels if you haven’t done so yet, and give us a quick summary about them. Do they resemble the engineering and/or structure of any PFSR—”

“Son,” interrupted Jay. “that goddamned Terrabringer EPAL or whatever its fancy name is got pushed way beyond its limits and almost blew us all back to an atomic form. We don’t have any sensors operating yet, and our radars are working at the minimum. We have no clue whether those UFOs belong to the Federation or not. Don’t bother us again with that. We’ll send you what we have when we are ready.”

He felt a little bad for the boy on the other side, as he was only doing his job. But it was clearer than water that those behind the INIS and Project Ad-Infinitum were listening to that com. channel. He would not let them tell him how to do his job after thinking they could just use him and his people as guinea pigs. They only cared about their political agendas.

“Hydra informing: Energy restoration to the navigation module tools: 50%. Please wait patiently.”

Jay wanted to tell her to hurry, although he knew that wouldn’t change anything. The last thing he needed was more stress. If it got over his mind, well, the results would end catastrophically. Being the captain of a dreadnought and more than 3000 people required having a calm and bold attitude, no matter the situation.

Everyone kept working on their computers, although they looked at Navigator Hoffmann every five seconds just to see if she had something else to say.

“I think I know what the high command wants to know, Captain,” mocked Commander Star. “they are afraid that the federation beat them, and they had been waiting for us here just to mock us. Or attack, in the worst of cases.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Jay sighed. He dissipated the holographic screen on his wristcom and passed the connection to his earcom. He then moved to the communications deck. Ramirez pulsed the screen repeatedly with grinding frustration.

“How’s our connection going, Lieutenant?” asked Jay. “have they identified themselves yet?"

“No, Captain. And with all due respect, this sucks,” responded Ramirez. “We need more energy for our Com. systems. I have barely been able to send a signal with only 45 Gigahertz. Not even my granny watched her shows at such a low frequency.”

“And have they responded? anything?”

“No, Captain. No response so far,” the bald Lieutenant squeezed his lips and raised his glasses, rubbing his eyes before continuing working on his interface.

“Hydra informing. Energy restoration: 100% percent. Status Complete. Reactivating infrasensor systems.”

“Finally! Sending a scanning pulse in a radius of 10’000’000 kilometers,” Officer Hoffman loudly yelled with a relieving breath. Everyone looked at her.

Jay rushed to her place on the other side of the bridge. “You’ve got our scans, Lieutenant?” he asked. “Do these objects match to any entry in our database?”

“Just a moment, sir,” the woman mumbled, moving his fingers quickly on her keyboard, and then slicing them like a finger painter on the holographic screen. “Gotcha! Generating 3D models of them. Look at this, sir!”

A circular screen overrode the falling lines of text of the first picture, and in the middle, the figure of what looked like a spaceship appeared, rotating slowly. Jay and Hoffmann traded looks. What was on the screen looked like something pulled out from a fiction story.

A red message suddenly popped on the interface: “Error: No matches available.”

Jay almost wanted to tell the young lieutenant to check out and re-run the entry register once again, but it was more than obvious that what was before their eyes could have not belonged to any ship operating on the Sol System. The Navigations Officer pinched the screen and then spread her fingers to make the model bigger.

The ship looked like a cylindrical tube covered by two short, triangular wings at each side, which curved down and up to the vessel’s main body. On their surfaces, at least 10 pairs of tiny and polished scales emanated, raising or contracting to the wings as the model slowly spun. The vessel then got wider to the bottom, giving it a shape similar to an isosceles triangle. At the rear, a horizontal wing that resembled the tail fin of a whale covered three thin mini tails that extended to a triangular propulsor of smooth ridges.

A message popped on the screen: “Color generated,” the model shined in a dark, platinized dark green, with the tips of her wings shining in red color. The propulsor also got lit; its Stella dazzled in a soft tone of lilac: a color that Jay had never seen on any propulsor known to man.

“What the hell… Do you recognize this?” Lieutenant Hoffman looked at Jay, but he looked as disconcerted as her, rubbing his red mustache.

“I… don’t think we are facing any PFSR vessels, Lieutenant,” he mumbled. “maybe we did beat the federating on the FTL race, after all.”

The woman looked at the screen and then once again at her captain. He slowly nodded, with his blue eyes fixated on the green of hers. “You mean that...” she whispered, but neither of them needed any words to express the answer.

“Captain Cortez,” the Technician’s voice on his earcom spoke, pulling Jay out from his assumptions. “we have spotted those unidentified vessels through the telescopic cameras mounted on your ship. They don’t respond to any INSU nor PFSR’s vessel entries.”

“You’re thinking the same as I?” asked Jay, although the question was not directed to the young man, but those above him listening and pulling the strings.

“We suspect that the PFSR must have built those ships on your side only for their leap mission. Those strange series of wings reassemble the ones of a PFSR'S canceled project,” responded the Technician.

Jay swirled his eyes. How could they be so idiotic? even with the evidence before their eyes, they still wanted excuses to find trouble with the rival faction just to satisfy their personal agendas. He felt glad for having joined the Navy and not a government agency when young, although it was clear that the INN was also filled with corrupt people meddling in political matters.

“Captain,” cried Lieutenant Hoffman. “those ships keep approaching! Only 200’000 kilometers from us”

“And they still don’t respond to our calls!” Com. Technician Ramirez exclaimed from the other side.

“Captain Cortez,” the Control Center’s technician on his earcom spoke. “try to establish a connection with those vessels. Open fire if they don’t stop their trajectory. You are authorized to attack. We are trying to call the high command of the PFSR here on the solar system. They surely will have an explanation for all of this.”

“So, the commies beat us after all?” said Commander Blair Star with an ironic tone. Captain Cortez had left the communication channel open for the bridge, so any crew members in there could listen to the connection from their terminals. “and we are gonna attack them? Damn. A conflict 100 times worse than the Uranian Crysis of the 21’ will come.”

“No, son. I don’t think we’re facing any PFSR’s fleet this time,” Jay replied. Everyone stared at him in the confusion of denial, but he returned to his place and sat straight on his seat.

He connected his terminal to the telescopic cameras, and the eccentric group of vessels was now at a neighboring distance, getting bigger with each passing second. They didn’t break their formation. What were they planning to do?

“Combat Systems Officer,” Jay spoke to Master Sargeant Kent Brooks. The black man on the left side of the bridge turned his head to him. “are our Hydra Cannons operating?”

“All of them loaded and ready to fire sir,” he responded. “are we going to engage on…”

“We are already engaged,” Jay responded. “If our friends don’t want to respond to our friendly calls, then we are going to vaporize them before they collide their weird ships against our precious Eternity of Return. Flight Officer,” he spoke to Flight Ensign Dante Rossi. “deviate the ship at 80 grades from their relative distance. Give us a good angle of fire. Brooks, be ready. Have a solution of fire for the Hydra Cannons ready on automatic. Hydra, assist him in the calibrations and inform everyone on gunnery decks 1 and 3 to put to work our Rosenkopf cannons. We are likely going to need them.”

“Understood, Captain,” Rossi and Brooks said in unison.

“Captain Cortez,” sounded Hydra’s voice. “I just remind you that we are engaging in combat with no shielding systems active on unfriendly and unknown territory. I suggest you to—”

“Hydra,” Jay responded. “I don’t know when it’s going to be the last day I tell you this, but shut up and let me do my work. I know the risks, but we can’t deviate any energy to recover our shields, or that Terrabringer engine will kill us all. Besides, we’re fighting vessels no longer than 700 meters. We have this under control.”

Jay didn’t know if he could believe his own words, but he needed to show himself calm and collected to his subordinates. Letting panic run when confronting an unknown enemy was one of the worst things that a Captain could do, and he had to take his risks. Escaping with an overheated engine was not an option, and they had no clues about the tracking capabilities of those ships. They had to fight.

But what were those vessels trying to accomplish? and who was there? he knew they weren’t any PFSR ships, contrary to what the INIS and the ISI wanted to believe. There was no way those ships were of human assembly. Their structures and qualities contradicted most of the human space aeronautics, and that was for not saying that they just looked plain weird.

After centuries of wonder and search, could they say they discovered that humans weren’t alone in the universe? they were going to find out. To think that their first encounter had to be a violent one only gave Jay uncomfortable feelings.