I can’t believe my eyes. “Thank you Lord. This is so incredible. No nuclear cloud. The portal gate was secured within that energy dome, which is intact, and the city is fine. But everything inside the dome, the military base, the portal gate ... all gone.”
The dome is still there. A glint of refraction here and there from a haunting glow. The dome is intact, not even a smudge. Crystal clear. But nothing in the dome remains. Just a deep glowing crater. The dome housed a military base, along with the portal gate. We have accomplished our mission, unless the Empire ship made it through. I didn’t see any ships when we were in the dome. It must have been underground.
Roll sounds almost like he’s in a trance. “There were no ships on the surface. Underground hanger. Electromagnetic launcher. Caught the image before my Ivees glazed. A second ship coming up, almost on the tail of the first.”
The way the dome concentrated the blast I’m sure anything below ground is also gone. There were a lot of soldier types on that base too. Their families! War is an awful thing. At least no innocents were hurt. I hope the bomb flash was muted by the dome. Still, it could have been so much worse. My heart is still doing flippy-flops.
It really is still there. I can see the super-freeway and all the traffic. The traffic has lightened up noticeably though. Now there are dozens of ships with strobing lights moving all over the area. They are acting a whole lot like a swarm of very angry bees; circling and moving further and further out from the city. There’s a lot of noise. The ships are making a droning claxon sound. Eerie. Some are heading our way. We have to do something fast!
We linked arms, cloaked, and moved behind a rock outcropping. That should buy us some time. We need to find out where in the galaxy we are. And we need to do some reconnaissance. The Darkstar Empire has entered their last days.
September 30th, 12:30 PST. We have a general idea where we are and it’s a long way from home. Our Skymap software was able to get a close location lock. We can image our Solar System, so we are able to port home. Thank goodness for that. Rock is on guard duty. Mr. T thinks we are in a secure area planet-side. So, Roll has been tasked to port to the office with a data drive. That has star positions and the other information we’ve gathered so far.
With the images of the star positions it will be easy to confirm a precise location for the star system of our enemy. That will ensure Roll can find his way back. We are all anxious to know what happened to that enemy ship that was moving through the portal just before the detonation. Hopefully the blast disrupted the teleportation gate system before the ship made it through to Earth. And, Roll is off.
It seems nice here. I mean, as far as the weather goes. There is a light breeze. It might be springtime. There are a lot of nice scents. Insects that look like butterflies, birds, a mossy soft grass. All in all, this is a nice cozy spot. Me, I think I’ll close my eyes for a minute. Now, that’s an Earth smell. Rolls back, with a box of donuts. And an update.
Roll’s in update mode. “An Empire star ship did make it through the portal before we nuked the teleportation gate. Mr. T, that’s the ship you saw just before the nuke went off. It wasn’t anything like a bug ship. But it wasn’t terribly large. Something like 20,000 to 30,000 tons. Even the Empire has to watch their weight.
“Still, that isn’t a small ship. Probably one of their top-of-the-line dreadnaught class ships. Just saying.
“The Empire crew seemed to make some tactical errors. There was no attempt to access the Darkside data base. It’s certainly possible the ship took damage as it traversed the wormhole, because of the nuke blast. They cruised on, heading toward Earth.
“Our guys had run into problems getting the base defenses online. They weren’t ready for the ship. The enviro-domes hadn’t been inflated yet either. Those would have stood out on the Lunarscape. The lack of normal radio chatter must have been unusual. And they should have been aware their Mars base was cold and silent with a hint of radioactive glow.
“Of course, there was a great deal of concern Earthside. That one ship would capable of bringing massive destruction to Earth. The general received a flash report from NORAD. The general was chatty for, well, for the general. He mentioned the Skywatch satellites. They sure didn’t like what they were seeing.
“One of the captured bug ships was on route to Darkside, to take the hostages home. Cocoon G-systems had even been installed for the crew. The EDF gave notice to the crew that an Empire ship was on route to Earth. They were already aware and had changed course to intercept the Empire warship. The EDF gave their blessing.
“There were doubts, uncertainty that bug weapons would be effective against the Empire ship. So, they punched it, with the intent to get close before firing. They also wanted an option to ram the Empire ship.
“Well, even in the cocoons they couldn’t handle the G-forces that the bugs can handle. But they managed more than a 15-G acceleration for 10 minutes. Evidently, they were moving nearly .005C before they cut the main engines.
“No one knows why the dreadnaught didn’t try to evade the bug ship. It was accelerating and moving even faster than the bug ship. But the Empire ship crew didn’t open fire until it was basically too late.
“The Earth crew on the bug ship waited patiently. They were close when they opened fire. No effect. The Empire shot
