“Or, like I said, the Empire ship was damaged from the nuke blast while in transit. To the good, the Empire ship was destroyed. The entire crew that was on the bug ship will receive the Medal of Honor. Beyond the call of duty. Let’s take a moment to remember the crew.”
Roll continued. “At least there isn’t a huge hurry to pick up the hostages. The people are fine. They got the enviro-domes up and decided to move the bugs out there; all of the bugs except the Darkside base queen.
“It turns out there was some second-in-command queen at the base. They found her in a secret hidey-hole. A bug gave her up. He sought out one of our guys, pointed to a spot on the hull, and spoke to him in broken English, ‘you find wassel queen there.’ I take it wassel is not a nice term. I’m not sure what they did with her.
“Most of the other bugs are fine, the spray knocked them out cold, without doing permanent damage. The domes have minimal air and heat, but the bugs didn’t seem to mind. They just piled up in a ... bug pile ... and went into hibernation. They will be fine.”
Roll was looking at me and smiling when he said that. I think he has come to agree that not all bugs are bad. Thanks to our engineer bug. He sure helped save the day!
Here is some more location information. The science folk don’t have a name for this planet. But we aren’t too far from Kepler 452b. Astronomers discovered that star system a while back and found a rocky “Earth-like” planet in the sweet zone. So, there’s a possibility of life there too.
This planet is in the constellation Cygnus, around 1,400 light years from home. The star system is relatively close to another system, though they may be too far apart to be a binary system, I’m not sure.
Think about the distance from Earth! On a straight course, it would take a bug ship 2,800 years or more to get from here to Earth. Well, without a portal gate it would. The bug star system, Trappist-1, is relatively close to Earth. Someone put the portals in place. Probably bugs, traveling along at about 50% light speed, or less. That means this Darkstar Empire is large. And very old.
The bugs are just pawns of this Empire. We’re ecstatic, knowing our guys were able to take out an Empire ship with just a bug ship. I’m sure it won’t be long before our manufactories are cranking out dozens of bug ships. How promising is that!?
***
+ BEGIN TIMELINE DROP.
NOTE: I remember how happy we were, knowing that an old bug ship had destroyed a more advanced Empire warship. That suggested we could slug it out with the Empire using nothing more than the bug technology we already had available to us. How wrong we were.
Sources: Various. Darkside One Data Recovery Project, Computer log from Empire ship that was destroyed shortly after Darkside Portal Gate transit. Shockwave team debriefing report.
The Empire ship had just begun transition along the Cygnus Prime-Darkside Portal Bridge when the nuclear device set by Shockwave within the dome detonated. That detonation caused a blowback through the portal bridge system which damaged the dreadnaught. Damage to the ship was limited to ship systems utilizing external arrays, systems such as communications and scanning. Computers were not severely impacted but had begun a series of diagnostic reviews as a precaution. That involved cycling through reboot protocols as the ship transited the gate.
Damage while in transit-space between Primary Service Transportation Gates was unusual. Yet it was not unheard of with a brand-new gate system. The supposition was, the bugs had done something wrong resulting in a gate tuning malfunction. A thorough review was in order.
Two additional Empire ships were set to follow in transit. That no ship immediately followed was not a concern. The malfunction would have been detected and the other ships delayed until the gate system was repaired. From the Empire side, with the portal gate destroyed there was no way to readily contact their voyaging ship.
The human crew on the bug ship managed a 15-G burn. That level of acceleration was not unusual for a bug crewed ship. There was only a 10-mintue burn before the human crew had to throttle back due to the strain of the G-forces. That made it appear the bug ship was experiencing some technical difficulties.
The Empire ship crew was aware that sort of thing happens often enough with the crude old bug ships. Such a glitch is analyzed by the onboard ship computer, there is an automated recalibration, and everything is fine. Those on the Empire ship were busy with their own repairs and quite focused on having a good close look at what they thought was their latest new toy planet. This planet was considered an exceptional find.
Normally, there would have been a large data burst from Darkside base as their ship exited the portal gate. The Earth special ops teams had wrecked Darkside’s communications array. And, the Empire ship crew had their own communication system problems. The base was oddly quiet even so, which was attributed to “those lazy bugs” rather than a human incursion and related transmission stoppage.
The crew did notice the bug ship cruising toward them, even though their sensors were minimally operational. A formal greeting was expected, though a single ship was unusual. There should have been a multiple bug ship escort to welcome the Empire to their new world. One ship? That caused anger rather than concern. It was an insult. The High Queen would have more charges stacked up against her. Perhaps they actually should feed her to
