Chapter 5: Chapter 4 – The Test Drive

Edward’s feet clanked against the floor plates of the Sheffield. The clean panels of the walls in stark contrast to the memories of his previous command. Where the cramped destroyer’s walls often had exposed pipes and bits of wiring, with everything kept in a general state of managed disrepair as drydock time was taken up by under construction ships. These slightly wider corridors with neat cable management therefore being a new and pleasant sight.

“Admiral on deck!”

The door to the CIC opened before him as he heard it echo out from inside the room, everyone at their consoles standing at attention as Edward walked in with his full-dress uniform.

The CIC was simply breath-taking to him. It was somewhat dimly lit but all the various would be dark corners were illuminated by the screens of the various consoles and the lights of various server racks. Right where he now stood was the central command console, a big brick with a LCD integrated into the table and personal screens and controls for him and David standing opposite. Looking towards the fore of the ship were a large set of wall monitors in front of a shallow trench with the pilot and various members of navigation. They were all standing up, facing away from their consoles and staring up at him. The ones at the aft end were all staring at him, all emerged from the two rows of consoles staggered upwards, looking down at him.

He swallowed, calming himself before giving the order, “At ease.”

Everyone sat back down at their stations, the room rippling with the noise as some life returned to the room. With chatter starting up between members of navigation, communications and engineering.

“Whats with all the pomp and circumstance here and with your uniform? You have all the tassels and such on you even!” Ah, David…

Edward just let out a exasperated sigh, “Mate, you know perfectly well that just a few minutes ago I was in a commissioning ceremony and was giving a very crap speech that I’m sure you watched with great amusement. Anyway I’ve seen you in full dress uniform more times than I’ve been in mine.”

“Well, I thought I could create some banter there you know?”

“You’re an absolute dick you know that?”

“You know full well I’m joking about that” David laughed

“Sir if I may observe,” Alex called over from their desk, “I think you should tell your 2IC to be quiet so we can get on with pulling ourselves out of drydock and getting our test run underway.”

“Great idea Lieutenant! Lieutenant commander David, please be quiet.”

“Yes sir…”

“Right, now to actually get on with things. Engineering, is everything good?”

“Yes sir!” came the curt response from CIC’s engineering officer,

“Navigation, are you ready and are all systems go?”

“Yes sir, ready to move off at your command.” The pilot responded, his crisp and refined southern English accent creating a sense of what Edward could only think of as serenity.

“Well then Lieutenant, bring us out and get us a safe distance away for us to burn our engines.”

“Aye sir.”

Edward felt a slight smile creep across his face as he felt a jolt as the ship fired it’s RCS thrusters, sending the ship gently drifting out of drydock.

On the fore set of monitors, one of them was displaying the live news broadcast from the internal armed forces media station with the Sheffield pride and centre of the shot on display.

It was a light grey and angular thing, like a long wedge of metal with various ports drilled into it and little turrets slapped on. At the front was a rough and pitted front with ports for the spinal railgun, missile tubes and reverse thrusters as well as the sealed hatch for the shuttle bay, with this crowded front end protected by armoured “wings” on each side of the ship. The mid-section featured a sort of bulge, where mounted on the “top” and “bottom” of the ship were the smaller railgun turrets, both facing forwards now. The ship’s shape then tightened back up before then bulging out again with the main engine, a large cooling radiator to each side of it with both currently folded back inline with the rest of the ship.

He imagined what it would look like with those fins folded outwards, the fins looking like sails as it would drift through the void… But soon enough, as his dream filled unfocused eyes finally brought themselves back into focus on the monitor, the Sheffield was now far off in the distance with the cameras soon shifting.

“Admiral?”

“What is it?”

The pilot cleared his throat, “We’re far enough from the station to fire our reverse thrusters at low power to pull away faster sir.”

His eyes drifted over to the pilot, clarity returning to his head as he nodded, “Fire them but keep our acceleration bellow one G.”

“Aye sir.”

The ship then jolted again, this time harder as the arcane artificial gravity technology fitted to the ship began to work it’s second wonder, its ability to cancel out the feeling of one G of acceleration to it’s occupants, given a slight delay.

“You know, if you start talking about how this effects designs going forwards, I’m going to have to break a direct order.”

“You know David, you already did that,” Edward laughed, “And there are a lot more than just this ship that can tell you all about that already.”

“Well, want me to shut up again then?”

“Nah mate, you’re alright as long as you don’t turn this into a circus again.”

“Fair. How do you feel about our hyperdrive test though.”

He felt his chest tighten at that as the swirling repressed thoughts of what might happen passed through his head again and started to swarm around him mind.

“Navigation, how precise are our hyperspace calculations?”

“We have almost complete certainty; we have all the data we need to get a precise exit point though the computers need some more time to make all of the calculations.”

David chuckled, “Fills you with confidence, doesn’t it?”

“No... it doesn’t.”

 

---

 

Half an hour passed with the only eventful situation being the firing of the main engines once they had turned the ship around to propel them into a safe, high earth orbit.

“Sir, we’re ready to jump to the Jupiter outpost sir, what are your orders?”

Edward swallowed, the tightness in his chest had not gone away in the last half an hour of agony as anxiety still plagued him. “Alex, make the last calls for all crew to get to their stations and navigation, prepare to jump.”

Two sets of “Ayes” followed as Alex’s voice then echoed across the intercom system.

“All crew prepare for hyperspace jump in T- one minute, I repeat all crew members prepare for hyperspace jump in one minute, all essential crew must report to their stations.”

The tension in the air grew, keyboards clacking filling the air as the main monitors flicked to the display of various ship systems, various parts of the display flicking up green little dots as various systems were run through, all returning as fully functional. Hatches started to be buttoned down, the radio chatter from coms growing as various sectors of the ship confirmed they had closed their bulkheads and were ready.

But as it continued, he couldn’t help but ask, “How’s the probabilities looking?”

“Its only a short jump and we’ve been calculating it for about an hour now. By our estimates the chances of failure are several million to one.”

“And still they come.” He muttered, trying to think of anything other than the slight possibility that they could be trapped in hyperspace, forever. The litany against fear, the chances of being hit by a car and the fact that he hadn’t been hit by one yet, the chances in gatcha games. Anything but the current circumstances. It was ridiculous to worry about it but still his mind raced with the idea.

“Jump in 10, 9, 8,”

This was his dream, the impossible dream of being able to traverse the stars in an instant. The ability to see alien worlds and experience them and record them down. This in comparison was like walking out of his front door in galactic terms. Hell the shuttle into space was probably more dangerous than this!

“7, 6, 5,”

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The assignment didn’t help, the knowledge of how it could go wrong and how it going wrong could leave you dead, in a unmarked grave, next to a crashed shuttle or something and have your name forgotten.

4, 3,”

I must not fear, fear is the mind-killer- What the fuck was the rest of it? God damnit this was messing with him! And why the fuck was he reciting some of the nerdiest shit out there now!?

“2,”

Fuck it, I’ve faced death before and not felt so nervous, just treat it like that, as part of his job.

“1.”

The hyperspace rift opened infront of the ship with only a few star gazers earth orbital command witnessing it fully as the Sheffield went into the colourless, empty but dark tear in space. Tendrils seemingly swallowing the ship up as it vanished into it, the rift sealing soon after, leaving no trace of the ship behind.

 

---

 

His brain felt like it was covered with pins and needles as the rest of his body felt like it was flowing around inside of him, the countdown for the estimated time navigating hyperspace on the main monitor sitting at ten seconds, barely visible through blurry eyes. With power systems just high enough to keep all systems fully operational.

Nine seconds, what seemed to be the blink of the eye and five seconds, another and minus one second. Wait, shit, shit, shit, this wasn’t-

“Exit portal forming”

Edward exhaled sharply as he nearly threw up. Despite all the shielding the ship had and the drive had created, it still felt that his insides had all sorts of unspeakable things happen to it and he didn’t like it one bit. Not to mention his mind still had a headache.

“Fuck, I feel like someone gave me drain cleaner mixed with vodka then rammed a stick up my arse!” David grunted, trying to resist dry heaving as he clutched the command console.

“So, your regular Friday night drink and a promotion then?”

“Fuck you, the only person who can make jokes at times like this is me.”

Edward laughed a shaky and slightly hollow laugh, letting himself relax for a moment.

“Well then, report!”

“No major issues other than a few non vital system crashes and a few discomforted crewmembers. It seems like we had an issue with the temporal shielding created by the drive core so we got hit harder than we should had.”

Great, something went wrong, of course it did. Just-

He needed a break.

“David, you have the con, I’ll be in my quarters.”

“I have the con then…” David muttered, watching Edward walk out of the CIC, with a worried Alex following shortly afterwards.

 

---

 

Edward looked down at his bottom drawers and eyed the bottles down there. No, it wasn’t good, he was on duty and this sort of behaviour is the sort that develops into alcoholism, if he wasn’t one already. But fuck his nerves wer-

The room filled with the sounds of someone loudly pounding on the bulkhead door as Edward jumped in his seat, nearly throwing his little office space into disarray with one kick and fail of his arms.

“Ah- Fuck- Come in!” He yelled, quickly pushing the drawer closed.

“Edward don’t tell me you’re drinking now! Just because David believes it’s a valid response to stress doesn’t mean that it’s a valid response to it! In fact, it means exactly the opposite!”

“And that’s why I wasn’t drinking!”

“Good!”

They stat themselves down on a small stool they pulled from the side of the room, putting themselves right in front of Edward.

“You’re like my bloody mum…”

They froze for a second, “Well I guess I have to be your two’s moms while we’re all away then as it seems to be the only way to stop you two from descending into self-destructive spirals.”

“I can stop myself from most of them.”

“Most of them…”

They both sat in silence for a moment, no one really moving at all with their thoughts simply stewing in their heads.

“You know,” Alex murmured, “I don’t feel too uncomfortable about this assignment…”

“Oh?”

“Well, doesn’t it feel a little… Imperialistic?”

Edward looked away, “To be honest, now that you mention it, it kind of does…”

“Why are you following through with it then?”

“Well, it isn’t a war crime, and it doesn’t violate anyone’s dignity to there’s no legal basis for refusing it and we aren’t going head on into a war as our plan A.”

“But still, the federation was committed to unification peacefully, well at least until we got attacked and I guess taking the opportunity at the same time is alright but…”

“But?”

“They aren’t on earth and they aren’t going to be attacking us at any point, so there’s no real need to attack them or spend the time trying to negotiate with them and then integrating them.”

“Its one of the few habitable planets in the galaxy that’s been terraformed for us. And well, it seems like they practise serfdom and I can’t help but feel like it provides something of a justification for it.”

“I’d… have to disagree with that Edward but I’m not going to argue with you on that.”

“That’s alright and if you want, I can place you as far away as possible from this if you want?”

“No… I think I’ll be okay, they’re my orders as well and we're friends.”

“Imperialism with friends!”

“Don’t make me regret this…”

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