Astra Pt. 04

Now if Jack believes another 20 years is needed before the next set of colonies, then when he returns he will lead a group off into another direction, to one of 5 star systems that Jack gave to the President almost a year ago.

He will spend some time bouncing between colonies and Terra. He has built or is in the process of building 6 Starbases with docks. When those 6 are complete he has set up the Jupiter, Saturn, and Titan projects to be conducted next.

Titan and Saturn are a separate Starbase and Mining Facility. Jupiter Starbase, JS-1, will work to replace the project started and lost due to the Praylons attack. It is a combined station for mining and Starbase with docks.

He has asked that James Treven oversee these expansions in addition to the 6 Starbases. He will be looking for a lot of good workers. He has hired the law firm of Dee Weed, Scru Hammin, and Ann Howe out of Sydney to oversee his patents.

Also to ensure his trust is divided out among his projects with something set aside for when he comes back and tells you 'I got yet another idea!' He can pay for it."

She shrugged while the people chuckled. She looked around, "For the airframe builders, he is building up Lancer III fighters, Manta-Ray II shuttles, Sting-ray II scouts, and Broadsword destroyers.

The lawyers hold the patents for those designs and will file them in a couple of hours if not already. No, they are not for sale. Yes, they are all his own airframe designs and they are for the Tau Ceti system only. All ships will be registered in the Ceti system. The only planned return vessel at this time is the Excalibur and her support craft which will have two transponders each, one for each system.

In fact, he left with 30 Lancer III, and 10 Manta II shuttles So technically 71 ships. King Arthur was upgraded to a Sting-ray II configuration. Every ship, except the hospital ship, has a Lancer III bay and all of them are FTL 5x fighters. The FTL drives are modular so the extra power can be converted into more weapons once it gets in the system.

Much like the Lancer II mockup he did for his wife Sprits; who still holds the Death Valley course record. The Sting Ray II has more firepower and power cores loaded on it than your newest Battleship design. Jack said out there he cannot call in for reinforcements while doing these things.

He also does not have a crew for a battleship for another 18 years when his children have grown." She shrugged again and the pressed laughed. The message ended. The president shook his head, "I am sure I will be hearing from the airframe builders about his new designs but there is nothing I can do at this stage to change them.

The law firm oversees that and they have an ironclad contract not to release any patents without his clearance for 49 years! Yes, that is a year before they would be due to expire. Just hope he gets back sooner if you want to talk with him and he will probably agree because he has designed something even bigger."

The press laughed at him, "Thank you, everyone. If you have further questions Talk with my new Press Secretary Randy Gonzales."

September 23rd, 2433

Captains log, "All flight checks are green. We are cleared to launch."

They did a staggered launch of all ships in to 4x speed range and then brought them together to fly a tighter formation at 5x speeds. Travel systems had a board on each bridge. It would let them know if someone was experiencing a problem. It would turn there ship yellow and if they fell out of formation red.

They set-up hull inspections at the 1-month point, then the 2-month point, and kept adding an additional month before stopping at checking every 6-months. They got to the point where they stopped once every 6 months for that activity and refueling. The pilots got used to using shuttles in FTL mode. They would all slow to 4x, shuttle transverse would happen and then they would move back to 5x speeds within the hour.

The trip went surprisingly well. Until the end.

March 3rd, 2436

Log entry added my Astra, "Captain is too distraught at the moment. He and the other wives are grieving over the loss of Danyelle in the shuttle Merlin. The asteroid that hit her shuttle was estimated to be traveling at FTL 9x speed when it destroyed the ship. If was only half a meter across and outside the belt.'

We had yet to enter the belt. Ship sensors picked it up but she was unable to adjust course to avoid the asteroid. The ship folded in half from bow to stern before the core exploded. Thus far the only loss of life or ship on this trip by space travel."

March 15th, 2436

Captain's log, "Both colonies arrived and were in place. The eternal ones have stopped at a distant moon mined some rock and left a placard. 'The place where humanity's death was sealed twice and was not needed to save it the third time. The Guardians of Humanity March 14th, 2436.'"

They moved off halfway between the outer planet and the asteroid field they had to navigate and cleared a path through. They decompressed the scout and did an EVA to position and turn on the satellite. They went back inside and monitored the activity and they charted the gravitational pull but it was minor. The wormhole was in place.

The crystals appeared to have linked as they got the carrier signal from the other satellite back. Jack leaned over, "Any Terran vessels picking up this message?" Jack had built the crystals himself.

He heard back, "This is the TRD Victus, we are not picking you up with our scanners are you in the asteroid belt?"

Jack chuckled, "Other side of the asteroid belt. Could I get a time and date hack from you please Victus."

The operator called back, "This is the Victus, it is March 25th, 2436. 0753Z on Terra. Now, who is this."

Jack smiled, "This is TAR-2 King Arthur in the Tau Ceti system. Please pass a message back to the president for us. As of 10 days ago, Geos and Meos colonies have landed. We are on the outer rim of the system in Tau Ceti at the meeting location we were supposed to have had for the Drakor.

Tell him all vessels made it except Merlin. We gained 984 lives en route. Excalibur sends their regards. You are near an experimental communication device that is tied into a micro-wormhole and using a combination of technology and psychic abilities, with a synthetic perpetual engine that should hopefully keep this line open for a long time.

The servers built into them have a dropbox. They have the ability to hold only a couple of hundred messages. I would like to keep this classified which means everyone will probably know about it. The president had a second envelope given to him. Tell him that is his access code to leave and pick up messages from this box.

We will try and swing back out every 6 months or so to see what is going on so do not flood it, we are just very busy out here."

The guy on the other called out, "You got to be fucking kidding me? Did you build a long-range satellite relay? Why did you not put it closer to Terra and your colonies?"

Jack sighed, "Let me see, Experimental and Wormhole were not a good enough clue for you. It creates a gravity well. It is shielded, unlike anything you can find and is powered by particle emissions that pass through the wormhole in each direction. A ship runs into it and it will break the ship apart. It is a shipping hazard. Activate Beacon transponder.

The devices are fixed in time and space until one is destroyed and the other is destroyed with it. Any attempt to bring down the shields will be a wasted effort as it is set to self-destruct if the shields drop closing the wormhole. They are not standard shields as they stop all movement in and out of the area around the satellite.

You now have beacon transponder which is broadcasting a warning message about a micro-wormhole charted in that location and to avoid at all cost."

The man asked, "Any other message you want to send back?"

Grace held his arm and looked at the comm, "This is Grace Travus. Please have the president inform the Family of Danyelle Travus that she died 22 days ago in a shuttle accident while we were getting ready to transverse the asteroid belt on the edge of Tau Ceti.

She got hit by a fast-moving rogue asteroid about the size of a grapefruit. It was moving so fast it blew through the shields, folded the ship in half from bow to stern, and then the cores blew up. Once again Merlin was destroyed. She left behind 8 children of her own and the family who adored her.

She lived over a year longer than in the previous timeline and had her children which she did not have in the previous timeline. She was expecting 3 more but was dying to get off the ship for a little while and went to gather leaders for a sit-down meeting when tragedy struck. We were not even in the belt yet just approaching it. Did you get all of that Victus?'

She heard him sigh, "The family is being notified. She has a younger sister who is off shift and works here in communications. The captain said he will deliver the message and his orders to sit here and wait for a month now makes sense."

March 25th, 2439

"After 3 days of grueling back and forth attacks the Brisen 'fleet of 20 ships was destroyed. They were not even supposed to be in this area of space, residing on the other side of the known galaxy. The Brisen tracked the transmitter back to Terra and destroyed it. Over 5,000 died on Meos, the focus of their attack. The Excalibur was heavily damaged in the engagement

Meltora was forced to leave to heal up in the asteroid fields after the first wave of attacks. He was the one who identified the creatures and had no idea as to how they happened to be here though he said their weapons seemed rather advanced. A metallurgical examination appears to show trace signs of what was found on the Excalibur. The best analysis was particle emissions associated with time travel."

Jack thought, * Justice, you know we are reeling from this battle. Do you know anything about this race being here during this time? *

He heard back, * We know they have only just recently gotten FTL drives and your theory about time travel would make sense. Drawn to a place where time had been weakened by another such journey or 2. You fought well to protect your people. Our first attempts at grafting something to one of these species went horribly wrong.

They became a Drakor but not like us. They are sinister, something about them craves more power. It attacked the others immediately and killed half the crew of the scout before it was put down. If it occurs again, we will have to see about a more direct approach. Sounds like we might have been trying for centuries with that group. We might not have tried again after the first encounter. For this timeline, you should be safe from them. *

Jack sighed, *But not another who tries to travel back in time again. They could appear here. We will have to increase our technology footprint; at least in this system but Jupiter is at risk as well. Let me know when you decide about them. *

Jack looked over the wreckage of his office from inside his EVA suit. He looked at the reports on file; Ring shattered in two places. Twelve hull breaches. Particle accelerator fried and destroyed, and the FLT drive fried and destroyed.

The loss of both destroyers with their crews and over half of the 112 fighters. One research vessel destroyed. The loss of 2 wives and 6 children from the first assault when he had to pull the ship back. Including 2 of Danyelle's children and 4 of Carol's children who were with her when her area was sucked out into space.

They found her sword, using sensors to locate the metal, but not the body as it burned up in the upper atmosphere. He got the other wives off the ship weeks prior if they were expecting and he had 2 holdouts before this battle. Carol and Holly who took over tactical after the loss of Danyelle. He looked out at the hole that had been the bridge of the ship.

He went to the maintenance tube and went up into the area that Astra normally traveled. He found the pieces of her backup body and the head was in tack. He took it down and spent the next several days working in the lab while repairs were underway. He got Astra back on-line and she looked at him "We were being attacked. Again."

He nodded, "You got blown apart when Carol and 4 of her eldest went out with her into space. Along with 2 of Danyelle's eldest children. Your server area is badly damaged. I had to retrieve your head in order to build you a new body again. We are in Geos drydock. The threat has been put down, for now.

Medical is destroyed, the bridge is destroyed, the maintenance bots are offline, and I have no idea what is left of your repository. I spoke with Justice. They think the repeated jumps in time in this area made it like a magnet for others. Those ships were from a race that just got FTL technology."

He threw up an image of the ship's damage and she held her mouth to her hand, "Oh my that is very bad."

Jack looked at her, "That is after five days of attempted repair in the space dock. We got emergency bulkheads in place trying to figure out what we can really salvage here. The link back to Terra is down as well. He showered her the other image and she shook her head, "I will see what I can make out of my computer."

Jack nodded, "I have a backup of your server running on that fabricator and the parts for the particle reactor running on those 3. I am having all the armor stripped off to see what is left of the frame. We lost Meltora due to injury. It went to the asteroid field. I do not expect Meltora back. It was getting close to splitting and it needed to heal to do that.

Once it does it would not fit on the ship again. The mining rig is working. Tim lost both of his wives on the ground; and all but one of his sons. He knows there are others hurting but Meos is his home now. He is centered and he helped to drive the death nail in the bastards. Be sure to find him a good candidate or three for wives."

---

Three hours later and she returned, "The historical archives are gone but the tech repository is 80% there." He nodded, "We need to assemble a mockup of this in my home on the surface. To spend time with the family. While I got family left."

She held him to her and he just tried to keep from crying...but failed.