Transitions Beyond Safe Harbour

Posted on Wed Sep 25th, 2024 @ 6:04pm by Captain Soto Nabaal

403 words; about a 2 minute read

Mission: S1M1-Shore Leaving
Location: Sol to Betelgeuse (SB Masada)
Timeline: Three weeks of travel time.

The little holographic pip representing the Nike quickly accelerated out past the orbit of Luna and the sentry pickets of the UESN Home Fleet, and flew on into the long night measured by the time it took light crawl between the stars. Unlike other pips on the star map, the Nike did not travel in convoy with others. But then, none save her sister ship Artemis could keep pace with her.

Alpha Centauri, Tau Ceti, these suburban star systems were soon left behind. Mid-range colonies, heavily depopulated following the outbreak of war, were if not plentiful then at least still nominally flying the flag of Earth. At one stopover at a comm’s relay, little more than a pair of light cruisers guarding a subspace transmitter ship orbiting a red dwarf star, they passed by the colony of Fomalhaut. From their close passing high definition imaging could make out the gridded streets of a small town anchored around the bunker of a colony administration office.

What the image could not see from so high a vantage was the dust covering windows, and foliage breaking through fast-set foundations that had not been finished. The moon would soon heal over the scar of benign conquest, undoing the work terraformers and ecologists had done. All too soon no one would know that humanity had been here on this distant outpost.

Unless someone made the footnote of Humanities eradication in the Romulan Imperial Archies a grievous academic error.

Arriving at Bettelguce one is first struck by the size of the star. A red supergiant, it was large than Sol by so many factors it boggled the mind. No more so than the planet of Respite, a rocky airless husk of a world that orbits at so distant a marker it had taken an actual starship to prove its existence. But given its position within the Orion constellation, the forefront of the United Earth colonial push of the early 2100’s, Starbase Masada had been set up first as a staging post for the then United Earth Space Probe Agency, and then the United Earth Stellar Navy. What had been fuel bunkers for fusion plants and warehouses of stores and spares were expanded and transformed into weapons storage, long-range sensor arrays, and a fleet yard to rival Utopia and San Fransisco.

After the fall of Starbase Yu past the Vega Gates, it was the last fort on the frontier.

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