Star Fields

Chapter No.21 Mistake

Chapter No.21 Mistake

You learn by doing, sometimes the hard way.

"Well," I said. "We're ready to head on out to see if we could find the mother of the human species. Take us out to the Cygnus Epsilon system, Judy."

Our ship quickly accelerated out of Earth orbit and shot away to quickly reach half the speed of light. We didn't feel any of it thanks to the gravity control system, an essential system that relies upon the manipulation of graviton particles.
After a few minutes, Judy turned to me. "We are ready to go to warp, Jason."

I swallowed hard. "Do it."

In a flash, the ship felt as if we were being spun around like a top even though we weren't. I looked at the warp number and gulped. It was over 17.5, a number that was beyond what was considered theoretically possible.

I looked over at Molly. "Holy shit!"

She just smiled, a satisfied smile at that. I don't blame her. Her work was the epitome of advanced physics, an achievement that put her up with the great thinkers like Einstein, Hawking, and Sharma.

"At this warp, we'll be there in twenty minutes," I said, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

"I don't really know if this system is home to an intelligent species," she said. "The rocky planet in the habitable zone is slightly larger than Earth and it has a sizable atmosphere, but I'm not sure how much oxygen it contains."

"It doesn't matter. If we don't find anything, we'll just go on to another system."

We came out of warp a million kilometers away from the habitable planet. Judy slowed us down to about a quarter of light.

Molly frowned. "There are two vessels attacking the planet. They resemble the Scath alien ships."

"Shit!" I turned to Judy. Take us in while cloaked. Go to Red Alert. Prepare the Gamma Ray blasters for action."

"Yes, Jason."

Madison, the android who operates the weapons, rushed onto the command deck and took her position.

"When we are within range, take us out of cloak and fire on those ships," I told Judy.

"Yes, Jason."

Molly sighed. "I didn't expect a battle. I can't imagine why they're attacking this planet."

"Who knows, but we sure as hell have the duty to stop them from destroying an entire species."

Our ship came out of cloak and Madison began blasting the attacking ships with intensely focused gamma ray blasts. They literally ripped the enemy ships open as if they were oysters.

One of the ships turned and engaged us, but Madison tore it up, causing it to explode. We barely escaped the debris, but we took a few very hard plasma hits, causing our ship to vibrate like a tuning fork.

Judy and Madison wasted no time in finishing off the enemy vessels.

We entered orbit and everything returned to normal, but Molly and I were still trying to calm our nerves.

"That was intense," I said in a calm but still edgy voice.

Molly was more interested in trying to determine how much damage the Scath aliens had inflicted on the planet. "There are some very ugly scars on the main metropolis," she said. "Fortunately, they're not a total destruction."

"Good thing we arrived when we did," I said. "I wonder what these aliens will think about what we did."

"We don't even know if they realize we're here."