12: THE SPIDERS KISS

The trip to Lorne took 10 days at warp 9. It was the perfect trip for a speed test being short and sweet. When we arrived there were a few ships in the system. Both the Seeker and Searcher were here, as the Aven shipyards were pounding out perimeter action ships as fast as they could. They definitely didn't want to be caught with their guard down again. The last gen-5 ship was the newly refitted R.C.S. New Orleans. Captain Thomas Becker sent greetings from his "new kick-ass starship". The rest of the ships here were a motley assortment of mostly gen-4 patrol craft, as well as one Loknar class cruiser. It wasn't going anywhere as she was badly damaged. It turns out the Loknar's story was the reason we all were here.


A familiar elf-dude had materialized in our transporter room. Ambassador Del'tane headed to the briefing room that held all the cruiser captains.

"I presume that you all have been briefed on the incident that happened in the Thule system 3 weeks ago." Apparently the Loknar had tangled with a Tholian cruiser who entered the Thule system and fired on the planet. The smaller Tholian ship was destroyed, but the cruiser was damaged in the engagement. "This has happened once before, in the TYC 777-174-1 system, 22 years ago."

I looked up the system. "That system is uninhabited."

"It has been since the Tholians attacked it 22 years ago. A small Van'aar colony was wiped out at that time," Del'tane explained. Del'tane was Van'aar, and Lorne held his home planet. Their first and largest colony was Thule, a Confederation member by itself. "Thule was actually colonized twice, the first colony was wiped out by an unknown force 154 years ago. We have, obviously, re-colonized the planet. It now boasts 70 million inhabitants. We now believe that force was the Tholians, as well."

I clued. "But why attack a planet every 22 years?"

"That's the big unknown. But their M.O. has been the same. Send a lone scout to do the job, and when that fails respond in force. This time they used a patrol cruiser, last time the scout was smaller. In both cases the singleton ship was fought off. This time we expect the second response to be massive."

"By going after Thule, they are effectively declaring war on the Rim Worlds," I stated. I was already planning a counter-attack.

"The Tholians don't see it that way. They never responded to diplomacy, and they never followed up the initial attack. It's as if this was some ritual that they felt they had to perform. I don't think that the Rim Worlds is ready for an all out war with the Holdfast."

"So we stand on the defensive, and let it slide?"

"I'm afraid that that's all the Council is willing to do at this time. This will be a two-pronged operation. The four fast cruisers should head out for a direct intercept of the Tholian fleet. The rest of the ships are to go to Thule, to mount the second defense there," Del'tane explained. Those ships were to be joined by other ships, including the now operational Confederate Union. "What we need from you four is intel on the size and capabilities of the Tholian fleet, as well as to provide delaying and harrying tactics. There are three small scouts heading out from Thule as we speak, heading on the most probable approach routes that the Tholians would take. Their job is to alert you the moment they find anything."

With that we were bade good luck by Del'tane. He was heading with the fleet to Thule. My plan was simple move the smaller fleet out to a spot to the north of the Medusa Nebula, and wait for the scouts to report. That would allow us to intercept a fleet coming in on any of the three vectors, as well as a chance to spot a fleet coming from somewhere else.

Directions in three dimensions were interesting. The Milky Way Galaxy was a flattened disk, of stars and gas and dust orbiting a common center, where a large black hole was. The three coordinates that defined an objects position in the galaxy corresponded to three directions.

The first was either core-ward or rim-ward, pointed to or from the center of the galaxy. This was the middle or 'Y' coordinate. The first or 'X' coordinate went either against the direction of the galaxies' rotation or with it, called spinward, or anti-spinward. That left "up" and "down". These were called North and South respectively, and was the last, 'Z' coordinate. Thus 'north of the Medusa Nebula' would actually be above it when the galaxy is considered a disk.


We were in position for over a week when we received the call. The Scout Zenophon had encountered the Tholian fleet and was currently running from it. From their position and direction we plotted an intercept course. The Tholian fleet had barely left the Holdfast when the scout spotted it, leaving us with plenty of intercept time. The size of the fleet is what bothered me, 20 ships, and these would be all generation-4. Unfortunately the scout didn't get in close to do scans of the Tholian ships. That was our job. We set up an intercept course, and headed out to meet the Tholian Fleet.


Our first encounter was inconclusive. There were 20 ships in the Tholian fleet, but two of them were new designs. It appeared that nobody had seen them before. 12 of the others were typical Tholian cruisers, built by mating two patrol cruiser hulls together. Another 4 were called 'Tholian Dreadnoughts' a mating of three hulls together. Compared with most other races, the 'dreadnoughts' were really the equivalent to a 4th generation light cruiser. The two patrol cruisers seemed to be stock, while the two new ship designs were the big unknown. The other ships capabilities could be looked up in the database, so 18 ships were known entities, but the other two were unknowns. That still left the four Rim Worlds cruisers out-gunned.

Our only advantage was in the speed department. We went in and strafed two of the dreadnoughts, causing them to break off and return to Tholian space. But at this rate at least half of the fleet would make it to Thule, and we didn't know who would be able to defend the Van'aar colony. We settled in on an attrition style strategy. The 4 ships would veer into the Tholian fleet, target a single ship, and try to disable it. Each attack took between 4 and 6 hours, so we could only attack a maximum of three ships a day. Unfortunately, the Tholians had reacted to our tactics and rotated their ships in and out of their current fleet duties. Each ship had changed its profile and role in the fleet, but the main theme was the protection of the two new fleet units.

We would have to take those new ships head on if we were going to make a dent in the Tholian attack fleet. Their abilities were currently unknown, and we were running out of time. We could strip them of their escorts by the time they reached Thule, but that would leave two relative unknowns by the time they reached the Thule defense fleet, with the possibility of a further follow up. This was the first time anyone tried to stop the Tholians on their 22-year cycle.


I had a bold plan. It was risky, but if it worked, we would be able to cripple the Tholian fleet before it reached Rim Worlds space. As the Tholians were reluctant to engage with their two new ships we would hit them head on and go after those two ships. Our goal was the disabling of those two ships above all else. But after all this time we really had not got 'into the face' of the new ships. It was time to change that.

We regrouped and headed right 'down their throats'. The four cruisers were going to cut right into the heart of their fleet and directly engage the unknown cruisers. It was a risky gambit, but we needed to know what those ships were capable of.


We found out that the 'Neo-Tholian' ships had a new version of a familiar Tholian weapon. As we closed, a blob of plasma appeared in front of us. The 'Quest was unable to avoid it. As soon as we struck the blob of plasma, we came to a screeching halt, immobilized by the blob. Alarms sounded throughout the ship. We had encountered a new weapon, which we dubbed a Web Caster. Unlike the older ships, which had to immobilize their prey first, the web caster could trap an opposing ship on the fly. And we were the first ship to fall into that particular trap. We were still fully armed and operational though. We used our 'hot magazine' to double our torpedo firepower, and managed to destroy one of the new Tholian ships. Unfortunately this close to Tholian territory, the fabric of space-time was relatively thin, as interphase space occurred here often, as the Federation could attest. As soon as we fired upon the second 'Neo-Tholian' ship, a gravity wave struck the Faraway Quest, casting it into a dimension-less existence. One of the Tholian patrol cruisers had also entered the interphase with the Rim Worlds Cruiser. To our surprise the Tholian ship collided with the 'Quest, in a ghostly way embedding itself into the ships hull just aft of the port phaser array. When the pair of ships emerged into the regular universe, the super-imposed parts of both ships simply ceased to exist.

Unfortunately for both ships, the location where they emerged from the interphase rift was unknown. The Tholian patrol cruiser was cut in two, while the section of the 'Quest that was superimposed with the Tholian disappeared. Shortly after the Faraway Quest reappeared in the universe there was a titanic explosion as the remains of the Tholian cruiser exploded. The blast rocked the 'Quest, and the crew was plunged into darkness.

On the bridge the gravity went out, causing the crew to float about, in pitch-blackness. After what seemed to be an eternity, the emergency lights came on, dimly illuminating the floating bridge crew. Sara was able to fly around the bridge and anchor the crewmembers to their stations, finally reaching the commodore. She then embraced me and waited until the ship righted itself. We waited, and waited, and waited. Eventually the lights came back on and the gravity returned to the ship. The rest of the bridge crew watched the angel and the commodore smooching while we waited, or studiously ignored us. Hey if the ships' commander and helm are smooching in zero-gee, the power failure can't be that bad. The ship returned to some semblance of normal, and I hit the intercom button and tried to get a hold of engineering.

"Engineering," came back the voice over the intercom. "Partial power has been restored, but both warp drive and impulse are off-line."

"What about the 'Sister," I enquired.

"We are currently using the 'Sister to power the auxiliary systems on the 'Quest. Our current power supply is the 'Sister's engines and the 'Quest's batteries. That's it for power at this time. There was feedback through the lost plasma conduits from the collision. The warp reactor is down and impulse is overloaded. It will take some time to restore power thorough out the ship." At least we both had the same idea for getting power.

"Nergat, bring up scanners and lets see if we can find out where we are."

"It's definitely not Kansas, anymore..." Nergat commented, while scanning. That brought a snicker from everyone but Sara.

"Locally we are inside the warp wall of a F-2 main sequence star. That's probably what dropped us out of the interphase. There is a gas-giant planet less than 0.1 AU away," Nergat informed.

"Sara, take us to that planet, best speed," I ordered.

"Max thrusters it is," she replied. We started on an agonizingly slow trip to the planet. The power from the sister meant that we were traveling at the 'breakneck' speed of 4 million km/h. That might sound fast, but in interplanetary terms the ship took three hours to reach the gas-giant planet.

"Status Change!" Loran stated. "A new contact just crossed the warp wall."

"Sara, put us into this planets north magnetic pole please," I ordered. She quickly set up that short trip. "We need to identify that contact."

Loran was scanning. "Contact is ... a Sidon destroyer as a best guess. The ship is a new configuration, but has definite Sidon characteristics, and Federation ones."

We moved into the gas-giants magnetic pole, in effect 'borrowing' a cloaking device off of the planet. As long as we ran passive scanners, we should remain undetected. Sure enough the Sidon destroyer passed the planet in a journey towards the star of the system. Its target was not that far away.

"Three contacts about 0.1 AU from our position." Loran interjected. "The destroyer appears to be on an intercept course."

"Can you identify the new contacts?" I queried.

"They appear to be nuclear powered large shuttles of some type. Checking library computer ... That's interesting."

"What's interesting?" I asked.

"They are 'Eagle' class transport shuttles, according to the database. They were Earth-built and in service about 500 years ago."

We watched the Sidon destroyer fire on the shuttles. Two were destroyed immediately, while the third appeared to be disabled. The destroyer did not stop, but continued into the inner solar system ignoring the damaged shuttle that it crippled.

"Scan those shuttles." I ordered.

"Scannng ... Two have been destroyed, while the third has been disabled. There are life signs aboard the remaining shuttle." Loran concluded.

"Sara,"

"Leaving the gas-giant and heading out on a rescue intercept." Sara seemed used to reading my mind by now. As the ship left the gas-giant planet power levels reset on board. Engineering had announced that the warp core was back online, providing power. Unfortunately, the plasma conduits to the warp nacelles were blown out, leaving the ship crippled, speed wise. With the additional power reaching the Eagle took only 1 hour, at sublight.


Allan was at the controls of the crippled eagle transport when the form of a large ship passing overhead blotted out the stars above. The 400 meter long hull slowly passed by, and the rear shuttle bays came into view. "Holy cow!" He muttered, as the ship passed by. But the bays were marked with 1 and 2 respectively, in good old-fashioned earth numbers. And the name was proudly displayed. "I think it's going to be OK," he informed his passengers.


"Bring the shuttle into bay 2 and disembark the survivors," I ordered.

"Aye, aye," came the response. I headed to the briefing room. Time to meet our guests.

There were three persons, on the 'Eagle' when we brought it aboard. We had to isolate its engines as they were leaking radiation all over the place. Two were human, and the third ... was a Psychon.

"I'm Commodore Michael, commander of the R.C.S. Faraway Quest," I began.

"Lieutenant Allan Carter, eagle pilot," the first man said as we shook hands.

"Tony Verdeschi, security"

"Maya, science officer," the Psychon finally mentioned.

We sat down and I looked up their records, actually finding them! "Allan Carter, born Australia 2166."

"That's correct," he replied

"Welcome to the late 27th century," I replied. "The question is why were the three of you kept alive?" I was looking directly at Maya. "This is the scan of the Sidon destroyer that attacked you." I answered while firing up the main viewer.

"Did you say a SIDON destroyer attacked us?"

"That's correct. We appear to be in Sidon space. Note the first two eagles are fired at with full power guns." The display showed us the firing sequence and the equivalent firepower of the attacks, two gigawatts. The third shot was a surgical slicing up the remaining eagles engines with an equivalent firepower of 0.1 GW. "Somebody wanted one of you alive," I stated.

"One of us?" Maya asked.

"Yes, you, specifically. The only good human is a dead one as far as the Sidons are concerned. What they want with a Psychon is anyone's' guess."

Tony asked, "How did you know Maya is a Psychon?"

"Because I happen to live on a planet full of them. New Psychonia has a population of about 40 million, about 95% Psychons.

"There is a whole planet of my people?" Maya asked, incredulously.

"Last time I checked, which was about 2 months ago. I have a nice little cabin just outside of a small town on the northern hemisphere."

Sara briefly entered the briefing room, and that got everybody's attention. "Impulse power has been restored."

"Finally some good news. Now get after that Sidon. If he finds Alpha he's going to bomb it out of existence. The Sidons have had a beef with humans for some reason. When they found out that one of the heads of the Federation was Earth they attacked its colonies along their border. That led to Larson's War, and the Federation has still a declaration of war with the Sidons although nobody has done any shooting for the last 68 years," I explained.

"The reason the Sidons hate us is Voyager One," Allan stated.

I looked the name up in the computer. "A Queller-drive ship."

"Yes, we first encountered the Sidons when they were following the Voyager back to Earth. It had wiped out all life on two of their planets, since the engines wouldn't shut down properly.

"If I recall history correctly the other Queller-drive ship wiped out one of our own asteroid bases in the Solar system."

"That was Voyager Two in 2185," Allan stated.

"We didn't encounter the Sidons until 2623-" A chime sounded. I hit the intercom.

"Shuttle bay to commodore. That Eagle class shuttle has to be ejected. The radiation levels are too high."

"Then make sure it's unloaded," I commanded.

I was about to resume the conversation when Sara came over the intercom. "Commodore to the bridge," her beautiful voice sounded.

"I guess we are about to deal with that Sidon. If you will excuse me..." I left the shuttle crew in the briefing room and returned to the bridge. As I reached the bridge, the Sidon was on the main view screen. We are closing on that destroyer.

"It's a typical generation-3 ship with a catch," Loran stated. "The warp drive has a Federation drive signature."

"That's not actually unexpected. Admiral Larson's fleet was 'gen three' and if some of them were captured, the Sidons would have a little boost. What's surprising is that the Sidons have not developed anything since. This must be a Dilithium poor region of space..."

"Regardless of that ships tech, it will reach this asteroid before we can intercept it," Loran concluded. The asteroid matched the configuration of the asteroid Ceres, formerly of the solar System, and driven into the void by an explosion if the nuclear waste dumps that we put there. Base Alpha, the home of our guests, was on that asteroid.

"Status change!" Sara stated. "There is a new contact on the forward scanners. It's an impulse vessel..." there was a pause.

Loran interjected, "Computer identifies it as a Swift class ship, Terran from the end of the 22nd century."

"It looks like Alpha has got a ship off the ground," I replied. "Too bad it won't make a difference. That Sidon has the firepower advantage. As soon as we're in range let it have it. Torpedo room," I called, while pressing the intercom.

"Torpedo room," came the reply.

"How is our torpedo supply?"

"We have 7 torpedoes left in the hot magazine, and we are cut off from the antimatter stream. We have 7 rounds total at this time."

"We might need all 7. Stand by."

With the oversized impulse engine that was mounted on both the Avenger and Knox classes, designed to power the mega-phaser cannon, the 'Quest could run at maximum impulse speeds and have power left over. Thus we could close on the Sidon destroyer while it found the Earth colony on Base Alpha. Unfortunately for it, the time it took to take out the Swift, we closed to weapon's range and started to unload our torpedoes. Then the battle became one-sided. The photon torpedoes smashed through the Sidon's shields and a crippling blow with our phasers ensued. The ship suffered a catastrophic failure of its warp core and exploded, leaving an expanding ball of plasma. The Faraway Quest came to a stop over the base. We used our computer files to 'break into the base's computer'. A tall gaunt man appeared on the screen.

"Greetings, John Koenig," I stated.

"Why does everybody that contacts us already know my name?" He asked.

"Because you are in the historical database," I replied. "That Sidon destroyer was gunning for you, so it has been dealt with."

"You are from Earth?" The commander asked.

"Not exactly. Although I was born there, I am now a resident of the Rim Worlds Confederacy. If you want to get to Earth I can oblige, but be warned, it's going to be a round-about trip."

"We had a trio of Eagles exploring the outer system for raw materials..."

"Which were destroyed by the Sidon. We will be arriving by shuttle." I finished.


I had taken a type-7 shuttle to the base, landing on one of the pads. I don't think that they were expecting any survivors from their shuttles, so Allan, Tony, and Maya came as a complete surprise. It was a brief reunion while I introduced the angel Sara and myself to the Alphans. Sara was an attention getter regardless of where she was from. An angel was that much a celebrity among any group of humans when she appeared. I played it up a bit, but relented when I was questioned. The story of Sara was revealed to the Alphans. Apparently, the revelation that there was a planet full of Psychons was also unexpected. The Sidon attack was new to the Alphans. The explosion of the Tholian ship had first attracted their attention to this system. Our appearance out of the interphase had triggered the Sidons to the location of the base, and the attack on the shuttles, specifically.