Cold War
by Warringer
Chapter Two
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Slowly life came into the Task Forces surrounding and guarding the large Bremerhafen Space Dockyards, a giant structure build into the hull of a 60 kilometer long Type 5 O'Neil colony. Dreadnought Task Force 10 slowly moved away from their guarding positions and turned about to face the proposed alien ships.
The NSS Iowa was the largest of the ships of DTF 10, a large nearly two kilometer long heavy dreadnought with a flat and wide silhouette with the dark gray color of it's carbon based armor, divided into hexagonal sections over the actual carbon-steel hull. She was sporting two large turrets armed with dual Ion Beam Canons capable of tearing deep trenches into the armor used by Soviet vessels. One of these turrets was located on the dorsal hull, the other on the ventral hull. Smaller turret mounts sporting rail guns, Plasma Pulse weapons and even classical gattling cannons for Close In Weapon Support were dotting the rest of the surface while Vertical Launch systems gave her a good missile capacity.
The rest of DTF 10 were fifteen smaller Arleigh Burke class missile destroyers, eight Tigonderoga class cruisers, three Kirishima class heavy cruisers and a single Essex class escort carrier.
As the Task Force pulled away from Bremerhafen, it was clear that even the smallest vessels of DTF 10, the Arleigh Burke destroyers were fifty meters longer than the ships that had appeared from Jump Space.
The vessels were seen from several of the Colonies at NATO Side 2, as they accelerated with ten gee, their fusion engines burning at only half power.
But several smaller stealthed recon drones had already reached the four unknown vessels, optical and passively scanning them. They were transmitting their results back to Iowa, but instead of using radio broadcasts, they used tight beam laser communication, preventing detection by the unknown ships.
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Commander Molari swallowed as he looked over the sensory information. This was insane. Everything in this system was large. Larger than anything he had seen up to date. The information indicated billions of people living on the third planet and the surrounding space borne structures that seemed to be colonies. Millions had to live in the rest of the system.
He closed his eyes and prayed to the gods for guidance. He wasn't exactly religious, but now...
"Ship movements," the sensory technician said and the screen changed again.
Twenty eight contacts moved away from the large concentration of large cylindric colonies towards their position. Molari swallowed again as he though about the implications of the things he had already seen. Even if the Vorchans could destroy the incoming ships, they could be more than able to compensate with the number of vessels.
He doubted that this system could be invaded easily.
A few moments later he looked at the silhouette scans of the ships. Frontal attacks would be a problem as those ships had a very sleek frontal silhouette and presented only the barest hints of their hull forward. Molari was willing to bet that the bows of these ships were especially heavily armored.
EM silhouettes came next and he swallowed again. The energy produced by those ships were huge. Either they were very ineffective in their energy use or the just plain needed this energy. But for what? Weapons?
He started to debate with himself. He could try and declare that this system was now of the Centauri and try to occupy it, but he doubted that it would work. The best was to make a formal First Contact, something that didn't really go against his orders. He was only a recon after all.
Yes, a peaceful contact was his safest bet at this moment.
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Much like the Suchoi, another KGB vessel was drifting in space near NATO Side 2. The Red October was a new Borey class vessel, specially build with the latest stealth technology of the Soviet Navy. No one in NATO did even know that these ships existed, as they had been build on Kevlavik Station, hidden deep within the Kuiper Belt.
Captain Marco Ramius drank from his tea as he studied the data screen in front of him. Suchoi had failed to answer to the tight beam laser transmissions of the October and so he had to assume that the Akula had been destroyed when those four ships appeared from Jump Space.
Ramius sighed. Captain Romachenkow had been a good man.
Slowly his glance went towards the data they had from the unknown new ships. It was really very useful that the NATO had decided to scan with such a power output. A good amount of the Radar and LIDAR impulses were reflected itno the direction of the October and so the optronics were able to get every last bit of information about these ships.
About 600 meters in length and a wingspan of around seven hundred. EM emissions coming from them showed pretty high power usage, but it was impossible to say what kinds of weapons they were carrying.
He grit his teeth as he noticed that there was increased activity at NATO Side 2. Especially since one of the Task Forces guarding the Dockyard there was moving to intercept the unknowns. It wouldn't be good it NATO made First Contact to the Aliens. They already had gotten the Visitor and the fugitives from the ship.
He turned around to face the political officer, Ivan Putin.
"I know what you want to say," he said and placed his cup of tea on the data table," And I guess I want the same."
He turned to one of the radio operators.
"I want a tight beam connection to Lunograd."