Chapter 3
As everyone else on the bridge attended to their duties, Commander Womack walked through the doorway with Bruce and Selina behind her.
"Sir, this is Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle. The two kids that dropped out of the portal that appeared on deck four. Kids this is Rear Admiral Andy Roberts, our commander," Womack said then Roberts got up from his chair to greet them.
"Welcome aboard."
"Thank you Admiral," Bruce replied as he shook his hand. Roberts then extended his hand to Selina, but she seemed hesitant to take it.
"You'll have to forgive Selina, she's not the one to automatically trust strangers."
"Did I give you permission to talk about me?" Selina asked in a snappy tone.
After a brief moment of silence, Selina shook his hand and told him that she would appreciate it if he addressed her as Cat.
"Very well."
"And what do the pair of wings on your nametag stand for?" Selina asked.
"Oh these?" These are my pilot wings, Cat. I use to be in command of a squadron of F/A-18E Super Hornets called the Royal Maces. Then when the Beowulf entered service in 2100, I was offered the command. Ironically, I was on the verge of retiring when it was presented to me."
"So the chance to command a space ship changed your mind?"
"Exactly, Bruce and she's not just any type of space ship. She's an intergalactic battlecruiser and the lead ship of her class."
"Very impressive, sir," Bruce replied then turned to look out the viewscreen and noticed they were traveling through some sort of tunnel. "Are we actually traveling through hyperspace right now?"
"Yes we are Bruce. We made our jump from Earth just as you and Cat appeared onboard."
"Where are we going?" Selina asked.
"We're heading to a planet we've designated as MW-877 to locate the source of a virus that infected the crew of the Ethel Marie. An exploration ship that belonged to the New Grounds Exploration firm on the planet Comberth."
"How bad did it get on the ship?" Selina asked.
"The virus turned those infected into vicious creatures and the ship was scuttled by a fighter from the Hades. Sadly, any uninfected crewmembers were vaporized along with it."
"I'm sorry to hear that, Admiral. But I wish to learn more about this universe, including the current state of Earth."
"We got nine hours before we reach our destination, so that can certainly be arranged. XO, take Bruce down to the conference room and give him access to all of our unclassified files."
"Yes sir, Captain Millen replied then asked Bruce to follow him.
After looking around the bridge to familiarize herself with the layout, Selina made her way over to Womack's console which was to the right of the command chair where Roberts sat.
"So what do you do on this ship, Shelley?"
"I'm the weapons officer, Cat. My job is blasting the bad guys to kingdom come."
"Hmm, what kinds of weapons does this ship have?"
"You see those squares out on the bow."
"Yeah."
"Those are our vertical launch cells, we got a hundred and ninety of them and they each contain two types of tactical warheads and two types of missiles. The warheads are known as MK-40 plasma warheads which pack an explosive punch of forty Megatons and the MK-60 anti-matter warheads which pack a punch of sixty Megatons."
"The enemies you face in this universe must have some pretty tough ships to warrant having that much heat.
"They do, but this ship and those possessed by our friends back home were built to deal with them. The missiles we got are SM6s and Arrowhead. The SM6 is what we used to swat down enemy fighters and other small craft like bombers and boarding shuttles and the Arrowhead is a cruise missile that can be used against both spaceborne and surface targets and it packs four-thousand pounds of high explosives."
"Whoa, this is some awesome stuff. Tell me more."
"When the ship was down for upgrades, we got four brand new heavy railguns. These things send projectiles flying at Mach twenty-nine."
"Twek'em a bit more and you'll get Mach thirty," Selina commented.
"Our ship also has eighty-seven point defense railguns for use against small craft and the slugs they fire slam into targets at a velocity of Mach nine. Each turret is fed by a magazine holding ninety-nine thousand rounds."
"Damn that's awesome, but killing a fighter with one of these things would be like hitting a fly with a sledgehammer."
"As long as they work against the enemy that's fine with me, Cat. The next piece of overkill we possess is ten kinetic rod launchers. They are housed in concealed locations on various parts of the hull but when they pop up, they are ready to send twelve Tungsten rods flying across the stars at Mach twenty-six. No ship we've faced has ever survived a hit from one of these things."
"I can imagine, Shelley," Selina commented.
"When the Beowulf and her sister ships first entered service, they were armed with sixty beam cannons. Thirty of them were plasma and the other thirty were solar. In 2103, we were retrofitted with a new energy cannons called tri-beams. Each one can fire off three beams at once and with sixty of these things at its disposal, a single Beowulf class battlecruiser can engage one-hundred and eighty enemy ships at once."
"Plus many more when you add in all the other ordnance," Selina said.
"Yeah and we also have a ventral bay that enables us to rain down on targets from orbit," Womack said.
"All of this stuff is very impressive, but I do have one more question. Is it possible for me to get some practice in with these weapons?"
"We can easily run some combat simulations on the console, that's how I pass the time during long voyages through hyperspace. Sir, permission to let Cat run some battle sims on the console?"
"Permission granted, just keep an eye on her," Roberts replied.
"I have no intention of breaking your ship, Admiral."
"It's just procedure, Cat. Anybody going through training is to be supervised," Womack replied then got up so Selina could have her chair.
"If I had a ship like this, Bruce would never have to worry about anyone trying to mess with him ever again. I could probably do a better job of taking out those monsters from Arkham too," Selina thought to herself.
