One of the Lieutenants typed in a command on her console.
"Deploying high gain com arrays."
On either side of the ship two seemingly small antenna extended then branched into larger arrays as they cleared the hull.
"Direct signals toward both Sol Three and Four."
"Channel open sir."
"This Captain Parek Serth of Return Fleet Alpha hailing Earth Terra Defense Forces, please respond. I repeat, this Captain Parek Serth, Earth Terra Defense Forces, please respond."
After a few minutes with no response Parek turned to the sensor officer. "Anything?"
"Hard to tell sir. Orbital space around both planets seems to be a bit crowded."
"Com, loop that message. Helm, lets head deeper into the system nice an slow."
+
The small three ship flotilla to advanced deeper in to the Sol system using gravity drives. Because of orbital positioning they found themselves closing in on Earth faster than Mars.
Thirty minutes later one of the officers spoke up.
"We've got something sir." reported sensors "A four ship, no wait... five ship element is breaking high orbit from around Sol Three and is accelerating towards us in an attack posture. Larger ships are starting to reposition."
"How big are the nearest ships?"
"They're over a kilometer in length and out mass us by several times. All of them are accelerating at the maximum limits of their sublight drives."
"Helm, continue to reduce speed."
"Aye sir, slowing to twenty percent light speed."
"Are we seeing any sign that our hails are being received?"
"No sir, but we may have been coming in too fast for them to have picked up out transmissions yet if they're lacking STC-FTL Communications."
"Incoming ordinanace!" Yelled the sensors officer. "Torpedos of some kind."
"All ships, evasive action!" replied Parek as he flipped open a compartment on the side of his command char and pulled out a headset. After affixing the two earpiece components the headset began projecting tactical information directly onto his retina.
"Weapons, shoot down those missiles. I'd prefer not to find out what they're carrying the hard way."
"Configuring beam weapons to point defense sir... firing."
Disintegration beams flashed out and struck each Torpedo in rapid succession. There was soon little left of the missiles except for expanding clouds of molecular debris.
"Dammit, is there any sort of response to our hails?"
"Nothing directed at us sir, and all of the other communications are encoded. They doesn't match any of the normal encryption patterns."
Parek stood and looked over the officer's shoulder at her displays. "I've seen patterns like that before."
"So have I sir but I can't remember from where."
"Thirty more ships now breaking Earth Orbit sir and their advance force is firing again."
The Captain cursed inwardly. "We can't sit here and start destroying human ships. We're here to protect these people! Helm bring us up to attack speed and swing us around the aft end of those closest ships, weapons disable their engines. That should give us enough time to back away to a safe distance and jump."
The helmsman muttered a curse beneath his breath then laid in the necessary course changes. The forward gravity drive surged as it locked onto to mass of one of the oncoming starships to assist it's maneuver. All of the crew were pushed into their seats despite the inertial compensators as they suddenly accelerated to half the speed of light.
002
