Chapter 03: Signs of Life

Sub-commander Dvorak of the Hansa Imperial Star Empire stood at the situation table at the rear of the still slightly damaged main bridge of the Archangel, and found herself continually trying not to laugh at the situation.

Through some galactic twist of fate, she had found herself as the acting first officer on a Macross Fleet SDF class battlefortress, and to make it even more interesting the ship and all those aboard were trapped in another universe, a universe which didn't have either a Earth Sphere Unified Nation or the Hansa Imperial Empire.

She knew that the remains of the crew from her own ship, the ISC Blood Haze survivors all seventy five of them, were dealing with the news about their location as well as she could hope for, but still better than most of the Archangel's crew, but even for a supposedly weaker species, they were coping well.

Although she highly suspected that the current need to repair the ship was taking priority over their own personal feelings for the time being, and that soon a high number of the crews compliment, both Imperial and Macross Fleeter alike, would need to make use of the ships trained psychiatrists.

Still, if through some miracle they did manage to make it back, she and the rest of the Imperial personal would be able to give one hell of a report to the Imperial high command on the internal workings of the type two SDF Macross class battlefortress and the Thunderbolt mark seven veritech transformable fighter-interceptor, the latest generation of the legendary veritech fighter-interceptor and counter to the Imperial's own Talon and Raptor fighters.

"Griffon flight has just entered sensor range, sub-commander." Reported the gunnery-chief who was manning the partially re-built flight operations station just left of her post at the situation table.

"Understood, have them transmit their sensor logs and flight data then clear them for landing and refuelling operations. I'm sure that major O'Neill will have a new set of patrol vectors for them soon enough."

"Aye ma'am."

Dvorak was impressed with the behaviour and the professionalism of the Archangel's crew, a compliment to their commanding officer. While she knew nothing of admiral Cutter beyond his name, her former commander Prefectus Atriums had spoken extremely highly of the man, and she could see that he was an excellent leader from the behaviour of his crew.

She scanned the report as it came in before she forwarded it off to Hudson, who was holed up in the observation lounge. His decision not to use either the admiral's flag-suit or the ships ready room was something she would've done herself if the situation had been reversed, but it was something which she had come to expect of him.

She paused in her skimming of the report as something caught her eye. She brought up the attached image files for that section of the report and stared at the first image in curiosity.

A large metallic circle on the surface of the planet that they were in orbit of. It was around seven meters tall and surrounded by ruins made of the metallic material and some evidence of orbital bombardment.

If it hadn't been for a purely random even, then the purpose of the structure would have remained a complete unknown, but while Griffon flight had been conducting scans on the area surrounding the ruins for Trinium and other materials which would be useful for the ship to help with the repairs, when an energy spike which had registered almost off the scales, had been detected from the structure.

The sensors in the ESINT pack had showed that the structure had released a huge amount of unstable verteron radiation which had settled down into a highly stable wormhole, from which the crews of Griffon flight had detected a small drone of some kind emerging.

The crew's had discreetly used their own scanners to scan the probe. They had found that it was a strange mix of both high and low levels of technology, but that most of the scanners where directed towards scanning the area within five kilometres of the structure.

Dvorak looked over the information and data about the structure and the alien probe once more, as for some reason this information seemed familiar to her.

"Flight, take over." She ordered as she downloaded the information to a PADD, before she turned and headed towards the observation lounge to talk with Hudson about this latest development.

-{[]}-

At the same time that Dvorak was looking at the report from Griffon flight on the bridge, doctor Morse was looking around the main ward of the ships main sickbay, and as much as she hated to admit it, but without the help of doctor Smith, even if he was a hologram, was a really great help. She was sure that without his help, she or another of the now limited number of ships doctors, would have made a mistake which would have cost them the life of someone.

With the immediate crisis dealt with, and none of the current patients where in need of any life-saving procedures, she had dismissed most of the medical staff with orders to catch at least five hours of sleep. Morse herself, was up to her neck in medical reports, for the admiral and the others who were still in critical condition.

She'd been in the operating room with the admiral alone for the last ten hours, and by some miracle and a hell of a lot of luck, she had somehow managed to stabilise him, but for some unknown reason he and the other critical cases were slowly slipping away, and there was nothing that she, or any of the other doctors, could do.

The admiral, like the other patients that were currently in the intensive care unit, were suffering from some kind of de-polarizing of their neural pathways, and with each passing hour there was one to two percent less registered neurological activity being detected in their individual brain scan's.

She had estimated that at their current comatose state they only had a month to six weeks before they were brain dead, and maybe three weeks of that time would they have enough cognitive ability left to actually talk, but giving the admiral or any of them a stimulant to bring them out of there comma's, it would increase their detrition and hasten their deaths.

She hated this feeling of complete uselessness, she had been training to become a doctor when her homeworld of Eden Prime had been invaded by the Disruptors back during the war. Back then she had come to know Hudson as he had been in charge of a small local resistance force, after his ship had been sunk in orbit while attempting to defend the planet, which had been operating the area of her colony so she had acted as the forces field medic even though she had only been a third year medical student at the time.

After the planet had been liberated by the combined forces of both the Alpha and Beta quadrant's, she had applied to the Macross academy as a medic. It wasn't until after she had graduated from the academies medical school and being assigned to the Archangel that she learnt that Hudson was also aboard and was the head of the ships security and third in command, with admiral Cutter being in overall command for the ships combined destroid, air-wing and MACO's.

Taking a deep breath to calm her nerves before she reached over her desk and lifted the intercom phone and punched in the four digit code for the bridge.

"Sickbay to bridge, I need for commander Hudson to come down to my office as soon as he can. It is concerning the admiral and the others in ICU."

"Copy doctor, I'll pass the message along to the commander." Came the reply from a still static filled comm-line, which was short meaning that it was probably one of the Trojans that had answered, and while she hated to place the weight of this kind of decision on his shoulders, it was a decision which was beyond her and went against her oath as a doctor, so she would leave it up to the commander and pray that he would be able to cope with it.

-{[]}-

Dvorak pressed the buzzer control on the controls for the observation lounge for the third time beginning to become concerned at the continued no answer from the other side of the hatch. Slightly worried as she opened the hatch as to what she would find as she carefully walked into the semi-dark lounge.

Sitting in the same seat he had used in the staff meeting several hours ago and fast asleep, with his head resting on his arms and his uniform tunic open to about half way and slumped forward onto the table.

She smiled, as she was glad that he was getting some rest, and while she was tired herself she also knew that she could go a little longer on just raktajino before she needed rest unlike her human counterpart, she also realised that the extra workload that had just landed on his shoulders like a destroid due to the admiral being in the ships ICU, coupled with the unknowns of the ship being in a completely unknown universe was a lot more than he was ever expecting to deal with.

She smiled once more as she closed the door and walked back onto the bridge, smiling while heading over to the co-pilots position at the helm and tapped Campbell lightly on the shoulder to get her attention,

"He's finally sleeping, make sure that he's not disturbed for the next few hours at least."

Campbell nodded gratefully as she complied with the order that she had just received.

Dvorak knew that both the young ensign she was next to and Hudson were close, and was mildly jealous towards the young ensign, not that she would ever admit it to anyone. Yet she did make a mental note to have a very long talk with Hudson about his relationship with the ensign just so that she knew where she stood with him.

She still secretly wished that the human commander had been born as a Lantean, then so many things would have been so much easier.

After their time that they had spent during the disruptor war, she had spent a full year as a guest of the Imperial High command, being analysed and scrutinized before they had finally allowed her to re-join the fleet on active duty, but she now had a chaperone in the form of that pompous ass of an executor Granger from the Imperial intelligence division.

The complications that she had suffered during that time as a guest of High Command hadn't helped, and thinking back on it now wasn't any easier. She wished that she could talk to Kira about what had happened, but she also knew that he would never understand.

Silently she circled around the damaged bridge, while the repair crew worked, making notes on her PADD as to the repair status of the different sections of the ship as she returned to her place at the situation table where she began to go through the latest reports which had accumulated and she needed to pass on to Hudson.

-{[]}-

Murdoch stared dispassionately at the sub-space drive core which took up all three levels of main engineering. The former chief engineer, lieutenant colonel Jeff Tracy, had been having an almost romantic relationship with the systems that made up the propulsion and energy production for the Archangel, but Murdoch couldn't understand how the man could have gotten so attached to the machines.

He turned away from the core as a senior chief petty officer came up to him carrying a PADD which had the latest status reports relating to the on-going repairs.

"Major, we've managed to get almost everything ready for a restart of both all reflex reactors and the drive core, we just need to run another series of stress tests on the anti-proton injectors and a few of reactor three's housing components."

"That's excellent work chief. How soon do you think that it will be until we can attempt the restart sequence?" Murdoch asked although he had already worked out the answer, but he felt that the chief had a lot of potential, so he tried to push him a little with every assignment.

"I'd say a few hours, six at the most sir."

"I believe that is an accurate assessment. I shall inform the commander that due to the efforts of you and your team we will be able to reactivate the main power systems before my original estimate. Carry on chief."

The chief petty officer smiled, accepting that it was as close to a compliment that he would get, as he turned to re-join his engineering team and grateful for the praise and glad to be doing something to help him to take his mind off of their current predicament.

-{[]}-

Combat date 56477.5, commander Kira Hudson recording.

It has been five days since our fight with the Prometheans in orbit of Lantea and our subsequent trans-dimensional jump and we are only now planning to commence a restart of our main power grid, though major Murdoch, the senior most engineer left, told me that it would take at least a full standard week before he and his engineering teams would be able to restart the mains, they appear to have performed a miracle as they have managed to get both the sub-space drive core and all eight of the reflex reactors back on-line a full two days ahead of schedule, and not a moment too soon as I think that everyone with the exception of specialist Osmond are sick to death of eating emergency field rations, since I've had to limit the use of the synthesizers and nano-lathes for the production of parts relating to repairing the ship while we have been surviving on the H 3 fuel cells and fusion generators.

Thankfully both the destroid detachment and the air wing was relatively unaffected by either the battle with the Prometheans or the trans-dimensional jump so we have been scouting out the surrounding area with our ESINTs and ESINT equipped Thunderbolt fighters.

It would appear however that we will be able to find useable resources nearby, most notable on the lifeless forms of both Lantea Alpha and Beta. Therefore I plan to order the ship cleaned and funerals to be held, then carry out a massive mining operation to fill cargo decks three, four and seven with raw materials.

At present comm-scan has been unable to detect any form of sub-space signals on any channel of frequency that is common, well common to home, which has would seem to suggest that the locals of this universe use a completely different form of faster-than-light communications.

One of our recon missions to a nearby system has detected several ships entering and exiting FTL from a type of sub-space rift which opens into a sub-dimension of sub-space which we suspect the locals use to achieve FTL speeds.

The ships coming out of this 'hyperspace' as the pilots have begun to call it have been extremely strange. On the one hand the obviously have a form of FTL travel, but in normal space the ships we have observed are slow moving pyramids. We have seen several of these ships which range in size from a little larger than the Archangel's own Argo class multi-purpose transports up to something as large as the Great Pyramid of Giza, and yet from what we have seen they would appear to lack any form of shielding system or weapons but they do have an unusually large amount of heavy armour, but it is very primitive.

The Archangel's own ablative armour would seem to be light-years ahead of what we have observed, and what we suspect that the local military forces may have also.

Another of our recon teams have also detected a series of ruins on a planet in the next system over with a strange metallic ring which is capable of creating a completely stable wormhole within the gravity well of a planetary body.

The limited number of scientist we have aboard are chomping at the bit to take an Argo down to the surface of the planet to investigate the device, but I have ordered them to wait until the ship is in a more presentable and battle ready condition.

A few hours ago a clearly military ship came out of the locals form of FTL, again it was a pyramid shaped craft about half the size of the Archangel but it was even less efficient than a first generation ARMD class space carrier from before space war one, yet the energy readings it was generating are a cause for concern given our current condition, as a few well-placed shots would be a problem for us, yet given our almost completely comically lack of manoeuvrability at present I suspect that it would take ten to twenty ships of a similar type to even be a concern to us.

Judging by the scans we made of the ship it would appear that these ships are constructed more along the lines of inflicting massive amounts of orbital bombardment than for actual capital ship engagements. Though if they have ships which are bigger and better equipped, then things could be interesting.

Unfortunately, medical has reported that admiral Cutter and the others that are in critical condition have made no improvement and now I have to make a horrible choice. Allow them to slowly slip away over the next month, or give the go ahead to allow doctor Morse to give the admiral an injection which would allow him to be active and back in command, but it would mean that he will be dead within two weeks.

I know what I would want to be done, so I hope that he agrees with my decision and I pray to whatever god or gods that exist that I am someday able to come to terms with what I have done.

-{[]}-

Cutter slowly opened his eyes, blinking rapidly at the soft lighting in the main ward of sickbay.

"Admiral, welcome back to the land of the living."

Slowly he turned his head and saw Hudson standing next to doctors Morse and Smith, that wasn't a good sign.

"Report commander." Asked Cutter with a slightly crusty voice.

Hudson handed over a PADD and gave the admiral a brief summary, talking with a slow and deliberately steady speech.

"Sir, just over two hundred of the ships compliment have died, with another thirty still in ICU. We have massive structural damage to all sectors of the ship which has resulted in main power being off-line for the last five days. The ships destroid detachment and air wing are in an acceptable condition with the exception for one of the Argo transports, which broke free of its docking cradle. I've had the CAG launch the ESINT's and several ESINT equipped Thunderbolts to perform a recon in force of our location with ghost fighters for support. We currently have seventy-five Imperial survivors on board and are being integrated into the crew to assist in none critical locations. Comm-scan has detected no ships, friendly or otherwise in the local system as we appear to be in a parallel dimension."

"Very good command…" Cutter dropped the PADD which he had been handed by Hudson and stared at him as if he was joking. "What did you just say commander?"

"Sir, we appear to be in a universe with a completely different quantum signature to our own."

"Macross fleet command?"

"Negative sir, we've had no communication on any known sub-space channel, except for that of our recon teams. As a precaution I've had the ships IFF and transponder deactivated. We have however detected several vessels in a nearby system, and we believe that the locals use a different form of communication to communicate with one another, however I have avoided initiating first contact until the ship was in a more presentable condition."

"That bad?"

"Worse."

Cutter sank back onto the bio-bed, the little amount of energy that he had managed to regain was draining from him fast.

"Ok, I'll read through your reports and then get back to you in an hour."

"Yes sir. Also doctors Morse and Smith have something which you need to hear, I'll leave now and when I return I will accept whatever punishment you decide."

"Very well commander, I'll let you get back to fixing the ship, get us ready as soon as you can."

Cutter watched as Hudson walked out of the sickbay, noticing how he was practically running from the medical centre of the ship, before turning to face the doctors that somehow magical started to pull a medical scanner from nowhere.

"So doctors what was so important that it has made the head of the ships security run like a scared recruit in their first fire-fight?"

-{[]}-

In a nearby star system, ensign Kelly 'Cobra' Kaplan looked down at the mission timer on the controls of her ESINT equipped Thunderbolt mark seven-B once more. They still had another five hours left for this patrol in this individual star system.

Since arriving in the system the pilots of Nemesis flight of Phoenix squadron had viewed the locals coming into the system via what the ships egg-heads where calling 'hyperspace'. The orders for Nemesis flight and the other ESINT flights, Dominion and Normandy, had changed from simple resource surveys and mineral scans, to passive long-ranged sweeps.

Commander Hudson had decided that it was safer to conduct these types of scans so that they could avoid any possible contact with any of the locals until they had the Archangel up to a decent level of both combat readiness and appearance.

"How we doing EA?"

EA, or specialist Ellen Anders, looked up from the scanner in the back of Cobra's seat before answering.

"Oh it's fascinating," she said in a sarcastic tone, "Twenty particles of space dust per cubic meter, fifty-two ultra-violet spikes, seven planets, four of them are gas giants, a regular type class D planetoid and a class three comet. The inner two planets are too close to the systems star to be any real candidate for mining at present that we couldn't gain via the synthesizers anyway."

"Ok, plus there's no 'stargate' anywhere in the system so we can assume that locals don't visit here all that often."

No sooner had Kaplan started this fact than the enhanced scanners of the ESINT pack attached to the Thunderbolt mark seven-B detected a large ship jumping into the system.

"Me and my big mouth, begin scans."

"Copy, running passive scans now."

The two waited for a few seconds as the scanners on the ESINT equipped Thunderbolt seven-B discreetly scanned the unknown contact, processed and displayed the data on their displays.

"Ok the contact would appear to be slightly larger than some of the bigger pyramid ships. I'm seeing over three dozen capital scale weapons."

"That is just so typical of the local ships which we've seen, they have a strange mix of tech, FTL capable but at sub-light speeds, they're no better than a megaton class destroyer from before space war one. I'm no expert but I'd bet that even an old Tri-Star destroyer would be able to handle one of these pyramid ships one-on-one with ease." Replied Anders.

"Maybe…" The console beeped again, "Hello, what's this."

They watched as a massive ship de-cloaked. It moved slowly towards the first in a slow and menacing fashion. After about three minutes they detected a massive energy build up followed by a single energy blast which caused the first ship to explode completely.

"DECULTURE!" Shouted Kaplan as she looked at the energy readings, "That thin is massive. Going by these readings that thing is about the size of Nupetiet-Vergnitzs class fleet command ship. The energy reading from that one shot alone was equal to a first generation guided beam cannon. Yet we have no idea if that was a full power shot or not, but it is massively beyond anything that we've seen so far."

"Looks like we've just seen the biggest and baddest guys on the block."

"I hope so, and I hope that they are friendly otherwise we are going to have a Promethean sized problem."

They continued to watch as the massive ship appeared to scan the wreckage of the slowly expanding debris field before tractoring in a small section of it and jumping away into hyperspace.

"Ok, activate all systems and scanners and let's see what we can learn about that weapon then we'll finish up our survey and return to the barn early. Something tells me that the commander is sure as hell not going to like this one little bit."