Prologue:

Near the Tosev System

The Bridge of the Avenger was a place well known to Captain John Weber. Weber was a general in the Empire of Kolan. Key word being was. There was a scandal between him and his CO’s wife, which had nothing to do with him. She simply looked at him in a way that looked lovingly, and then a rumor started that they were having an affair. Well, that rumor made it big, and then the word reached his CO’s ears. He had Weber arranged to be ‘spaced’, where a captain is ejected into the endless void of space. On his spacing day, a large raid by the Pirates of the Tosev system was the only thing that stopped it. They pitied him, and accepted him into their rag-tag group. He rose through their ranks quickly, and soon became one of their most powerful generals.

Right now, he commanded the Ship, Avenger, and it was aptly named. First, the avenger was a simple assault frigate. Then, it got an upgrade that changed it to a destroyer, and then when they got the resources, it was upgraded to a Heavy Cruiser class ship. An assault frigate is a frigate sized ship, one that has a crew of 100 or so, and has lots of powerful guns on the front of it. A frigate class ship has a chassis that makes it look like an upside down pistol, with crew quarters and basic operations near the high point of it and the engines and unmanned systems were at the bottom of it. In an assault frigate, there were four guns located in a plus sign formation on the front, and then two plasma bomb launchers on the bow.

A destroyer is much like an Assault frigate, and an Ion Cannon Frigate. Ion Cannon Frigates are frigates that are shaped like Assault frigates, but have a huge single Ion Cannon on them. Essentially, they’re just big shells for Ion Cannons. Ever since the destroyer was released, they have become used less. A Destroyer is a ship that has put together the four guns of an Assault Frigate and placed them on the top as heavy guns on the bow, in view of the bridge of the ship. On the sides of it, there are Ion Cannons on a turret. Because they have been made to be fitted on a turret, the Ion Cannon Frigate has become obsolete.

A Heavy Cruiser is a lot like a Destroyer, but this time it has Six Guns like on a destroyer, and has four Ion Cannon Turrets, that can fire two actual beams at once. They also have a small fighter bay for small strike craft.

Strike Craft are small one, or two person ships much like Fighter Jets of the age when men were confined to earth. They usually had one small gun that used primitive small shots, and sometimes they would have an alternative weapon that was used against larger craft.

There is also a Corvette class. A corvette is a lot like a fighter ship in the fact that it requires fuel and can’t do a hyperspace jump, but it does pack I bit more punch than a fighter class ship. A Corvette could hold a crew of about 20 to 50 people, but they didn’t have a berth for them to sleep. There was a small kitchen in the back of it in case there was an accident with its mother ship, and they needed to survive while waiting for either a new ship to hyperspace to them or them to make a trek to a support frigate. The support frigate was a different type of frigate. It was able to repair capital ships, and could also hold either 10 fighters or 5 corvettes.

Ships all ran on engines called Impellers. An Impeller created a small gravity field behind a ship and it allowed the ship to move forward. The ship also pushed the field behind it, causing it to move forward. The speed of the ship was proportionate to its mass and the size of the field being created. In other words, it required a ship that was large, like a frigate, to have a large Impeller. There also was a problem, the larger the field, the slower the ship moved. At first the physicians thought that the larger a field was, the faster a ship could move, but that was soon proved wrong. The smaller the field, the faster the ship could ‘break free’ of it, and create another in a rapid process of give and take. If you looked at older ships, they had smaller models that created very small fields at the sides, and made a oar-like formation. It was very inefficient, as it not only cost a lot of fuel, (mankind still used fossil fuel power when these ships were used) and also were very slow. A small ship could mainly hope to achieve 200 lr/h (light-years per hour). The average speed nowadays is 5,000 Lr/H. So, give that to a frigate, and there is one really slow ship. Weber shook his head as he ran through all that data, why the hell did I do that? Oh well…

The Avenger’s guns clicked and swiveled to target the new ship in their sensor range. They identified it as neutral and neither fired or returned to their regular position. Weber flew the ship into the position where the ARC totally enveloped it with its three wings. There was one on top of it, and two to the side of it. The cruiser looked like a frigate compared to the size of the ARC. Weber left the command chair and said to his left hand man: “Prepare my ship. We’re boarding this ARC.” The left hand man nodded, and pressed two buttons. In the Heavy Cruisers dock bays, the heavy corvette Avenger Prime was fuelled and prepared to leave the ship. Weber and 19 other men boarded the ship. The ship lifted off its landing gear, and hovered in space. The dock bay cleared of all personnel, and then the airlock disengaged. All air was first pumped out of the ship and then the shield that prevented the cold vastness of space disengaged. The Corvettes Impeller kicked on and left a heat stain on the ceiling of the dock and pulled out into space. The ARC slowly came alive as it detected movement near it.

ARC’s are an odd sort of ship. They were built by an ancient race of people, who, unfortunately killed each other after they discovered nuclear warfare. The planet, whose name is now forgotten, created five ships that had a living core that was able to think freely. How this race created space technology before the A-Bomb is still a mystery. ARC stands for Auto Reticulating Charka. Charka was also the code word that that race used for a ‘Mothership’ class vessel. A Mothership is a ship that can build, repair, and dock any ship possible. They have huge dock bays for fighter craft that can hold hundreds of any ship that can’t hyperspace. It can build anything from a simple R-Probe to the majestic Heavy Cruiser.

As the Avenger Prime docked with the ARC, all of its systems came online. Weber, having studied all sorts of ships, placed his hand on the ARC’s teleport beam and teleported himself into the bridge of the ship. A face of a man with long brown hair and a long mustache appeared in the main holographic projector in the center of the bridge. It said, “Greeitings master. I am ARC-4. I hope I can serve you to the fullest extent of my power.”

Weber nodded and said, “Can you show me a holographic map of the system?”

The face zoomed to the size of a fist and a map appeared in the center of the area. It was centered on the center of the system and had a detailed view of what was around it. Wilhelm pointed to a planet, which was encased in ice, and the map zoomed into it so far that he could pinpoint the debris around it. Wilhelm almost squealed with joy, but the other trooper’s teleported in.

The ship pulled up a chair, and Wilhelm sat on it, with an evil look on his face.