“What is it Ensign Diablo?” Commander Jordan Magadza entered the bridge. The former Olympic swimmer was an intimidating figure. She carried a certain presence about her that filled a room and made people take note. She had reputation as a fearsome XO and rumour had it that after this exercise she was going to get her own command. “Have you located that sub yet?” It was like the dam sub didn’t even exist. Magadza did not like to lose, ever. She knew they were nothing but bait but none the less there was ever a slight chance they might get lucky and she would be ready if that slim chance presented itself. Every now and then she drop a gravity marker which in theory should be enough to pick up even that vessel if it was following them.

  The bridge was located deep within the ship in an oval arrangement, a large screen encapsulated the entire wall or more to the point the entire wall was the screen. If you walked into the room without the certified frequency lenses you would simply see a white empty room. This was a augmented reality centre, each visual display was pushed through the organic contact lenses of each crew member and was refined enough in detail that two people with different clearances would see different levels of information.

  “Sort of ma’am. It’s a level one distress from Resolute.” Ensign Selina Diablo replied. “They are suffering significant turbulence from the worm hole.”

  The Classical Class Frigate Sparta was almost as large as the Resolute yet weighed nearly six times as much. The frigate was as bold as the sub was subliminal. She had the class eight armour with class eight weaponry including twin IPAC guns mounted top and bottom, fore and aft, giving her eight of the powerful guns. She had enough firepower to smash the Resolute twenty times over, if she could see her.

  The Sparta was reverse teardrop in shape with a blunted rear, attractive from a distance until you were close enough to see the white crisscrossed bulky armour. The altered titanium graphene fibre weave alloy was the hardest and most durable product the human race had ever produced. The Sparta covering was one metre thick. Four times the strength of steel, nearly ten times the heat resistance with built in active impact displacement. Class eight armour was the equivalent to 3.8 meters of solid steel.

  The Classical Class frigates had been the main stay of the UNF space fleet in its day, the Sparta had been one of the last the class and specifically developed as a training vessel for the UNF Space Academy. It was never actually commissioned for active service although it was fully serviced for warfare and was the most advanced of its variant.

  “Call the Commodore. Move us out another ten thousand kilometres out, full speed.” Magadza ordered with a wave of her hand, not hint of uncertainty in her voice. A level one distress signified potential loss of ships and lives, this was also coded for non assistance as she looked at the screen.

  “I am picking up vibrations on the sensors.” Lieutenant Jessica Collins reported as she fired up the huge twin 1120MW engines.

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  “Oh hell, the Resolute is gone. And don’t mean cloaked.” Diablo spun around. “Well, I am pretty sure she is not cloaked. I can’t find her.”

  “General quarters.” Mag’s sent out the command as the sirens echoed throughout the ship. Again no hesitation, her ability to read a situation was almost uncanny.

  “I can’t hold her.” Collins fought with the controls. “Engines have maxed out at 1120MW.

  Commodore George Zorba sat in the captain’s cabin, skimming over another report. The big Greek did not get out of the Academy classroom much these days, he had taken advantage of a transfer to personally ‘step down’ and take command of the training vessel. This was the final shakedown of Magadza’s crew for her new command. He was simply here to evaluate and if he was to be honest with himself, Magadza needed very little evaluation. It had been nearly twelve years since he had sailed in a frigate. Not that he had much to do this time round, he had spent most of the time catching up on his paper work. It was odd when he thought about, it was a very long time since they had actually used paper but they still called it exactly that.

  There were no windows in the cabin but just to be out in space again gave him that sense of freedom. He did miss this, being out in space, commanding a vessel. He had never wanted to give up command but after command of four vessels he had run out of ships to command, his time was up. He never wanted to go back to an office so he moved to training vessels. He liked being on ships, for him it never grew old. He could feel the vibrations through his feet. He could feel the vibration, he shouldn’t feel the vibration. He stood up and rubbed his chin.

  The sudden alarm broke him from his thoughts and he quickly spun around and headed the fifteen meters to the bridge. These days he loved alarms, it meant something was happening and anything that dragged him away from his paper work couldn’t be bad.

  “Report?” He asked glancing towards Mag.

  “The worm hole is active and it has already claimed the Resolute sir.” Mag replied calmly although she was unsure what to do next.

  With the flick of his hand, George pulled up the 3D image in front of him and frowned, they didn’t have a simulation for this, he glanced at Mag, she was still in command but he could see that she had briefest hint of fear in her eye.

  “What on earth are you doing to my ship?” Lieutenant Tommy Bores rushed into the Bridge. “I can feel her breaking apart.” The short engineer jumped into his command seat. “Holy hell, we have one stressed hull.”

  “You can come and drive the bitch yourself if you want.” Shot Collins as she gritted her teeth. “We are slipping back.” They could all feel the ship starting to vibrate now.

  “We are going break apart, blow an engine or both in a minute.” Bores tried adjusting the engines on line.

  “Send out a distress signal.” Zorba took a seat and gave a reassuring nod to Mag. They could do no more then what they were doing. Zorba found himself watching with an almost detached view which un-nerved him. He already could tell they would pull clear, they were wining this battle, he looked up the left panel. The Resolute had appeared to be much closer, what did Missy have up her sleave. In the back of his mind he could guess Missy’s tactic, she had turned the Sparta from bait for the Resolute to bait for the fleet. He would have loved to continue this game. Was this wrong to think of this now?

  “Sending distress signal.” Diablo answered.

  “Over max the engines. 120%” Zorba then added as after thought, no need to tempt fate