The E. S. S. Wellington

By

J. N. Wdowski

Chapter One – The Message

The entire bridge crew instinctively covered their eyes as the E.S.S Grant exploded into a bright silent flash off their starboard bow.

“Helm, get us out of here!” Captain Mueller barked.

“Heading?” the helmsman requested.

“Not here,” Mueller replied.

The stars on the main view screen, showing the ship’s forward motion, turned into streaks of blue lines, as the E.S.S. Wellington jumped into faster than light speed. A smaller screen, above the main screen, displayed their aft view of the receding stars turning into streaks of red lines.

Within a second the ship’s de-mass generator shut down, returning the ship back to sub light. A class eye ice world filled the main screen. On the aft monitor the stars returned to their normal dots of white and yellow pinpoints in the blackness of space.

“Where did you bring us, Mr. Momdingo?” Mueller asked standing from his command chair to look at the ball of ice on the screen.

“We are ten light years from our last position.” He looked at the star charts on his display, “This is Regges VII.” He answered looking up at the world on the main screen.

“Ensign Yamato, damage report.” He turned to the attractive twenty-three-year-old manning the damage control station.

“We were hit on deck five, beta section. Four crewmen were in the section.” She struggled to keep her voice professional. “We have lost the shielding generator. Repair crews are on it.”

Mueller sat back down in his command chair. The Grant exploding in a flash kept playing in his head. They never saw who or what attacked them. He was shook to his core, but as captain, he knew he could not show it to his crew. “Mr. Momdingo, what is the closest base to our position?”

Momdingo looked at his display then turned to his captain. “Tesla III. At least ten jumps from our present position.”

“As soon as the de-mass generator resets, lay in a course to the first waypoint back to Tesla III.” Mueller turned to his communications officer. “Ensign Rodgers, report back to Star Force Command on the spooky com.”

Aye, sir.” Rodgers acknowledged as the twenty-two-year-old woman with a bob haircut of chestnut hair, and light freckles on the bridge of her nose, began using Morse code to relay a message on their entangled atom linked with Space Force Command.

“Afterwards call all senior officers to report to me in my office.” Mueller turned to Frost “The Bridge is yours. Call me if needed.”

Commander Frost a thirty-eight-year-old redhead stood from his station “Shouldn’t I also be in the meeting?”

“I need you on the bridge in case whoever hit us comes after us.” Mueller stood to relinquish his seat to his first officer. “If any alien vessel does show up, do not engage. Avoid contact, even if it looks like a rowboat."

"A rowboat?" Frost was confused.

"You know what I mean. Do not engage them. Make a run from it, and hail me immediately.” He turned back to Ensign Yamato “How are sensors?”

“Sensors are mostly operational.” She responded.

“Mostly?” Mueller stepped towards her station.

“X-Ray and infrared are out.” She looked up at him as he looked over her shoulder at her display station. “It should be fully functional before our next jump.”

“Understood. We'll need repairs to first focus on the anti-gravity shielding. We’ll just have to rely on other sensors until then.” he placed a supporting hand on her shoulder, sensing that the loss of the Grant had not only shaken him. “Focus on your duties.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Captain’s Office

Mueller sat at the head of the small conference table. He was joined by Doctor Kumar, a thirty-five-year-old petite woman from Mumbai. Like all female crewmembers she had the standard bob haircut. Commander Michael Walowitz was the Wellington’s chief engineer; he was forty-years old and always seemed to be frowning. Chief science officer thirty-six-year-old Lt. Commander Novikov sat on the opposite side of the table from Mueller. He did not look happy. From time to time he would stroke his bald head with his hand.

“What the hell happened?” Mueller opened the meeting.

Walowitz replied first “They were able to knock out our repulse gravity shield generator.”

“That is not possible.” Mueller insisted “They repel all kinetic and energy weapons.”

“It is possible.” Novikov replied “They did it. So it is possible.”

“How?” Mueller began to copy Walowitz’s frown.

“They were able to penetrate the repulse gravity shield with neutrino scans. Once they located our field generator they used a gravitas resonance pulse to destabilize the local shielding. Enough so to tear a brief opening long enough to hit the generator with a single tungsten dart; most likely fired from a magnetic railgun. Once our shield generator was knocked out we were vulnerable to their conventional weapons.” explained Novikov.

“It is most likely what happened to the Grant. If we had stayed any longer we would have shared their fate.” Walowitz added.

The captain’s personal telecom chimed. He looked at the screen on the device; it was the bridge's sensor officer Lt. Stenvall. “You have contact?”

“No, sir. Something more interesting.” The twenty-five-year-old crewcut blonde replied.

“Which is, Lt?”

“The neutrino beam they used to scan the ship was sent out in binary pulses. Extremely fast, but neither-the-less, a clear pattern of pulses.”

“I don’t understand.” Mueller looked at his science officer and engineer at the table.

“The pulses were not random or repetitive. It seems to be a binary coded message. It started with a series of progressing prime numbers, which is what made me first notice; a universal indication of an incoming message. It made me examine more seriously our recording of their neutrino scans of us. I discovered four sections of ones and zeros, forming images. My computer has already processed them.” He answered. “I had the computer enhance the resolution to make them more understandable.”

“Transmit the images to the screen in my office.” Everyone at the table focused on the large flat screen on the office cabin’s bulkhead. The first image that appeared was an overhead drawing of the star system that they had just lost the Grant in. The second image was the same illustration but with a thick ring around the system, like a border. The third image added icons that resemble the silhouettes of starships approaching the border line. The final image was the ships on the border being replaced with the images of explosions.

“I think the message is very clear.” Doctor Kumar spoke up for the first time.

“A message they want us to relay back home.” Mueller stroked the whiskers on his chin. “It seems they didn’t destroy us on purpose. They took out the Grant to get our attention, and then gave us a bloody nose to back off and bring their warning to our superiors."

“Who are they?” Doctor Kumar asked.

“We never made any contact. We thought the system was uninhabited.” Mueller explained to her. He turned to his chief engineer “Mike, can you get our shield generator up and running again?”

“Running the 3D printers as we speak for the replacement parts we need.” Commander Walowitz did not look confident. “It will be a day or two to make full repairs.”

“What difference would our having shields make?” The doctor seemed anxious. “They obviously have the ability to bypass them. You're not planning on going back,,, are you?”

“No doctor. I will not re-enter their system. No, I plan to do what they left us alive to do, I will be returning to the closest star base and deliver their message. I still want our shields operational. I don’t like feeling completely naked.” He answered the doctor and turned to Walowitz, “Mike, get them back up and running ASAP.”

“Aye, sir.”