Summoning Orion

Chapter 2: The Unknown System

March 1st, 2603

A chime sounded off in his quarters as a naval officer woke up from his brief nap to answer. He sat up, grabbed and put on his cap, and pressed a button on a wall console.

"Yes?"

"Captain, our drive is finished charging up. We're ready to make the final jump on your command."

They've already made about 7 jumps, covering a total of 700 lightyears for the past 7 days. Instead of the new quantum tunnel drive most ships were being equipped with as of latest, they've been using the trans-material drive to reach their desired destination.

Why?

Because this was no ship, but a station. A station that's primarily designed to be stationary, so it doesn't have a proper FTL for travel. However it always comes installed with a trans-material drive during transfer across space, or if it needs to make a quick getaway from overwhelming odds. The process requires all externally docked vessels to be detached and external docking ports retracted. However it wasn't completely naked as it carried it's own arsenal and compliment of UAVs for self defense, including deployable satellites armed with an array of weaponry.

"I'll be at the bridge in 1 minute." The base commander responded before he began fixing up his uniform, and checking his appearance in a digital mirror. Finding no flaws, he was satisfied and turned to leave his quarters.

"Captain on the bridge!" The first-officer of the station called out as the captain walked through a pair of sliding doors and entered the station's control hub.

The massive space structure was an immense circular shaped facility reaching a diameter of 100 km to it's outer ring, which had a height and thickness of 2 km. The outer ring was where the station docked and supported large capital ships, with enough docks to hold 200 cruiser sized ships. Two large docks were built in symmetrical fashion to hold two dreadnoughts. In defense of the outer ring were two modules with a dedicated arsenal of 50x quad 812mm mass drivers, 50x quad 406mm mass drivers, 6x anti-ship/nuclear missile launchers, 100x laser CIWS, and 50x missile CIWS. In the very center of the station was it's core structure, with a diameter of 48 km and a height of 52 km, connected to the outer ring via four 50 km long tram links. The core was where the station housed it's petawatt cold fusion reactor, shield generators, trans-material jump drive, long range communications, and hanger bay for storing numerous frigate sized ships and thousands of UAVs. The core was protected by a dedicated arsenal of 100x quad 812mm mass drivers, 100x quad 406mm mass drivers, 12x anti-ship/nuclear missile launchers, 200x laser CIWS, and 100x missile CIWS.

The station generally has no official name, being identified by the planet or asset it's assigned to guard. "Ensign, prepare our final jump. Standby to engage the drive on my mark."

"Aye sir." The officer at the helm console began inputting the final coordinates for the final jump they needed to complete. Having finished recharging just a few minutes ago, the drive was spooling up and ready to transport the station across space.

"Drive is ready sir. Awaiting your word."

"Go for jump."

"Away in 3...2...1."

The station was enveloped in a field of energy before it disappeared from it's place into a mass of energized particles, reconstructing itself and appearing 33 lightyears from it's previous position. From in the middle of nowhere in space, the station arrived several thousand kilometers from the wormhole that was discovered two months ago.

Surrounding the wormhole were two fleets of 10 battlecruisers, 40 battlecarriers, 40 multirole cruisers, 20 missile destroyers, and 20 escort frigates combined. They were assigned to guard the entrance to the wormhole, while another fleet was just recently sent through to secure the other side. Ever since it's discovery, high command wanted to secure this anomaly as an asset to assess for future research, including the planet that was discovered on the other end.