Colony Wars 1: War Never Ends

Chapter Fifteen - Thrown into Conflict

21st June 2076 – 3rd Galactic Step

Armstrong Explorer Starship

Alpha Transition Portal

Altair System

The ripple in space appeared suddenly and violently, casting out waves and pulses of dithering blue and white energy. Then out from the centre of the distortion came a glowing white bubble, which fizzled and popped into nothingness, leaving only the pristine looking Armstrong spaceship behind. Then the interstellar portal disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.

Viktor looked at his instruments and saw that his vessel had only been inside the tunnel of light for about fourteen minutes and yet they had been travelling at an amazingly fast speed. Now he had to work out just where the passage had taken them. He called up a star map of the whole known galaxy and asked the computer to calculate their position. He stared at the point of light which he knew was the sun and then at the next closest star and hoped that they would be somewhere near the two stars.

When the computer finally placed a ring around the Armstrong's new location on the map, Viktor gasped loudly.

"What's wrong Viktor?" Lara said in a soft confused voice.

"Altair, we're in the Altair system," Viktor said croakily and the brown-haired man at the flight station just turned to stare hard at the scientist with his mouth wide open.

"That can't be," said the pilot, "Altair is over three times as far away from Earth as Proxima Centauri is. The computer must be wrong."

"Mr Shenka, run the locator again, please. Mr Kraft, give me a status report on the engines and internal systems," Isaac Jenkins said as he removed his helmet and rubbed his head.

Viktor ran the locator software again, but this time he checked the computers calculations at every step, just to make sure it was not malfunctioning.

"Engines are at optimum readiness, Sir," Angeles Kraft called, as he sounded out his report. "Somehow though the three G boost sequence was shutdown nineteen hours early when we entered the... the... whatever that thing was."

"That's odd," Jenkins said, perplexed by the strange series of events. "What about the hull, is it still intact?"

"Yes, we're sitting pretty Sir, if only we knew just where that was?" Kraft said cheekily as he cast a sidelong glance at Viktor.

The screen bleeped again before Viktor and again it had come to the same conclusion, but this time he had monitored its processes and found the navigation computer to be working correctly.

"Confirmed Captain, we are on the outskirts of the Altair system. Sixteen and a half light years away from our own Sun."

"Really?" Captain Jenkins asked incredulously.

"Yes Sir, really," Viktor said honestly, and then he turned to Lara and unbuckled her seatbelt. "I think you'd better go back to Adriana and Toby now please dear?"

Viktor watched her go, he hated to send her off when she looked so scared, but this could be a potentially querulous situation and he would prefer that Lara be away from the command deck so that she would not witness her leaders arguing.

"Now what do we do?" Angeles said in a loud angry voice. "We could be stranded here forever."

"Get a hold of yourself Mr Kraft," Captain Jenkins said confidently. "You knew when you took this mission, that it was unlikely that we would ever see the Earth again. We'll just have to make the best of the situation."