GAIA

Hell's Daughter

Part Two – Hell's Daughter

Chapter Eight - HMS ARIS

- 10008 AD -

It was her first post.

The, Bretonnican Star-battleship His Majesty's Service Aris.

She was a millennium old junker of a bygone era, but still carried fighters, and still packed a punch. While newer technologies had become available in recent years as far as fighter's were concerned, Tanya Roberts was thrilled to be flying an old Euro System's Fighter. Hell she was happy to be flying anything at all.

The daughter of two Am-Space pilots, Tanya had been forced to go abroad to earn her wings. Am-Space had a rule about an entire family serving in the same corps and so at the ripe old age of seventeen, Tanya found herself leaving the United States of America in favour of the British Space Flight School of England. The immediate thing she noticed upon arrival there was the difference in demographics. Where as back home, she belonged to a minority, in Europe she was part of the black majority. As a result, belonging had proved to be a lot simpler.

'Yankee to Aris, Yankee to Aris, come in?' Tanya said as she piloted her sleek atmosphere and vacuum capable fighter around space refuse. Her Magnetic Anomaly Detector was suggesting the colossal jagged twist of metal she was passing was the tip of a proverbial iceberg. 'My MAD is going haywire out here. I got a whole minefield of what would appear to be incoming rogue cargo, Aris. We're going to need to restrict these co-ordinates. Punching them through now.'

'Aris to Yankee,' replied OPerations Specialist Harper, 'read you loud and clear.' He then turned to the commander of the air-wing beside him, 'bugger, that's a lot of space she's painted.'

The Commander of the Air Wing shook his head. 'That American girl is rather certain of herself to make such a recommendation, but I'd trust her instincts, sir.'

'Very well. Linda,' he called out to the nearby communications officer, put out a general code 3 for anyone flying into Yankee's co-ordinates packet, and issue a no-fly zone for civilian vessels.'

Lieutenant Linda Jones took a deep breath before going ahead and executing her orders. It was a big call, and if proven unsubstantiated could get the CAW in serious trouble. Almost immediately, there was a response.

'HMS Aris? This is the HMS Hope. Come in?'

'HMS Aris, OPS Harper at the helm.'

'Captain William Sutton, of the HMS Hope. Haven't you heard?'

'Heard what?' replied a suddenly concerned Harper.

'Bretonnica! She's, bloody well gone!'

Bretonnica? Was there a ship named after their home world he hadn't heard of? 'Come again, captain, HMS Bretonnica is lost?'

'No, the fucking planet Harper. She's gone! Blown to hell. Fucking alien scum we have been hearing so much about turned out to be real. These, Draggone as the Galactic Anthropic Imperial Armada call them got the drop on us. Six billion dead. We're trying to –'

'Sir,' Linda whispered, 'We've lost them, actually I can't seem to reach anyone.'

'Condition 1!' Harper yelled, 'Jesus Christ, recall the air-wing, we have to gate out of here.'

'Sir?' the CAW responded.

'Jesus, Jim, look at all that space Yankee's painted. What if that's not debris like the chunk she eye-balled?'

'Bollox!' swore the CAW. They were about to be swarmed by a hostile force. Taking the Vox, he called in his operational air-wing.

Meanwhile OPS Harper was busy getting on the horn to engineering. 'Sally?'