Antares One

Prologue

16 April 2094 18:16GMT

USS Kitty Hawk SCV-01

Jovian System near Amalthea

The lights in Engineering Central Control had been dim for the last couple of hours, impeding the work of a half dozen enlisted techs as they sought to alter the room from its designed function.

Three hours ago, give or take a few minutes, the Kitty Hawk, along with several cruisers, escorts and support ships, arrived at Amalthea for the counter-attack against an alien Enemy its crews knew virtually nothing about. Suits back on Earth had taken to referring to this group as simply "the Enemy" as there had been no communication with the flotilla of sixteen ships that had emerged from an apparent wormhole four years earlier other than violence. 

Kitty Hawk's squadron of ships, the first such force ever mustered by humanity, consisted of craft from six different countries and personnel from almost every nation back home; an achievement in and of itself. After the historic allied victory at Mars just eighteen months ago, the Enemy's remaining force had retreated back to the Jovian system, and intelligence suggested they were going to head back wherever they came from for help. That couldn't be allowed to happen.

The painful lessons learned at Mars told humanity that the most likely result of this war, without immediate unilateral action, was utter extinction. The Enemy had blasted several Chinese and American settlements on Mars before the fleet arrived to drive them back, killing thousands of innocents. Such destruction would be brought to Earth unless the Enemy was stopped while they still could. 

Admiral Solomon Montoya aboard the EUSS Trafalgar took that unilateral action, ordering his fleet of twenty-two ships, including Kitty Hawk, to follow the Enemy wherever they went. It took eighteen months, but finally the Enemy was spotted at the Jovian moon Amalthea, apparently guarding some kind of outpost that was projecting an energy field keeping the Jupiter wormhole open.

Allied ships launched missiles at the outpost and successfully disabled it before the Enemy's heavier ships could cross the wormhole's event horizon, and the resulting (and unexpected) gravitational disturbance that followed destabilized the wormhole and crippled those heavy ships. Unfortunately, it also garnered the attention of the remaining Enemy combatants, who furiously attacked the fleet, most notably its biggest target, the Kitty Hawk. A short and painful battle followed, resulting in the last few fragile Enemy ships' destruction, along with over half the allied fleet. The Hawk took major damage itself, namely the loss of the forward command section and, with it, the primary communications and navigation nexus for the ship.

Commander Michael Oliver, until two-ish hours ago the Hawk's Engineering Officer, now its acting captain, supervised the technicians in Central as they hastily retrofitted monitors and consoles to give the secure room the ability to at least get the Hawk under full control again. "Hayes, how are we looking on that comms board?"

Ensign Hayes pulled herself from under the desk she worked on, a bit easier than usual given the reduced artificial gravity since the battle. "I think we're good sir. You should be able to pull up comm traffic as soon as you log in to the comm-net." She wiped a bead of sweat from her brow, leaving a streak of carbon behind.

"Best news I've heard in an hour. Here goes nothin'." Oliver typed a file path into his own console, waited a couple of heartbeats, then widened his eyes at the streams of text now coming through. "Good job guys, it looks like we might be in business again."

"One problem at a time, right sir?" Lieutenant Suarez said from the damage control desk behind him.

"Damn straight. Then you move on to the next clusterfuck," Oliver replied with a smile. "Get going on navigation, then. You got everything you think you're gonna need for that?"