"Prepare to cloak on my command," Erik instructed Mission Specialist Hamid Ursa as the Hellbender approached the threshold of Rostran warspace.
Erik thought the cloaking devices on UFAR ships were something spectacular, although he had no real concept of how they worked. To be honest, not many people did. The cloaking devices were a spoil of war from the Great Subjugation that was taken, researched, reverse engineered, and equipped on every ship in the fleet that might find it useful. Erik was told once that the device works by creating a stable envelope at a certain perimeter around the ship and then physically bending the universe around it. Essentially, while the ship is cloaked, it is not just simply hidden. It would appear that it didn’t even exist. It might actually not exist at the time. Erik was never sure.
He remembered being told the stories of one of the enemies defeated in the Subjugation. There were many enemies, but the most fascinating one was- well, Erik could never pronounce the name, but he remembered it translated almost perfectly to “The Eye of The God” in his language. When the colonies united, formed the Republics and began invading neighboring quadrants, The Eye of The God were among the first attacked. At first, the established colonies had entered into negotiations to attempt to form a meager alliance with this incredibly powerful civilization, but The Eye of The God remained neutral. They were much more technologically advanced at the time than any other civilization in the known visible universe. They insisted on peaceful relations with the UFAR, which would have required them to contribute valuable resources to the Subjugation Campaign. Communications eventually broke down over The Eye of The God’s pacifist ideals. When the UFAR invaded, they found The Eye of The God’s home world had been vacated, leaving their infrastructure in tact. Erik believed cloaking was found then. They would have made a great ally. As the legends spoke, Erik would listen as a child about how The Eye of The God fled their home world, but were easily outnumbered and overtaken, with no help from their deity. At least that was the story told to children in grade school. In truth, however, they disappeared. Nobody seemed to know where they went. Nobody really cared.
Earlier, the Hellbender had received its final set of encrypted instructions for proceeding. Since the Hellbender was operating covertly, the mission information and objectives were loaded to the ship's onboard memory and encrypted so they couldn't be revealed until they were needed. Erik thought of this as completely unnecessary, but the Ministry of Defense didn't always operate in the most logical way. For at least as long as Erik had been enlisted, they had always been about secrecy and security to an absurd level.
Erik was ordered to enter Rostran warspace cloaked and silent as a precaution. This wasn't so much for fear of anything except Saal awareness. All of the Hellbender's moves had to be performed covertly now that it had entered a war zone. A Saal scout vessel could intercept any errant communiqué and one of any number of unfortunate events could ensue, all of which involved embarrassment on the part of the United Federation of Autonomous Republics.
"Ship is under 95% cloak, Captain."
"Very good." Erik leans forward slightly in his Captain's chair, shifting his weight. "Speed check?"
"42k sir. Do we bring it up to 50?"
"Negative. Maintain. Let's keep it silent."
"Right."
The hull of the Hellbender groaned with age and strain as the engines powered
down, cutting off the radiation trail (or noise, as it is sometimes called) left behind by engines built into ships that are older than their crews. The bridge lights dimmed automatically from being switched to power conservation mode. Yuriel leaned toward Erik and whispered, "Why the secrecy, Captain? Are the Rostran not expecting us?”
"I hope they’re expecting us in a good way and not a ‘blast us into pieces because they’re pissed about the loss of the Meristoma’ kind of way, that would be unfortunate. We’re silent to prevent detection by any Saal craft. It's not really the Rostran we have to be afraid of,” he reassured her. "It's Saal scout ships deep in this warzone. We prefer nobody outside of this transaction even know we're here. It kills our isolationist image if we're caught, right?"
