Void Incursions Prelude
Exiting warp in an unplanned fashion was all but an easy process. There were many obstacles and factors that could blow one's ship up, crush, implode, rip apart, or other imaginable scenarios that made the idea of exiting a warp jump before the set destination like a disaster waiting to happen. A navigation calculator or computer depending on the ship and whether it possesses a real A.I. could get to point "A" to point "B" without any trouble. All that was needed to make that kind of travel possible was to calculate what was in front of your ship for 20 Kilometers, and what was going to be around your ship for 20 Kilometers radius when you exited warp at your approximate destination. Warp wasn't an exact science and was really based on "best guesses" and "approximate data" in most cases. A simple navigation array could get you to your destination without much of a problem, and the worst case was usually you were 40 kilometers away from where you needed to be. An A.I. navigation complex on the other hand would calculate variables too complex for a simple array's CPU and would get you right on destination and would be better able to orient and control the ship in a much better and organized fashion.
The only problem with exiting a warp in an unplanned fashion was that nothing was "truly" calculated from those two point. When in warp, if the Nav array detected something in the path of your ship, it would simply nudge the ship out of the way until it passed it, and then set it back on course. When you exited unplanned, the Nav computer could not guarantee safety or that anything would appear in front of your ship and you slowed down to normal velocity. So if you slowed down to normal velocity and an asteroid field zoomed towards your ship at over 25,000,000 kilometers a second, you were doomed. Even if the Nav computer could calculate a safe route in such a timely manner, the maneuvering at those speeds would tear the ship apart.
This was problem Sar was facing now. As Sar and his small fleet were escorting some rebels off their home world of Kelinen to one of the governed prison worlds located in the Eridande System named Kar in their nimble but strong advanced cruisers, one of the fleet members, Nineo, had his main computer warn him that his warp system was overheating due to a coolant leak and that he would only be able to safely maintain warp for a few minutes. Risking a mechanical breakdown, which if the safety mechanisms failed could turn into imminent explosion, he had sent the message to Sar.
Being the only one armed with an actual Navigation A.I. he had to come up with a plan and quick for exiting warp. Although Navigation A.I. weren't particular smart and in no way sentient, they did their jobs fairly quick and well in an emergency situation if given enough data. However "a few minutes" was not what was considered enough time to come up with a 100% safe warp exit. However the A.I. did come up with something and linked it to the fleet via their COMs and promised them a promising 70% chance to live.
As the fleet exited warp in the middle of dead-space, space that was not fully charted, they noticed random pings coming from their LADAR based detection systems. It was faint but it was still there, seeming not to move as they drew closer to it. As far as the eye could tell there was just empty space and nothing more.
Being only 250 million kilometers away from Kar Sar gave the command to ignore the ping and to consider it just some random space fluctuation that they could not fully detect and to avoid it by 200KM. The fleet confirmed the order and relayed it to the two escort ships named "Shaken" and "Stirred" and told them to form up within 20KM of Sar's Ship.
Sar's Wing Leader Lorin, a female tiger in her mid 20's, flying a missile fitted cruiser named "Proper Guidance" took it upon herself to fly a little closer to the source of the anomaly to see if her ships admitted underpowered sensor array could detect anything more. Her ship wasn't outdated or weak by any means, it just didn't need strong sensors due to the missiles being self targeting. She didn't need to target anything or have a lock for weapon tracking, she just orbited or followed close to the thing she wanted the missiles to go after and let the pieces fall into place.
As Sar watched Lorin fly to the signal he didn't think twice about for two reason. One was that her ship had more reserve energy than anyone else mainly because it didn't have to keep a weapons array charged and also due to the weaker sensor not needing as many gigajoules to operate. The second was because he really doubted it was anything. Still though, he kept his eyes on his LADAR's screen just in case he was wrong.
Lorin approached the signal within 100KM and activated one of the forward facing camera's on the bow of her ship and linked it to her holo-panel in the small bridge of the ship located in the middle of the ship instead of the front due to the extensive modification and systems that could be switched out for others. Lorin at times when having to use enhanced multi-spectrum cameras instead of eyes thought how these ship were like a jail cell made out of building blocks that could make the jail bigger or smaller, but the cell never changed size.
As she looked at the screen and starred out into space, she moved the camera around the signal expecting to find something, only to find black emptiness and white dots. Zooming the camera in and enhancing the image did nothing more the waste a few watts of energy, and wear down the intricate metal gears on the lens motor more.
Irritated and defeated she almost didn't even bother activating the ships main scanning array, which was a more powerful LADAR array that could scan a total of 10AU's for her ship, and was relatively slow. However by focusing on a direction, she could reduce the scanning time by effectively eliminating unnecessary space to scan.
As she moved her figures around holo-buttons on her chairs armrest a visual overlay of the scanning array popped itself on top of the camera view and made itself slightly transparent to not block the full camera view. As she hit the now flashing "Start" button on the center of the small holo-panel, which had rearranged and changed itself so that she had full control over the scanning array, a large barely visible laser spread from the front of the ship out into space.
The fact that the scanner was visible to anyone with visual enhancement, meaning it could be detected by even the dumbest ship sensors, made it one of the least stealthy scanning devices out there. The only advantages of a LADAR sensor array was the distance it could put out and the fact that it was hard to jam or disrupt, and the light emitted from it literally had to be scattered.
As she watched the faint light spread in front of her ship and travel through the vast body of space, she noticed it hit something exactly 100KM in front of her. She looked at the LARDAR readout which indicated large objects had impeded the array from completing its scan. She stared at her holo-screen expecting something to become visible but nothing did. To her it remained empty space with stars.
She decided that she would use a trick that she learned from the Space Academy on Orignious II that would shed literal light on the object which could not be seen. By overloading a LADAR array and increasing the strength of its laser light and modulating it into what was called "Delta Ray", it could literally light up any object by exciting the electrons of said object. However besides the increased power need of doing this, it also made the scan clearly visible to anyone or anything.
As soon as she activated the overloaded burst of the sensor array, a very punctual and mechanical voice simply stated "Warning! Multiple Contacts". The scan had disrupted a stationary cloaking generator that held behind it a half dozen small and fast moving frigates and nine lesser assault ships, which where only marginally bigger the frigs but slower and less nimble and could be taken out in a few well place hits. Frigates on the other hand were fast, nimble ships that could cause less sophisticated tracking systems to "lose their heads" and offline themselves by errors in tracking prediction mathematics.
Quickly she set her ship on an intercept course with Sar's, who was already on his way with the rest of the fleet in a standard attack formation. An advanced cruiser with this many enemies could hold them off without much of a problem due to the large power and CPU output that made these ship quite overkill for anything of lesser strength. In some cases with these advanced ships they could fit modules originally designed for battleship class vessels and manage to use them effectively.
As the rest of the fleet caught up to her, which was still a good 3 minutes flying at a maximum speed of around 600 meters-per-second, the small group of ship quickly opened fire on her and the frigates orbited her hoping to find a weak spot in her defensive systems. However such tactics by such small ships with such insignificant weapons was useless. The frigates weapons did nothing but get deflected or absorbed by her ships shields. The fact that they were firing small artillery rounds also didn't help their cause.
After the fleet approached her and closed in to their targeting range of 95KM, the attack group made a break for it warping back into unlocalized space from which they came. A small group like theirs in such standard ships was no match for a fleet 10 AIF, Advanced Interceptor Cruisers, class ships.
Threat gone and nothing showing up on the LADAR systems, they closed up on the two escort ships and awaited Nineo's status report regarding his warp abilities. Nineo flashed the report to Sar stating that he could make the jump, but would have to remain stationed for extensive repairs afterwards.
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Thank you Tank Jaeger for helping me with those more the sad errors found in my writing. I promise I'm normaly a bit more careful then that.