//------------------------------//
// Discovery 
// Story: A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW 
// by De Writer 
//------------------------------//

 Star Admiral Hissin gazed down at the green, serene planet below. There was civilization there, which made it far more of a prize. A new inhabited world to add to roll of Imperial Slaves.

An aide, an Irritoki, a long necked, gray scaled member of one of the Empire’s oldest and most trusted slave species, interrupted his serene contemplation of the planet that they were orbiting. “Sir and Master, I fear to bear bad tidings but this particular world will not be the easy conquest that it appears.

“We have been conducting the usual preinvasion survey. There are some glaring anomalies. We have found NO nuclear activity signatures beyond the natural ones. In spite of that, There are signs of blast activity in the Gigatonne range and some smaller ones.

“The two biggest ones produced craters over thirty kilometers across. One caused a MOUNTAIN to simply melt and flow into the crater, creating a crescent shape. The other is nearly perfectly circular with a central peak caused by debris rising straight up and falling back. Both have filled in with water and become lakes. They are ancient, around two and a half thousand years old.

“There is another smaller one, only five kilometers across on the shore of this large bay. It is only about seventy years or so old, certainly less than a century.

“Besides that, in this remote area, there are about twenty craters that are far younger. It appears to be a test range.”

Contemptuous, Hissin glanced at the evidence. “On this whole world, we have found but few air or space fields. They have nothing to deliver their weapons with, if they are weapons!”

Biting his lip enough to draw blood, a sure sign of serious upset in the Irritoki, the aide replied, “Sir and Master, that is wrong. They do have at least some air/space vehicles. We have tracked them from several hidden bases.

“We found the first one totally by accident. It appears to be an air breathing hypersonic vehicle, though we did not realize that until later. It launched from a hidden underground hangar, already airborne when it emerged.

“Through luck alone, we had cameras aimed at the right place to see it and begin tracking it. It aimed upward at about a thirty degree angle and accelerated with nearly unbelievable speed. Its engines only quit when it hit air too thin for them to use.

“The vehicle coasted in a sub orbital hop under perfect control. It reentered and decelerated over the open sea between these islands here, and this large mainland. Operating at subsonic speeds for stealth reasons, it flew to this remote area where it joined three others like it and five of a different sort.

“The various aircraft are not hostiles, as we have seen avoidance actions that follow clear rules. They are circling this barren area here, well to the north of that large and densely populated area. We are guessing that they are there to observe some event at the center of their circle.

“Local aircraft are flying there in considerable numbers and are about what we would normally expect of this sort of culture. Those locals are under observation and do have some airfields. One is near the event center.”

Just then, the ship made a course correction great enough to feel. Irritated, Star Admiral Hissin snapped, “That is the third correction in under five orbits! Why can’t you hold the ship in a stable orientation?”

The pilot just pushed away from his console and snapped right back, “If you think it is that easy, YOU try it! The space around this planet and moon system isn’t like anything in my experience! It keeps changing. Not even G is constant here!”

That did get the Admiral’s attention. Not the outburst, the pilot was a Rakki and such was expected of them, but they were the best technicians known and utterly reliable slaves. It was the idea that G was not a constant here. There were so many things about this system that did not line up with normal knowledge.

Somewhere in this system, the dreadnought Chain of Empire had gone missing. Their mission was to find her or her wreck. Finding the planet was a plus. A very big plus.

Carefully, he asked the pilot, “What would happen if we simply established an orbit, like this planet was a normal one?”

The pilot, realizing from the form of the question that he was off the hook, as it were, replied, “We would circle the planet perhaps four times before we crashed. We would almost certainly either strike the planet or swing past, so close that we would burn some before exiting the orbit by slingshot.” His brows furrowed in deep thought.

“Perhaps that is what happened to the Chain. If the computer can be relied on in this situation, almost any such slingshot will put the vessel into gravitational reach of the satellite.”

The bridge crew was really very well trained. The sensors technician heard the suggestion and shifted the aim of her sensors. In only a few moments, she reported, “I have a metallic mass on the surface of the satellite. It is in the proper size range to be the Chain of Empire and is emitting slight signals consistent with life support operating on stored energy.”

She paused, examining her readings and refining her search. “I have confirmation. We have found the Chain of Empire. She appears to have suffered a catastrophic Displacement Engine failure.

“There are signs that the landing was a controlled crash using auxiliary power to mitigate the worst damage from the wreck’s hard landing.”

Admiral Hissin was digesting the idea that the main star drive of one of the Empire’s most powerful vessels of war had malfunctioned disastrously. That spoke of massive computer failure in a multiple redundant system.

The floor of the ship suddenly shifted and tilted! With artificial gravity, that should be impossible! The pilot was frantically applying massive amounts of auxiliary power, trying to regain control of the ship! Throughout the entire vessel, emergency alarms were screaming!

The pilot began switching down systems while damage control assessed the automatic reports. Breathing a sigh of relief, he reported, “Control regained, Admiral. Under NO CIRCUMSTANCE AT ALL should we use the Displacement Engine.”

Accepting the pilot’s assessment, Admiral Hissin demanded, “What just happened?”

The pilot replied honestly, “I have no idea, Sir. Something seized the ship and both flexed and twisted it. It made a massive alteration of the orbit that we were trying to follow. Our ship appears to have returned to normal without damage after the event.”

Astrogation looked up, and offered, “We have experienced most of our difficulties when our path takes us between the planetary surface and the moon. This event did not damage the ship because we are embedded in the local space-time complex. What ever it was warped the entire local space-time complex, and us with it, on a scale of kilometers or less, instead of the usual millions of kilometers to light years.”