[Starhawk]

2445.0 Returning Home:
�It�s good to finally be getting back to Icaran space.� Star Admiral William Ross said with a smile as his fleet emerged from the Wa�Tor warp point into Norvor, the home system of the Icaran Empire. Commodore Rukai Fujita smiled at her Admiral�s cheerful tone as she looked up from a report.
�What you really mean sir; is it�s good to be where Lin is after so long.� She made sure her voice was just loud enough for only Ross to hear it and she smiled again when he turned his nose up at her playfully.
�Why Commodore you shouldn�t be so rude to your elders, we are a little sensitive in our dotage you know.� William kept his face appropriately grim as he spoke, which only caused Rukia�s grin to grow broader.
�With all due respect Admiral but dotage my ***, your only sixty-two, that�s not even middle aged.� William chuckled at her overly respectful tone and turned back to face the video display that showed the tactical display of Norvor.

One of the first things William noticed as he looked at the display is how much Norvor had changed in the seven years he�d been there, the system�s total population had gone from around twenty-two billion to an almost unbelievable eighty-six billion as colonists from all over the Empire flocked to the New Icara sphereworld to bolster the population, he also noticed sixteen shipyards in orbit of the worlds of Norvor with signs that more were under construction.
�Lord, it�s hard to believe this much industrialization could have happened in only seven years.� Ross tone was suddenly much more serious and for the first time Rukia could remember it was full of awe.
�Well the Praetor ordered more shipyards built so that we could produce enough ships to fight this war properly, and planetary yards take too long to build capital ships because they have to worry about boosting all of the segments into orbit and then having orbital construction teams assemble the pieces, the government decided it�s cheaper and faster to just boost the raw materials into orbit and work on assembling the entire ship in an orbital yard, and that�s nothing once New Icara�s built up she�s going to have five orbital yards.� She walked over to stand beside William who just nodded, an expression of awe still on his face.
�Admiral Icara orbital is ordering us to proceed at maximum safe thrust to New Icara orbit; all ground assault elements are to proceed to Cadia orbit.� Captain Jones said from the com section as he ran through the final checks a ship underwent before proceeding to �anchor� as it were.
�Very well, helm lay in a course for New Icara orbit order all ground assault elements to proceed to Cadia; best thrust.� William kept his voice professional even as his own excitement was growing to finally be home; And Rukia was right; I�m looking forward to seeing Lin. he didn�t quite let the smile reach his face but when he turned and saw the twinkle in Rukia�s eye he playfully shot her a glare before looking back at his displays.
�ETA New Icaran orbit?� Rukia turned back to her station as she watched the main plot.
�ETA three hours New Icara orbit ma�am.� The helmsman responded in the professionally bland monotone most naval crewmen reserved for battle and Rukia kept the grin off her face only through a profound act of willpower.

Three hours later and the first fleet was finally in visual range of the huge artificial construct that was the size of a star, actually bigger then a star Ross corrected himself as he remembered that New Icara had been built around the Norvor star as soon as the other planets in the Norvor system had been outfitted with the latest in �artificial star� technology.
And God and some geeks in lab coats only knew how that bit of technology worked William thought with a wry mental smile, I wonder if God wears a lab coat�.. his train of thought was cut off the second the main display faded from tactical overlays to real time images of the sphereworld.
�Holy mother.� William croaked out as he saw the clouds of super dreadnoughts around several small moon sized warships, all of which were around the massive Sphereworld in the largest concentration of metal he had ever seen.
�Sir I�m getting message traffic from, second, third, fifth, sixth, seventh, and home fleets all salute, and bid welcome to first fleet and Star Admiral William Ross.� The com tech sounded as awestruck as everyone else on the bridge felt at seeing so many ships in one place.
�Thank you com; pass on my compliments to all fleets.� William�s voice was quiet as he stared at the fleet that could only be home fleet as it had two battle moons and the only Five Swords class ships currently assigned to fleets.
�My Lord I am reading four more battle moons in system, and a beacon belonging to eight fleet who appears to still be mobilizing and twelve more flag monitors!� Rukia shook her head as she looked at the sensor readouts she had patched into from various sources in the Norvor system.
�Sir Com from New Icara fleet HQ, message reads; Admiral Ross and Commodore Rukia to report to HQ immediately upon arrival.� William nodded at Rukia at the com tech�s report.
�Captain Jones you have the bridge, com tell flight bay to prepare a cutter for immediate launch.� With that William and Rukia headed for the lift William couldn�t help but wonder how Lin was doing or how the review went and had to deliberately keep his pace slow and casual as he walked beside Rukia.

A few minutes later and Ross was staring out of a portside window of his cutter, still awestruck by the sheer number of capital ships assembled in one place, not to mention the swarms of cutters, skiffs and supply craft buzzing about the fleets as they carried out a myriad of tasks required to prepare any fleet for war.
William and Rukia�s cutter, as well as their escort cutter however were headed for the sphereworld its self and the massive fleet HQ which had been built there a year before in order to rally the navy for the upcoming operations against the UMK. Although he had seen the vid chips of the construction William was still taken aback that humans could ever build something as massive as the sphereworld that was steadily growing in the view ports.

The bulky cutter gracefully flew over New Phoenix city on its way to the military spaceport and Ross noticed that New Phoenix was a sprawling metropolis, bigger even then Icara city back on homeworld. He turned to Rukia who had been here before and jutted his thumb in the direction of the small viewport.
�How many people live in that city?� he turned gaze back to the view for a second and noticed a huge mustering field outside of the city limits.
�Currently there are about sixty-five million people in New Phoenix, though with so many warships in orbit we have a lot of navy and marine personnel down here on leave so it�s probably closer to sixty-eight million.� Rukia grinned at Ross� expression and decided not to mention that New Phoenix was smaller then Ionia back on the New Sparta sphereworld which had roughly eighty two million people living there at any given time.
Rukia had come to know William better then most of his subordinates had, and she decided that he liked it that way, after Sandra Fowler was killed William had stayed pretty aloof from the rest of his officers; howver over a year of her hard work later Rukia was proud to note that her Admiral had finally started to open up a little more, of course he was a full Star Admiral and wouldn�t likely spend any time down in the Middie birth or Lieutenant�s country but he had finally opened up a little with the senior officers. Rukia smirked at that thought, there were five full captains and 22 Commanders and �baby Commanders� on board the massive battlemoon that had become the flagship of first fleet and William had only started talking on a casual basis with two of the Captains and five of the Commanders. But it was better then nothing she decided and gave a little mental shrug and went back to reading the status reports for the Holy Crusade.

Alexander Hallice naval base and starport sprawled out before the two hundred ton naval cutter like an ocean of lights, the base its self was a city covering a two thousand square kilometer radius, with dozens of landing pads, kilometers upon kilometers of roads, and hundreds of buildings containing barracks and myriad other facilities which had purposes to myriad to think about.
William never pretended to understand the science behind artificial star technology, planetary grav generators or the technology that went into creating a full scale atmosphere for a �planet� bigger then a star; but as he looked at the sprawling military base in front of him he felt even more baffled by the sheer effort and scale of the sphereworld his cutter was now flying over. As he stared out at the wonders in front of him Ross remembered back only some forty years when the �Empire� was a single world with a �navy� smaller then a modern division, made up of ships that were smaller then a single Super Dreadnought�s primary gun turrets and he thought with some pride of how far humans could come in such a short period of time. Ross swiveled the cutters� camera up to the sky and saw the battlemoons that were the pinnacle of starship design, each one was rated by navy standards as a 15 megaton craft which referred only to the weight in weapons, engines and primary equipment, the actual �weight� in metal of a battlemoon was in the billions of tons just like the super dreadnought actually weighed over one hundred and sixty million tons when fully loaded. But all that paled in comparison to this absolute marvel of modern construction which weighed more then a sun. A construct that had entire cities and military bases built onto its surface, not to mention hundreds of factories and industrial molecular sequencer facilities.

Suddenly Ross� thoughts all came to a screaming halt as he saw the landing pad growing as his cutter came in. There was a small party of people already visible from the cutter�s window and against his will Ross felt a swelling of fear that Lin would not be among that party, for news had still not reached him on the result of her Naval review.

Chapter Two:

As the cutter�s hatch opened and a ramp slid silently to the landing pad�s battle steel surface a flute shrilled the traditional notes that greeted all high flag officers upon arrival.
Ross calmly walked down the ramp, flanked on either side by his two marine guards, as he reached the bottom of the ramp a small barrel chested man in a civil service uniform stepped forward and reached out his hand excitedly.
�Admiral Ross welcome to New Icara I�m Aaron Kreel; and might I say we are all pleased to meet a legend like you�.yes very excited sir.� The man�s voice was surprisingly deep and sounded almost inappropriate considering the unseemly display of hero worship this Aaron had just spouted.

Ross forced a smile and shook the man�s hand; but he was glad when a woman wearing the uniform of a full Star Admiral stepped forward and gently nudged the overexcited Kreel out of the way.
Ross looked at the woman�s severe and unattractive face for several seconds before recognition finally dawned on him and his smile turned genuine and his hand came up in salute �Admiral Lady Selene how are you?�
She returned his smile and brought snapped up her own salute �I�m well Lord Ross, and from the looks of things in orbit we are all about to become very busy.� The closing part of her sentence was ominous and Ross felt the hair on the back of his neck rise; however he was not given a chance to dwell on these thoughts for too long as he quickly went about greeting the other members of the party that had met him at the landing pad; most of whom where Admirals, and Civil service leaders.

*******
An hour after the meeting at the landing pad Ross was in a ground car heading for the new Admiralty that Grand Admiral Bright had set up when she transferred naval command from homeworld to the sphereworld New Icara.

Lady Selene sat across from Ross and after a rather forced bit of small talk Ross swallowed his nerves and asked the questions that had been haunting his mind ever since he had returned to Norvor.
�Selene, what�s going on in the Empire these days, I�ve heard lots of rumors but being out on the frontier for five years doesn�t exactly help with information flow.� He frowned and leaned back into his seat as Selene folded her hands and frowned thoughtfully.
�Well William we�ve got some problems in the frontier, whole worlds are breaking out in riots all along the fringe and demanding independence and quite frankly the FSD is still trying to pull their pants back up after the SS got bootstamped by the Praetor; so we�re having problems suppressing these damned newly conquered worlds.�
Ross had heard of only some small local rioting in the frontiers and felt sick for a moment as he realized the entire frontier was being torn apart by some damned rebels who couldn�t see the benefits of being Icaran worlds�..worlds he and his soldiers had fought for; that so many young men and women had died for.
�There�s also some bad news in the military, you know Admiral White?� Selene�s voice dropped to a whisper and Ross sat up straighter and leaned a little forward.
�Not well, I only met her once in passing.�
�Well she led the 5th fleet against some frontier worlds that had rebelled, anyway she lost two warships and about 15,000 of her people trying to take one of the worlds�..so she bombed it to hell and killed everyone.� Her voice held a note of disgust that Ross had never heard in her before and his own shock and nausea seemed to grow.
�My God how many people did she kill?�
Selene winced as his voice raised higher then he meant it too and she shrugged �I don�t know, some say a few thousand but most think that she destroyed a colony of about thirty-million men, women and children�..either way she earned her fleet the nickname �Death�s Hand� which as you can imagine is a big morale killer with them.� Selene�s face grew dark for a moment as the anger of an Icaran Admiral doing something that horrible to innocent people!
�What has the Admiralty done about this mess?� William clenched his hands and stared blankly at the woman sitting across from him. Just a few hours earlier he had been marveling at the advances the Empire had made, and now this�.it felt like the whole universe was caving in around him.

�Well�.she was brought to trial last week and executed last night, not that this is about to become public knowledge mind you, as far as the public will be concerned she died in a cutter accident.� The woman�s severe face looked even harder as a scowl crossed her lips.

�That�s it? So what is the official word on what happened to that world?�
Selene�s scowl turned into a grim smirk as she looked out of the groundcar window �Well William with nothing but five mile deep craters covered in fused glass there isn�t exactly a lot of evidence that we have to worry about leaking to the public.�

William leaned back again and sighed, what White had done was wrong, but he told himself that at least the Empire would have a hope of bringing stability back far easier without this information spreading throughout the galaxy.

�How is Lin?� the words came out hoarse and Ross felt a split second of embarrassment.
�Her review was completed just before the so called �Death�s Hand� incident; fortunately the Navy didn�t feel there was anything she could have done otherwise, and actually decided to transfer her to the 7th line fleet instead of Home Fleet.� She paused and looked intently at the massive building that was coming into view.

�Anyway we�re at the New Admiralty so I�m sure you�ll get the rest of the information you want in the briefing tomorrow morning�..uh in the meantime I�m sure you and Lin will have to *ahem* catch up with one another.� Her grin turned wicked and as the car came to a halt she quickly opened the door and slipped out.