Unity

Chapter 19

I stared in awe as we drew closer to the Unity. The ship was massive. We closed within twenty clicks of the ship and ran parallel towards aft. Beginning in the morning hundreds of cadets would begin occupying the Unity and begin the final phases of training. One week, that is how long we had allocated to transporting Unity's crew from the Academy to their new home. The deck of the shuttle had the port and starboard bulkheads removed and replaced with a hard transparent material. It would never be able to enter Earth's atmosphere, but the view it allowed was astonishing.

Something was tickling in the back of my mind, but it took nearly fifteen minutes before I finally recognized the problem. The sides of the Unity were perfectly smooth, almost flawless. There were no communications towers, weapon emplacements or hangers to be seen. I had imagined the outside of the Unity to be a veritable forest of weapons and communications gear, let alone fighter launch bays and hangers.

I turned to my left and addressed the admiral, "I don't see anything outside of the armor on the ship. Where is all the communications equipment, fighter bays, and everything else that supposed to be there?"

He just shrugged and said, "My guess is that this ship is much more advanced that anything we have ever seen. They have been tight lipped about the specifics of what it is capable of. I'm sure this tour will be full of surprises."

The tour began with an external inspection of the ship and finished with a guided tour through the most important parts of the interior. Due to the immense size of the Unity, the tour was going to take most of the day. We continued our journey to the aft of the ship. As we the ship's aft, I noticed that it was rounded off like an old submarine. There were no exhaust vents or any sign of a propulsion system anywhere to be seen. As we made our way up the starboard side of the ship, Admiral Jones called the bridge of the Unity and asked with a devious smile, "Why don't you give us a demonstration? Run out all guns and open all fighter launch bays."

Within a minute the Unity's hull went from perfectly smooth, to looking like a sponge. There were too many holes to count. The larger holes I guessed were the fighter launching bays. There were dozens of them on this side. This allowed a rapid launch of fighters. It looked like we would be able to launch all eight hundred fighters in a matter of minutes. There were hangars for the cruisers to land, but they weren't exposed now and there were also several general use docking bays in various locations around the ship.

I looked suspiciously at Admiral Jones as I spoke, "You knew all along, didn't you?"

He let out a small chuckle before answering, "I wanted to see your expression."

"How do you suppose the battleships are supposed to dock with the Unity?" I asked, completely ignoring his previous response.

"Let's find out," he replied. Admiral Jones picked up a comms headset and said, "Stargazer, this is Admiral Jones. Proceed to dock with the Unity on the fore starboard side." The pilot confirmed and the newly built battleship that arrived with the Unity proceeded to dock. I was unprepared for what happened. Towards the front of the ship a large section of weapon ports closed, returning the hull to a smooth surface. The hull began to recess in the shape of the battleship. My first thought was that the hull was buckling, but soon realized the indent was too smooth. As the battleship approached, the indent in the hull began to contour itself to match the shape of the battleship. The Stargazer slid into the reshaped section of the hull and came to a rest. The battleship was affixed to the Unity like a giant blister. Once the docking was complete, the Stargazer's weapons came online and matched Unity's defensive stance. I was awestruck at the sight. It was an amazing feat of engineering that would allow the battleship to become one with the Unity.

"That's incredible," I whispered. The battleship began to disengage with the Unity, and within a minute, the hull was back to its original shape. We started moving forward again. Pretty soon a large rectangular indent appeared in the hull, and slowly a hangar came into view. It wasn't an overly large hangar, but it still could fit several ships. Once we had landed and the hangar had been pressurized, we stepped out and were greeted by a balding, middle-aged man in a white lab coat.