Chapter 616 Supercell  

TES Farsight, geosynchronous orbit over Research Base New New South Wales.

A detachment of two corvettes, a destroyer, a heavy cruiser, and a drone tender that Fleet Admiral Bianchi had ordered to take up escort duties for the Farsight had finally arrived and slotted themselves around the exploration cruiser like a protective shield. Except this particular shield had teeth, and knew how to use them; their job was to provide overwatch with constant flights of drones, and orbital strikes from the cruiser and destroyer, if necessary. The corvettes would be on constant patrol of the shoreline of New Australia, ready to report any activity on the part of the being, or beings, that inhabited the ocean floor.

Terran spaceships had excellent sensor suites in general, but as corvettes were meant for pickets and patrols by their very design, they had completely outsized sensor suites for ships of their size. In fact, the only ships with better sensors were the cityships, as they had the room to pack in literally thousands of sensors, redundant sensors, and dedicated reactors to power them all.

“Well, that’s new,” Ensign Bret Farnsworth reported from the bridge of the TFS Revanche, one of the two corvettes currently patrolling the shore of New Australia from above the Karman Line. One of his LiDAR arrays had picked up a weather system headed inland that would pass by Research Base New New South Wales at “danger close” range. It was the first weather the task force had seen that generated clouds since their arrival.

Indeed, the skies of Proxima Centauri b had been unnaturally empty since the task force had arrived outside the system and begun their scans. Thus, the Revanche’s AI had bumped that particular sensor array up in priority and notified the sensor officer on duty on the bridge.

“Forward the report to the Farsight, Ensign,” Lieutenant Kim Willis ordered, then added, “and page the captain to the bridge.” She was currently on her watch while the “captain”—Lieutenant Commander Yvgeny Kuznetsov—remained in his ready room handling the neverending administrative tasks that any ship’s commanding officer had to deal with.

If the ship’s AI had bumped something innocuous like a weather report so high up the priority response queue that it ended up on a station on the bridge, it merited the captain’s attention. Not even a minute later, Captain Kuznetsov entered the bridge in his immaculate shipsuit, just in time for a holographic image of Captain Marinakis to appear on the bridge.

“Status update, Captain Kuznetsov,” Captain Marinakis brusquely “requested”.

“Sensors, status?” Yvgeny echoed.

“Sir, we’ve picked up an anomalous weather system headed inland from the eastern coast of New Australia. Tracking has it passing danger close to Research Base New New South Wales and the AI bumped it up the priority response queue,” Ensign Farnsworth reported.

“How close is ‘danger close’, Ensign?” Captain Marinakis asked.

“Five to seven kilometers away from the outer defensive perimeter, Sir.

“How severe is the system? Will we have to halt ground ops?”

“The AI says it’ll be the mother of all supercells, Sir. An estimated 15 centimeters of rain will hit the research base, and the storm will last from five to twenty-four E-hours. Chance of lightning is high as well—sensors report a charge differential already building even as far out as the storm is from land.

“But as for damage to the research base, we expect that to be minimal. The shields can take lightning strikes no problem, they were built to withstand much more than the five or so gigajoules we’re currently reading in the strikes over the ocean. There’s no telling if that’ll remain constant once the supercell makes landfall though, Sir... if it does without veering off. Storm tracking is still an inexact science no matter how advanced the tools we use to track them are.

“And adding mana to the mix, well... there’s just no way of knowing what’ll happen later. If the storm continues its current course and at its current intensity, it won’t even tickle the rovers, Sir, much less the shielding around the base. But our confidence level at this point is only 55% based on the information we currently have.” Captain Marinakis fell into deep thought for a minute. A supercell storm wouldn’t really impact things too heavily in and of itself; the research base and all of the hardware on Proxima Centauri b had been designed to withstand much more damaging things than a little wind, rain, and lightning. However, Ensign Farnsworth had raised a very valid point: nobody knew just how the planet’s mana would affect the storm once it made landfall.

He weighed the merits of caution against the benefits of forging forward anyway and decided that caution would be the better part of valor in this instance. It was a decision that was very much in keeping with The Book, too.

“Cancel all ongoing missions,” he ordered. “Recall the unmanned rovers and aerial drones, and order all base personnel to shelter in their assigned areas. The recall will be complete and last until further notice.

“Engineering personnel are to focus on weatherproofing the base and doing proper shutdown procedures on any equipment or unfinished building projects that haven’t been designed with tolerances for a storm of this magnitude.

“All personnel are to assist in battening down the hatches. The shield was never designed with weather in mind, so the wind and rain will penetrate it unless you fancy suffocating to death inside it.”

He then turned to Ensign Farnsworth and asked, “How long until the storm front makes landfall?”

“Anywhere from seven to ten hours from now, Captain,” the Ensign reported. “Our meteorologists are tracking it via doppler and will continue updating the estimate as they narrow it down.”

“Very well, Ensign,” the captain said with a nod and made a mental note to put a commendation in the young sensor officer’s personnel file.

“Well, everyone, you have your orders, so move out and execute them. Marinakis clear.”

“Aye aye... cap... tain,” the bridge crew began in unison but then fell into staggered silence like an interrupted orchestra as they realized the captain’s hologram had already vanished and the comms channel was closed.

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