I haven’t been back to this series for awhile. I kind of thought it was over since the New Earth Colony had just about killed all the possible threats to it’s existence, so far. Since this is still a relatively new colony, they are still exploring the space around them to now include the underway space. They would like to find all the NEIIS (New Earth Indigenous Intelligent Species) sites, especially any small or large cities.
It appears that the researchers from New Haven have found such a new site, but it is under water, at the bottom of a large inland sea. That’s a first for any of the NEIIS sites. Connor Gates, former General Gates of the Colony Defense Force (CDF), now retired, has been invited to visit this new NEIIS site and he eagerly takes his team with him.
In the meantime, Colonel Sean Quinn, Commanding the CDFS Vigilant has been tasked with two mission. First he’s to ensure the Apollo Mission is a success. This mission will sent a number of drones towards Earth hoping to detect any remaining humans on the planet and determine if Earth is still hostile. Due to the extreme distances involved, the drones will be operating independently and their resulting information won’t return to New Earth for almost one-hundred and fifty years. His second mission is to check up on some researchers investigating a possible NEIIS site on a small planetoid name Sagan.
Connor Gates and his small team are now aboard two small research submarines sitting at the bottom of the inland sea right next to a not so small NEIIS city. They definitely notice a huge arch at the front of the city. They have no idea what the function of this arch is and they haven’t seen one of these at any other NEIIS site found all over New Earth.
Suddenly, the submarines are rocked with a gigantic wave that throws everyone aboard all over the place. At first they thing it was some kind of very near seismic activity, but there’s been no indication of that kind of activity in this area before. They decide to surface and try to find out what happened as well as make some repairs to the sub. When surfacing, they do eventually figure out that they are almost 60 miles from their previous location. There’s no explanation as to how a submarine that was previously stationary move almost 60 miles in just a few minutes. All communications are also out. They can only send out a distress beacon and hope someone will respond.
At the same time as the submarines experienced their violent activity, the Vigilant started to come into contact with thousands of small objects in their orbit over Sagan. When previously there had been absolutely nothing on their sensors except the two small orbiting moons, the Vigilant seemed now to be in an asteroid field. With the assistance of the ships AI, they successfully navigated out of the field, but not without some damage. While trying to figure out what happened, they noticed that only one of the small moons was still in orbit. It appears that the other small moon now is the asteroid field orbiting the planet. No explosions or any other reason for this moons destruction can be found. Additionally, shuttles that had previously been sent to find the NEIIS researchers are now finding nothing anywhere on the planet.
Colonel Quinn gathers his senior officers and some of the brilliant scientist aboard his ship and asks them to figure out what happened. The best theory is that the Vigilant is no longer in the same dimension as they were. The only way to positively find out is to go back to New Haven. All their communications are out to or at least they are not receiving any transmissions from CENTCOM.
So, we have some interesting situations here. Could Sean’s ship and Connor’s subs both been hit with the same thing. And if so, how do they return to their own dimension, one of possibly millions!