Remember the Peregrin

Ships don’t have a birthday, but she left the assembly line of the Star fleet factory on the 23 of October 2247. she was towed into orbit from the space station where she had been put together by robots and workers and moored securely. They covered her shining Trimantium hull with camouflage paint which would make her hard to spot and they finished her interior which would be the home of her crew. She was only one of four hundred C class hunter ships, relatively small but fast and deadly warships special made for the ongoing Thalgmarian conflict. Her number was C 125 but on the third day she was given a name, randomly chosen from a database of available and appropriate ones. She was just one among many but then again, perhaps not. Even the robots seemed to take extra pride in their work on this shining elegant bird. She was registered as Star fleet destroyer The Peregrin and a robot painted the image of a diving falcon on her long sleek nose. It seemed right somehow cause her class consisted of ships capable of great speed and agility.

The workers would remember just this ship, she had not yet come to life, her engines were not connected and her positronic brain had not even been brought on-board but she hovered with a sort of eager grace. Some said that she reminded them of a good hunting dog when the season is approaching. She was given two completely new engines of a revolutionary new design, and all the best weapon systems available. She was made to be a killer, to fight and destroy her enemies and she was not expected to have a long lifespan. Yet she was made from the very best of materials and made to survive even the toughest battle. They could not afford to loose a single ship before it had done it’s job.

The conflict between the confederation and the Talgmarian empire had lasted for twenty standard years, the Talgmarians were known for being a rather stubborn and aggressive race and the star fleet and its many allies were fighting hard to free the inner quadrants of the galaxy of the threat. The Talgmarians would attack and plunder wherever they could and they were making a living out of scavenging and killing, they had to be defeated for the cause of the safety of every trading ship in the galaxy. When they expanded their raids into the areas controlled by the confederation of free planets there were no other option than total war and the battles had been many and bloody. Since the enemy saw it as their undeniable right to take whatever they wanted and refused to listen to diplomacy the confederation had no other option but to face them head on and attempt to break them once and for all.

Ships were produced by the hundreds every day, from small scout ships to massive battleships the size of a supertanker back on old earth. The factories were teeming with activity and the engineers tried hard to develop new models and weapons which would give them an edge, give them the taste of victory. The Peregrin was one of these new ideas, her long sleek hull seemed almost fragile but the triangular shape of her wings and the obvious bulging engines and weapons turned her into an almost ominous looking bird. Her nose bent a bit down and she gave an impression of strength and speed, of sheer aggression.

Her interior was finished in a couple of days, not a single minute was wasted cause the raids never seized and outposts and transports were massacred every day. She was not a very luxurious ship, her crew would have to be satisfied with the basics but then again, this was war. She was resting, awaiting her crew and first mission. Her engines were started and tested and she shivered from nose to tail as in anticipation, there was a strange tone when the engines ran, an almost growling noise that made some of the engineers wonder if something was wrong but she seemed to be in perfect condition. When in orbit she was shining white with a deep blue underbelly and perhaps she reminded some workers of a shark, she had the same deadly elegance. Some of her sister ships left orbit to engage in their first missions and the Peregrin seemed almost eager to join them. Her brain had been connected and would help the captain and crew manoeuvre the ship and although it couldn’t think on its own it would learn and be shaped by its experiences.

Two weeks after she left the factory her first crew and captain embarked her and made her their home and they soon realized that she was a good ship, a very good ship. Her captain was a man well known throughout the star fleet command and he had a record of victories that made him a good choice when it came to leading one of these new ships into battle. James W Waters was well into his forties when he got the command of the Peregrin and he immediately liked the ship. Even though her type was rather untested and new he felt that she would do her job and do it well. It was strange but no ship is exactly like another, even if they are made to be identical. The old sailors back on earth swore that every ship has its own soul of some kind and captain Waters believed this to be true. He of course never spoke of his belief but he came from a family of seamen and carried their beliefs and traditions with him even though he travelled the sea of stars instead of a sea of water.

He was well used to conflicts and he had gotten a very good crew, fifty souls who admired him and would do anything he ordered them to do without hesitation. The ship herself seemed to merge with her crew in some way and they became a unit. The captain soon realized that she was the best ship he ever had commanded.

She was sent to protect a convoy of transports ships heading for one of the border planets and she soon proved herself. She was showing muscle and doing it in a most impressive way. In her first open battle she made five kills and she did not even get hit by the opponent’s guns or lasers once. Her new weapons and engines all worked perfectly and the star fleet command was very satisfied with the new C class ships. Her crew could swear that they heard her engines growl as she dived head on into battle and the enemy soon learned to recognize the sleek almost sword like shape of the diving falcon. She was one with her crew and captain and nothing seemed impossible when captain Waters was behind the helm. His motto had always been “no retreat no surrender” and the Peregrin embodied that to the very core.

Waters never stopped being amazed by his new ship, she would perform beautifully even in the toughest situations and he trusted in her completely. Other ships of her class would be shot down, they were all sent to the front-line and even though they all had her engines and weapon systems they did not have her crew and her captain, the things that made her unique. She would return victorious from battles where almost all the other ships were destroyed and she could take some really bad punishment but still function. She was soon known as a good ship, the crews of spaceships all grow superstitious and a ships reputation meant a lot. Some of her crew died in the different battles but new men would embark and they soon became an integrated part of her crew and came to love and trust her just like the rest.

She would be badly damaged, her hull leaking O2 and her engines barely working but still she would bring her crew safely back to base. It was almost like she had a will of her own and that will would never allow her to give in to any danger or enemy. She would show her teeth even in the face of death if she needed to. The conflict got harder, the enemy brought on their own new inventions and ships and she lost more and more of her sister ships. The Confederation sent more ships into the conflict zone, bigger and more heavily armed battle cruisers but she had made a name for herself and she kept it. She faced the Talgmarian war birds with their cloaking technique and managed to shoot them down with the help of her captain and crews long experience. She was no longer shining and sleek, her hull had dents and scars, her paint was flaking and she looked more and more like a ship who had seen her fair share of hardship. She would be repaired when damaged but some of her remaining sister ships were wrecked.

The confederation engineers were working overtime creating even better ships all the time and her class became old fashioned after just a few years. The new ships were not as elegant and graceful, their creators made them effective, not pretty. Some of them were robotic and everybody knew that captain Waters and many others like him hated the very idea of robotic ships. How could you trust something which was controlled by a computer instead of an experienced human mind?

Her reputation grew, she looked old and ragged by now, but she would still deliver quite a punch when engaged. She was given many different missions and she managed to fulfil them all in the very best way. She even housed a wedding between two Thu’thulian royals who had to be transported to safety since their own ship had been badly damaged. The happy occasion left the Peregrines crew in a state of constant nausea for several days since the Thu’thulians excrete a sort of pheromone when excited that smells heavenly to them but horrible to a human being. She transported important messengers and goods and she won herself fame when she became the only ship of her class who ever managed to kill a Talgmarian battleship. It had all been by chance or perhaps not, one of her missiles had found a small hatch some Talgmarian maintainance worker had forgotten to close and cover with the required armour plate and the hatch was leading straight into an important part of the cruisers engines. It was the first time a small destroyer like her had finished off a battleship almost a thousand times more heavy than itself.

She was no longer known as a good ship, she had become a lucky ship, there seemed like nothing could stop her or destroy her. Waters name was often heard in the different bars and barracks at the bases and the Peregrin was almost a sort of living legend. She soon became the last of her kind, all the other C class destroyers had been destroyed or wrecked and she still flew, like a living reminder of a time when the engineers thought about presentation too and not only fire-power. Then one day she was sent to investigate a missing merchant ship somewhere in the outer quadrant, it was a routine call since most of the merchant captains preferred to hide and avoid enemy contact by switching off all communication. A rather risky solution if something happens.

She did not find the merchant ship, instead she found a Talgmarian minefield. Talgmarian mines do not explode, instead they trap the ships in a field of intense gravity, a trapped ship will be unable to move on its own. Waters was sweating with possible solutions when a Talgmarian destroyer moved in for the kill. The Peregrin had been fixed many times, she had gotten a lot of new parts during the years she had been in service and she had recently been fitted with an experimental new tractor beam. Waters saw only one chance and he took it, he trusted his now ageing ship and hoped that she would survive this new danger he would force upon her. He had often said that the Peregrin could break down but never disappoint him and he prayed that this was true. The captain of the destroyer was eager, he came in fast and the destroyer was about twice the size of the Peregrin. He thought that the small old confederation ship was helpless, and normally she would be.

The new tractor beam could be locked at a certain distance and remain fixed at a point, almost like a solid rod of pure energy. Waters knew that they might die from the attempt but if he did nothing the Talgmarian would blast them out of the skies in a few seconds. He locked the tractor beam on the approaching destroyer and gave one last warning to the crew. The destroyer hit the beam with full force and the impact pushed the Peregrin out of the gravity trap. The shock made her hull creak and shiver and her nose was bent even more than before but she was free. The destroyer had been pushed out of its direction by the impact and it was for a few seconds showing the Peregrin it’s underbelly. Waters did not hesitate for a second, he fired and the destroyer exploded close to the small ship. The Peregrin was badly wounded now, her internal structures pushed out of place and twisted and her engines had an ominous sound of damage. She returned to base but only almost and now she was regarded as too old to be worth fixing.

She had outlived her time and although they repaired the worst of her damages she would no longer be regarded as a warship. She was transferred to a job as a scout ship in the inner quadrants and Waters was given a new warship. It was with a sad heart he left the Peregrin, she had served him more than well and he could have sworn that she was alive, that she knew what he wanted and gave it to him even before he could give the orders. She was only an old ship now, and she was given several captains over the next five years. Some considered her nothing but a tin can filled with miles of wires and cables and electronic and they showed no respect for the ships glorious past. They soon realized that she was a very difficult ship to operate. There were still some left of her original crew and their attitude seemed to change also the ships mentality toward its commander.

The fresh young captains would naturally tell everybody that this was just a ship, twenty five thousand tonnes of metal plastic and other materials but a true seaman knew better and soon the captains would start believing too. A few of her captains knew of her reputation and treated the old lady with almost religious reverence, to them she was a perfect lady and her engines would purr obediently when they gave their orders. She fought smugglers between the inner planets of the Smhyrna system and she chased a stolen luxury cruiser dangerously close to a quasar and still she survived and returned safely. Although she no longer was a warship she did not stay inactive. Some of her captains were little more than smugglers themselves while others were fresh from the academy and needed a little experience before they would be given control of a more valuable ship.

The Talgmarian conflict finally ended, the Talgmarians were forced to surrender and their entire fleet destroyed and peace returned to the galaxy. The Peregrin was reduced to a mere transport ship now, her once elegant exterior was almost unrecognisable and her end close. She would soon be considered too old and battered to be safe. Captain Waters had always remembered his ship and swore that she was the best ship the fleet ever had owned. She had survived more battles than any other ship and made more kills than even bigger destroyers. The new generation of warships were all robotic, their manoeuvres and tactics programmed and it was computer versus computer now. To the old captains they were an abomination, robotic ships would rip an ordinary ship to pieces before the crew had the slightest chance so respond, and they left battlefields with no survivors. The honour was gone, only butchery remained. It had been mind and ship against mind and ship, no more.

Captain Waters became ill, he was a proud man and had not seen a doctor before it was too late, his belly pain had been a special and rare form of cancer and it was too late to do anything. He clung to life for two whole years and during those two years he learned that the Peregrin was taking out of service. She would be demolished soon. It was a sad and unworthy end to a ship who never had surrendered to any enemy.

The captain died on the star fleet main hospital and he was laid in a casket made from a piece of the hull of the last starship he commanded. With him they placed a model of the Peregrin as she had been in her prime, shiny and lethal and sleek. The casket was brought up into orbit and shot out into an area of space designated to be a graveyard. Here he would rest for eternity. Those who stayed with him on his deathbed told that he had mourned not his own fate but that of his beloved ship. She should have gone down in a blaze of glory, not ended up as scrap metal.

The Peregrin was due to be wrecked in April that year, but fate sometimes turns in the most surprising ways. The engineers had invented a new type of robotic ship, small but very deadly with good cutting lasers and missiles. They needed a ship for a demonstration and chose the Peregrin. A date was set and some of her old crew heard of this and demanded to be there, to show their last respect to a ship that had saved their lives so many times and meant so much to them all. The doomed old ship was towed from the scrapyard and into orbit, there she was securely moored to some buoys There was a big crowd assembled on the transport ship that hovered in a safe distance from the anticipated action and everybody was eager to Se what these new ships could do. Two had been built and they were both there to do their destructive work. The crew members of the Peregrin was happy the captain had died before he could witness this, the sight of his ship being butchered by these new horrors would have broken his heart completely. There were robotic cameras hovering above the scene to capture everything that happened and a commenter had taken place in a small shuttle to tell everybody what he saw.

There was a sense of anticipation and a couple of older men mumbled that this was the modern equal to the Romans, eagerly awaiting the lions to take the first bites of the Christians. The signal was given and the two robot ships moved in for the kill and then something happened, something that assured the Peregrin a place in history. She would have been forgotten soon but now her name would live forever among those who made their living among the stars. She would be a symbol, an icon of an age of chivalry and bravery where man and machine cooperated to become more than they could be on their own.

There was a sudden cracking sound of interference from the sound system, a hissing and sparkling noise and people looked up in confusion, the commenter had just checked his equipment and it had worked just fine and it was too early for him to speak. Then a voice came through, steady and firm but strangely distant. “No surrender, no retreat”

The old crew members recognized the voice and they stared at the doomed old ship with a feeling of awe and understanding. She lay there moored like a lamb awaiting the slaughter but suddenly she seemed to come alive, like she had so many times before. The constant solar wind had burned away the remains of her paint and she was shining like the day she was new. Here and there they could see the scars of her many battles and she was hovering by her own power. Everybody knew that the engines had been disconnected and most of them removed. So had the brain, and there was no power left. She should have been an empty shell. The first robot ship moved forward and the front laser made a deep gash in the Peregrines nose, at first nothing seemed to happen, then everybody could see a glimpse of fire from underneath the long down angled front and something hit the robot ship with deadly force. It exploded in a cloud of fire and debris.

The men from the engineering department stood there in shock, they did not believe what they had just seen. There was an eerie silence in the observation room, none believed their own eyes. The old ship should have been nothing but a tin can, dead in the waters. The recoil from the blast forced her nose up, she reared like a horse in defiance of her own fate and the mooring on her right side snapped. She continued the manoeuvre she had started, she rolled over her left wing and down into a dive and for a second she looked exactly like the bird who’s name she proudly carried. She spun and rolled with her whole weight and momentum behind her and her long elegant hull hit the second robot ship midship. It had been moving in to cut her wing off but now it was cut in two pieces by the Peregrines last amazing attack. The robot ship disintegrated right in front of every-bodies eyes, if the Peregrin had been powered by her engines at full blast the effect could not have been greater. She was mortally wounded now, her wings close to falling off and her nose broken, pieces of debris were flying around her but she was still in one piece. Her nose turned slowly toward the observation ship, they could once more hear the eerie cracking sound and the famous words of captain Waters motto, then she exploded.

The blast was extremely violent, the flash so bright it made several of the observers blind for days and the huge transport ship was almost thrown out of control. Of the Peregrin there was nothing left, just a small cloud of swiftly evaporating gas and people stared flabbergasted. Only the crew members remained calm, they felt a sort of joy. She had faced her end the only decent way and they were happy. She had been as defiant and brave in death as she had in her long life and no matter how this was explained they knew the truth behind it.

There was an investigation of course, none could explain the voice cause it had been the captains voice and none had tempered with the equipment. It had not been a transmission either, the sound had come from the old ship. The first explosion was explained rather easily, one of her last captains, a rather roughish fellow, had fitted her with some rather illegal weapons of his own, including some Ardharian warheads. It was suggested that the first cut from the lasers had somehow short circuited the missile and made it fire. Some would complain about the workers of the scrapyard who hadn’t been able to find such a dangerous object but the captain admitted to having hidden the missiles in a small tank which usually contained waste water. None would have bothered checking it before the ship was to be demolished. The last explosion was the Peregrines own self destruction system but much more powerful than it was designed to be. It should have been disengaged and removed and some swore that it had been removed and could show the different parts of it as proof so none understood how she then could have exploded.

The answer was obvious to everybody out there who knew of her tale, and believed in the spirit of a good ship. Her captain had returned to save her from this last disgrace and he had been leading her into her last battle where she had defeated her two enemies and then chosen death before dishonour. Her death had been glorious and as expected of her and she had regained her honour and reputation. The incident was reported as unexplainable but the tale was told over and over again over the centuries to come. The spacemen would nod their heads over their drinks at the bars and they would know that the tale only supported what they all knew. A good ship is like a living thing and if you treat her with respect she will respect and protect you back. The Peregrin was never forgotten and her mystery never fully solved and to many that was exactly as it should be. When cocky young captains treated their ships like objects the ragged old sailors would shake their fingers and smile with a warning in their eyes. “Remember the Peregrin”