Dorn hauls ass back to Earth.Finally the predator ships of the war-fleet parted to allow their the largest of their number to face the Eisenstien. If the frigate was a fox to the wolves of the battleships, then it became no more than an insect before a colossus. There were moons that massed less than the giant. It was the clenched hand of a god carved from dark asteroid stone, a nickel-iron behemoth pocked with craters and spiked with broad towers that jutted from its surface.
At a great distance the vessel would have resembled the head of a mace, filigreed with gold and black iron. At close range, a city’s worth of spires and gantries reached out, many of them glowing with the light of thousands of windows, others concealing nests of weapons capable of killing a continent.
Several light minutes inside the orbit of Eri, the Phalanx exploded from a warp gate with violent concussion, sending sheets of exotic lightning radiating out and away into the void. Delicate sensory devices dotting the surface of the tenth planet registered the new arrival and immediately communicated reports to relay stations on Pluto and Uranus, where in turn they would be sent onward by astropath to Terra and her dominions. The return of the Imperial Fists to humanity’s cradle was long overdue. By rights there should have been celebrations and great ceremony on many of the outer colonies of the solar system to mark it. Instead, the Phalanx came in with speed and ruthless purpouse, not in a stately cruise around the solar system’s outlying worlds.
The mammoth craft did not fly the pennants and banners associated with the triumphant arrival of a heroic vessel. Instead, the colour on her masts and the laser lamps about the Phanalx’s circumfrence were lit for urgency. Patrol ships made way, no captain daring to challenge the Master of the Imperial Fists for his haste. Drives flaring like captured stars, the fortress-vessel passed in through the ragged edge of the Oort Cloud at three-quarters the speed of light, down into the place of the ecliptic, crossing the orbit of Neptune in a flicker of dazzling radiation.
Obviously, given the positioning of Eris, this isn’t the Oort cloud. Presumably the writer means the Kuiper Belt.
Anyway; Let’s assume that the Phalanx started out at .75 C when it reverted, and decelerated hard all the way to Terra.
Eris’ Aphelion: 97.56 AU
Eris’ Perihelion: 37.77 AU
As there’s no way to tell which side of the sun the Earth was on at the time, we’ll use those figures. Now, I won’t present working unless someone really wants it, as my math sucks, and it’s easier to use calculators anyway. But, 300 Gs acceleration brings one up to just under .75C over a distance of 97.5 AU – this can be regarded as a lower limit (800 Gs does about the same of the perihelion distance) for the acceleration of a large, and going by the statistics usually published for large things like that, very slow, spacecraft.
. Just something to consider...
