Europa Military Dockyards
Orbit around Europa
Dark hulls sat in the dockyards, the last welds lighting up the dark hangers. The sparks rolled off onto the ground dozens of feet below. After a few minutes the welding stopped and dark figures could be seen leaving the scaffolding erected around the multiple vessels. For minutes the vessels sat in the dark, around their base men moved then the sun came around to the open ends of the bays, casting everything inside in bright light. The ships glistened as the suns rays entered the dockyard, revealing long blocky vessels all of them with distinctive rings around the engines. The hangers light up then as massive overhead factory lights turned on with a bzzt. The men on the ground made final inspections of the hulls and exited the floor. Then men with cameras, both video and still, entered reporters began talking into their mikes and questioning a few experts who came along with them.
All across the Dutch Empire
Live news feed
"Here behind me sit the vessels that will bring the Empire to the stars" said the reporter standing in front of the massive ships. "Using technology pioneered in labs across the Empire they will show the world that the Empire will not be stagnate. Already crews and colonists are loading aboard the vessels that will depart for the stars in only a few hours. This is indeed a great day for the Empire." What the news failed to report on was the Russians recent launch of their own FTL capable vessels, and that the Russian FTL drives were probably more reliable then the Dutch ones.
More specifically the fact that Dutch drives could only travel along certain node fault lines that existed between gravity wells, and then only some of them. The tears could only be seen with the right detection equipment, lucky for the Dutch scientists their was one right nearby, just past Pluto. Its ends points had been mapped with test satellites. The satellites had even been able to send FTL communications back the same way, most of the exits (which only required the slightest deviation from the node to end up in, meaning that the following craft would need to be extremely accurate once inside the node) had lead to dead worlds, but at least one lead to a habitable system, it was impossible to determine just how many other habitable systems the node could lead to, especially with the loss of a number of the satellites.
Europa Military Dockyards
A few hours after broadcast
The final crew members and cargo had just finished loading onto the vessels. With a loud whoosh the holding cranes released the ships. The ships were then guided out of the Dockyard by guiding lines. When the vessels cleared the dockyard they initiated their Sublight engines, vented plasma to be more correct and turned proceeded towards the node. Around the vessels were numerous smaller news ships that were filming the vessels departure.
A hour later the ships reached the node. Before entry the ships lined up beside each other and moved toward the node, what appeared to all around to just be empty space, the smaller craft buzzing around them. First the lead ship launched a small ball that stopped at the point were the node was. Then the ships ring sections flickered, and small points around the vessel focused the energy coming from the engines, then a extremely large arc of energy from all the vessels struck this ball and with a incredibly dazzling flash of light a tear appeared in the fabric of space. The ships then drove into this tear, as they reached it they seem to elongate to impossible proportions. Then they were gone and the node closed behind them.
