calculations.
“It's not always this exciting,” Jake replied.
“Well, that hasn't changed,” Ayan remarked as she redirected power to the shields and emitter systems.
“What's that?” Jason replied.
“He still can't manage a good lie with a straight face,” she teased. “That's as much power as you'll get.”
“Breaking into inner orbit now,” Jake said just as the solid fuel boosters cut out and the inertial dampeners powered down to a level that allowed for a momentary perfect silence. For that instant it felt as though everything in the universe had gone quiet, that they existed in a peaceful space that was isolated from all their problems and the realization that they had made it off Pandem started to sink in, carrying with it a relief that none of them would be able to describe.
The moment ended abruptly as Jake's tactical console marked several West Keeper fighters that were moving to intercept them and flashes of green and white energy streaked past the transparesteel window.
“Activating the wormhole generator!” Jason said with a start as he quickly manipulated the keys at his station.
As the first of the enemy rounds struck their shields they were drawn into a wormhole that just barely warped and lensed the view of the destroyers, carriers and other myriad fighting ships all around them as they passed between. When they emerged no one was ready, but Jake jerked the controls and hit the thrusters hard as an enemy fighter appeared right in front of the Clever Dream.
“Energy shields down to eighty one percent and failing,” Laura announced as the inertial dampeners struggled to keep up with the heavy impacts of large, high explosive, high velocity shells. “We're starting to recharge but we're using everything the reactors are putting out.”
“In other words we can't afford to take more fire,” Alice said as she found the source of the firepower. “The Saviour, never heard of it. Concentrate fire on that ship and the incoming fighters. We can't afford to take damage from both.”
The bridge quaked suddenly, nearly tossing Stephanie out of her seat and shaking everyone else. With a quick glance to the tactical display everyone saw that all of their dorsal shielding was gone; gravity, energy, even refractive. “Ashley, turn us over! We need to give those shields time to regenerate!” Alice ordered. “What hit us?” she asked Agameg.
“An antimatter enhanced nuclear torpedo, I didn't see it coming because of its high velocity.”
“I hope that was their only one,” Alice said.
“This is the gunnery deck! We've got fighters crawlin' on us an' no shields! Get us under cover or we'll have to abandon-” Frost shouted into Alice's subdermal earpiece.
“Frost!” she replied.
There was a long moment of silence before he replied; “Lost a whole section, barely got out.”
“Can you keep firing?” Alice asked as she looked to Laura, who shook her head pointing at the dorsal section of the ship.
“I'll keep the guns blazin', but I dunno for how long!”
Alice looked at the pattern of damage across the ship and immediately recognized that the fighters were closing the distance between them and the ship to within hundreds of metres and launching electronic pulse rounds to disrupt the shielding protecting their lower engine pods and the forward command section. She didn't give the order to operations, but locked down the forward observation areas as well as the ready quarters and bridge conference room herself. Her status display told her that there were fourteen people in the forward observation areas and they had twenty seconds to get out. She closed the display highlighting crew locations down, focusing instead on ordering any non-essential personnel to the core of the ship.
Out of the corner of her eye she caught a glance at Stephanie's expression. She was keeping herself together, looking terse, but she couldn't hide her fear entirely. “Stephanie, keep a few people here, but go direct the movement of crew to the ship's core,” Alice whispered.
Stephanie nodded and strode directly off the bridge, signalling four of her security officers to accompany her.
“I have nine percent energy shielding back up on our rear dorsal section, four on the rest. Our aft shielding is failing,” Laura said.
Alice looked at the status of the Saviour and saw that they were running with a field of flak in front of them as they launched even more fighters, torpedoes and heavy gauss cannon rounds directly at them. “All right! Bring us about and fire everything at the Saviour, ignore the fighters, ignore the shielding.”
Without flinching, Ashley fired all thrusters so the Triton spun around and drifted backwards. Torpedo bays all along the edges of the Triton fired, belching short jets of flame and high velocity long shells at the enemy ship. Many were redirected or destroyed as they encountered the flak field between the ships, while a few flew past and even fewer struck directly at the narrow, long hulled ship.
The forty nine turrets that could fire on the gunnery deck were alight as they erupted streams of deadly rail cannon shells at the enemy vessel, striking her more often than the torpedoes. The defensive cannons that could rotate in the enemy's direction fired along with the smaller rotary particle cannons there, normally reserved to defend craft as they came in for a landing.
The effect of the focused efforts were immediate, the shield readings of the other ship dropped megajoules per second, but there was no telling how much power they had in reserve to keep them charged. Her eye was equally drawn to the status display of the Triton, where she could see the shields covering their main rotary engines were down to seven percent and falling quickly. “Any reply from the Carthans?” Alice asked.
“Nothing,” Cynthia replied, looking near panic.
“Any sign of the Clever Dream?” she asked Agameg.
“They made it to the outer atmosphere and disappeared,” he replied quietly.
The ship shuddered and Alice shot to her feet as she caught sight of the cause. “Abandon the bridge!” she shouted as she hit the emergency switch that activated the large main rear hatch behind them. The double doors began to close immediately at their normal pace which had seemed slow until that moment. “Chief Vercelli! Get your people out!” Alice shouted just before the ramp ways to the lower half of the bridge sealed.
She watched as everyone on the bridge moved, not so much as locking their stations. All except for Ashley, who was focused on the controls. Alice took three long strides forward, grabbed the woman by the collar and pulled her to her feet. The younger woman just stared at her, shocked. Nose to nose Alice shouted; “Get out!”
Ashley turned and ran as Alice sat down at the helm and clipped her safety line to the seat, sealing her vacsuit. She hurriedly brought up a smaller version of the tactical and ship status displays and took the controls, piloting the Triton in a much less graceful fashion so the forward section faced away from the Saviour. “Hurry the hell up Jake, I don't think we can take much more of this,” she said to herself as she heard the large main bridge doors seal behind her. With the touch of a quick sequence of buttons on her command unit she initiated the emergency sequence on the bridge, beginning the process of venting the atmosphere into space.
With a flick of her wrist she tried to turn the ship away from an oncoming formation of three fighters, their guns blazing, trying to break the already badly damaged layers of hull protecting the forward command section and the bridge. The energy shielding in front of her was completely gone and in the thinning air of the bridge, through the surface of her vacsuit headpiece she could hear the rapid, thunderous impacts of their energized shells striking the hull.
The tactical display flashed, indicating a new contact and without so much as verifying who it was she reached to her secondary control panel and ordered the main landing bay doors open. “Welcome home Jake,” she said through a smile as she watched the Clever Dream swerve from where it had emerged and strike an interceptor head on.
A small explosion sounded behind Jake, Ayan and Jason followed by a girlish scream that could have only belonged to Minh-Chu. The ship spun end over end as the cabin began to smell of burned cables and electronics.
The sound of a fire extinguisher followed it. “I step out of a stasis pod into a strange exploding hallway. Best day ever!” Minh exclaimed from just outside the cockpit as he fought the small electrical fire.
“Are you all right?” Jason asked over his shoulder as he watched Jake stop the Clever Dream's spin and fire
