'Meaning there's no real emergency there.' Oz looked back to the tactical display. Triton was finally about to stabilize. 'Now let's see if we can bloody their noses. All weapon emplacements fire. I want our heaviest munitions available to focus on the lead battlecruiser, their port side if possible.”
“Maybe once we stop spinning like a top,” came Gunnery Chief Frost’s reply.
“When you’ve got a shot, Chief.” The gunnery deck and aft torpedo room was showing heat damage to the hull and Oz shook his head. 'Laura, at least get refractive shielding up.'
'The emitters in that section are damaged, I'm trying to bridge fields from around it,' Laura replied with a controlled, even tone. 'Considering we came out with shields at about five percent it's a miracle we have anything at all. We’ve also burned out inertial dampeners across the ship. I’m going to try to have the ship light up dead spots so the crew can avoid them.'
“Now that’s a problem,” Oz said, looking at the tactical display at the centre of the bridge. The carrier was stable, but still turning much faster than he was comfortable with. 'Ashley,' Oz started as he looked to the navigational indicators on one side of the tactical display and realized that she was already turning the ship so the port side shields would take hits instead of the aft section. 'Keep doing what you're doing,' he finished.
The tactical representation of the Triton lit up as every torpedo port, missile and railgun turret began firing at the lead battlecruiser. It was a medium distance fight at a range of one hundred eighty eight thousand kilometres. He couldn't help but notice the ships were keeping their distance. 'What are they doing? Their particle beams are less than ten percent effective at this range.' He asked himself as he sat down in the Captain's chair. He tracked the munitions headed towards the lead vessel, glancing at the Triton’s shield status. Gravitational, energy barrier and refractive shielding were all charging, they were taking less damage by the second.
'Maybe they're waiting for something?' Jason offered from the secondary command seat beside him.
The first of the projectiles closed to within ten thousand kilometres of the bulky, thick hulled battlecruisers and a large explosion flashed. The core of it was superheated and a powerful electromagnetic surge surrounded it for tens of thousands of kilometres. The first wave of the Triton’s attack was vaporized and anything behind it was deflected or disabled by the dissipating energy field.
'Was that what I think it was?' Jason asked Oz quietly.
'I need to know for sure, sending a copy of that to you, Chief Grady. Helm, plot a hyperspace course to the nearest obstruction. Asteroid belt, planetoid, nebula, I don't care as long as it's uninhabited.'
'Aye, I have a planetoid pair in a small nebula, only a few million klicks across, lots of asteroids in there too, at least that's what the hazard note says,' Larry replied as he set the computer to start calculating a safe route.
'Can all our people navigate it?'
'Panloo or Darris could do it easy with their navigators,' Ashley replied.
'All right, that's where we're headed.'
'Commander McPatrick, is this the source of the energy readings we just got down here?' Engineering Chief Grady asked as his full sized avatar appeared in Oz's left hand command seat.
'It is.'
'Then get us as close as you can so they can't do it again.'
'So that was an antimatter enhanced nuke?'
'Yes. It's a smaller version of one I've seen used to excite a brown star. At range they'll be able to do terrible damage without disrupting their own systems.'
'Ready to begin acceleration if field control can confirm hull coverage,' Larry announced.
'Say the word and I'll charge the hull,' Laura replied hurriedly.
'Hang on Chief, we're about to remove ourselves from the equation.' Oz's tactical screen flashed red, marking several projectiles with antimatter detection warnings. 'Frost! Take out those torpedoes!' he ordered.
The Triton’s weapons were just beginning to penetrate the lead battlecruiser's shields, doing severe damage. That came to an end as all the rail cannons changed their focus towards the incoming torpedoes. Several were destroyed in the first few seconds.
'Secure torpedo rooms, abandon the most damaged sections of the ship,' he ordered as he highlighted the decks that had been breached as they left the Ossimi belt. 'Get us out of here Ash.' Oz watched as three of the torpedoes drew nearer, within ten thousand kilometres. They started moving towards them faster.
The Triton’s hull began to charge with the energized particles that would alter the space the ship occupied so they could accelerate at many times the normal rate and Ashley almost had the ship in position.
“All right, all the decks will mark areas under the influence of damaged inertial dampeners by turning the floor lighting red,” Laura announced from her field control station.
Oz watched in horror as several sections of the floor turned red. Most of the bridge was compromised, glowing faintly red, but there were dead spots. The communications terminal, engineering and the floor under the pilot seat were all unprotected. 'Stand clear!” was all he had time to say.
Two of the torpedoes closed to within five hundred kilometres and exploded simultaneously. In one instant the lights went out, ears popped, and everyone aboard was thrown dangerously hard.
There was nothing he could do. He tried to hold the arms of the command seat but the force of the collision ripped him free and he swore he felt his shoulder graze the ceiling. His vacsuit had just enough time to cushion his landing as he struck the floor in front of the captain's char.
Lights began to come back on. Oz picked himself up off the floor and offered Jason a hand. He took it and pointed to his ear, shaking his head.
'I can't hear anything either,' he mouthed back. 'Rapid pressure change.'
The Triton’s main holographic display came on and marked breaches in hangar three and on several other nearby decks. The hull had been thinned to millimetres in the space surrounding the damage, but it was still energized with hyperspace particles. Their velocity read as many times the speed of light, they had been knocked adrift while the ship was enshrouded in a hyperspace field.
Oz looked to the helm and saw that Larry was unconscious in his seat. Ashley's chair was empty; she had been thrown over her console and lay on the deck, breathing rapidly. Her legs were bent and turned at impossible angles. She was awake, however, and working at something on her command and control unit.
To his surprise, the Triton’s main engines came to life and with a deft hand that left him in awe; Ashley plotted a drifting course and initiated it as an automated manoeuvring sequence that would guide the ship in a broad arc. They would make the nebula after all. The navigational section of the main status display turned green as she initiated the sequence and marked herself as available and ready. Regardless of her condition, and the anaesthetics her vacsuit systems administered from the chest down for broken ribs, hairline fractures in her hip and her badly broken legs, the ship accepted her status change.
Oz used his command and control unit to order all vacsuits aboard sealed and activated emergency medical measures. His ears tingled and itched fiercely as the nanobots went to work repairing the damage. It was a maddening, irritating sensation and he couldn't help but chuckle as Jason put one hand to his vacsuit protected head and threw him a rude gesture with the other. '-bastard. You know what a pain in the ass that is?'
'Aye, but we've got to get our hearing back.'
'Well, no dead on the bridge, a few knockouts, and some serious injuries we shouldn't completely work through with nanobots. I've got a replacement pilot and navigator coming from the lounge. Agameg rode it out like a rubber ball. If anyone else was standing where he was we’d be scraping them off the ceiling.'
Agameg Price helped the pair of tactical officers up from the floor; one was cringing as nanobots attended to his broken arm. 'Ashley's condition looks serious, is someone on the way?' he asked.
'Internal bleeding has stopped, but she needs to get to medical for her hips and legs. We only have comms through half the ship, the rest is on relay and the only working internal sensors are on the command deck.' Jason replied.
'Not good if we're boarded.'
Jason waved to his wife, Laura, briefly before going on. She was taking her seat, like most of the crew her vacsuit protected her from anything worse than a bruise. 'Considering the course our genius helmswoman just put us on, and where we'll be hiding, I doubt we'll be an easy catch.'
Oz brought up the smaller command interface on his command and control unit. Several holograms hovered over his arm and semi-transparent screens populated his head's up display. He had to check on Ashley, she was the most injured.
