“Scanning!” Another shell struck, sending sparks flying as the panel above the ECO console shorted out.
“Kaylah!” Nathan begged, not knowing if they could take another hit. “What kind of reactor!”
“Fusion!” she answered. “They’re using simple fusion reactors! Six of them!”
“Nathan! What are you going…” She wasn’t able to finish her sentence, as Nathan wasn’t gonna waste time debating this one with her.
“All hands, brace for shock wave!” he called out ship-wide, as he detonated the last torpedo’s warhead.
Outside, in the silent black void of space, the aft end of the crippled warship suddenly broke apart in a blinding flash, shredding her mid section until the entire back half simply broke free from her. Moments later, her six fusion reactors started exploding in rapid succession, causing her tail to burst into pieces, and most of her forward section to break apart into smaller pieces.
Seconds later the shock wave hit the Aurora. It hit hard, so hard that it forced her tail down by thirty degrees in the blink of an eye. Without the inertial dampeners, any of her crew that were in the back half of the ship suddenly found themselves tossed up head first into the ceiling, before falling back to the floor again. But that wasn’t the end of it. Six more smaller shock waves from the warship’s exploding fusion reactors also hit them, albeit with far less force.
Nathan shook his head, shaking the debris off. He was on the floor yet again, behind the tactical station, facing Doctor Sorenson. She had been holding her dead father the entire time, up until the last shock wave tossed her and her father’s body into the corner on top of the body of the dead marine by the starboard exit. Other than her initial screams of shock and the subsequent cries of grief, he had not heard a peep from her during the entire battle. He wondered if she was in some kind of shock. Of course, she had every right to be, they all did.
He looked at her, seeing the look of abject fear in her eyes. “Are you alright?” he asked. After a moment, she looked at him. “Doctor Sorenson? Are you alright?” he repeated. She stared in his eyes for a moment, finally nodding slightly. “Don’t worry,” he promised her, “We’re going to be alright.” He didn’t really believe it, at least not completely. But he felt she needed some hope in order to hold it together.
Nathan struggled back to his feet. He could see that Cameron had somehow managed to stay in her seat at the helm the entire time, and was busy trying to see what was still working. He made his way over to Kaylah to see that she too was unharmed. She looked even more shaken, with a small gash on the side of her head from flying debris, but she was conscious and already trying to get back into her chair.
“I need to know what other ships are out there, Kaylah,” he told her as he helped her into her chair. “Without the main view screen, you’re the only eyes we’ve got.”
“Yes Sir.”
It was still pretty dark in the room, and there were fewer systems offering information to him through the tactical console than before. “Damn!” he swore. “Now just about everything is down!” He looked towards Cameron at the helm in front of him. “How’s the helm?”
“I got nothing. Everything is down. No propulsion, no maneuvering. Even the OMS are down now. And we’re still only running on emergency power.” She turned around to face him. “We’re dead in the water, Nathan,” she said, folding her arms across her chest.
For a moment, Nathan felt like she was accusing him of something. He had not given her a chance to disagree with his plan to detonate the last torpedo. There simply hadn’t been time for discussion, not if they were going to survive.
“Sensors are down too, Sir. Well, not completely down. But they keep flashing in and out. It’s hard to get a decent image to build.”
“Keep trying,” Nathan instructed, most of the determination having left his voice.
“Engineering, Bridge.” Nathan looked at the comm controls, they appeared to be dead as well. “Great. No comms.”
“What do we do now?” Cameron asked.
Nathan looked around the room, hoping another bright idea would pop into his head. But nothing did. He had been lucky so far, and he knew it. He might have made one or two good decisions along the way, but the fact that they were still breathing was due to dumb luck. He just wondered how much longer his luck would hold out.
“Any ideas?” he asked, admitting that he had none of his own.
Cameron looked at him, saying nothing. But he could see in her eyes that she had no ideas either.
Nathan took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I guess all we can do is wait,” he resigned. “And hope that Vlad is still with us.”
It was their first opportunity to stop and look around the bridge, and witness the amount of damage they had sustained. The helm and navigation consoles appeared undamaged for the most part, which was a good thing. The Sensors and Electronic Countermeasures stations were both fried. But the auxiliary console behind them that had been configured for the Jump drive seemed relatively undamaged, which was surprising considering the exit directly behind it had practically collapsed.
The comm stations at the rear of the bridge had suffered some sort of an explosive short circuit, but the port side auxiliary station, as well as the engineering and science stations were all intact. And of course, the tactical station that Nathan had been using was also relatively undamaged.
All in all, he figured it could’ve been much worse. They were, after all, still alive. And that meant there were still possibilities. He only hoped that whatever they might be, that they weren’t too unpleasant.
Cameron had taken it upon herself to deal with the injured. She had first checked on the captain, who still lay bleeding and unconscious, but alive for now. She did what she could, breaking out an emergency medical kit from the cabinet near the exit. But other than the captain and the four of them, the rest were dead. Altogether, a total of seven people had died on that bridge half an hour ago. She just wondered how many more had died elsewhere on the ship. They had left Earth on a simple test cruise with a skeleton crew of one hundred, which was barely enough to run the ship. They couldn’t afford to lose even those that had died on the bridge, let alone others. Not if they were to have any hope of getting back to Earth.
Earth, she thought, wondering in what direction it might be.
“Have you thought about those smaller ships?” Cameron asked him.
“What?” He had been off in his own little world when she asked the question.
“The other ships out there? The smaller ones that were attacking the big one that nearly took us out.”
“Oh yeah, I’ve thought about them.” It was a lie, he hadn’t. “Well, if any of them survived the shock wave, they’ve probably high-tailed it out of here by now. I mean, a big ship like that has gotta have friends, right?”
“Maybe. But what if they’re still out there?”
“What, you think they’re gonna come after us?” he asked.
“Why not?”
“We didn’t have a fight with them?”
“We didn’t have a fight with the big one either, but that didn’t stop them.”
“Maybe they thought we came to help the smaller ships?”
“It’s possible.”
“Then shouldn’t the smaller ships be thankful we helped them out?”
“Maybe. But what if they’re pirates, they could be coming back to board us right now.”
“Space Pirates? Come on, Cam.” It sounded too silly to him. But then, the more he thought about it… “Ya think?”
“I don’t know what to think,” she admitted with a sigh.
Nathan thought he saw a bit of desperation in Cameron’s expression. And he knew how she felt. “Let’s just think positive thoughts, okay?” he encouraged.
Suddenly, a crackly voice came across the comm at tactical. A crackly voice with a Russian accent. “Nathan! Can you hear me?”
Nathan jumped up and ran back to the tactical station. “Yes! Vlad! I can hear you! What’s your status!”
“Well, I’m okay,” he joked, causing Nathan to smile. “But the ship, she is not so good.”
“Can you get power restored?” Nathan knew that they could only go for so long without power.
“Yes! Soon! We are working on it now! But Nathan, I had to hot-wire the comms to tell you something. There are ships approaching us from behind. I think they are going to land inside the hangar deck.”
Nathan’s mind began racing. Who were they? Was it the same ships that had been attacking the warship that nearly destroyed them? If so, why were they coming here? Were they coming to board them? If not, why else would
