The only edge fighters had on pretty much any larger ship was acceleration and max speed. Neither of which was useful enough in a fight to make up for sacrificing power and room for proper shields and other vital systems. But if the smaller ships' only goal was to hem the Last Stand in, preventing them from escape, then they didn't need anything else.
Well, that and guns.
To his dismay, it turned out Elyssa had thought of that, too. “Initial analysis of enemy fighters' operational systems suggests railgun armaments and engines.” Ali said, still soothingly calm even though the situation certainly didn't warrant it. “No other systems detected, including life support. Fighters must be drones operated by Pilot AIs.”
Pilots. Void, he hated those things; first they tried to take his job, now they were trying to kill him.
“So wait,” Barix snapped. “You're saying they shoved Pilots into ships that are pretty much just an engine with guns, then sent them after us for the sole purpose of keeping us from making a rift jump?”
“That's exactly what she's saying,” Aiden replied grimly, watching the jaws of Elyssa's trap close around his ship. He was so distracted by the approaching fighters that he almost forgot to keep up evasive maneuvers against the transports' fire and the swiftly approaching atomics.
He was apparently the only one who'd forgotten the nukes, though. “Fighters are swinging wide around to cut us off,” Ali reported. “Keeping out of range of the atomics, which are still inbound.”
Yeah no kidding; it was taking every trick up his sleeve to keep ahead of the blasted missiles, eating one shot after another from the transports and stray railgun slugs from the passing fighters. All to buy the gunner a bit more time to deal with just the most immediate of threats.
A bead of sweat trickled down Aiden's forehead, forcing him to cant his head slightly to the side to avoid it going into his eye. He didn't know when he'd clenched his jaw, but now he was practically grinding his teeth as he focused everything he had on his controls, his ship, and the numerous ways his enemies were trying to kill him.
Was this it, then? Everything he'd fought for, everything he'd accomplished, and he wouldn't even get the satisfaction of going out in a blaze of glory battling Deek ships? He was just going to get snuffed out in the middle of nowhere by a former colleague, quietly disappear along with his ship and crew, as a final proof that no good deed went unpunished in this miserable sewage tank of a universe?
That was about the time when Elyssa hacked into their comms system to gloat.
Thankfully, she couldn't get onto the main display since comms were isolated, but Aiden jumped when her harsh voice spoke in his ears through his headset. “Still think you did the right thing, Thorne?”
“Locking her out,” Ali said, sounding irked. As well she should be, since her Caretaker upgrades should've made her more than a match for this sort of intrusion.
“Don't bother, if talking is the extent of her cyber attack,” Aiden snapped. “If she gets too distracting just mute her, but focus on more important things.”
“Got two of the nukes,” the gunner abruptly said, sounding strained in spite of his usual rigid discipline; Lana was a bad influence on his professionalism. “But one of the remaining ones is-”
Aiden saw it and gunned the engines full out in a wild spin, and to the void with inertial dampeners and the gunner's aim. Everyone on the bridge cursed as they were thrown back and to the side by the violent maneuver, Barix loudest of all. Then there was a flicker in the lighting and displays as an EM pulse from the detonating atomic rattled the ship, momentarily disrupting the systems, and a warning klaxon joined the others as their shields went down.
“Let me guess, we're about to get hit by mini rifts bringing combat android boarders,” Belix snapped over the comms. “This just keeps getting better and better.”
Surprisingly, or maybe not, it was Elyssa who answered. “No, that's one of the few things my pirate hunters don't have. Not that they need them.”
The elfin woman didn't react gracefully to the taunt. “This attack seems more personal than just a deal gone bad, caused mostly by your own misjudgment about what we were willing to do,” she said with a venom in her tone. “I think our erstwhile business partner might be harboring the resentment of a girl with a crush that never got a second look.”
Aiden made an irritated noise and toggled the sound down on his receiver, struggling to focus on keeping his ship ahead of the shots coming their way from seemingly everywhere. As well as the final atomic, which would blow them to subatomic particles without the protection of their shields.
“My love, there's a possible alternative,” Ali said.
He certainly would've loved to hear one, if he could spare more than a fraction of his attention from keeping them all alive. He simply growled in reply.
Almost at the edge of hearing, he heard Elyssa's reply to Belix. “Believe it or not, Ishivi, not every woman in the universe wants to get pricked by the Thorne.” She laughed bitterly. “No, I fell into an even more insidious trap than infatuation . . . hero worship.”
In spite of the situation, Aiden couldn't help but pay attention to that; his former crew member had never shown any sign of that as far as he remembered. “What? You did?” he blurted.
“My love, don't get distracted by this,” Ali said sharply. “I can-”
He raised his hand curtly for her to wait. He wanted to hear the facilitator's answer, so he turned up the volume again; this could be a crack in her frigid shell, possibly a chance to talk her out of her vengeance.
Because at the moment, her letting them go seemed like the only way out of this situation. The ship shuddered as they finally took some hits past
