As if to affirm his words, the whole room suddenly lit up in a flash of yellow.
“Did you see what it was?” asked Anders urgently, jumping down from his bunk and pulling on his jacket. “Everybody, get your gear together, we may need to move fast!”
“Definitely an explosion of some sort,” breathed Angelique, as all four of the Marianne’s crew crowded around the window. “There! Behind the hospital ship!”
As Ryann joined them he was just in time to see a chain of explosions lighting up the far walls of the gas cloud.
“Some of ours do you think?” asked Ashe.
“Hard to say,” replied Anders, grim-faced. “But, maybe not. Those explosions look too big for anything our fighters carry.”
“Lumina then,” croaked Ashe.
“Let’s wait and see.”
“Look, over there, it’s the Serena!” cut in Angelique. Sure enough, the little freighter used by Jean-Baptiste Grande was approaching fast from out of the thick clouds of the Halion Belt.
“She’s been hit,” growled Anders, squinting to make it out in the distance. As it appeared out from behind one of the refugee ships on a course for the landing pad, Ryann could see that he was correct.
The Serena belched black smoke and sparks from one of her damaged engine ports, causing her to list over at an angle. She touched down heavily upon the landing pad as Grande’s men ran out to meet them.
Another great explosion seared the gas clouds above, so close that Ryann saw the shockwave spreading out, sending ripples of ice and rock before it.
The station shook as the debris struck, and immediately the lights dimmed and emergency alarms split the air.
“That’s definitely not coming from any of our fighters! The Lumina have found us!” cursed Ryann, looking on as he saw Jean-Baptiste Grande himself striding down the Serena’s loading ramp, shouting orders to his crew.
Ryann turned and ran over to the door, beating upon it with his fists.
“Hey! Let us out!” he cried, but his voice was barely audible above the cacophony of alarms.
“Ryann!”
Angelique’s urgent shout made him look around, just in time to see the dark silhouette of the Ibis burst out from the wall of the Halion Belt, scattering a shower of crystals all about. The clouds lit up behind as the great craft was struck by bright beams of laser fire from a swarm of smaller craft in pursuit. They had the appearance of insects buzzing all about the ponderous vessel as they span this way and that, firing shot after shot into the defenceless ship.
“Dammit — Luminal drones!” cursed Anders. “The mothership can’t be far behind!”
They looked on in horror as the Ibis came on towards them, multiple explosions blossoming all along its great hull as the Luminal drone-ships circled around it.
“Why don’t they get their damn Interceptors in the air?” cursed Ryann, unable to tear his eyes away from the unfolding scene as the Ibis came on through a hail of fire.
Just then, a noise from behind made them all jump, and they turned to see the door to their makeshift cell slide open. The red emergency lights illuminated the empty airlock beyond: there was no sign of their guards.
“Time to leave,” muttered Anders, and all six of them hurried for the door.
Ryann went on ahead, peering cautiously around the corner and out into the corridor. He signalled the all-clear, and the group headed off at a jog.
“Get to the landing pad!” called Anders over the sound of the alarms.
They ran along deserted corridors, heading back through the control centre. Every bulkhead door lay open, and as they passed through the habitation levels there were no signs of the Outlander families they had come across on their way down.
They paused cautiously at the entrance to the main control room, but even here all was eerily deserted. The banks of equipment were all unattended, and they pressed on towards the landing pad.
As they crossed the control centre, Ryann paused to look out through the panoramic windows that filled one side of the room. He had a perfect view of the entire refugee fleet spread out in space before him and the glowing walls of the Halion Belt beyond.
As he looked on, another great explosion from inside the ice-field lit up the room.
The Ibis was now coming to a halt a little way off from the station, unable to get any closer due to the other vessels. The Luminal fighters still swooped and span all about them, but to Ryann’s relief, he could see that Grande’s crew had managed to scramble the Interceptors now, and they were engaging with the Lumina. But they were hopelessly outnumbered. There must have been at least twenty or so enemy craft, and to Ryann’s eyes the pilots of the Interceptors looked inexperienced. He cursed as he watched one of them chasing down a drone-ship, focussing upon his target without any heed for the enemy ships upon his tail.
“Use your wingmen!” he whispered under his breath, unable to tear his gaze away from the weaving craft. To his dismay, he saw two Luminal ships latch on to the little Interceptor, swooping in and out of the refugee ships as the pilot tried to get a shot to land upon his quarry.
“Look behind you dammit!” urged Ryann, as the Lumina craft closed in. By the time they opened up with their lasers, the Interceptor had nowhere to go. It broke off its pursuit of the drone, desperately dodging this way and that, but it was no use. There was a brief burst of white light as the Lumina guns found their target and the Interceptor exploded in a shower of flames.
“Ryann!”
Anders stood at the exit to the control centre as the others filed out towards the docking level.
Ryann glanced back out through the window, finding it impossible to drag himself away from the unfolding scene. He watched in horror as one of the Luminal drone-ships swooped down over the refugee fleet, strafing
