by Drew Cordell
“How is she talking to us?” Brandon demanded after he was sure we were muted on our side.
“We’re linked to a hardline connecting us to Vrenn’s intranet. She probably just got the system information from station personnel to connect to our docking bay’s comms port.” Gwen highlighted the Dalthaxian dropships in the distance, magnifying the image on the viewport so we could see the bulbous ships slicing through the backdrop of space, dark and fast. There was no way to scan them for lifeforms through the energy shield of the docking bay, but I saw no reason to suspect Admiral Nsara was bluffing. The Admiral started to say something else, but Gwen cut the commlink, silencing her voice so we could focus. Three minutes until Cadan Graves was supposed to arrive and we were supposed to leave our docking bay. This situation was getting crazier by the second.
“Think! We don’t have three minutes,” Gwen said, panic thinning her voice as she pushed more power to the ship’s engines, preparing for an immediate departure.
I tried to join the chat lobby with Cadan again but got the same generic message about failure to connect. The soldiers on the approaching dropships wouldn’t be able to fire EMP weapons from outside the docking bay’s energy shield, but once they were inside they would overwhelm us in seconds. Just one EMP pulse could be enough to ruin our entire plan and take Ether Rogue out of the picture.
I desperately scanned the list of Ether Rogue’s available modules, not seeing anything that caught my eye. “There’s got to be another way,” I groaned, frustrated with myself and the impossible situation. Panicking now wouldn’t get us anywhere.
The dropships were closing the distance, and in less than two minutes, they’d be crashing through the docking bay and swarming Ether Rogue. I needed to stall. “Connect me to Admiral Nsara. I’m going to try to buy us some time,” I said, not knowing exactly what my plan was.
Gwen nodded at me, flashing a thumbs up and indicating I was live with the admiral.
“Admiral Nsara, I am a neutral player operating as a bounty hunter and have captured Gwen Delarine and her associate on their light freighter, Ether Rogue. I intend to return Miss Delarine and your relic to you, but I need you to order your dropship pilots to turn around. I expect payment in full through Bounty Net before we complete our transaction after I provide proof that I have captured Gwen and am in possession of your stolen artifact.”
I was staring up at the clock for Cadan’s arrival, watching it close in on the two-minute mark. The dropships were still rapidly approaching, closing the distance and showing no signs of turning around.
Admiral Nsara responded, her voice just as cold as before. “Negative, our AI has matched your voice signature and has identified you as one of the terrorists fighting alongside Gwen Delarine against sovereign Dalthaxian forces. You share responsibility for the killings of twenty-six of our men, and will pay the full price if you do not stand down immediately.”
I cursed to myself, realizing how strong the AI on Anchorhead had to be. I had to pivot quickly. “Okay, let’s try this, Admiral Nsara… I’m going to call you Kai, actually. Turn the dropships around or we’re going to destroy the map fragment.”
Admiral Nsara paused for a moment, and the dropships outside our docking bay slowed, cutting their speed by at least half. Gwen nodded to me in encouragement as the admiral continued. “We are prepared for that contingency. Destruction of a unique relic like the one you possess will return it to its origin point and reset that instance of its drop location. Dalthaxia does not favor a war with Treshvyn at this point, but we are confident in our ability to recover this relic by other means should you destroy it now.”
“You can walk away with the relic today, Kai. We can both benefit. You let us through the blockade, we jettison a cargo pod containing the map fragment, and we jump away. Easy as that,” I said, knowing she’d never go for it, but watching the clock tick down nonetheless. The dropships slowed further, but they were still closing in. Just over a minute and a half until Cadan Graves was supposed to arrive and clear our escape path.
“We don’t negotiate with terrorists. We offered leniency if you were to surrender peacefully, but that is no longer on the table. Prepare to face the might of Dalthaxia and be erased from Eternity Online.” The comm connection cut to static, leaving us in grim silence.
I grimaced as the dropships accelerated, barreling toward the entrance of our docking bay at full throttle. “We’ve got to go now, Cadan is just going to have to get us out of whatever mess we get into.”
The timer on my console clocked them arriving in our docking bay in 45 seconds. Just as I was about to speak again, the console screen in front of me flickered to black with a sudden loss of power.
25
“What happened?” I yelled, my heart fluttering away in my chest like the pages in an archaic book.
“Relax, just putting her into analog. Last thing we want is to fly into a concentrated blast of electronic warfare signals and lose control of the ship’s modules. The AI is offline, disconnected, and shielded with faraday now.” Gwen didn't seem to be as stressed about the dropships that would be on us in the next ten seconds. She revved the engines, lifting us off the docking bay with the ventral repulsion jets with smooth precision. She neglected to activate the aGrav systems during this maneuver—maybe they were on what must have been a long list of equipment that wouldn't function in analog flight mode.
I hadn't seen anything about an analog flight mode when I was looking over the ship’s stats and equipped modules. It was an apparently antiquated and extremely illegal feature, only used by smugglers and old-era stealth tech fighters and bombers within the universe of Eternity Online. Against a titan like Anchorhead though, it would render us immune to hostile electronic takeover through a brute-force AI strike.
“You see those dropships, right?” I demanded, bracing myself in my seat as my heart leaped into my throat. They were barreling toward the entrance of our docking bay, blocking our escape. Safety restraints in my flight chair or not, head-on collision would splatter us all over the side of Vrenn.
“I see them. Fen, boost portside shields to maximum—everything we’ve got,” Gwen ordered. “Brandon and Fen, you need to try to conserve as much ammo as you can. Make your shots count.”
I wanted to ask Gwen what she was planning but didn’t want to distract her. We were going to have a hard enough time getting out of this mess as it was. Boosting the shields on only one side of the ship would create a hardened point, increasing protection of that region proportionate to the decrease in surface area neglected elsewhere. If we took a hit anywhere else, the hull of Ether Rogue was going to take full damage.
“Portside shields boosted,” Fen reported, nothing in her voice indicating she was anything but icy calm amidst the chaos.
“Almost there. Come on…” Gwen said, easing her hand down to the main thruster control lever. The dropships were slowing for landing, but they were still coming in hot and would be in our docking bay in seconds.
Gwen forced the lever forward to 8Gs, rocketing us out of the hangar with incredible force. The Dalthaxian dropships tried to swerve out of the imminent head-on collision, but they hadn't been prepared for our sudden acceleration out of the docking bay. Once the centripetal gravity of the station faded, Gwen was free to roll the ship, punching the side thrusters and slamming the portside of Ether Rogue into the round nose of one of the dropships as we spun with nauseating force.
The Dalthaxian ship crumpled and exploded, tumbling off to our left and crashing into another dropship with devastating results. Impact rattled through Ether Rogue’s chassis, pulling me against the restraints of my chair and knocking the wind out of my lungs from the sudden deceleration, but amazingly, our shields and hull held. Ether Rogue continued its violent spiral after the collision, carrying us away from Vrenn.
Gwen fired the opposite side thruster to pull us out of the spin, righting our orientation and punching the main thrusters. The three remaining Dalthaxian dropships
decelerated hard, trying to avoid crashing into each other or the station, but they were no longer a threat. A notification flashed, and I struggled to read it through the G-force induced haze.
Level Up!
Congratulations! You have reached character level five and now have one attribute point to spend. For reaching a milestone, you have gained your first class point used to specialize your character build and create your class.
Current XP progression to level 6: 7/160 (96% XP remaining until next level.)
I dismissed the notification, knowing I’d have to spend my attribute point and figure out the class system after we escaped Dalthaxia or when I respawned from yet another death.
Somehow, we still had shields to spare, but they wouldn’t be around much longer, especially with the swarms of snubnose fighters whipping through space and racing toward us. Admiral Nsara would probably try to disable our ship and capture us alive, but we were racking up an expensive bill for Dalthaxia.
With the crazy escape maneuver complete, Fen redistributed whatever was left of our shields over the full surface area of the ship without needing a command.
The painful acceleration forces left me dazed and reeling in place. My head felt heavy, and my teeth had punched bloody holes in my tongue during the brutal collision. I fought through the discomfort, swallowing the coppery blood and trying to right my orientation and perspective. Gwen and her alien friend had somehow remained completely cognitive and sober during the crazy maneuver, but Brandon looked to be suffering a fate similar to mine despite his sturdy build.
A few more deep, controlled breaths and the black haze on the corners of my vision dissipated, but the hot pain in my tongue remained. I focused on the scene, piecing together the events as they unfolded. We were only a few meters from Vrenn’s docking bays, flying parallel to the surface.
The Dalthaxian fighters pursuing us didn't seem to care about our proximity to the station, firing blinding laser beams at us as they swooped in from all sides. The energy beams sliced across the hull of the station and the energy shielding of the docking bays, leaving uneven pockmarks in their wake.
Some of the fighters found Ether Rogue with their lasers and cut into what was left of our shielding. They would do a lot more damage as they closed the distance to get into optimal weapon range. Gwen did her best to avoid the scorching beams, but the fighters’ targeting systems were being boosted by Anchorhead’s AI and they rapidly corrected as she maneuvered to avoid them.
“They are trying to disable main thrusters and life support,” Fen declared. “The shields will not hold for much longer.”
“I’m on it!” Brandon shouted, ripping off his safety restraints and running down the corridor away from the flight cabin on unsteady feet toward the dorsal blaster turret enclosure so he could provide some firepower to support Gwen.
Ether Rogue was vibrating as the lasers from the fighters razed our shields. But the vibration and oscillation cycle was shortening, which meant the shields were thinning, even if we couldn't check their status while flying in analog mode. The rattling intensified as some of the lasers began chewing their way into the hull, leaving black carbon scoring marks on the plated surface. Continued exposure, and we’d be in substantial risk of a hull breach and subsequent exposure to vacuum. I had a feeling the automatic damage control system wouldn’t be able to function in analog mode and save our lives if we took that kind of damage.
A steady stream of blaster fire from Ether Rogue’s upper guns tore through one of the fighters pursuing us, sending it tumbling in a wild ball of flames before smashing into the energy shielding of one of the station’s docking bays with a lethal explosion. Brandon’s fire was slow and methodical, and while he couldn’t keep all of the enemies off us, he was forcing them out of strong positioning that would lead to a Dalthaxian victory.
“Come on!” Gwen roared, diving into a narrow maintenance trench that was carved into Vrenn. The trench offered some cover from the scouring lasers chasing after us with feverish speed. Gwen made miniscule horizontal adjustments and yawed the freighter to overcome the curvature of the trench as it started to wrap around the station. From outward appearance, it didn’t look like Ether Rogue should have even been able to squeeze into the small space, but Gwen was making it work.
Dalthaxian corvettes and battlecruisers were moving to assist the fighters, but it didn't look like Admiral Nsara intended to vaporize our ship or cause significant damage to the station yet. Gwen rolled the ship, narrowly dodging an exposed length of power cable housing that jutted out through the protective trench we were using to buy more time.
Time had slowed, and what felt like minutes had probably only been a matter of seconds. The timer overhead reached zero, and a massive ship warped in, only about a kilometer away from Anchorhead. It was a Barracuda-class super destroyer augmented with turrets along its long, thin frame. It was shaped like a long, predatory fish from some of the harsher aquatic worlds in the outer edge of the galaxy, and was stacked high with countless layers of bulky matte-black armor plates.
Cadan’s ship was much faster than anything its size and mass had a right to be, powering through the darkness of space straight toward Anchorhead with what seemed to be a death wish. “Ether Rogue, this is Dark Reaper, we’re here to assist. Follow us out!” Cadan shouted over comms, his voice enthusiastic and hopeful like he was soaking in the thrill of battle.
One of the smaller turrets on top of Cadan’s ship rotated and fired a constant stream of superfluid liquid at the fighters pursuing us while the main weapon batteries hammered away at Anchorhead, firing brutal explosive rounds into the shields of the Dalthaxian behemoth. The aqueous spray from the smaller turret expanded as it passed through vacuum, forming a field around the swarms of fighters dialing in on Ether Rogue. Sinister bolts of blinding arc lightning jolted through the stream of fluid, forking out and striking all the fighters in the field of fluid with lethal electricity. After the flash, what was left of the fighters that were now dark and powerless, drifted lifelessly through space.
I closed my eyes, seeing the afterimage of forked lightning in my eyes as bright color. A smile tugged at Gwen’s lips as she pulled us out of the maintenance trench, flicking Ether Rogue in the direction of Cadan’s ship and punching the acceleration. We followed the massive war machine as it accelerated toward Anchorhead with heavy guns blazing.
The Dalthaxian capital ship was returning fire, but none of the massive blaster turrets could punch through the barracuda’s immense armor. It looked like most of the lasers and blaster cannon rounds from Anchorhead were just bouncing off the hard, angular shapes of the Dark Reaper, deflecting violently into the void of space.
Two jagged shapes emerged from the top of Anchorhead, writhing in space and orienting themselves in-line with Cadan’s super destroyer before accelerating to blinding speeds. I instantly recognized the distinct shapes for what they were. Cadan’s voice came over the comms again as we accelerated in-line with his ship, preparing to make our jump. “It’s getting hot. You need to jump now. I don’t want to be here by the time those super torpedoes hit. We can’t hold out much longer against Anchorhead’s electronic warfare modules, they’re going to brute force their way through our AI.”
Dark Reaper rotated along its yaw axis, exposing the full length of the ship and a long row of rapid-fire blasters that let loose an unholy barrage of blaster fire to try to take out the approaching super torpedoes, or at least disrupt their assisted flight tracking modules to buy more time until impact. Heavy armor or not, Dark Reaper was going to be in a lot of trouble if those torpedoes hit.
“Almost ready to jump, Dark Reaper,” Fen reported in her heavy accent. Ether Rogue’s navigational computer was struggling to complete the necessary calculations to compute our jump out of subspace without the aid of the on-board AI, but it had been making progress this whole time.
Brandon was still on standby in his turret enclosure while Fen worked to enable our escape, but the weapo
ns on Dark Reaper seemed to be oriented in every direction, lighting up enemy corvettes and battlecruisers with intense fire. Many of the supporting Dalthaxian ships exploded under the hellish barrage, splitting in half and igniting the darkness with short-lived explosions before the vacuum of space snuffed them out. More arc lightning splintered across the battlefield, leaving clouds of dead fighters drifting away before they could get into effective range of Dark Reaper.
Blindsided by the sudden, powerful ambush, Admiral Nsara gave the order to vaporize Ether Rogue. Clouds of dark smart missiles surged from bulky launchers on top of Anchorhead, locking in on us. Cadan was doing a good job of keeping the supporting ships off us while it blocked all the fire from Anchorhead, though we needed to get the hell out of Vrenn space before the missiles could wrap around the Dark Reaper and atomize us.
The super torpedoes were wrapping back around, attempting another angle on Dark Reaper after being forced to evade the blistering surges of rapid blaster fire. It was only a matter of time until they hit though, and our window for assisted escape was closing.
“Jump drive ready!” Fen shouted.
“Ether Rogue clear!” Gwen reported to Cadan, watching the beautiful carnage unfold around us. She pitched Ether Rogue down, pulling us out of Dark Reaper’s wake and positioning us to blast through the ramshackle remains of the broken Dalthaxian blockade. The missile swarm would be on us in seconds, but we’d be gone by then. A light glowed to life on her dash, and Gwen pushed the jump drive lever, snapping my head back against the headrest as Ether Rogue jumped through the stars, entering the ethereal blue realm of hyperspace.