by Martin HC
“Incoming laser line transmission from the Ferren fleet,” Tira told them.
“Should we answer it?” Jill asked
“Haydn always does, no matter who it is for some reason.”
“OK, but first everyone get out of here, just me and Tira, I don't want them knowing you're off the Ophelia,” the men found the strength to lift themselves off the floor and stagger towards the door. “You too, kid.”
The kid was sitting in the corner hoping to be forgotten amongst the activities, but was sorely disappointed. She stopped mid chew to answer Jill.
“You tried for so long to find out my name, now you know it I'm still getting called kid,” defiance throughout her muffled tone.
“Hey, don't think the nickname will lose itself now, that's with you forever, I'm still getting used to you talking,” she replied, her look turned stern, which wasn't a particularly difficult look for Jill to achieve. “And no back chat young lady, out, now!”
“Fine,” she huffed, admitting defeat. Getting up, she shoved the rest of the substance into her mouth and stormed passed the adults, who with Brenn's support, twitched themselves slowly out of the bridge room. Jill watched them all the way until the doors closed.
“Tira, give me a view of everything happening outside.”
She did as requested, the room's walls dissolved, it was a show of light and explosions. Frigates normally invisible to the darkness twinkled, as nuclear warheads blew in the face of their defences.
“What's the cartel status so far?”
“Three frigates have fallen to inbound warheads slipping through their defences, the distance the Ferrens are keeping is providing them the time they need to build targeting solutions, however the missile barrage is getting closer as each volley follows the last.”
Over half the cartel frigates were rolled to the purpose of anti-missile defence, so they were holding together quite well considering the numbers they were up against. Jill shielded her eyes as a ball of light erupted to life off to her left, Tira automatically dimmed the display slightly but it was still very bright.
“That'll be frigate number four,” she said.
“Could you disable or destroy the missiles if they get too close to us?”
“Yes, of course,” Tira answered looking at Jill, as if to suggest otherwise would be an insult.
“Good, keep that on stand by, we don't want to show all our cards right now, or they might just blow the Ophelia early.”
“Very well,” Tira answered. “You know, you're much better at this than Haydn is.”
“When was that ever up for debate?” she answered smiling. “Answer with video, keep him talking, and keep me out of shot.”
“Fair,” Tira replied, as an image of a man appeared in front of them.
He stood in front of a large and comfortable chair with pride atop a row of stairs, his uniform plain but for his rank, those closest and immediately below him could be seen on screen too. His expression never changed from its dead look as the girl answered. Opening his hands, he spoke.
“I am Commander Ado Babaidou, and I wanted to offer you the opportunity to save yourselves.”
“Save ourselves?”
“It doesn't have to end this way, surrender yourselves, surrender your ship to the power of the republic and we will be very generous, or instead, watch your friends die as I turn you to dust.”
“The republic can offer me nothing, I am the only power here,” she answered defiantly.
“Power is wielded by those with the least to loose,” he educated her. “Your colleagues are in immobilised frigates, they will burn before they can get the drives online again, and you are alone.”
“You arrogant fool, thinking you hold all the cards, nothing you have on that ship matches me in strength, release my friends and leave.”
“I have the numbers, even the largest of men can be crushed under the weight of twenty children,” he continued in his lecture, the screen split and an image of Damon appeared. Three men, heavily armoured and armed stood where he sat, one behind and one at each side. “I also have Osthorpe, if you attempt to kill me, he dies first.”
“Tira, if it comes down to it, you take my crew and leave me behind,” Damon said to her.
Babaidou looked to Tira again.
“Noble,” he said, spitting the word out as a guard's rifle smashed the captain in the face, toppling him over the side of the chair. He hit the floor with a thump. The other two moved immediately to grab and haul him back onto the chair.
Tira didn't flinch or even gasp, but she did lean her head slightly towards the display, her hair fell forward darkening her face and she answered the commanders intimidation with menacing words of her own.
“Be very careful how you proceed commander, hurting my friends will annoy me and up until now, I've shown you a magnanimous level of self restraint.”
“Why should I fear the veiled threats of a child?” he asked her. “Let us be honest girl, I do hold all the cards.”
“Not all of them,” Tira answered him, her smile turning malicious.
Who's Hunting Who
The commander's who'd been with her from the beginning trusted in her guidance, and those that were new, did not dare to openly second guess the surviving command of seventh fleet. Two victorious fleet battles and a triumph against the Darkspace enemy may have gutted their numbers, but had given them at the same time an almost legendary status.
“I still can't believe she slipped us out right in amongst them,” Y'Riell murmured to herself.
It was a sweet feeling, her ships outnumbered and had completely surprised the enemy, they'd taken the complete advantage and watched them being turned to slag heaps for their attack against her fleet.
Powerful lance weapons opened fire, and pulse cannons tore apart Ferren hulls with blinding alacrity, leaving the warships to die around them.
“Are they returning fire yet?”
“Some are starting to now, ma'am. They've taken much longer to recover than we estimated.”
She knew the energy dump first hand, it almost killed her being at the receiving end of it previously. The manoeuvre they just completed had so far only been theoretical at best. Without Tira's advanced link to coordinate her fleet's systems, the stunt would have likely killed them all, scattering the Mergence fleet across light years of space with nothing but dead crews to fill the halls.
She watched on and grinned as her Starfyre battlegroups tore apart their enemy, on top of the pulse cannons, her nuclear arsenal unloaded on Ferren hulls.
Ferren armour was to date the best they knew, it provided them an edge against the Mergence energy weapons, but today it was not enough. As the cannons beat through hull plating, shredding and melting it, nuclear warheads would hit home inside the newly formed openings.
The large display showed a Ferren battleship breaking apart under a torrent of pulse cannon and nuclear fire, armour and structural metals became slag as strike after strike hit home, splitting the dying vessel in two.
What encapsulated her attention was the way both sections of the battleship continued to fight, despite the main weaponry failing. Point defence went into overdrive as energy was redirected, and warheads were launched from their tubes on mass.
Even on its death bed, the Ferren battleship proved its worth in engineering, design and voracity, even as it died, she witnessed it taking one of her own cruisers down with it. This display drove one thing home to her, they were a powerful enemy who would fight to the death, never surrendering for sake of their honour.
“How are we doing people?” She called out.
“Enemy formations and tactics are starting to collapse under our assault, so far we've destroyed thirty six percent of the enemy fleet and they've taken six of ours,” an answer came back. “Scratch that, seven ma'am.”
The Ferrens had no chance, she was taking few losses, more than expected but by a very short margin. Only an hour ago the governing forces of the Ferren republic
declared war on both the Mergence and Sciesin, citing the attempt to bring the Darkspace terrors out once more, and into Ferren space. She seethed knowing the attempted atrocity was true despite her government's denials.
Warmongers with more to gain through conflict than a lifetime of peace could ever offer them, forgetting in all the years of rocky peace the true brutality of what was coming. She considered her enemies own feelings on the matter, wondered to herself if he would see reason over his honour. Unlikely she speculated, they'd attacked her fleet without provocation, knowing where it would lead.
Her attention turned back to the tactical plot in the centre of the semi-darkened room, her enemy was collapsing, their formations now unable to support the compounding losses.
Her own ship thrummed and vibrated below her feet, having been built with fewer pulse cannons, the mighty flagship boasted instead a powerful quad lance. Four beams of burning energy hit an enemy cruiser square on its flank, they maintained their integrity and continued to burn and cut through the cruiser's armour, breaching and gutting her. The crew began to rotate the ship in response to spread the damage, but it was too late, the beams raked and tore at its victim as internal explosions began to rip it apart.
The flagship's guns shut down, to prevent overheating she guessed, as no gun group in their right mind would have shut off such a clean killing blow for any other reason.
It didn't help the target cruiser anyway, internal explosions continued to tear through it. Her hull heaved and glowed a bright red above its core signifying a breach, melting its way through the superstructure and blowing out in a spectacular show of light work. The core breached fully almost immediately after, finally turning the cruiser into another brief miniature star.
Y'Riell knew the lives being lost on both sides but still she savoured the taste of her impending victory, the ambush was so well and savagely executed, the first of the war and only an hour after its declaration. This would only give her more status, more power and more credence with other members of Mergence hierarchy, rallying them to her support would be much easier now.
Brice disappeared into the seedy underworld of his profession, seeking to flush out the perpetrators of this war, he hadn't informed her of his methods and requested to be dropped off in an uninhabited system, mostly hostile to life of any form. All he would tell her was that after her fleet were back underway, he would be picked up again.
When the Net is Cast
The Ferren flagship's command deck was in a state of disarray from the surprise strike, taking some heavy blows themselves, people lay dead on the floor in places. Babaidou himself was injured, blood matted the side of his face and hair and his right arm was now bound tight to his body in a sling, broken after being thrown from his chair.
His subordinates rushed from station to station, trying to double their workload to account for the shortfall, a result of so many dead. Damon himself at some point took another bash, but was in a much better state than the Ferren commander, only one guard remained standing behind him now, the others dead at his feet. One broke his neck against the floor's steps, and the other took a heavy blow to the face from a computer terminal.
The flagship's captain was displayed over a portion of the wall in front, the display itself juddered and occasionally froze briefly.
“Captain, how soon can we extract ourselves?”
“We have no capacity to withdraw, Commander,” he answered flatly. “The enemy fleet hit us by complete surprise, at current loss estimates, they will destroy us completely before we can bring our power levels up high enough to engage the star drive.”
“How did they catch us off guard so badly, how did they get amongst us like that?”
“As far as we can tell, they dropped out of the firestorm inside our formations. The resulting energy dumps killed many, and our crews are struggling to get their systems back up and online. Those ships which are active, are fighting.”
Babaidou understood the captains words, his fleet would be destroyed utterly in the first fleet action of a newly declared war. The dishonour if he survived having lost it all, was not worth considering, but he would have to lose it first.
“Surrender is no option for a Ferren, Captain.”
“Never sir, we die for the republic, for honour!” the captains powerful voice boomed as the commander cut the connection.
Tira's face retook its own previous position on the display after the Mergence fleet hit, the powerful energy dump caused everything to shut down and reset, but once the display booted back up, she was still there. In the confusion of the situation it took them a short while to realise it was still real time, they tried to cut the connection themselves and failed, repeatedly.
They were locked from the capacity to do so, she'd somehow infected the comms system, maintaining the link.
“It's not too late to surrender Commander, you can still live through this.”
“Some things are worse than death girl, it would shame my name to do so,” he answered her. “If I must die here today, then so be it.”
“You're a fool.”
“You have no concept of honour.”
“Or you have the wrong concept of it,” she fired back.
The battleship lurched again, forcing him to grab the chair, the room's dim lighting blinked off and reset as the floor shook, he used his one free hand to steady himself.
“Report!” he ordered.
“You took another nuclear strike, the second on that spot now, internal power has dropped overall by twenty seven percent, all weapons systems and point defence on your rear left flank is now offline, internal integrity to that area has also dropped substantially due to concussive forces, your armour took the brunt of the strikes and has held but it won't survive another strike, leaving you overly exposed to follow up action.”
He hadn't expected the report to come from Tira, and it was a damning one. It appeared as though his tactical agreed with her also, as they now turned the right flank of the ship to their most prominent threat, two Mergence battle cruisers closing the range and firing on her as they did.
“Turning the other cheek won't help you Commander.”
“You mock me now,” he stated.
“Surrender your fleet and return Damon to us, you don't all have to die here today.”
He looked down to the Ophelia's captain, and then activated a display beside his chair, typing in some commands he looked back to the girl. “You're right about one thing, I don't have to die here today, it was foolish to try and bring you to our side I admit...”
Something happened in the background of Tira's display, a woman fell through a hole from nowhere. Choking and coughing she collapsed onto the floor and curled up into a ball, a male followed through, wearing the face he hunted.
“Oh, you made it back did you?” Tira asked Haydn, immediately disengaging from her previous conversation. “I assume your temporary pleasure cruise was a bundle of joy, while we've been dealing with everything here, you've been over there dealing with her,” she finished pointing to the attractive bundle of mess on the floor.
“Errmm, we were just, you know, talking.”
“An interesting conversation it must have been, did it require the removing of your clothes by chance?”
“You know?”
“Yes, I know,” she snapped at him. “...Well help her off the floor at least, and get her onto a chair before she ruins that dress.”
“Oh, right, good idea,” he said, lifting the beautiful woman of the floor.
“What is she wearing?” Jill asked, figuring the gig was up.
“A short dress, I told her it would be a pretty rough ride, but she wanted to look good anyway.”
“Yo... told me... to breathe... out,” Feissa garbled out, looking up at him. “Is it re...ally worse... than thi...s if I.... didn't.”
“No, that was a lie, it doesn't help either way, but it did get you to step through.”
“I hate... you..” she strained out wh
ile curling herself up into a ball in the chair, twitching randomly.
“No you don't,” he told her confidently, before finally looking to the display. “Who's that?”
“Commander Babaidou,” Tira answered. “He commands the Ferren fleet, he plans to blow us up, and make Damon watch.”
“He has Damon?”
“Yes.”
“And can blow us up?”
“He's strapped nukes to the Ophelia's core,” Jill answered.
“Do we have the others?”
“Yes, but I'm still uploading Serena's matrix.
“Why am I only finding out about all this now?” Haydn burst out in disbelief.