by Florian Nagy
Chapter 28
Harka’yn waited patiently for the last few minutes to trickle away. The formation was ready, and the crews were awaiting the action. The scanners of all the ships were trained on the incoming hyperspace signatures. The waves came closer and closer, the ships were nearly upon the system. The small fleet moved onward, coming nearer until they were on the system’s outskirts, and then inside it.
The Defender IV and its allies disengaged from hyperspace annoyed that the chase had dragged on for so long. They fired their engines in reverse, space slowed down, and they were once again in normal space. Immediately the scanners on all the four ships began beeping wildly. The Vigilante’s bridge was ablaze with confusion. Before anyone could even comprehend the reason for the commotion, all the ships were bombarded, shuddering under the impact.
The double line of the Ameerian defenders trained their weapons on the invaders and fired. Their weapons emanated from their arc formation and closed in on the focal point. In reality, the ships were hundreds of kilometers apart—fighting from across a large distance that was astronomically, however, next to nothing.
The Imperium’s ships began to return fire to the flagship while preparing their engines to escape. Commotion echoed across the four ships, as everyone scrambled to their posts. Captain Trein furiously tried to put together a target for the fleet. They were all firing wildly into their enemies without result. Aboard the Vigilante, Darius Targen trained the ship’s fire on the engine room of the Ameerian flagship.
He hoped he could punch through its already weakened hull and possibly incite an explosion from its antimatter fuel reserves. That would surely explode and cause debilitating wreckage among their enemies. The scans of the enemy ships revealed that their hulls were not as well made as those of an Imperium’s vessel, but could withstand some damage—and even an antimatter explosion would not wipe out the fleet at that range.
He immediately turned on his communication to the other ships, and in a few quick words explained his plan. The four ships then spread out and trained their fire on the flagship. The Imperium’s ships were weakened, and their progress was slow.
The Ameerian mercenaries cut deep into the task force’s flesh. Their heat had not yet abated. The frigate to the right of the Vigilante began to buckle. The EFS Keeran had been overwhelmed and its systems had become compromised. Some of the crew had time, however, to escape by the means of its shuttles. A few small darts shot out of the sides of the Keeran before it was consumed by flashes of energy and cracked and tore apart, gushing its contents into thin, cold space.
All ships were feeling the effects of the fight. The total duration of the skirmish had probably been only around a minute or so, but to everyone it had seemed like an hour. Darius felt they had lost the battle. They could not defeat their enemies even if they managed to somehow break apart the flagship. Their fate seemed to become clearer and clearer. He was stupefied at the short-mindedness of the mission they were on. How had the Imperium’s intelligence not gathered enough information on the raiders as to send only five ships to battle them? How had this mission run so amuck that they had to chase their enemies for days just after coming out of a nerve-wracking battle in which they had suffered great casualties?
Harka’yn’s eye twitched nervously as he caught sight of the notification on his screen. It flashed slowly, a pale white, and then dimmed back into the screen just to resurface a second later as a menacing, pulsating light. A fleet was arriving at QAX-23. A coincidental passerby to this system was almost impossible. It would have been a massive coincidence in the barren mass of stars. Someone knew or had detected the ships there and was coming. Could the ships be Ameerian allies? They would be several hours late. They would surely have known that the Imperium’s ships had already arrived. Yet, the Imperium’s ships were still intact and fighting, so any help was welcomed. Their arrival would not be in vain.
The Imperium’s ships also detected the visitors. Many aboard the remaining three ships lost all shreds of hope. The escape shuttles from the Keeran had docked aboard the remaining three ships. The crew walked around with looks of frozen dread on their faces. Sections of the Vigilante blew, and environmental hazards broke out all over the ship.
The ship was in a state of shock, but Darius’ mind was quite the opposite. The conformity to death had not stirred sudden chaos in him but a smooth attention to his last moments. His breaths heaved with power, and the sweat tricked down his forehead. With the back of his right hand he wiped it in one rough motion, his eyes focused on the screen in from of him. They caught every detail. He had never noticed the beauty with which the computer projected its images, how much artistic detail had gone into it. Surely, so many people had worked on the design, production, and implementation of that system.
His eyes looked up quickly, and he gazed at the ship’s large front screen, now showing the enemy lines. All lines and forms left burning images in his mind. He heard a beeping sound as the ship’s power levels had gone critically low. As the adrenaline pulsated through his every vein, the visitors arrived.