Chapter 10: One Last Shot...

There are many sounds that can get a captain’s attention, even in the deepest sleep. The sound of escaping air from a hull breach for example, or the sounds of disrupter fire. However, there is one sound above all else that is guaranteed to wake up even the most sound sleeping captain, at least one that wants to survive to wake up.

And Crystal helpfully played that sound at maximum volume, the harsh, blaring siren, along with her announcement that the ship was under attack. I was halfway down the hallway, in my sleeping pants only, before I was fully awake, but the adrenaline rushing through my system was even better then a stimulant shot in making me aware of the situation.

The door to the bridge opened as I neared it, and I wasted no time demanding a status report from Crystal as I jumped into my pilot’s chair.

“Captain, 47 seconds ago, we were struck by a glancing blow from an interdictor beam without warning from a ship that was running passive. System overload was minor, but it slowed us down enough that the unknown ship was able to prime engines and is currently chasing us, with fast interdictor drones slowly overtaking us. The chasing ship is roughly our speed.”

I swore as I called up the sensor reports and pieced together what was going on. Apparently, there had been a ship lying in wait, and when it had sensed us, had fired an interdiction beam, trying to overwhelm our electronics and shut us down. It wasn’t a tactic much used by pirates, because in most cases, it was a short-range weapon, and they either would have to know the exact route a ship was taking, or sense them at a distance and then close in on them. For this ship to be waiting and to be so energetic in following up indicated that this was unusual. I thought back to the message Heyanna received and wondered if it was related.

One of the problems is that the interdictor drones they launched had the capacity to run faster than we could (as they had reactor mass to burn and didn’t quite care if they used all of it to reach our ship). They were also programmed to stay as close as possible to the blind spot behind our ship, where any side or top/bottom mounted weapons would find it hard to target them, due to the ship’s engine corona as well as the physical mountings.

The ship behind us was roughly the same speed as us. They couldn’t catch us directly yet, but if those interdictor drones zapped us and made us even a tiny bit slower as the engines cycled off the overload, then they COULD close the distance and bring us under more direct fire.

Erene and Daniella appeared at the bridge door, shivering a bit in fear, and clutching each other’s hand for support. “Captain, what’s going on?”, Daniella asked over the clatter of the horn, and I snapped a command to cancel the alert sound but keep us at combat footing. My fingers were flying over the keypad, trying to find a way to scramble the interdictor drones, but still had a little bit of mind to appreciate the little bit of wispy nothings that they apparently slept in.

“We’re being attacked. Can you take over the alternate stations and try to get those drones off us? Even if they veer off course for a few seconds, that would give us a lot more time to deal with them.”

They separated and ran to their stations, sliding in with a focus that an Imperial midshipman would find hard to maintain, especially in the girls’ “uniform”, or more specifically their lack thereof.

This was the worst kind of fight from my point of view. Unlike most fights I was in, I wasn’t the one who started the encounter, and having struck when they did, they had taken the initiative away from us. Crystal had done well to shake off the Interdictor Beam and increase engine power to military maximum immediately, but we were between the void and the supernova when it came to dealing with this attack.

If we turned to try to deal with the interdictor drones, then the ship chasing us would catch up, and it would be the fabled target-rich environment, and it would be like trying to tap dance through a minefield while someone shoots at you with a sniper rifle. If we ran, and couldn’t figure a way to deal with the interdictor drones, then when they zapped us, we would be dead in the water and a sitting duck. Our only real hope was to get close enough to friendly space that an all-channels alert may whistle up some help to get them off our backside.

In the meantime, it was the kind of chase that never gets properly displayed in the holovids. It was a test of will as well of skill. They had to be alert that I wouldn’t pull something they weren’t expecting, and I had to come up with something they weren’t expecting. If I made the wrong move, they’d find me an easy target. If I figured out the RIGHT move to make, they would have seconds to reply or we would be able to get away.

Erene immediately started running simulations to try to figure a way to spoof the interdictor drones, while Daniella started working on firing solutions. It was currently well beyond any range where we could expect a hit, but she tried to gather as much information as possible on their path and how many.

Seconds turned into minutes, as the three of us worked at our consoles. Erene and Daniella kept up a slow, disjointed conversation as they relayed information to each other. It sounded more like two grizzled warfare officers on the bridge of a Navy warship, rather than two teenagers in their first real combat, especially when dressed in frilly bits of nearly transparent fabric.

“Looks like 5 of em.”

“Yeah, that’s what the sensors are telling me.”

“What does it look like, they’re in. Filled Diamond formation?”

“Yeah. Pretty standard from what the computer says. They’re running pretty tightly packed though.

“Probably to avoid delays in communicating with each other to prevent ECM from drawing them off one at a time.”

“Have you tried the Gamma encryption band? If they’re running basic, then that’s most likely the protocol they’re using.”

“Of course! Thought I had a ping on Alpha but they shifted patterns before I could get a confirmation.”

Meanwhile, I was monitoring the ship’s engines. Even warships were not designed to run full emergency power for hours on end. We had an upgraded engine, but we were asking a LOT of the engines to run full-throttle for this long. Thankfully, our recent maintenance had it running in top shape, but some of the components were beginning to show signs of stress, as a couple of the normally green icons on my board would flicker yellow every now and then.

Since Melissa didn’t have an action station, she was sitting in a chair next to me. She obviously had a million questions that she wanted to ask. Mostly to try to settle her nerves, I think, but she didn’t want to distract us. But she helped Heyanna serve the three of us, myself a strong coffee (from the taste of it, she had added a bit of a stimulant to it), and hot chocolate for the girls.

I sighed as I took the first swallow of the hot coffee, and then nearly splurted it out my nose when Erene shrieked “YES! YES!” After taking a couple seconds to clear the burning sensation from my nostrils, I belted out “Erene, report!”

She spoke without facing me, “Sorry, captain! I just got access to a couple of the drones chasing us. I was locked out quickly, but I managed to get in a couple commands to their network, let’s hope this works.” All five of us were avidly watching the bridge’s monitors, so we could see the results.

After about ten seconds, I thought whatever she had tried had failed, but the icons behind us suddenly changed. What had been five distinct icons of the drones chasing us merged momentarily into a white dot, and then when it seperated again, the five signals had now dwindled to two. Erene howled in triumph and did a truncated victory dance in her chair while still working commands on her console to confirm the current status.

She turned to face me a couple seconds later. “It worked Captain! I managed to get past the drone’s ECM and use the ship’s countermeasure system to get into their navigation. Since they were all communicating with each other, I could issue commands through there to try to cause collisions. I tried to pull them all together so they’d knock each other off course like a galactic pinball game. The ricochet worked, mostly! I got three of them. But now they’ve gone to autonomous tracking, so I won’t be able to override their system again.” So it was good news/bad news. We’ve reduced the threats to two, but they were still threats, and they were still gaining on us.