Joe looked back at Rhea, then up at Ranix. "I'm afraid so."
"And this is important to you?"
"Yes."
"Rais, what's our position?"
"We are hovering 50 kilometres above the surface, and on the far side of the body from the target vessel."
Ranix looked at Yuli, "Send the following message, Alliance Ship Epsilon to Coalition warship, what are your intentions."
Yuli got out of her navigation station seat directly across from Ranix and moved back to the comms centre. "Standby." She did a quick check of the ship's communications gear, which checked out. Looking up at the station's main screen, she gave it a few quick taps, then brought her attention back down to her lower screen, and tapped on a virtual keyboard the message that Ranix had given her.
"Message ready, Sir."
"Send it."
“Moment of truth.” Joe said to Rhea in almost a whisper.
Before Yuli could acknowledge the order, her screen lit up with an incoming transmission. She scanned the message, then looked at Ranix. "The Coalition ship has instructed us to surrender, and prepare for boarding."
Joe looked at Yuli with a look of disbelief on his face. "That must be an automated message."
Ranix nodded. "Not very friendly."
"Movement!" Jonas yelled out from his station. "Coalition ship is moving towards us at a high rate of speed."
"Rais, counter their movement!" Ranix hit the ship communications system. "Engineering, we are being pursued by Coalition warship." He looked down at Joe, "You better strap yourself in."
Yuli had moved back to her navigation station, so instead of moving to the rear science station, Joe took the open seat at the comms station.
Ranix triggered the ship-wide communications system, "This is Ranix, we are in contact with a Coalition warship."
"Yuli, what are our options?"
Yuli scanned the navigational and mapping data that was on her screen. "Limited. We could attempt to lead them away from Earth, but we'd be in open space."
"Asteroid belt!" Yelled Rais cutting Yuli off. "Hold on!"
The giant warship accelerated away from Ceres quickly and dived deep into the asteroid belt for cover, but the Raider was smaller and faster, and it was going to be impossible to keep it off the tail of the Epsilon.
"The Raider will be in visual range within 30 seconds." Reported Jonas.
"Rais, get us as deep into the asteroid belt as possible." Ranix ordered, clutching the armrests of his command chair.
Sitting just behind and to the left of Ranix, Joe continued to watch the main view screen which was displaying images of where they were going, and another image of where they were in relation to the Raider inside the asteroid belt.
As the ship weaved its way through the belt, Joe felt like he was on a roller coaster ride, which he thought was odd, since he had been told that he shouldn't feel any movement sensations while onboard.
His observation was soon confirmed by Master Engineer Sulvan. "Inertial dampeners are failing in several sections of the ship."
Ranix didn't both replying. "What's the status on that Raider?"
"50,000 kilometres to our rear, and approaching fast."
Joe knew that in a situation like this, the faster, more nimble ship was going to catch the slower, more cumbersome ship. It was just a matter of time.
"She's within weapons range!" Came the news from Jonas.
"Not so friendly after all." Joe said to himself as the first bolt of charge energy hit the top rear of the ship, an impact that forced the stern down hard, putting a considerable amount on g-force on Joe's body until Rais countered the effect by accelerating and putting the nose of the ship back down.
Just as Joe was trying to catch his breath, another impact hit the midsection of the ship, followed by three more rapid hits.
"Damage report!" Ranix yelled into his communicator.
Master Engineer Sulvan didn't reply in quick order, so Ranix repeated his demand for information.
Finally, the engineering department responded. "Sulvan's wounded. We're venting air, and our water storage cells are starting to leak."
It couldn't be much worse, Joe thought to himself. Either they were going to asphyxiate, or run out of gas, and then get slaughtered.
"Rais, you've got to keep them off us!" Ranix implored, but it was no use. The Epsilon wasn't designed for bobbing and weaving, but for quick straight runs, and she wasn’t operating at one hundred percent. Rais was good, but the tools he was working with were not suited to the task. Not to mention the ship hadn't been fully repaired to showroom standard before they left Earth.
The Raider was now just a few hundred yards to the stern of the Epsilon, and in perfect firing position, but after the first few heavy punches that it had thrown, it was now delicately using its light particle disruptors in an attempt to knock the ship's engines out.
"I'm getting power output fluctuations!" Rais reported, hands dancing across his control panel while trying to keep one hand on his flight stick.
"Engineering, what's our status?"
"We're taking damage to the engines. They're trying to."
The line went dead with a hiss over the intercom after another blast of enemy fire slammed into the side of the ship. It was clear to Joe that while the Raider wanted the ship stopped, they were more than willing to do some damage to the rest of the craft in an attempt to force the Alliance ship to surrender.
While Joe hung onto his seat restraints, he noticed that the hanger bay doors were opening. "Someone has triggered the bay doors!" he yelled over the wailing claxons and shudder of metal as the ship got hit again.
Ranix looked down and checked his console. "What?"
Two-thirds of the way down the length of the ship, one member of the crew had finally decided to take some decisive action. After the orders to prepare for a ground assault had been rescinded, the Sentinel Commander had stayed online and tracked the situation from his holding pod.
Leaving his holding space, he made his way a few yards to the hanger bay and made sure that all hatches to the area were shut and secured. With his rifle in one hand and his other wrapped around a pillar for support, he bypassed the ship's AI and initiated an emergency hatch opening sequence.
The second the hanger bay doors started sliding open, and the vacuum of space ripped all the air out into space, and anything that wasn't strapped down. When all the air had finally been sucked out of the room, the robot quickly made its way to the breach, and stuck his head out, looking for the Raider. Sure enough, he spotted it, 300 metres astern, firing at the Epsilon, with what the Sentinel Commander consider poor marksmanship.
Looking up, he assessed his options to get to the top of the hull, and since the section of the ship that was between him and his destination was almost entirely smooth, he knew that he'd have to punch into the hull to get a grip and prevent himself from tumbling off into space, and without a thruster pack, he would be completely fucked if he fell off the ship.
Climbing out onto the hull, he sank his fingers on his left hand into the hull, then kicked the end of his feet in, and started climbing. Luckily the skin of the ship was thick, and he wasn't going to puncture the hull, just leave it pockmarked. When he was almost to the top, he sent a signal to the AI to shut the hanger bay doors. He knew that they were playing for all the chips, and he didn't want to fuck things up.
As he finally clawed himself to the top of the ship, he activated a series of small magnetic strips that were built into the bottom of his feet, an essential feature for any machine built to defend ships was the ability to stay attached to them. A small green light came up in the lower left-hand corner of his primary viewing field, indicating that his mag-lock was secure.
Just as he was about to send a message to Ranix on the bridge, a wildly lucky beam of bright yellow light from the Raiders particle disruptor hit the SC in the left upper arm, shearing the appendage off like a hot knife through butter.
A d
amage assessment was sent immediately to the SCs heads-up-display, alerting him to the crisis. His neural net quickly ran a systems check, and then came up with a very simple response, one that Major Hunt would be proud of:
We're playing for all the marbles!
In a blink of an eye, the ships senior automated defence system, or Sentinel, with its vibrant green stripe running down its head charged to the rear of the ship, bobbing and weaving from the occasional shot of enemy fire that might get to close for comfort while simultaneously hacking the ships navigational and flight systems. What Ranix and the rest of the crew had never been told was that the Sentinel Commander could override every system on its own starship. Only the Ship Master was aware of the fact, and rarely informed his subordinates of such a capability.
Of course, in a situation like this, Ranix would be thanking his lucky stars that the SC was the machine he was, and after almost six months on Earth, even with an all too organic in mindset, he was still the most lethal fighting machine in the Alliance.
The ships AI automatically resisted any external hack, but the Sentinel Commanders electronic warfare capabilities rivalled his physical abilities, and he was able to override the flight control systems that Rais was controlling on the bridge.
Stopping just forward of the engine housing, the Sentinel Commander knelt down at started to initiate his plan of attack. It was evident to him that the Raider was holding steady at a distance of 300 metres, and that it was shadowing the movement of the Epsilon, and what he required was a much closer distance.
By taking flight control away from Rais, the Sentinel Commander knew he was starting a shit storm on the bridge, but at this point, it was either that or the ship being taken by Coalition forces.
Checking his weapon, the SC rotated the selector switch to fully automatic fire and set the output to level 10. Playtime was over, and it was time for the professionals to take over, and he quickly changed his operating setting to Combat Mode.
Pulling up the ship's flight systems to his heads-up display, he started to control the ship's flight path, and while it might have seemed counterproductive to those on the bridge, by flying in a straight line, that meant that the trailing ship was also going to be travelling in a straight line. Checking his sensors and other telemetry systems, the SC knew that that Raider was flying straight and level in relation to the Epsilon, at a matched speed, 300 metres astern.
Knowing that the fate of the ship, the crew, and probably Earth were at stake, the SC initiate his plan. Sharpish.
The first thing that happened was the SC initiated an emergency stop and complemented it by firing the forward thrusters. With the inertial dampeners damaged, anyone not strapped in would have been flung forward as the ship went from a great speed to zero in a fraction of a second.
While members of the crew were having their sternums squeezed by the immense force being put on their bodies, the Raider performed just as the SC had predicted.
Instead of pulling up, or sliding right or left, whoever was piloting the chase ship probably blinked twice, tilted their head in confusion, said holy fuck, and then tried to hit the breaks. But they were too slow and fucked. Any ship not ready for an emergency stop wasn't going to make one fast enough if they were trailing another ship at such a close range.
When the Epsilon has stopped dead in space, the chasing Raider had continued at its rapid pace until the last second, when the pilot finally applied the ships reverse thrusters, but they didn't prevent the ship from slamming into the back of the Epsilon with enough G-force to kill a member of the SETI team.
And just at the moment, the Rancorian Raider slammed into the rear of the Epsilon, allowing the Sentinel Commander initiated his attack.
Moving forward at top speed, the hulking robot timed his leap from his ship to the pursuers vessel like clock-work. Landing on the hull of the enemy ship, the Sentinel knew exactly where to go. The Rancorian Light Raider had one fatal flaw, its bridge had a reinforced transparent viewscreen. Although it was rated against light meteor strikes, the firepower from a pulse rifle was more than enough to contend with its ballistic protection.
Landing squarely on the enemy vessel, the Sentinel Commander quickly made his way up the hull towards the ship's bridge, while simultaneously keying into the Epsilons engines, and preparing them for an emergency launch to half-lightspeed.
With the nose of the Raider still embedded in the rear of the Epsilon, the SC fired all the starboard thrusters, shifting the nose of the ship towards Earth, and wrenched it free from the Rancorian ship.
Moving at top speed, the Sentinel reached the Raiders bridge and noted that the blast shield had been lowered over the glass view screen. Instead of stopping, the hulking machine accelerated and put his right shoulder down and slammed into the protective barrier at close to 100 kilometres an hour.
To the naked eye, the force of the impact did nothing to the blast screen, but to the Sentinels advanced optics, he knew he had started a micro-fracture, big enough to compromise the rest of the shield.
Setting his rifle down, the machine quickly ejected a grenade from his chest mount, hit the arming tab, and placed the device just below the fissure. Picking up his rifle, he took four paces back, knelt down and shielded his head with his intact right arm, and initiated the device.
In the time it had taken the Sentinel Commander to reach the Raiders bridge, plant the grenade and detonate it, the ship's crew had barely been able to react to his moves, and it was evident from the charging glow emanating from the two heavy beam cannons on either end of the ship's wings that the Raiders captain was no longer interested in capturing the Epsilon, but destroying it.
Still linked to the Epsilons flight and navigation systems, the SC quickly plotted a safe half-lightspeed course to Earth, and just before the Raider could finish charging its beam cannons, the Epsilon vanished at 150,000 kilometres per second towards Earth, just as the grenade detonated, blowing a large hole in the blast shield.
His close proximity to the explosion meant that debris was slammed into his massive armoured torso at high speeds, and he registered damage to a variety of his systems, including his right knee.
While the crew of the Raider on the bridge were still in shock from the explosion, the SC rose to his feet, aimed his rifle at the exposed clear view screen, and pulled the trigger. In zero gravity, and with a frame like the SC's, the weapon barely twitched as it fired off one hundred high-energy bolts at the transparent material.
Set on maximum, it took all one hundred shots, all aimed at the same location to bore a hole through the material which was inches thick. When the crew on the bridge realized what was happening, they started to scramble off the bridge, but the instant the glass view screen was breached, and a round hole just three inches in diameter was created, everything and everyone still in the bridge and not strapped down was sucked violently through the small hole, including one crew member whose body was turned into a soupy substance as it was forced through the tiny slot.
When all the air had finally emptied from the bridge, the SC peered in and found that the captain of the ship had stayed in his command chair, strapped in, and had donned an emergency helmet, and was looking right back and the massive machine.
Ringside seats to the end were what the captain had as the SC pulled another grenade from his chest mount, armed the device, and slipped it through the hole that was covered in biological waste and fluid. The grenade just floated gently towards the captain, sitting in the middle of the bridge, about seven metres from the view screen.
Stepping back two paces, the SC detonated the grenade creating a massive explosion on the bridge. The ship's captain was killed instantaneously. The bulkhead doors leading off the bridge were blown in, and the view screen continued to fracture, as more bodies were sucked onto the bridge, and then through the fracturing hole that the SC had created.
It didn't take long for a series of small chain reaction explosions to run the short distance from the bridge to t
he ships fusion generator, and just thirty seconds after the grenade had been detonated, the fusion generator lost integrity and exploded. The ensuing shockwave tore the ship cleanly down the middle, and sent a radiation shockwave hundreds of kilometres in all directions, before a secondary explosion caused by the ships jump drive momentarily sucked the centre of the ship into a miniature black hole, which collapsed a fraction of a second later, and released a blast of 210 petajoules of energy, sending the Sentinel Commander and the piece of hull he was on hurtling 1000 kilometres away from what was the centre of the ship.
Two minutes earlier.....
"Rais, you have got to do something, or we are dead!" Ranix yelled from his command chair.
"Working it!" Came the reply.
The ship continued to be pelted with enemy fire, just as a flashing light on Yuli's control panel caught her attention. "I'm showing the hanger bay doors opening."
Ranix turned to his left and looked at her. "Close them."
Yuli promptly tapped in the necessary commands to the ship's computer. "I can't. Something is overriding my commands."
Ranix looked at his console and brought up the hanger bay systems. The system showed that the doors were open, and he quickly gave the command for them to close, only for the screen to flash a message informing him that he had been denied access to command protocols.
"I think we've been hacked." He said before he was pressed hard into his seat restraints as the ship slammed to a sudden stop.
"Rais!"
"It wasn't me."
The force of the Raider slamming into the rear again sent everyone on the bridge forward in their seats. In the intelligence suite, the strength of the impact was too much for Doctor Lau's 71-year-old body, killing her.
Defiant Order Page 19
