Chapter 10

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Chapter 10: It's all in the execution

We had a solid plan, I thought, but in the end, it all came down to how well we pulled it off. I slept while the Koraxians fixed up their ship.

I stood on the bridge, waiting for a signal from our new friends that they were ready to proceed. I watched on the tactical display as the moved off, and sensed the tension rising among my crew. We had no idea how this would unfold. Would the Koraxians be right about how their brethren would behave? Yuro guided us into a path just behind them, as they approached yet another FV we didn't have in our records. Soon, they vanished in a flash of light, and we weren't far behind.

We found ourselves in an unfamiliar system, and immediately powered down all but the most essential functions of the ship. A slight vibration took over as the Koraxians engaged some kind of towing beam. Our passive sensors did pick up the base, and the three promised defenders. I shuddered at the thought that one Koraxian ship nearly made hash out of the Protector, and hoped we got the drop on this trio quickly enough to come away clean. Rydia Arnold kept us updated with status reports from the friendly rebels.

"They are going to tow us closer to the base and rendezvous with the patrol."

What followed was a lot of waiting. My ship was pulled ever closer to the enemy, trembling as if it knew to be afraid. Easy, I telepathically instructed, as if it would actually help. Even with the assistance of the rebels, I knew this was a dangerous, deadly scenario. If we didn't strike them fast enough, if they didn't take the bait, if they didn't send all three ships, if... if... if. I caught myself. Deal with each eventuality as it occurs. Not before.

"They've reported in to the patrol craft. Two of them are coming over to inspect. One will remain behind. The rebel ship is going to dock with the facility under the guise of refueling," Lt. Arnold reported.

I nodded. "Keep the HDs hot," I ordered my Tac Officers. "I want to unload them as soon as they're on top of us. Keep an evasive sequence queued up so we can bug out if we have to."

They knew to do that without me telling them, but it always seemed to make them feel better, knowing they'd anticipated my instructions correctly. Morale mattered, as much as I wished it didn't. The little screen on the arm of my chair showed the results of passive scans--the Koraxian ships were getting very close. The third one kept an eye on our friends. Did they suspect something? There wasn't time to ask.

"Ships are closing. Ten clicks," Jenna announced. "The hull disruptors will deploy at five."

And deploy, they did. One ship was in front of us, and one was above. The HDs tore out of their launch tubes simultaneously with the ship powering up. Full sensors came back on, engines revved up, thrusters returned to maximum strength, and all this occurred in time for us to see the HDs work their magic on the enemy ships. The one above us was nearly ripped in half by the barrage of projectiles slicing through its crystalline structure with resonating beams. As to what happened next, I don't think I'll ever be completely certain.

My personal theory is that the hull disruptors were actually too effective. They didn't just tear the ship in half, they exploded the very guts of it. I say this because a good third of the whole damn ship came barreling right at the top of the Protector. There was no time to move. Yuro engaged the evasive sequence as soon as he realized what was happening, but it was just too late. The top of the ship got smashed in. The greenhouse, the recreation dome, the observatory--all wiped out by the uncontrollable fury of a dismembered Koraxian deathship.

Thank God we were all strapped into our seats, or we'd have been thrown halfway across the bridge. We were still stunned, but at least not tossed about like feathers in a pillow fight. "Status!" I yelped.

Jenna rambled it all out in rapid-fire succession, as if she wanted to say it as quickly as possible and deny the reality. "Heavy damage to the dorsal area, power losses throughout the ship, numerous breaches, casualties on all decks!"

"What about the other ships?"

"One is destroyed, the other is crippled and limping back to the base. Our friends have started their attack. But we're in bad shape, sir."

I turned and looked at her, making eye contact, so there'd be no confusion about what I meant. "Evacuate the damaged sections. Get repair teams on restoring power immediately. Seal up the breaches. Ready another salvo of HDs for the final ship."

"S... sir, I'm not sure we can launch again, there's so much damage."

"Clear the goddamn tubes and fire! We're going to hold up our end of this, dammit." Her resolve, weakened for a moment by the sudden chaos, maybe, returned the instant I swore at her. It had the desired effect. She straightened up and set about carrying out my instructions. If we were to die there, so be it. Even if no one ever heard about what we'd done, those sons of bitches would go down in flames right with us.

The ship made a sickening grunt, like metal fighting not to come apart, as we turned toward the base. Our forward launchers were crippled but not wrecked, and we used the handful of HDs we had left to chase down the fleeing ship and trash it. It broke into several pieces under the onslaught, and this time we were careful enough to keep our distance. I tried not to think about the fires raging on the upper levels, the people trapped by collapsed corridors and debris. We all knew what was happening elsewhere, but we could do nothing. Nothing except do what we came here to do.

"There's still one more ship," I reminded. "Do we have any more hull disruptors?"

Jenna shook her head. "The forward tubes are empty, and the upper ones were crushed by the other ship."

"What do we have?"

"We have a couple nukes we could throw into the forward tubes. We could adjust the yield for a highly concentrated blast. If we got it close to the center of the enemy ship, it might do some major damage."

I didn't want to bet our lives on a "might," but it wasn't like we had any better options. We had to prove our commitment to the rebels--indeed, they were proving theirs to us. "Do it," I muttered.

The rebels, I have to hand it to them, really worked over the base. Refueling platforms? Trashed. Control towers? Obliterated. Barracks? What barracks? Okay, so I really didn't know what each of the structures were for, but they were differentiated enough I knew they served separate functions, and they were all getting handily annihilated, and that's the extent of my caring.

But the remaining ship was playing cat-and-mouse with our friends, and had managed to chip away some of its spines. We'd just learned that Koraxian ships, while outwardly very durable and tough, could explode violently if you hit them right. I didn't want to see that happen to our shiny new pals, so we gambled everything on a pair of nukes, their parameters set to unleash a tightly concentrated fireball of absolute Hell. Just the concussive force would be enough, we hoped, to rip the enemy ship a new asshole.

So, we fired. The nukes worked--sort of. It definitely got the other ship's attention. Several spines were broken off, so they engaged a quick spin to hurl a few in our direction. We veered hard to port, throwing every starboard thruster into overdrive, stressing the ship even further. I hoped it wouldn't come to a sudden evacuation--I didn't even know how many escape pods were lost in the collision. We were lucky the ship held together at all. And without an external survey, we had no way of knowing just how bad the exterior damage really was. One thing at a time. I had to pace myself.

The ship began what was clearly a pursuit. "Get us the hell out of here," I barked. "Give 'em a chase."

So we led the Koraxians around, briefly, as they tried to get a good shot in. At the end of the day, though, the Protector was fairly maneuverable, and we managed to dodge them. We couldn't do much else, since our remaining weapons were crippled as fuck. Our only hope was for the rebels to come through, and they did. The tactical display showed the remaining ship slowly disappear, and a visual confirmation made it clear: enough spines were thrown into it to crack its central structure, destabilize its internal composition, and blow it apart.

I sighed with relief, even though we weren't out of the woods. I immediately had Lt. Arnold get the rebels on the horn. "Tell them we're severely damaged and need to go somewhere safe so we can repair and regroup."

She nodded, relayed the message, and looked back at me. "They say they understand, and that we now owe them."

"There will be time to bargain later. Right now we need to figure out how badly damaged the Protector is. Tell them if they don't understand that, they can shove it."

I'm sure she relayed the message in the most diplomatic language possible. I wouldn't have. I unstrapped myself from the command chair and left the bridge, intent on checking out the damage for myself. On my way out, I called to anyone within earshot: "I could use a few more pairs of hands, there are a lot of people in trouble up there."