Fiction Sanctimonious - Ongoing 3306

[Phoenix_Dfire]

1st October 3306 – Baal System.

‘You’re a WHAT?’ exclaimed Davie.

The crew of the Krait, Sanctimonious II, were sat around a table outside a restaurant in the Coriolis station. Having spent the last week transporting goods for the funeral of the Late Mad Prince Harold Duval to the Baal system, they had decided to celebrate with an expensive meal. Their waiter’s deferral reaction to Mooka had surprised both Mac and Davie, so much so she had shown her latest ID card update to her adoptive fathers to explain.

‘It’s also expected that when we’re docked at an Imperial port,’ she said, with a mocking high Imperial Accent. ‘One expects that you refer to one’s self by the proper Imperial title!’

‘Do we have to doff our caps to you as well?’ Davie threw his arms up in the air.

Mooka looked over at Mac, who was sniggering behind his hand. It was obvious to her that the commander of the crew found this situation hilarious. In the six years, she had known him, she had never seen Mac laugh like this before.

‘OK, how do we address you now?’ he said between snorts of stifled laughter.

‘Actually, I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘But, enough of the laughing! I’ve worked hard to get this title.’

Mac stopped laughing as he realised that she was a lot more serious about her Imperial title than he was. She felt a tinge of pride having achieved so much. Since gaining her imperial citizenship, she’d risen in the Imperial Naval Reserve to the rank of Baroness.

‘We’ve missed something here,’ Mac said. ‘How did you get that title so quickly?’

‘Well, I did a lot of work for “The Senator” while you and Davie were frozen in those escape pods,’ She explained. ‘I even got as high as “Knight”.’

‘That’s impressive,’ interrupted Davie. ‘But how were you able to gain rank when you re-joined this crew?’

Mooka looked sheepishly at the floor.

‘I signed the entire ship up when we were rescuing the people off Makenzie Relay during the terrorist attack,’ she said.

‘WHAT!?’ both Mac and Davie cried in unison.

She raised her head and looked at her adoptive fathers with a small embarrassed smile.

‘The Empire thanks you for your service?’ she said, bracing herself for another outburst.

‘I don’t believe this,’ Mac complained. ‘We did hundreds of rescue-runs getting people off that station.’

‘And every time,’ continues Davie. ‘We got people to safety; they promoted us?’

‘Not every time,’ admitted Mooka. ‘Only when we’d run a certain number of missions.’

‘Hang on, did we leave other people behind and only rescued imperial citizens?’ Mac asked, his expression going darker.

‘You chose the missions to run,’ Mooka shot back, trying to head off where this was going. ‘I never chose who we rescued.’

‘Look, it was an Imperial station,’ Davie quickly interjected. ‘It makes sense that most of the people we rescued were Imperial.’

‘I suppose,’ Mac admitted. ‘I’ve been taught to rescue people dependant on their needs, not their politics. I just took the first missions off the top of the board. I hope we didn’t leave anyone behind who should have been a medical priority.’

‘The situation was manic inside those stations,’ Davie tried to reassure Mac. ‘We had to be in and out before the ship fried. You helped rescue thousands. Just take that as a win. Which reminds me…’

Mooka watched Davie as he checked his ID on his wrist terminal. Mac just continued to look at her in shock. She had hoped that they would never find out, especially Mac. He’d retired from the Federal Military having reached ‘Post Captain’ and now he’d just found out he’d been working for the Empire for the last couple of weeks.

‘Hey, I’m a Master,’ exclaimed Davie. ‘That means I can buy one of those sleek Imperial Couriers. Mod those engines and nothing in the sky can catch you!’

Mac slowly checked his details on his wrist terminal.

‘I’m a Knight!’ he said flatly.

‘Does that mean everyone in the Empire has to refer to me as Master Thronton?’ Dave said excitedly.

Turning to look at Mac he asked, ‘So, do we call you Sir Mac or Sir Duncan?’

Mooka saw Mac throw Davie such a dirty look that the tall co-pilot quickly turned back to her.

‘Hang on,’ he said as realisation struck. ‘That means they’ll let you buy an Imperial Clipper! Oh man, I’ve always wanted to fly in one of those.’

It struck Mooka that despite Davie’s height, powerful physique and that glittering smile on a handsome face, he sometimes came across like an excited puppy who was discovering a new squeaky toy. Meanwhile, Mac sat back in his chair, a melancholy smile on his face.

‘Davie, I think we have to accept that our little lady is all grown up now and might be flying solo soon.’

‘No,’ Davie cried. ‘We can’t break up the dream team.’

‘Do you know how much a Clipper costs?’ Mooka tried to reassure Davie. ‘I’ll be years before I can afford one of those. Besides, I’m not ready to break up the Dream Team just yet.’

The waiter arrived with everyone’s food order and everyone was stunned by the quality of the dishes that were placed in front of them. Mooka thought back to her first couple of months on the old Sanctimonious, when she was eating rations out of the old Asp Explorer’s emergency supplies. She never could have imagined she would be eating like this one day.

She picked up a small starter and took a bite, allowing the taste to overwhelm her. A moment which was completely ruined when her comms unit buzzed alert, which was quickly joined by both Davie and Mac’s buzzing as well.

‘Well, your dear Emperor has decided to interrupt our meal,’ Mac sarcastically said, looking up from his comms unit.

Mooka reluctantly put down her cutlery and picked her unit up. There was a call for all imperial pilots to report to Eurybia system.

‘What the hell’s there?’ Davie looked back at the announcement. ‘The system sounds familiar but I can’t place it.’

‘The Empire must be going after Liz Ryder,’ said Mooka flatly.

‘They must think she made those bombs,’ commented Mac, scanning through the summons.

‘So what do we do?’ asked Davie.

‘Well, they’re requesting volunteers,’ stated Mac. ‘So, unless our Ladyship here has a compelling reason, I say we sit this one out. Besides, we know Liz. She’s got no problems making missiles for commanders to blow each other up but attacking stations? She’d never build anything to hit stations. ’

‘Master Thorton agrees with Sir Duncan of MacTaggart,’ Davie announced with a very bad impression of a High Imperial Accent.

‘I wasn’t wanting us to get involved,’ Mooka replied. ‘However, if Master Thorton decides to continue to mock my station, my rank does allow me to have him executed.’

Davie started to laugh but it tailed off when he realised that neither Mooka nor Mac were laughing with him.

‘You are joking?’ he said.

‘It’s one of the laws of the Empire that a higher ranking subject can order a lower-ranking subject’s execution, as long as they have sufficient reason,’ said Mac, in a sombre tone.

Mooka managed to keep a straight face when she saw Mac winked at her when Davie wasn’t looking. Mooka and Mac began to eat their meal while Davie just looked at each of them with a worried expression.

‘Seriously though, she can’t do that,’ he whined. ‘Right?’

Author's Note :- I'm going to try and put all the Sanctimonious Stories which relate to the present plot lines in this thread. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up better than I did with the Interstellar Initiatives.

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

18th October 3306 – Witch Head’s Nebula

Mac rubbed the sweat from his hands for what felt like the twentieth time. With the distress call signal source getting larger in the view-port, he glanced over the ship’s readouts again.

‘I can’t believe we’re going to do this,’ came Davie’s voice from the gunnery chair behind him.

Mac didn’t reply, concentrating on the approaching signal source. The ‘Sanctimonious II’, their Kriat, had been equipped with the most advanced weaponry he had ever seen. Davie had control of two plasma chargers and a Flak launcher. Mooka could fly either a Tiapan or a trident fighter, while Mac hoped he’d calibrated the two fixed guardian gauss cannons to the right range.

With a flash, the Krait appeared in realspace in the middle of a large green gas cloud. Ahead, hanging in the centre of the cloud, was a huge survey mega-ship, fires burning along its length.

‘This is the mega-ship – Achilles,’ the ship to ship communicator blared, ‘We’ve been attacked by Thargoids and we have multiple failures across the ship.’

‘Attention Achilles,’ Mac announced into the comms. ‘This is the Sanctimonious II. We stand ready to assist you. We have collection limpets to recover your escape pods.’

‘Thank you Sanctimonious but that isn’t going to help,’ came the panicked voice over the communicator.

‘We can take on survivors,’ Mac responded, slightly puzzled. ‘How’s that not helping?’

The mega-ship didn’t need to respond, as from behind one of the habitation rings, movement caught Mac’s eye. A black shadow emerged from behind the Achilles, forming the shape of a large Thargoid interceptor. The Alien ship was shaped like a flower with eight petals wrapped around a central stem.

It’s black colour, with hints of red all along the petal-like wings, reminded Mac of unhealed scars, of blood clots and open wounds. The Kriat shook as a green beam of light was thrown out by the Alien vessel, a low note of sound reverberated through their ship, as the Thargoid scanned their ship.

‘Oh Flux,’ shouted Davie. ‘It’s a Basilisk.’

The Thargoid didn’t even wait to finish it’s scan when parts of the Alien’s glowed an even deeper red and small fighter like ships emerged in an elliptical pattern from behind. Mac hit the controls to deploy their weapons, while poured power into the engines. He pulled the ship around in an evasive pattern away from the Alien ship.

‘Crap, Crap, Crap, Crap,’ Davie was frantic. ‘We’ve never managed to take out a Cyclops before! What chance do we stand against one of these?’

Fighting down the urge to slap his co-pilot, Mac turned the ship through the cloud of Alien fighters. There were small shudders as their weapons impacted against the shields.

‘Keep it together!’ He snarled, knowing he had to help get Davie’s panic under control. ‘We can do this! We’re not in an Asp anymore. This ship can take it.’

He glanced over his shoulder at the big co-pilot. He seemed to have controlled his nerves.

‘Mooka,’ Mac ordered. ‘Launch the trident and keep the big ship’s attention off us.’

‘Aye Aye Boss!’ She acknowledged.

‘Davie! Use the Flak cannon to take out as many of those Tharglets as possible. ‘

‘Aren’t they called Thargons?’

‘The only thing I want to call them is dead! Get shooting!’

‘Aye Aye Sir!’ Davie replied in a mocking tone.

The starfield span with a sickening motion through the viewport as Mac threw the ship in a desperate attempt to avoid the incoming fire from the cloud of small Alien craft. The Sanctimonious shuddered as hundred of little impacts slammed into the shields. Individually, they were insignificant. However, when there was this many Thargons, even Mac was shocked at how quickly their shields were stripped away.

There was a ker-chuck sound as Davie fired the Flak cannon. Mac was a little concerned but his co-pilot knew what he was doing. Davie triggered the flak shell just as was in the centre of the Thargon swarm. An explosion enveloped the whole swarm in a single shot.

‘Aw, Deadeye!’ exclaimed Davie.

‘I can’t keep the Basilisk off me!’ exclaimed Mooka.

‘I’m on it!’ Davie yelled, aiming the turrets at the flower-like ship.

The plasma turret’s blue bolts slammed into the Alien vessel, gouging deep wounds into the blackened skin. Almost immediately, Mac could see those holes beginning to heal, when a spot on one of the petals of the Alien began to glow brighter and flash like a lighthouse beam.

‘We’ve got a heart exposed,’ yelled Davie.

Mac turned the Krait to face the Thargoid and tried to line up the gauss cannons. With their slow charge up time and the fact you had to be pinpoint accurate with your aim, only experienced pilots could get a gauss cannon shot on target. Ignoring the incoming fire from, Mac focused on that throbbing spot of light and fired once at distance.

He got a glancing hit. The Thargoid continued to advance, this time it’s full attention on the Krait. The two-second recharge for these gauss cannons felt like forever. Mac fired a second shot, this time scoring direct hits with both cannons on the Alien’s heart. As the huge vessel got closer, Mac counted down the seconds and then squeezed the trigger.

‘Heat levels critical,’ announced the computer.

The ship communicator blared an inhuman sound from the Alien. As they passed their enemy, the petal with the glowing heart, broke off. The debris narrowly missing the Sanctimonious’ bridge. Mac was forced into his seat, as he ignited the afterburners to give himself some space. A new blip appeared on the scanner in front of him.

‘More Thargons,’ announced Davie.

‘They’re your target, Davie!’ Mac ordered.

He also noticed the scanners were showing shields around the Alien mothership.

‘Mooka? Status?’

‘The fighter is ok, I’ve taken a couple of hits but I’m still in the fight.’

‘Try and knock its shields down, while we take out this new swarm, ’ Mac commanded. ‘Don’t worry, if you lose a fighter. We have plenty of them in the hangar, just remote link to the next one.’

To Mac, the fighter bays were small engineering marvels. Each bay held a single fighter, which a pilot could remote control by telepresence. Having flown the fighters himself, the telepresence software fooled you into thinking you were actually in the smaller craft. This technology had not used when he was in the military because back then the control signal was too easy to jam. However, these days, the encryption was that good that no-one had been able to break a telepresence link.

The other advantage was if the fighter was lost, the bay would construct a new fighter in just a couple of minutes. Each bay normally had enough spare parts and material to recreate several times. Mac had made sure that the Sanctimonious had the top of the range, double fighter bay fitted. Which meant that a fighter could be launched without having to wait on the rebuild time.

Mac snapped himself back to the present; he noticed the ship’s heat was far too high. That was the problem with these new guardian based weapons, they generated so much heat, it could melt some of the ship's systems if they were used too much.

‘I’m going to drop a heat sink,’ he reported.

There was the now-familiar ‘Ker-chunk’ sound as Davie fired the Flak Cannon again. He swore as the shot appeared to explode outside of the swarm. According to his readouts, Mac noted there were 60 or so of these little ships. A second Flak shot had better luck, taking out a lot of Thargons, but there were at least still 20 left as they made their first pass over the ship.

The Krait shuddered as multiple hits bounced the ship around. The shield indicators dropped to almost zero. The bridge lit up as yellow lightning reached out from the Thargoid mothership and enveloped Mooka’s fighter. A couple of seconds later the small craft disappeared in a small explosion of white and blue.

‘Launching a second fighter,’ she reported.

‘Belay that,’ Mac ordered.

As the heat sink was triggered, All heat from the Sanctimonious’ systems was pulled from the ship’s system. The Thargoid and Its swarm seemed to lose sight of them. Both the Swarm and its mother ship began to perform a search pattern. This gave Mac a few seconds of respite to consider their next move. The yellow shield indicators around the Thargoid had almost gone and their own shields had begun to build up again.

‘What the…?’ He exclaimed in surprise.

Davie looked at him quizzically.

‘It’s the hull integrity estimate,’ Mac quickly pointed at the readout. ‘We’ve lost 15% of our hull.’

‘It’s the Thargoid weaponry,’ explained Mooka. ‘The shields are only stopping seventy per cent of the damage.’

‘Aw Fluxing hell,’ swore Davie. ‘Do you want me to call for help?’

‘They’d never arrive in time,’ replied Mac. ‘This interceptor has to be taken down. Otherwise, no one is getting off that mega-ship.’

Mac looked at the readouts, the heat levels in their ship were beginning to rise again and it won’t be long before the Aliens would detect them again.

‘Same plan as before, ‘ he ordered. ‘Davie, take out the swarm, then concentrate on the Mothership. Mooka, run interference in the fighter. If you get a shot at the heart, you take it.’

There was a roaring sound from the Sanctimonious’ comm unit.

‘I think they’ve spotted us again,’ gulped Davie.

‘Launching fighter,’ reported Mooka.

Mac turned the Krait towards the swarm, hoping to give his co-pilot an easy shot. The Flak cannon, exploded in the centre of the formation of the small craft, wiping out most of them.

‘Concentrate on the Interceptor,’ Mac ordered. ‘It will just launch a new swarm if you wipe all of them out.’

‘Aye Aye Boss!’ Davie Acknowlweded, this time without the mocking tone.

The large plasma turrets on the top of the ship opened up at the misshapen flower-like craft. It shuddered as the blue bolts slammed into it. Mac watched in amazement as he saw the hull readout on the interceptor drop, just as their own heat levels were beginning to rise to dangerous levels again. Suddenly a pulsing glow appeared on another of the petals.

‘We’ve exposed another heart,’ exclaimed Davie.

‘Our heat levels are too high to use the gauss cannons,’ said Mac.

‘I’m on it,’ reported Mooka.

While the interceptor had been focused on the Krait, it had ignored the small blue and white trident fighter. Mooka had found herself in the perfect firing position. The blue plasma bolts from the fighter hit with pinpoint accuracy. Mac watched the readouts of the heart plummet as each of Mooka’s shots hit.

There was another shriek of pain from the ship communicator, as with a small explosion, a second petal flew away from the Thargoid. Mooka, made the fighter dodge aside, avoiding the reams of fire that came from the damaged vessel. Alerts flared all across Mac’s viewscreen.

‘It’s launched Caustic Missiles,’ reported Davie.

Mac immediately threw all available power into the engines and shields, pitched the ship down and activated the afterburners. The Sanctimonious had a point defence turret, which was great at shooting down human missiles and pirate limpets. However, against Thargoid missiles, it was nowhere near effective. The only hope was to avoid and outrun.

Three green streaks flew just above the Krait, quickly turning and realigning to follow. Although the Sanctimonious had built up quite a distance, the missiles all completed their course adjustment and began to chase the human ship. Mac hit the boosters again, keeping the speed of the ship high. He noticed that Mooka was also firing her boosters, to keep the fighter within broadcast range of its mother ship.

The point defence turret had locked on to the closest missile, it’s green bolts of light hitting the missile. However, it was not damaging it or knocking it off course.

‘300 metres,’ Davie reported.

Mac fired the afterburners again.

‘250 metres.’

They could hear the point defence turret run out of ammo, with the familiar clicking noises as the auto reloader tried to replenish its supplies.

‘150 metres.’

Mac gritted his teeth, preparing himself for the impact.

’50 metres.’

Mac tried to activate the afterburners again, but there wasn’t the power left in the capacitors.

‘Brace,’ Mac ordered the crew, pulling the ship up in a high G turn.

However, there was no impact. The missiles, having run out of fuel, carried on in a straight line, unable to turn to continue ther persuit. Allowing himself a momentary sigh of relief, Mac turned the Sanctimonious back to the Thargoid vessel. According to the readouts, it had generated another set of shields and Mac knew that it still had three hearts left.

However, he had a sense that the Alien ship was getting tired. It was hard to expend that level of energy without all its hearts working.

‘Ok, you two. I’m dropping a new sink,’ Mac announced. ‘Let’s go to town on it.’

With new confidence, the Sanctiomious and it’s trident fighter bore down on the damaged vessel. The heat from the plasma turrets and gauss cannons was funnelled straight into the heat sink, so shot after shot hit the enemy craft, without causing the Sanctimonious any problems. The yellow bands of the Alien’s shields quickly vanished from the readouts and again huge wounds appear all over the ship. A third petal started to glow as they passed the Alien vessel.

Mac switched off the flight assist mode and flipped the Sanctimonious 180 degrees, flying backwards at full speed. As the Thargoid began to turn, he fired three full shots from the gauss cannons and yet another petal fell away from the huge vessel. Again the Thargoid screamed and once more, missiles launched from it straight at them.

Mac was ready this time and, using the lateral thrusters, dodged the Krait to the side. The missiles flew past them, So Mac boosted back towards the Alien again, hoping to give his crew another firing pass as they tried to outrun the missiles again.

Mooka’s fighter was darting around the huge ship, avoiding the fire that it was sending her way. It completely ignored the Sanctimnious as Davie fire shot after shot of blue plasma bolts into it. Again the enemy shields collapsed and another heart was exposed. The Alien ship turned to pursue the Sanctimnious again, allowing Mooka to copy Mac’s previous manoeuvre. With the fighter flying backwards, Mooka’s salvo of fire had no trouble taking out the exposed heart and the Alien howled again in agony.

‘It’s doing something different this time,’ reported Davie. ‘There’s some kind of energy build up.’

‘It’s going to EMP,’ Mac said.

He was already flipping through the ship’s loadout of weapons until he found and armed what he was looking for.

‘Unknown energy field detected,’ announced the computer.

Thargoid EMP bursts were the Aliens biggest weapons against human vessels. These EMP fields were known to disable the big capital warships of the Federation and the Empire, leaving them sitting ducks for the caustic missiles and other forms of attack. They’d used with great effect to attack human space stations all over human space.

Mac counted to three and activated the EMP countermeasures. A blue shockwave, spread out from the Thargoid, hitting both the Sanctimonious and the Mega Ship. Protected by the countermeasures, the Sanctimonious was unaffected by the pulse of energy but they could see the lights on the Megaship dim and then switch off.

One of the issues of the countermeasures was it could only block the pulse around a certain radius. There was enough range for ships like the Krait and it could even protect ships as large as the Imperial Cutter or Federal Corvette. However, the radius was too small to protect anything bigger, so in one fell swoop, the Aliens had negated mankind's most destructive weapons.

‘I’ve lost control of the fighter,’ reported Mooka.

‘Stay put,’ replied Mac. ‘Hopefully, they’ll ignore you!’

‘Right, let’s get that last heart,’ Davie said grimly while gripping the controls more tightly.

With the Sanctimonious’ shields barely registering and the ship integrity indicator down to just above 50%, Mac knew this was still going to be a difficult fight. He flipped the ship onto it’s back to get the Thargoid back into view. As the Alien ship appeared in front of them, it launched yet another wave of Thargons.

‘Get the swarm,’ ordered Mac.

Without Davie responding, Mac heard the Flak cannon’s unique sound as the co-pilot engaged the swarm. Mac lined up the gauss cannons and fired shot after shot. The Thargoid tried to close, trying to jink out of the way of the Krait’s shots. Yellow lightning jumped out from the Alien, catching the Sanctimonious and surrounding their ship. The power from the shields dropped and for a second mac though the engines had been lost.

‘Shield’s down,’ reported the computer.

Mac struggled with the controls, as the Thargoid tried to hold them in place. The yellow lightning was draining power from their systems, making it difficult to escape. The capacitors showed just enough power to fire the ship’s afterburners. He clicked the boost command but there was no response. He clicked them again, still no response. He altered the power priority to move from any power from the shields into the manoeuvring system and tried again. He felt himself being pressed back into his seat as the Sanctimonious ripped itself out of the Alien ship’s draining grip.

‘Fighter has power,’ exclaimed Mooka. ‘I’m moving in.’

Davie had abandoned firing at the Thargon swarm and opened up with the plasma cannons into the mothership. It didn’t take to long to expose the final heart. Mooka took full advantage of it and her fighter’s plasma weapons made short work of it. The final petal broke away, leaving the misshapen Alien ship peeling away, obviously in pain.

‘Caustic missile launch,’ reported the computer.

However, there was no time to react properly. Mac threw the ship into a desperate barrel roll. The first missile passed harmlessly above them, the second passed under the right-wing. However, the third struck them amidships on the top of the ship. Red lights appeared all across the dashboard.

‘Caustic damage detected,’ reported the computer.

‘We’ve lost the Flak cannon,’ reported Davie.

‘Never mind that, just get that Basilisk,’ ordered Mac.

Mac turned the ship back to face the Alien ship. The swarm was going to come in for another pass but as they had nothing to counter it, they were going to have to try to finish off the mothership before the swarm would destroy their ship. Blue plasma bolts slammed into the black ship, blowing huge chunks of the Alien into space. Mac fired the gauss cannons, smashing through the centre of the Thargoid’s remaining petals.

He then noticed the caustic missile’s was dissolving the top of their ship. The hull integrity was falling fast.

‘We’re going to overheat,’ exclaimed Davie. ‘We can’t burn the ship out.’

‘Keep firing,’ ordered Mac. ‘We need to take it out.’

‘But what about the heat!’

‘You get that Basilisk,’ Mac shouted. ‘I’m hoping the heat will burn off the thargoid gunk.’

The heat indicator told mac they were close to 120% of the heat capacitors, If they kept firing then some of the ship’s systems would start to shut down. Mac was taking a a chance, he’d never done this overheat trick before but he’d heard about it working for other commanders who’d fought Thargoids. He fired a couple of gauss shots into the Alien, watching the heat levels increase to almost 180%.

He saw the swarm coming back into range. Their shields had gone, the hull integrity showed 30% and dropping fast. Mooka’s fighter had just completed a firing pass, Davie’s last salvo missed due to the Alien dodge to the side again. He lined up the Sanctimonious up and headed straight for the Thargoid in a massive game of chicken. He fired another gauss shot and another, the Thargoid began to crumble and a loud shriek came over the ship communications.

Mac fired the boosters again, just as the Thargoid seemed, for a second, to contract as if it was taking a huge breath and then it vanished in an explosion of green and white light. A green gas cloud expanding from the blackened remains of the enemy vessel. The Thargon swarm was almost on them but the withering array of fire did not arrive. As the swarm passed over them, each of the little ships disappeared in a little flash of green and white light themselves.

‘Caustic substance has burnt off,’ reported Mooka.

The sudden silence after the fight was deafening. Mac looked over at Davie, who smiled back sheepishly at him. Mooka took the transference headset off and grinned like an idiot. Mac turned back to the ship readouts and saw that the ship’s integrity was holding at about 20%. Mac allowed himself a second to relax into the pilot’s chair and then flipped the ship communicator.

‘Sanctimonious to Achilles, you can evacuate. The Thargoid has been neutralised but we can’t stop another one if it turns up.’

‘That’s OK Sanctimonious,’ came the reply over the communicator. ‘We’ll get everyone away before the bugs can come back. By the way, the captain’s authorised a payment to cover all your repair costs.’

‘That’s appreciated Achilles, we’ve got a lot of holes to patch. Sanctimonious Out.’

The mega-ship opened a lot of hatches and a swarm of capsules emerged from the huge vessel. Each of the pods aligned themselves and then started to fly in the direction of the closest safe harbour.

‘Message from the Pilot’s Federation,’ announced the computer.

Mac looked quizzically between his two crew members. Davie just shrugged

‘Play it,’ Mac said.

‘The Pilot’s Federation credits Commander MacTaggart with a Basilisk Thargoid Interceptor kill. We award the Commander a bounty of 6 Million Credits.’

‘Whoa,’ Davie said but Mac waved him quiet.

‘In addition, with the destruction of the Alien vessel, Commander MacTaggart has reached the combat rank of Elite. Right On Commander!’

‘Now you can “Whoa”, ‘ said Mac grinning to both of his crew.

Author's Note :- I know the 'defend/rescue the mega-ship' scenario wasn't available in the Witch Head nebula event but you can find these scenarios in Maia and Kamadhenu (there are others but I don't know where they are). They were left over from the last time the Thargoids had a big offensive and haven't been removed from the game. I would recommend giving them a try because they are a nice twist on the Thargoid fight scenario.

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

28 January 3307 - Investigation.

‘Oh Man, this is so weird!’

Davie’s voice came out of the communicator’s speakers with a slightly tinny interference. Mooka was sat in the gunnery station on the bridge of the Kriat Mk II ‘Sanctimonious’, monitoring one of her adoptive fathers driving the ship’s SRV. She realised that whatever was out there was still jamming outgoing signals from the massive structure ahead of her.

At least this building is human, she thought to herself.

Although both the Guardian and Thargoid bases had automated drones flying about them, this huge building in front of them just seemed dead. There was no light, no heat and even the reactors for the facilities had gone cold. There was just the occasional blip from the main transmitter as it’s emergency batteries began to die.

‘We’re not getting a thing here,’ Duncan ‘Mac’ McTaggert said into the comm unit.

‘I’m not scared,‘ Davie tried to reassure them over the comms. ‘It’s just weird. What are the readings on the other ships?’

Mooka grimaced. They weren’t the only ship in the vicinity. In fact, there appeared to be about thirty ships parked around the huge building. The lights of many srvs buzzed about like light bugs. The distress signal has been well broadcast across human space when the transmission had been discovered by Commander Elsa Solomon as they travelled through the Swoilz XX-D c1-30 system. A ship or facility called ‘Serene Harbour’ had sent out a distress call with a set of planetary co-ordinates. That, in turn, had sparked a massive search effort until a Cmdr Russet Meles had discovered the location.

‘Everyone seems to be behaving themselves,’ Mac replied.

‘None of the ships appears to have their weapons powered or deployed,’ reported Mooka. ‘I’ll let you know if anything changes.’

‘That’s a relief,’ commented Davie.

The Sanctimonious was one of the first to arrive not long after but it was pretty obvious that the mad dash to help any survivors was in vain. On the barren airless moon of a gas giant in the R CrA Sector AF-A d42, any facility that didn’t have power for life support was doomed. With this system being over 200 light-years from civilised space, no rescue effort would have arrived quickly enough.

‘I’m at the main gate,’ reported Davie. ‘I’m heading in.’

‘Acknowledged,’ replied Mac and he turned to Mooka.

‘You expecting trouble?’ she asked.

‘Not yet,’ he other adoptive father answered. ‘But it won’t be long until someone turns up to cause some trouble.’

The contact board pinged loudly, attracting Mooka’s attention. Massive energy readings were appearing all over the system. She relaxed a little when she realised the new arrivals were privately-owned fleet carriers and not a huge fleet of warships from the Empire or the Federation. However, she knew these fleet carriers could carry hundred of ships and there was bound to be some pirates looking for an easy score amongst them.

‘I think this is a penal colony,’ Davie reported. ‘There are several buildings around here labelled, Cell Block, and then a number.’

‘Are there any communication stations about?’ asked Mac.

There was a pause from the speakers.

‘Yup, I’ve got about four of them on the scanner and a Data Link relay.’

‘Ok, Get them downloaded ASAP,’ Mac ordered. ‘We’ve got a lot of company coming and some of it might not be friendly.’

‘Aye Aye Sir,’ Davie replied in his usual upbeat voice.

Mac hit the disconnect control with an irritated slap. Mooka suppressed a smile at the way Davie was able to get under Mac’s Skin like that. Davie always liked wind Mac up about his time in the Federal Navy. Still, it was a good sign that both her fathers were in a good place since they had been locked in an escape pod cryo sleep for more than a year.

They lapsed into silence for a few minutes, interrupted only when Scanner bleeped. Mooka looked over to see it lighting up with contacts. These were the ships that had arrived with the fleet carriers. She quickly caught her breath and tried to filter through them for any that could have their weapons deployed. She quickly focused in on a wing of a Fer-De-Lances with a couple of Eagles that were pulling ahead of the pack.

‘I think we’ve got some troublemakers,’ she announced. ‘Three incoming far too hot to be landing.’

‘Davie,’ Mac called urgently. ‘Where are you?’

‘I’m at the main gate,’ replied Davie. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

‘Get back here faster, those ships will be here in a minute.’

They were 200 light-years from the nearest police or Navy ship. The incoming ships could destroy as many of the landed vessels as they liked and they would never be assigned a bounty or a wanted status. They were too far from any civilised system for the crime to be acknowledged. They could be just hot head pilots, out to give some people a scare. However, as she’d learned long ago, best to assume not.

‘The shields can probably take 1 or maybe two passes,’ Mac commented, powering up the weapons and shields. ‘Can you handle the turrets?’

Mooka nodded and pulled the targeting visor down over her head. It gave her a 360 view of around the Santimonius and allowed the turrets to follow the direction of her gaze. She could see in the distance the three ships she spotted earlier. It looked as if they were going to do a bombing run over the parked ships on the ground, including themselves.

‘I can see you guys,’ came Davie’s voice. ‘Get out of here and pick me up later.’

‘No,’ ordered Mac. ‘I want you aboard now and we’ll make a run for it. I don’t want to hang around here any more than I have to.’

‘Gotcha,’ replied the big co-pilot. ‘Putting power into engines and shields.’

Mooka was already working out the timings in her head, another 45 seconds for the SRV to get into position, another 30 seconds to secure the SRV, Davie to get out and the Bay to be depressurised and another 15 seconds for the engines to perform lift-off. She agreed with Mac’s assessment that these ships would get at least two passes at them. She turned the turrets towards the approaching ship and lined up on one of the eagles, which was trying to hide behind the FDL. However, she would wait until she heard Mac’s order or they opened fire with something.

Something dropped from the underside of the FDL and smashed into a Diamondback Scout. The ship vanished in a ball of orange flame. The Sanctimonious shuddered as it’s automated point defence turret open up on something else dropping from the FDL. The big shark-like vessel was lit up as the mine it was about to drop on them exploded whilst in flight.

Mooka opened fire at the Eagle. Normally, the manoeuvrable fighter would be able to dodge turret fire quite easily. However, it’s pilot wasn’t expecting any resistance from the parked ships and did not attempt to avoid the plasma bolts she threw its way. There was the flash of blue light as the first couple of hits impacted its shields, then the shields collapsed from the constant barrage.

She was surprised to see the ship begin to roll out of control and head towards the ground. It was only as it rolled away from her, she saw that one of the plasma bolts have hit the front of the ship leaving a gaping hole where a canopy should be. The other eagle and FDL suddenly broke off, realising that at least one of the landed ships could fight back.

‘I’m underneath the bay,’ came Davie’s voice over the speakers. ‘I’ve started the retrieval process.’

Both the Eagle and the FDL were completing their turns and coming back at them now. They were going to focus their attention on the only ship that had dared to fire back on them, Mooka reasoned. The FDL line up and unleashed a withering barrage of fire into the Sanctimonious. Their ship’s three shield rings quickly going from blue to red and then to nothing in quick succession.

The returned fire against the other eagle as it began to line up for an attack run. Before it got a chance to shoot, the blue plasma bolts from the Sanctimonious’ two plasma cannons battered the smaller ship around, spoiling its target lock. Both ships passed overhead.

‘I’m on board!’ came Davie’s voice screaming over the comms unit. ‘Take off! Take off!’

Mooka saw her weapon’s power drop as Mac funnelled power from the weapons to the engines and the shields. The launch indicator began to slowly rotate showing how close their engines were till they had enough power to lift off. The shield indicator had managed to gain two blue rings out of three, She didn’t know if it would be enough.

Although she couldn’t fire the guns, she could still track the attacking ships through the gun sights. The Fer-de-Lance had completed its turn and was beginning to line up for another firing pass at them.

‘He’s got a line on us,’ she cried, failing to keep her emotion in check.

‘I know,’ Mac shot back.

It appeared to Mooka that the launch indicator had slowed down, mocking their situation. The Fer-De-Lance fired, four beams began to hit the side of their Krait and she was thrown about in her chair from the impact. The two remaining shield rings began to fade quite rapidly from the hud. There was a ping from the engines.

She was thrown back into her seat as Mac fired the boosters. They were flying about ten metres above the ground. Mac pulled back on the controls narrowly missing out the tower. Mooka tracked the enemy ships through turret sights. She sighed loudly in relief. They were abandoning the chase. The other landed ships were taking off and, judging by the amount of fire aimed at their attackers, were not happy being bombed.

‘Fluxin Psykows!’ She swore.

Mac must have come to the same conclusion and pulled the ship into a level flight about a 1km above the moon’s surface. Davie burst through the door at the rear of the bridge.

‘Are they still after us?’ he panted.

‘No. They’ve got bigger problems to worry about!’

As if to emphasize that point, there was a small explosion in the distance. Mooka checked the scanner.

‘That was the other Eagle,’ she announced. ‘Looks like the FDL is making a run for it.’

‘Any Reason why they attacked?’ Davie asked, with a tone of voice that indicated he suspected he knew the answer.

‘None,’ replied Mac. ‘Probably high on Onionhead.’

‘Well, you’re not going to believe the juicy stuff I got from the Serene Harbour’s Comm logs,’ Davie said as he sat down in the spare seat on the bridge.

A list of communication logs appeared on Mooka’s head’s up display. Both her and Mac took their time reading them. After she’d finished, she relaxed back into the seat to process what she’d just read. Serene Harbour was an Imperial Black Ops Interrogation centre. They’d captured some high ranking Marlonist terrorists and brought them here to extract any information from them but they escaped.

It was how they escaped that worried her. A riot had started amongst the inmates, so reinforcements were called. A transport ship had arrived with all the right security codes but the soldiers who poured out of it killed guard and prisoner alike. Not even the prison administrator was left alive. The only people left were the captured Marloists who walked onto the transport so casually, you’d have thought they’d just been out for a morning stroll.

‘Well, Damn,’ Mac exclaimed.

‘I know, right?’ replied Davie.

‘It means that either the Imperial Intelligence Service codes have been broken,’ observed Mooka. ‘Or there are some Marlonist terrorists high up in the I.I.S.’

‘That doesn’t bode well,’ replied Mac.

‘Especially when this Superpower Summit is due soon,’ observed Davie. ‘I wouldn’t want the Marlonists turning up there.’

‘I’ll pass this onto my contacts in the Federation and I advise you to pass this back to your Senator Mooka,’ Mac said.

‘Probably won’t matter anyway,’ said Davie. ‘This will hit the news networks soon enough.’

‘It’s going to be an interesting few months,’ said Mooka, while hoping that they wouldn’t be.

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

17th Feb 3307 - Ambush

'Sush!'

Mooka started as Mac hissed at both herself and Davie to keep quiet. She knew it would be impossible for sensors to pick up their conversation. However, she knew Mac need silence to concentrate on what they were doing.

The Sanctimonious II was in an asteroid belt in the HIP 54530 system, powered down and hiding next to one of the massive rocks. Their Krait MK II wasn't the only ship hiding. They were part of a squadron of smaller vessels, all of them running at minimum power to hide within the asteroids belt. There were a couple of cobras in their taskforce, a few Eagles and four Federal Gunships, packed with as many fighters as they could carry. Except for the Sanctimonious, all the ships had Federal markings of one sort or another.

The Sanctimonious crew were involved in the Federation sanctioned police action against the Jupiter Division in HIP 54530. The Jupiter Division's leader, Jupiter Rochester, had been implicated in the destruction of the Federal President's Ship - 'Star Ship One'. She was concerned about Mac. He was taking out Jupiter Division ships with almost a religious zeal.

In one of their quieter moments, Davie had explained that Mac felt it was people like Jupier Rochester that had corrupted and perverted the Federation and its ideals. One of the reasons, he quit his high ranking job in the Federal Navy. Usually, the light-hearted co-pilot would want nothing to do with an operation like this, but this was a demon that Mac had on his shoulder for too long. Being involved seemed to be a way to exorcise that demon.

Yesterday, Mac had received a call from one of his old Federal Navy buddies, asking for their assistance for a special op. There had been a quick discussion amongst the crew. Despite the fact the Feds had given them no factual information about the operation, they decided to sign on.

Mooka was a little nervous that they would just be used to draw fire away from the Federal taskforce. However, she had been reassured, not by Mac's constant panderings, but by the mass lock torpedoes which had been fitted to the Sanctimonious for free. Those were not cheap, and the Federation would never waste them on expendable operatives.

A bleep on her scanner interrupted her thought process. Several contacts had appeared at close range. These vessels had been hiding in the asteroid field, just like they were. Now it looked like they were hoping to sneak out of the belt unnoticed. Unfortunately for them, the energy they had used to manoeuvre had just given them away. She focused the scanners and got a readout on each of the sneaking vessels.

'Six contacts about seven klicks out,' she reported in a whisper. 'It looks like there are four Federal Corvettes and a couple of eagles.'

'We can take them easy,' commented David 'Davie' Thronton.

'Not until we have the order…' Mac started to say

There was a triple-click sound from the external communicator.

'… and there we have it,' he finished.

In a flurry of activity, Mac sent power to the Sanctimonious' systems. The influx of energy allowed Mooka to activate the telepresence system, and she found herself sat in the cockpit of one of their fighters. The reality illusion of being in the cockpit of their condor fighter always took her breath away. Every time she launched the tiny, winged craft, she swore she could feel the acceleration.

Scanners showed that their Gunships had launched two fighters each. However, so had the enemy corvettes. The big enemy ships lit their boosters in a blatant attempt to escape them. In the meantime, their escorting eagles broke formation and headed straight for their small fleet of fighters. Analysing the situation, she realised that their strikeforce was outgunned. The Gunships were indeed heavy hitters, but against four Corvettes, their chances of stopping them were very slim indeed.

'Hit the fighters, Mooka,' ordered Mac. 'Leave the eagles to fight it out and stay away from those big ships.'

'Yes, Boss,' she acknowledged the order.

Watching the fighters pair up into wings, she realised that she would be especially vulnerable as a fighter with no wingman. She assumed that the enemy would come after her first, so she prepared herself to go into an evasive flight pattern as soon as the enemy entered the weapon's range. Hopefully, that would give the fighters on her side an opening. The span between the two small fleets plummeted a lot quicker than she expected.

'Incoming fire,' warned the computer.

Mooka threw the controls to the left, spinning the fighter into an evading barrel roll. Beams of light passed through the spot where she'd been. She couldn't believe it; almost half of the fighters and both of the eagles had fired on her. They must have been looking for an easy kill.

She reversed her fighter's turn as a couple of the enemy passed her. She was vaguely aware of a couple of explosions in her peripheral vision, but she didn't know if they had just lost friendlies or not. She continued the turn until one of the enemy eagles came into sight. It was attacking one of their Cobras. A glance at the scanner revealed that no-one was targeting her, so she pushed the throttle to full and closed on the larger craft.

The Eagle was focused on the Cobra and didn't seem to notice Mooka's fighter moving into a firing position. She reduced the throttle, trying to match speed with the enemy as it banked and dived after its target. Her gunsights aligned, and she let the fighter's plasma cannons unleash. She saw the stream of blue bolts repeatedly hit the Eagle, its shields flaring blue with every hit. The larger ships' shields were falling but not as fast as she hoped.

'They’ve got some advanced shielding here,’ she reported on the open channel.

‘Just keep pouring the fire down on them,’ came Mac’s reply. ‘They’re too small to carry shield cells.’

The Eagle wasn’t reacting to Mooka’s attack. It was single-mindedly focusing on the Cobra ahead of it. Giving the scanner another glance, she carried on pummeling the enemy’s shields with plasma bolts. The Eagle’s target was having trouble evading, mainly because the Eagle was much more manoeuvrable. All three ships chased each other around one of the larger asteroids in a deadly game of tag.

‘Target Shield’s Failed,’ announced the fighter’s computer.

‘About time,’ Mooka grunted to herself.

Her plasma bolts had now started to hit the hull of the Eagle. Small plates of armour peeling off with every hit. At this point, the Eagle’s pilot must have realised he was under attack and tried to pull away in a hard right turn. Mooka was ready for that manoeuvre. As the Eagle began to bank away, it exposed the ship’s whole profile to her. She calmly sub-targetted the canopy and fired a salvo of plasma bolts straight into it.

There was a miniature explosion at the front of the ship; the Eagle began to roll uncontrollably and slammed into one of the many floating rocks around them. Mac had always told her, the weakest part of any ship is the pilot. If you get the chance, remove them.

‘Eagle Down,’ she reported with satisfaction.

‘Sanctimonious Fighter! Break right,’ a voice came over the comms unit.

Without hesitation, she pulled on the controls and sent the fighter into a hard right turn. The ship shuddered as a volley of fire hit her rear shields, almost wiping them out. She’d fallen into the same trap that the Eagle had. She was too focused on her target. She reversed her turn, hoping to evade her attacker a second time. She started as laser bolts passed perilously closed to her cockpit, forgetting that she was still safe inside the Sanctimonious’s Bridge.

A Condor fighter, similar to her own, was locked onto her tail. It was as fast and manoeuvrable as hers. She desperately looked around for a way to find cover. There was nothing she couldn’t get to before her fighter would be destroyed. Mac’s lessons popped into her mind; if you can ask for help and ask for it. A proud pilot is often a dead pilot.

‘Sanctimonious Fighter requesting assistance,’ she called. ‘I’ve got a bogie on me tight and can’t shake him.’

‘I’ve got you covered,’ replied the same voice that had warned her before. ‘On my signal, pull a hard left, and I’ll get him before he does you more damage.’

‘Rodger that,’ she called as she evaded yet another burst of fire.

She was trying her best, but this pilot was excellent. Her fighter shuddered as it lost the last of her shields. If the voice didn’t say something soon, then she wouldn’t be around to hear it anyway.

‘Hard Left!’

She threw the controls over as hard as she could, the fighter’s engines whining in complaint. She closed her eyes, half expecting to open them again on the bridge of the Sanctimonious. When she opened them, she was still in the fighter. There was a small debris field behind her. The Cobra she’d saved from the Eagle drew level with her.

‘Guess that makes us even,’ came the voice, which had a southern state drawl to it. ‘Fancy flying on my wing for the next part?’

‘Of course,’ she replied to the Cobra pilot. ‘Back to it?’

‘You read my mind.’

‘Attention Strikeforce. This is Taskforce Actual.’ Came a commanding voice over the comms. ‘We need Corvette One disabled; destroy the rest.’

Letting the Cobra take the lead, Mooka followed the ship round back towards the formation of Corvettes. A quick scan of the area revealed that Corvette’s had lost their fighter screen and both of their eagle escorts. They had a couple of minutes before the enemy could assemble new remote fighters.

She could also see all four gunships were focusing their fire on the enemy designated Corvette four. The enemy ship shields were depleting rapidly under the barrage of fire. The remaining friendly Condors, Cobras, Eagles, and the Sanctimonious were running interference with the other three enemy vessels. Their objectives were simple, keep the Corvettes too busy to escape and not to let them target the Gunships.

‘Boss, ‘ Mooka called to Mac. ‘Where do you need me?’

‘We’re tangling with Corvette One,’ came the reply, as a target flashed blue on the scanner. ‘Just help to get its shields down and then target any point defence, ECM or chaff launchers.’

‘Got it,’ she acknowledged and glanced over at the targeting data on the highlighted ship.

‘Cobra pilot, ‘ she called into the comms. ‘I’ve been instructed to hit Corvette 1. You up for it?’

‘Sure thing,’ the Cobra pilot drawled.

She saw the Cobra adjust its course slightly and fire its boosters to close on the target rapidly. Mooka did the same with her afterburners and pulled in tight behind the Cobra to hide from the Corvettes field of fire. She quickly glanced at the readout on the Sanctimonious. The Krait still had plenty of shields left, meaning she was safe for the moment.

The range closed a lot quicker than she would have liked. The Cobra opened up with its beam lasers, the Corvette’s shields flaring blue where they impacted. She applied a little lateral thrust to peek out behind the Cobra and got a full view of the Corvette. The enemy vessel was covered in turrets and had two of the biggest Burst Lazers she’d ever seen. The familiar bumps of the point defence were noticeable too. They were going to have to be the priority.

Three Beam lasers from the Corvette opened up on the Cobra, diminishing its shields rapidly. The Corvette itself was trying to manoeuvre to bring those massive Burst lasers to bear on the Sanctimonious. She couldn’t let that happen. She opened up with her plasma cannons, emptying half of the magazine into the enemy. She flipped the flight assist computer off, and she turned the ship to keep her guns on target while maintaining the same vector. The rest of the magazine was exhausted. She quickly threw the fighter into an evasive flight pattern to avoid any returning fire.

She allowed herself a smile of satisfaction seeing the enemy’s shields reduced to its last ring of three on the targeting readout. There was an explosion off to her side.

‘We’ve lost Cobra Two,’ one of the Eagles reported. ‘These corvettes are cutting us to ...’

There was another explosion close by, and the reporting Eagle must have destroyed.

As if in reply, there was a third, more enormous explosion glared off to her left. Enemy Corvette Four disintegrated as the Gunships unleashed their big plasma accelerators into it. The flight of four turned to take on Corvette Three. In the meantime, Mooka formed upon Cobra’s wing as they turned back in towards their enemy.

‘Shield Cell,’ the Cobra pilot reported.

Mooka swore to herself. That meant the shields were being reinforced by a unique piece of equipment within the Corvette itself. The targeting showed two rings of protection around the enemy where there only had been one before. The two of them swooped in again and pummelled Corvette One’s shields. Additional fire came from the Sanctimonious’ Turrets. She knew Davie would be making sure that the Corvette would be focused on the ship that could withstand it’s firepower longest. Again, the Corvette readout showed a single shield ring.

‘Incoming fire,’ reported the computer.

Mooka responded by throwing the fighter into a steep dive. High-velocity kinetic rounds caught the back of her shields, the impact throwing the little fighter off course. The fire had come from Corvette Two, obviously trying to help Corvette One escape. The Cobra made another pass at Corvette One, reducing their adversary’s shields so a single thin red line on the readout. With a nudge on the controls, Mooka brought up the subsystems list within Corvette One and highlighted the first point defence turret.

The Sanctimonious and the Cobra again made a pass, knocking out the Corvette’s remaining shields. However, both ships fell into the firing ark or Corvette Two and unleashed a withering barrage. The Cobra took the brunt of it. It’s much weaker shields vanishing under the weight of fire. The smaller ship took hit after hit from the enemies’ main guns and disappeared in a flash of orange and yellow flame.

‘No,’ Mooka breathed.

She forced herself to focus. Corvette One was still ahead of her. She quickly fired a burst from her cannons, reducing the point defence turret to scrap. On the same pass, she managed to target and disable a second point defence turret.

‘Two point-defence turrets down,’ She reported.

‘Great,’ exclaimed Davie. ‘Get the other two, and we can launch these torpedoes.’

She flipped the fighter using the flight Assist off trick she’d seen Mac had use many times and barrelled back in at full throttle. The commander of Corvette One must have guessed what she was doing and open up with what weapons he had available. Mooka saw her shields disappear rapidly.

She reduced the third point defence turret to scrap and attempted to target the last one. It wasn’t to be; one of the massive burst lasers scored a direct hit. Mooka was now back on the bridge after the remote link had vanished when her fighter disintegrated. She quickly called the controls for the second fighter in their fighter bay, A Taipan.

Taipan fighters were slower than the condor but more armoured. The problem was that Mooka’s present fighter’s weapons mainly were set up for fighting Thargoids, not human ships. Still, what choice did she have; it was either that or wait two minutes for another Condor to be assembled. She launched in the new fighter, noticing the Sanctimonious herself was now down to a single red ring of shields.

Requiring Corvette One, she headed straight for the remaining point-defence turret. The Anti-Xeno cannons were hitting it but not doing much damage.

‘Sheilds are down,’ She heard Davie report.

‘Ok, I’m locking the Torpedoes,’ Mac said. ‘Mooka, take that final turret out.’

Mooka knew what she needed to do. She lined up on the position of the last point defence turret and hit the boost button. The Taipan slammed into the large ship. The collision would have done negligible damage to it, but it would have destroyed the last turret. She was back on the bridge while the fighter bay assembled new fighters. There would be nothing she could do but wait and watch. Sanctimonious was taking fire from both Corvette One and Two now. Their hull integrity had already dropped down to seventy-five percent. They were only going to get one chance.

‘Lock achieved,’ reported Mac. ‘Torpedo away.’

Mooka followed the progress of the large projectile. It was slower than a missile, but a Corvette didn’t have the power to weight ratio to avoid it.

‘Hull at sixty-five percent,’ reported Davie.

‘Corvette Three Down,’ came a report over the communicator. ‘Targetting Corvette Two.’

‘That will take some of the heat off us,’ Davie said, sounding relieved.

Mooka ignored him as she followed the progress of the torpedo. Corvette One attempted to turn to evade it. However, that just gave the torpedo a more prominent target profile. The enemy ship shuddered as the torpedo smashed into its side. Mooka noticed the engines at the rear of the vessel flared rainbow colours.

‘That’s his frameshift knocked out, ‘ Davie said with satisfaction. ‘He’s going nowhere.’

‘Targeting the powerplant,’ Mac said matter of factly.

It only took two shots from the Krait’s gauss cannons. Corvette One was dead in space. With the destruction of Corvette Two, a couple of seconds later, the ambush was all over. While Mac and Davie sagged with relief in their flight chairs, Mooka started scanning through the debris. She was looking to see if she could find an escape capsule or remlock alarm from the cobra pilot.

After a couple of minutes of searching, she got a matching ping. Mac manoeuvred the Sanctimonious to pick the escape capsule, while Mooka ran down to the cargo bay to retrieve the pilot. By the time she’d gotten down to the bay, Mac had already scooped the small escape craft. Mooka repressurised the bay, ran over to the coffin-shaped object and started the activation cycle.

A couple of minutes later, a bleary-eyed man sat up from the escape capsule. He looked about fifty, bald with a long white beard.

Oh, my goddess, Mooka thought to herself, Have I just saved Santa Claus?

‘Hi there,’ he said to her.

’Which side were you on?’ he asked pleasantly.

‘Same as yours.’ Mooka replied. ‘Welcome aboard the Santimonous.’

‘Thank you,’ he drawled. ‘You the fighter pilot?’

‘Yes, I am,’ she confirmed.

‘That’s an imperial accent girl,’ He said, looked at her puzzled. ‘What are you doing flying for us, feds?’

‘Oh, that’s because one of my fathers is an ex-Post Captain,’ Mooka said, not wanting to go into the whole complicated story. ‘You’re invited onto the bridge.’

By the time the two of them got to the bridge, the strikeforce leader was giving a debriefing. A Farragut Battlecruiser was due to arrive at any moment to take the custody of Corvette One's crew, and bonus payments would be on their way to all involved. Mac turned in his seat to face the commander they’ve rescued.

‘We bring abord all the escape capsules we can find, but I wanted to thank you for looking after our daughter out there, Cmdr?’

‘Cmdr Jessie. It’s much appreciated. Although it was more a mutual saving out there, ’ their guest admitted.

‘Who do you reckon was on Corvette One?’ Davie asked speculatively.

‘Oh, that had to be that Rochester fella,’ Jessie explained. ‘I kinda heard something I shouldn’t have when being briefed by the Commander.’

‘That makes sense,’ Mac said. ‘Anywhere we can drop you?’

‘The nearest bar,’ he replied. ‘That way, I can buy you all a drink before getting my replacement ship.’

‘Never turn down a free Drink,’ smiled Davie.

‘So how come you’ve got an Imp, A Fed and Alliance all working together here?’ Jessie asked.

‘That story too long to tell here,’ said Mooka. ‘But maybe over that drink?’

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

12th April 3307 - Dredger

‘What the Flux is that!’

Mooka almost jumped out of her skin as David ‘Davie’ Thornton’s exclamation rang around the bridge of the Sanctimonious II.

‘I don’t believe it,’ breathed Duncan ‘Mac’ McTaggart.

In the seven years that Mooka had known her adoptive fathers, she had never heard Mac sound in awe of something. That even included when they were driving around the Thargoid bases. On the scanner, in the middle of the asteroid cluster they’d arrived in, were two massive ships.

The crew of the Krait MK II had received a tip-off, from their contacts in the Cannon group, that there might be something they’d like to see in the asteroid belts in the Perseus Dark Region KC-V C2-2 B system. However, they hadn’t been specific about what. She studied the sensor readouts.

‘There’s the missing mega-ship, The Hesperus,’ she said.

From what she could see, the Hesperus was the classic design of a massive ball command section linked by a long thin superstructure, a couple of miles long, to massive engines at the rear. She had seen hundreds of mega-ships with that design.

‘However, we can’t seem to identify the other one. It is human-built, but that’s as much as the sensors will tell me.’

At first glance, the second ship looked like a standard bulk cruiser, with two significant differences. Firstly, there were different sections, which looked as if someone had just bolted two vessels together. Secondly, and more importantly, the vessel’s front seemed to have something that looked like an intake or maw. Anything that came close to this opening was sucked in and crushed.

‘That…’ started Davie.

‘… is a Space Dredger,’ finished Mac.

‘Really?’ Mooka asked. ‘I thought they were fairy stories!’

‘I thought they were to,‘ replied Davie. ‘My Pitri would tell my sister and me about how the space dredgers would ‘eat’ stations, and if we weren’t good, they’d eat for us too.’

There was a moment of awkward silence on the bridge as Mooka suddenly realised what Davie had just said. Davie’s father had been on Donaldson station when Theta Seven and the rest of the NMLA terrorists had detonated their bombs a couple of weeks back. The Sanctimonious had rushed to the Alioth to help in rescue operations and evacuate people from the station.

Even though they had helped rescue thousands, Davie’s father was still on the list of the missing. He had searched through the wreckage himself, but neither he, his sister or their family company’s enormous resources had turned up any sign of their father. His mother held the family together in her usual stoic way, but Mooka knew that the unresolved issues between Davie and his father were eating away at the big co-pilot.

It was one of the reasons they were out here. Mac had jumped at the chance to get Davie away from the constant worry and searching through the ruined station. Davie’s sister had promised to let them know as soon as they found anything.

‘Oh, they’re real alright,’ said Mac breaking the tension. ‘Although, that’s the first Dredger which has been seen in more than a hundred years.’

‘In the Federal Navy,’ he continued. ‘We had the occasional exercise to neutralise a Space Dredger if one came into a system. Standing orders were always to assume them to be hostile. There was an incident about four hundred years ago where a Dredger went after a Coriolis station in a remote part of the federation. It destroyed the station, and by the time the navy had got there, it was long gone.’

‘So, it was true?’ Davie asked, amazed.

‘The last one was seen about 100 years ago, just on the outside of Federation space.’ Mac said. ‘But the Dredger headed into deep space as soon as it could.’

‘There must be hundreds of people onboard,’ observed Mooka. ‘just judging by the size.’

‘More like thousands,’ replied Mac. ‘They’re kind of….’

‘Incoming transmission!’ the computer interrupted.

‘Play it,’ ordered Mac.

An automated voice emerged from the communication speakers.

‘This is a message from the Scriveners Clan to all ships arriving in this area,‘ it said. ‘We claim this mega-ship as legitimate salvage. Our scouts have already inspected its interior and taken any useful cargo that remained. Its data drives have been removed and are being incorporated into the Knowledge Core that our people have sustained for decades.’

It continued, ‘The remains will be converted into raw materials for our use. The mega-ship no longer has any value to you or anyone else. Be warned! The Scriveners Clan does not communicate with outsiders. We will not initiate hostile action, but you are cautioned not to interfere with our procedures.’

‘Well, that’s generous of them,’ commented Davie.

‘They’ve got the firepower to back up any threat they make,’ said Mooka, looking up from the scanner. ‘That Dredger is bristling with weapons.’

‘Probably got a good couple of hundred ships onboard too,’ Davie speculated.

‘They probably just want to be left alone,’ observed Mac. ‘If I remember rightly, they’re kind of like living generation ships.’

‘Really?’ asked Mooka incredulously.

‘Yeah, there are thousands of people living on that ship in an enclosed society,’ Mac explained. ‘Travelling the cosmos, scavenging what they find.’

‘Does that thing even have a Hyperdrive?’ asked Davie.

‘I don’t know,‘ replied Mac. ‘But it would explain why they’re so rarely seen. They’d be generations of people living and dying as they flew between the stars.’

‘Sounds awful,’ Mooka said.

The computer bleeped.

‘I’m looking at the Dredger’s uplinks,’ said Mooka. ‘They’re using a protocol so out of date we could easily hack into their data servers, and they’d never know we’d been in there.’

‘We’d have to get close,’ said Davie. ‘But we could find out what they know about the Hesperus.’

Mac looked at both Mooka and Davie, then shrugged, ‘If they find out what we’re doing, we’re going to have to burn hard.’

‘Not a problem,’ said Davie. ‘The Hesperus’ sister ship had some contact with the thargoids. I want to know that this one’s story is.’

‘Ok, we’re going to switch off what we can and go silent running.’

‘Fine by me,’ said Davie.

‘Right, Boss,’ replied Mooka.

Mac turned back to face the viewport and hit a couple of switches. The ship lights switched off, and the Sanctimonious seemed to sigh as the shields switched off, the heat vents were closed, and all non-essential systems powered down.

Mooka remembered how scared she was the first time she’s experienced silent running. They’d been running from the pirates who had kidnapped her from Achenar. Mac had hidden their old Asp explorer amongst some asteroids and put the ship into silent running. She remembered trying to hold her breath as she could see their pursuers flying through the asteroid belt, trying to find them. The fear had gone, but the memory continued to haunt her.

She highlighted the first uplink and watched as Mac moved their Krait on a slow approach. They didn’t move too fast as they didn’t want their heat emissions to give away their position, but it felt like the ship was crawling. She watched the heat gauge; it was building but at a prolonged rate. It wasn’t long until they were practically next to the colossal space dredger and one of the small data uplinks protruding from it.

‘We’re in range,’ announced Davie.

‘Get what you can, Mooka,’ ordered Mac.

‘Yes, Boss,’ Mooka said as she operated the controls to activate the data links.

There were various pings and noises from the console in front of her. After a couple of seconds, she had access.

‘I’m in,’ she said. ‘I’ll do a quick search.’

‘Still all clear,’ reported Davie. ‘There’s doesn’t appear to be any reaction from the Dredger.’

‘I’ve got something,’ Mooka said urgently. ‘Starting to pull them down now.’

‘Contacts!’ said Davie urgently. ‘Four, maybe five small craft. Patrol pattern, I think.’

‘Mooka, How long?’ Mac asked with a tinge of tension in his voice.

‘Files downloaded,’ She reported. ‘Scanning for viruses.’

She felt the ship shift as Mac moved the ship away from the Dredger and away from the other vessels. They drifted away like a leaf being carried on a river current. When the Sanctimonious reached ten km from the Dredger, Mac took the ship out of silent running and turned away from the gigantic vessel. There was a countdown noise from the computer.

‘The files are clear,’ she announced and sent the files to the other two consoles.

Four sets of garbled letters and numbers appeared on their screens. Mooka grimaced as she looked through the files. There were snippets of text here and there that seemed to make sense, but the vast majority of it just looked like random junk.

‘Urgh,’ groaned Davie. ‘That’s going to take a while to crack. It’s not corrupted?’

‘Nope,’ replied Mac. ‘That’s gone through a cypher.’

‘I’d like to have a run at it,’ Mooka announced.

‘Sure, knock yourself out.’ Mac started to say when there was another bleep from the communicator.

‘Incoming message.’

‘We’ve got busy postmen today,’ observed Davie wryly.

Mac scanned the message,

‘Oh!’ he exclaimed in surprise. ‘We’re being offered a 2 million reward from someone called “Salvation”. If we deliver a copy of these files to Hind Mine in T Tauri.’

‘Weird, how did they know we had the files?’ asked Davie, who was also looking at the message.

‘Does it matter?’ said Mooka. ‘It’s still 2 million credits.’

Davie smiled at her. ‘All money to put together for your new ship, eh?’

‘No!’ she denied.

However, Mooka could feel herself blushing. Davie could read her too well.

‘I don’t see the harm,‘ said Mac, looking at her with a slight smile. ‘We might as well try and help out the Mooka Clipper fund.’

---

They were on jump seventeen when Mooka finally broke the encryption. She’d been in contact with various people over the communications networks who were pooling resources to try and crack the Hesperus files. She came running into the dining area to the surprise of Davie and Mac.

‘Got them,’ she said.

She handed over a data tablet to Mac which had the decrypted files on it.

‘We were right! Hesperus was like its sister ship. The first two logs show it was looking for Aliens, but before it could report its findings, there was sabotage. A rival company organised that. Some of the crew escaped and might have continued to explore the area. They wiped out their attackers by poisoning the Hesperus’ atmosphere.’

‘The last two logs were by an engineer who was outside on a maintenance run. Poor sod found that the atmosphere was deadly, and no escape craft left when he came back onboard.’

‘Oh, the poor fluxer,‘ commented Davie. ‘That must have been terrifying.’

‘The last log entry was found in an empty vac suit,’ Mooka said, pointing to the data slate. ‘He might have managed to find some way to escape.’

‘I guess we’ll never know,’ Mac said. ‘However, at least we now know what happened to poor Junior Engineer O’Neil over 200 hundred years ago.’

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

09-08-3307 - Twenty-Two Four Sixty

'To all humankind; this is Salvation!' announced an old thready voice out of the ship's speakers. 'Future Generations will remember our triumph today. The Thargoid threat consigned to the past.'

'Oh Lord,' groaned David 'Davie' Thornton. 'Please let him shut up!'

'With my Guidance, Azimuth has constructed the means to destroy our enemy,' the voice continued. 'My final gift, born of a century of sacrifice; The Proteus Wave!'

Commander Duncan McTaggart, known universally as Mac, suppressed a smile. He knew his co-pilot of the Krait' Sanctimonious II' hated Salvation. He turned to look at Davie, sitting in the gunner's seat, making yak-yak gestures with his hands. Occupying the other seat was their adopted daughter Mooka, who just looked at Davie and rolled her eyes.

'At least Salvation is doing something about the Thargoids, 'she shot at Davie.

'Only after he'd sabotaged AEGIS,' Davie shot back.

Mac felt he had to intervene before this became another raging argument between them.

'Can it you two!' he ordered. 'This is supposed to be a historic moment!'

'Historic?' grumbled the co-pilot. 'My perfectly formed buttocks it is!'

For the last eighteen months, they'd been following the events of the ongoing war with the Thargoids from a distance. From the return of the Adamastor mega-ship almost two years ago, through the loss of the Alexandria, the fall of AEGIS, and the rise of Salvation and his Azimuth corporation, the crew felt they needed to stay away from the ensuing drama.

If it were up to Mac, they wouldn't even be in HIP-22460. In his gut, he felt the approach Azimuth and Salvation took was wrong, but there was nothing a lowly pilot like himself could do.

'When the avalanche starts, it's too late for the pebbles to vote,' he muttered to himself, trying to remember where he's heard that proverb before.

Mac looked over at the Azimuth Mega-ship' Bright Sentinel', with its vast array of anti-alien weaponry, and felt they were now in the middle of an avalanche.

'Our victory is delivered at this moment,' the speaker blared again.

There were two, no make that three, reasons why they were here. Firstly, despite Mac's reluctance, he wanted to honour his friends who had been lost. He still had friends from his Academy days on the Federal Battlecruisers, which were in this system. He felt he needed to show solidarity with them.

Secondly, Davie's sister, Dasvini, was onboard the Alliance's flagship 'Oath of Tyndareus'. The Thornton Haulage Corporation, Davie's family's company, supplied the Mega-ship to the Alliance, who had converted it into an anti-Thargoid battleship. Dasvini's position was as liaison to the Alliance military and to ensure the safe return of their ship when this was over.

'Humanity's next great chapter begins now!' the voice finished.

Finally, Mooka wanted to be here. To describe her as a Salvation 'fan-girl' was an understatement. Despite the mounting evidence that Salvation and Azimuth had performed some pretty despicable acts to get to this point, Mooka said that the ends justified the means, and this approach would save more lives in the long run.

'Proteus wave is now online Commodore Halloran,' came a different voice over the speaker, male and a lot younger. 'Surface site readings are stable!'

So, for the last two weeks, the Sanctimonious II had defended the Alliance and Federal forces from the Thargoid attack while Salvation and Azimuth built his super-weapon on the moon below. The Proteus Wave weapon was supposed to wipe out the Aliens once and for all. The war had always been framed as a 'them or us' fight, but Mac felt they'd been here before. Humanity had tried to wipe out the Thargoids with the Mycoid Virus. That had brought a few hundred years of peace, but the Aliens had returned and now seemed more potent than ever.

'Initiate countdown sequence!' ordered a new female voice on the speakers.

'That's the Federal Commadore,' said Mac, wondering why just a Commadore was here and not an Admiral.

'Thirty, Twenty-nine, 'A robotic voice came over the speakers.

'Here we go,' said Davie after a pause.

'Eighteen, seventeen,' the voice continued to count down.

'Contact!' exclaimed Mooka. 'I’ve got Four Thargoids interceptors incoming!’

‘Rodger, Going Evasive!’ Mac tried not to grimace. ‘What type?’

‘Hydras’

‘Oh, Fluxing hell!’ groaned Davie.

Four Alien craft came into view as they emerged from hyperspace. As soon as the Thargoids were clear of their entry point, they set a course to intercept the Bright Sentinel. Mac realised that the Sanctimonious was right in the Thargoid’s path. He opened the throttle to full and hit the boosters. The acceleration pushed him into his seat just as bright energy pulses flew from the Thargoid ships, passing straight through where the Sanctimonious had been.

Most of the incoming fire was dissipated by the shields of the Mega Ship. However, a dozen smaller ships had not acted as quickly and disappeared in expanding balls of orange explosions.

‘Oh no, you don’t,’ Mac snarled and hit the weapon deploy command on the control console.

The Sanctimonious’ weapons emerged; Turrets for Davie to fire, and Mooka could now launch and fly one of the remote-control fighters. Mac brought his ship’s nose around and got in behind the formation of the Alien craft.

‘Three,‘ came the voice from the speakers.

The ship shuddered as the Mooka’s fighter was launched.

‘Two,’

There were the familiar ‘spat-spat’ sounds of the Anti-Xeno cannons as Davie fired the Turrets

‘One,’

Mac lined up the sights of the two engineered rail guns on the same ship Davie was targeting. He was about to pull the trigger when there was a flash of blue light. A wave of blue energy emerged from the planet below, washing over the mega-ship, the alien vessels and finally themselves. The Thargoid ships’ engines appeared to splutter and fade out. The massive flower-like vessels drifted ahead of them.

‘Cease Firing!’ ordered Mac, hardly believing his eyes.

‘The Proteus Wave has been successfully deployed,’ came the young male voice from the speakers.

‘Analysing Thargoid Vessels,’ the new young female voice announced

There was a pause that seemed to stretch out for a millennium.

‘No life signs.’

Mac cut the engines, letting the Sanctimonious come to a stop. He looked around the crew. Davie and Mooka looked at each other in confusion. Had they just won?

‘and the rest of the Thargoid fleet?’ said the Commodore

‘We’re getting similar reports all through the system,’ The young female voice confirmed. ‘They’re shutting down!’

‘We finally did it!’ relief evident in the Commodore's voice.

There was the faint sound of cheering over the commlink as people on the mega-ship and the smaller fleet around it celebrated.

‘Told you,’ Mooka shot over at Davie.

Davie said nothing and just glared back. Mac was just about to stop the argument from starting.

‘Wait!’ it was the young male voice again. ‘I’m picking up an energy surge near…’

‘No!’ he continued, anxiety making his voice rise. ‘From the Proteus Wave site. Thargoid Markers but well past anything I’ve ever seen before.’

A knot of fear began to form in Mac’s stomach.

‘Shut the weapon down Now!’ ordered the Commodore's voice.

Mac quickly turned back to the console and looked through the weapon groups. Forcing down panic, he had to find the right weapon combination.

‘We can’t establish….’ The young man’s voice ended in static.

‘Oh Fluxing Hell!’ cried Davie.

Mac pressed the fire control a millisecond before a massive green flash appeared. From the same site on the planet, a green-coloured wave of energy washed over all the ships again. The Mega-ships lights went out. This time the engines of all the human ships began to splutter and die. The one exception was the Sanctimonious.

Mac looked at the Field Neutraliser he’d activated, his fingers shaking. For that critical split second, their Krait had been invulnerable to whatever had emerged from the Proteus Wave site.

‘What just happened?’ ordered the panicked voice of the Commodore. ‘Report!’

‘The Thargoids!’ the young female voice replied. ‘They’re alive!!’

The engines of the four ships in the Alien fleet burst into life, and they started to advance on the helpless vessels.

‘The engines are offline,’ cried the young female voice.

‘Get them back,’ ordered the Commodore, ‘We need power now!’

There would have been no chance. The Thargoid vessels spat out a barrage of energy towards the mega-ship, destroying any unfortunate helpless ships in its way.

‘All hands,’ ordered the Commodore. ‘Brace for impact!’

The hail of fire of fire smashed into the shield-less Bright Sentinel. Explosions appeared all along its length. The massive ship seemed to wobble under the weight of fire, and the superstructure began to fall apart. One of its colossal cargo pods separated from the vessel. The habitation rings stopped turning, and Mac saw the massive engines get blown off the back.

At that instant, he knew the entire ship’s crew was as good as dead. Between the impact, the decompression, and the internal explosions, he knew they’d stand no change. The realisation made the knot in his stomach tighten even more.

‘Davie,’ He shouted. ‘Call your sister! Tell her to get in a ship or an escape pod and get out of here.’

‘I can’t get through!’ cried Mooka, operating the comms board. ‘Something is jamming the comms.’

The Thargoid vessels began to accelerate, turning towards the fleet of disabled craft surrounding the newly created wreck. One of the Hydra’s turned towards them head-on. Mac gritted his teeth as he fired the gauss cannons, only to be rewarded with a hiss and some escaping gas from the two weapons. He threw the ship into a desperate evasive corkscrew manoeuvre as the Hydra fired at them.

‘What’s happened to the gauss cannons,’ cried Mac, as the ship shook under the impact.

‘I don’t know,’ Mooka cried back. ‘There some kind of interference making them unusable. I’ve just lost control of the Trident fighter.’

Mac quickly checked the ship's status. The gauss cannons, the internal and external armour, and the hyperspace range booster were flagged as red, inoperable, or yellow, meaning malfunctioning. He looked with alarm as the yellow items quickly degraded to red.

He threw the ship into a reverse turn, evading many projectiles.

‘The Hyrda is launching thargons,’ Davie shouted. ‘One hundred and twenty-eight of them!’

Thargons were small drone fighter craft. They were slightly larger than a torpedo, and each was armed with a small plasma weapon. A single shot wouldn’t do much damage, but a swarm could smash a ship to pieces very quickly. The swarm quickly followed the fleeing Krait and Mac saw the shield strength indicator fall abruptly.

‘Ah, Flux it!’ Mac shouted out loud, knowing that there were no offensive options left. ‘We’re running!’

He turned the Sanctimonious toward the Hydra, and the big Alien vessel also turned towards them. Mac flipped the power distribution to put all spare power into the shields.

‘You’re not!’ yelled Davie, obviously thinking they were going to ram it.

‘Of course not,’ Mac replied as the Alien ship began to loom through the cockpit canopy. ‘I’m just deciding when to chicken out!’

At the last second, Mac wrenched the controls. The Sanctimonious performed a barrel roll, passing over the top of the Hydra. This left the pursuing Thargon swarm with nowhere to go and crashed into Hydra. Most of the drones managed to avoid the vast vessel, but a few disintegrated on impact. It didn’t slow the Hydra at all, and the big ship began to turn to chase.

By the time The thargoid had completed Its turn, Mac had dumped all power into the engines and was accelerating away from both the Interceptor and the remains of the swarm. He selected the super cruise mode on the frameshift drive and saw the power begin to build. He boosted the ship again, running from the Alien craft. Mac knew if the Thargoid ship got too close, it could use its vast bulk to abort the jump.

The Thargon swarm caught up with them. Davie wanted to use the Flak Cannon, but deploying the weapons would abort the jump. The ship shuddered again, sparks flying from some electronics running around the cockpit.

‘We’ve lost the shields,’ Mooka cried. ‘If that Hydra gets a clean shot, we’re done for.’

‘Five, Four, three, ‘The computer counted down until the engines would kick in.

The Sanctimonious shuddered again as a hit came in from the Hydra

‘Hull armour down to 30%,’ Mooka updated.

‘Two, one!’ the computer finished.

The Sanctimonious jumped away a millisecond before a vast ball of plasma from the Hydra would have hit. Mac collapsed into his seat, pondering their next move.

‘What now?’ asked Mooka.

‘We’re going to have to go to the Oath of Tyndareus,’ Davie said urgently. ‘Dasvini is still on that ship.’

‘If it’s still there,’ Mooka said quietly.

There was an awkward pause. The shock was evident on Davie’s face that his daughter could be so cold about her adoptive aunt's fate.

‘We can’t,’ said Mac. ‘We’re going to have to drop back to real space. A caustic missile must have hit us.’

He pointed at the hull indicator on the heads-up display, slowly counting down to zero. The corrosive payload of the Alien missile was eating its way through the hull, and once it got to the reactor, that would be it. Thankfully, Mac had the foresight to equip the ship with decontamination and repair limpets. Drones that could counter the corrosive agent and repair the hull using nano-technology were beyond Mac’s level of understanding.

‘Once we’re repaired,’ Mac continued. ‘We’ll head to Oath of Tyndareus and extract Dasvini. Then I want to drop by any Federal Cruiser and see what we can do.’

Mooka and Davie nodded in agreement, and after counting to ten, Mac dropped the ship back into real space. Davie was a flurry of activity as he launched the decontamination limpets while Mac looked at the other damage on their Krait. He tried to repair one of the gauss cannons, which seemed to work for a few moments. However, as soon as he tried to power the weapon, it degraded to an unusable state.

‘It’s no use,’ said Mooka. ‘Anything which has been enhanced with guardian technology won’t respond.’

‘So that’s the extra armour, the Jump Range Booster and the Trident fighters out of action?’

Mooka nodded.

‘Decontamination Complete,’ announced the ship-board computer.

He knew that Davie would now launch the repair limpets to try and patch the hull.

‘We’ve lost all of our effective weapons,’ Mooka replied. ‘Because the Proteus wave was based on guardian technology, the thargoids must have worked out a way to flip the ….’

‘Detecting Jump anomaly,’ interrupted the computer.

‘They’ve followed us?’ asked Davie, panic rising in his voice. ‘They never do that!’

Mac glanced at the hull indicator; the limpet had only repaired the ship’s hull to 50%. However, he knew they had to run and run now. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw what looked like a rip appear in space, and a Thargoid Hydra appeared. It launched more Thargons and accelerated on an intercept course with the Sanctimonious.

Mac powered up the drives again. He felt the repair limpet being ripped off the hull by the acceleration. Angry red bolts of plasma headed for their ship as Mac activated the Boosters, desperately attempting to escape. In some ways, he was relieved. A Hydra may be a vast and heavily armed ship, but it wasn’t as fast as the Sanctimonious at maximum burn. They'd have no chance if the Thargoids sent a Basilisk Interceptor after them.

Mac made the ship weave in and out of the fire from the Thargon swarm or the Interceptor itself. After extending their lead on the Alien craft, he activated the frameshift drive for the second time within two minutes. He knew that they were only a couple of hits from destruction. The computer started to give him a countdown, and they were away.

Once in Supercruise, he immediately turned towards the last known position of the Alliance flagship. He turned and focused on each of the crew in turn.

‘Do you think it will follow us again?’ asked Mooka fearfully.

‘Yup,’ said Davie. ‘We’re the ones who got away. They want to silence us. I’m sure that was the same Hydra as before.’

‘Right, then we’re going to have to move quickly and fast when we get to the Oath,’ Mac said. ‘Is there any way we can track your sister? So we know if she’s on the ship or in an escape pod?’

‘All of us in the family have a tracker,’ Davie explained, pointing at a lump in his arm. ‘I’ll know if she’s on the ship, in an escape pod or ….’

The big co-pilot couldn’t finish the sentence. Mac sympathised, but he needed both of his crew focused and alert. Otherwise, they’ll be dead before they know it.

‘Davie, I want you on the repair limpets. I need you to be repairing the hull as soon as we drop in and keep on repairing it until we’re good. Give Mooka the tracker info. How long was it before the Hydra jumped in after us?’

‘About a minute, maybe a minute thirty?’ replied Mooka.

‘That’s our window,’ Mac continued. ‘Mooka, you’ve got a minute to find Dasvini. Once we’ve located her, I’ll fly the ship to get her, but I want flying the Tiapans fighters running interference.’

He turned to Davie, ‘Once you’ve got the hull back to full strength, get on those turrets. If any Thargoids get too close to either Dasvini or us, take them out.’

‘ETA, seven seconds,’ announced the computer.

‘Everyone clear?’

‘Yes, Boss.’

‘Aye, Aye.’

The Sanctimonious arrived near the last know position of the Oath of Tyndareus. The mega-ship had been attacked in the same manner as the Bright Sentinel. It was in pieces, with wreckage strewn about everywhere. Some of the smaller parts of the mega-ship were still on fire. The yellow glow of Thargoid caustic weapons impacts seemed to outline what was left of the vessel within a green gas cloud.

Mac sucked in a breath as he took in the devastation. Five minutes ago, it seemed that Humanity was on the verge of victory, but the thargoids had flipped the deck. This looked like the worst defeat any of the superpower navies had received. He felt the repair limpet attach to the ship to start its work, and mac started to count down from 90.

They closed on the destroyed vessel. Mac could hear Mooka operating the scanners, hoping to find the tracker that would tell her where her aunt was. Mac had reached sixty.

‘First limpet is used up, firing another one.’

‘Still nothing on the scanners. There’s interference from the gas.’

Mac saw movement amongst the gas cloud as the Sanctimonious continued to close. He magnified the area and breathed in sharply. There was another Thargoid interceptor already here, one of the smaller Cyclops ones. Even worse, it had a couple of the smaller Octagonal scout vessels escorting it.

He watched for a second as the Alien projected a light beam onto something and then pulled it inside. With horror, Mac realised that the Thargoids were harvesting escape pods. Maybe the Alien would be too interested in that to notice their arrival. His countdown reached thirty.

‘That’s another limpet finished,’ reported Davie. ‘We only need one more.’

Mac nodded, hoping to keep his friend from noticing what the Thargoids were doing. He nervously looked over at Mooka, who glanced at him with a crestfallen look on her face. There was a slight shake of her head. His countdown reached ten. He called up the galaxy map and set course for a system 20 light years towards Earth. His countdown reached five, four.

‘I’ve got something!’ Mooka exclaimed. ‘Dasvini’s signal is coming from an escape pod near the ship's bow!’

There was a flash of pseudo-motion, and the Hydra appeared close to the Sanctimonious. Mac started and accidentally hit the boost button. All three of the crew were pressed into their seats by the sudden acceleration. He felt the last repair limit detach from the Sanctimonious. Glancing over, he noticed they had 90% of their hull restored. Mac figured it would have to do.

Mooka had set the escape pod as the priority target and was probably getting ready to launch her fighter. Davie would already be targeting the Hydra with the turrets, Mac reasoned. He had to ignore their activity and concentrate on his own. He evaluated their situation.

They were flying at 500 meters a second; the pod was 6km away ahead of them. 2 km behind them, and the Hydra was in pursuit. It was running slower, so they’d be able to outrun it like before. However, to rescue the pod, the standard practice was to slow down to between 5 and 25 and use the cargo scoop to bring the thing aboard. Just to add icing to the cake, there was another Thargoid interceptor about 10 kilometres away.

‘Nope,’ he thought to himself. ‘Standard practice was not going to work here.’

He shoved more power into the engines and shields. Thankfully, he knew that Davie's turrets consumed very little power, so his actions wouldn’t affect his co-pilot.

‘It’s launching Thargons again,’ observed Davie. ‘Can I switch to the flack turret?’

‘Good Idea,’ Mac said. ‘Do it!’

They were 3km away from the Escape pod when Mac heard the crack of the flack cannon. The flack cannon was designed to be used against a Thargon swarm. Squeeze the trigger, and the cannon would launch the shell; release the trigger, and the shell would explode, sending deadly shrapnel in all directions. Time it right, and the shell would be in the middle of a swarm, quickly reducing the number of drones you’d face.

Mac heard the pop of the shell exploding and noticed the number of Thargons in the swarm drop significantly. The escape pod was 2 km away. He already knew the Sanctimonious was going too fast to pick it up. What’s worse was the other Thargoid Interceptor had obviously noticed them and was already heading in their direction as well.

‘Brace for a Boost Break!’ Mac yelled.

He aimed the ship at a point above the escape pod and switched into Newtonian flight mode. He flipped the Kriat 180 degrees so they were flying backwards at full speed. All three crew could see the enormous Alien ship in front of them. Mac hit the boost button again, and the Krait's massive engines killed the velocity almost to a dead stop. Mac felt the weight of the g-forces pushing him down into the chair. It was as if a massive weight had been placed on his chest, and he felt his peripheral vision starting to go.

He ignored the pain and pitched the ship down. The pain was worth it because the escape pod was 100m ahead of the Sanctimonious. He dropped the cargo scoop and approached the pod. A couple of seconds, that’s all it would need. He heard the flack cannon fire again; Davie must have recovered as well. Mooka was swearing as her remote-controlled taipan was blown apart. He nudged the ship, lining up the pod and then there was the satisfying cluck noise of the internal mechanisms taking the pod onboard. He closed the cargo scoop. Fire from both Interceptors hit the Sanctimonious at once. The shield indicator almost disappeared instantly.

‘They’re almost on top of us!’ yelled Mooka.

Mac turned the ship towards the smaller Cyclops interceptor.

‘What are you doing?’ yelled Davie. ‘We need to run!’

‘We are running,’ Mac shot back. ‘We’re just running smart!’

‘They’re not going to fall for that again!’ Davie yelled above the noise of the engines.

‘Wanna Bet?’

Yellow lightning arced out of the centre of the smaller alien ship as the Krait got close. Mac knew there was no way to avoid it and watched in horror as the shield indicator completely disappeared and the hull strength indicator began to plummet.

‘We can’t take another one like that,’ yelled Mooka. ‘And the Hydra is almost on us.’

Mac ignored the shouts of the crew. He paused a second and threw the Sanctimonious into another evasive barrel roll. There was a ripping sound as one of the Krait’s wing tips was sheared off when it collided with part of the Cyclops. Mac fired the boosters again to get as much distance from the I Interceptors as possible.

However, the smaller Cyclops interceptor couldn’t avoid the pursuing Hydra and smashed into it, exploding with a green flash. The Hydra must have been severely damaged, but Mac didn’t want to wait around to see. He just kept the throttle open at maximum. With flashes of pseudo motion, more thargoid interceptors jumped in. Thankfully they seemed to be ignoring the Sanctimonious and were after the enormous amount of escape pods scattered around the area.

Then they heard it; a transmission through the ship’s speakers. A low rumble of rage, which almost blew the speakers out. Mac knew that whatever made that sound was old, big and angry. It was going to come for Humanity. He looked around at the wreckage and realised their ship was in no state to rescue any more escape pods.

As Mac activated the hyperspace drive, he looked at the ship's clock. Only fifteen minutes had passed since the Proteus wave had been fired. Fifteen minutes, and it was now a whole new kind of war!

The Hyperspace tunnel appeared, and the Sanctimonious disappeared from HIP-22460.

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

Peripeteia

29-11-3308 – Hupang System

It was the echo of her breathing that was getting to her. Mooka liked the new scavenger vacuum suits, especially compared to the older flight suits, but she still felt the helmet shrinking around her head. She started to count down from 4 to 1 to cope with the anxiety. She had to stay calm; it wasn’t as if her situation was stressful enough.

The tap on her shoulder almost made her cry out in alarm. Looking up, she saw Davie in his Dominator suit, giving her the thumbs-up sign and pointing to his ear. She held up her hand to let him know she needed a moment, and when her breathing had settled, she switched on her comm-link.

‘You OK?’ Davie asked with obvious concern.

‘As well as can be expected,’ she replied.

They were both crouched behind a pile of containers on a gangway. The gangway was three metres above the ground between two observation towers at Fletcher Biological Assembly in the Hupang system. Below them were several heavily armed guards in Dominator suits similar to Davie’s. They were casually wandering around as if there was nothing to worry about.

She always felt a bit sorry for guards on this kind of assignment, walking around for hours on end in a vac suit. The boredom must be overwhelming sometimes. Mooka grimaced as she realised it was Davie’s job to ensure they weren’t bored while she carried out her task. She was breathing much more manage-ably now. Thankfully, the counting had worked.

‘Team Alpha report,’ came Mac’s voice over the comm-link.

She looked over at Davie, who rolled his eyes at their call-sign. Mac, being ex-military, was used to communicating in that manner. It felt silly to Mooka and Davie because they pretended to be soldiers, not real ones. She allowed herself a little sigh as she touched the comm-link to reply.

Might as well act professional, she thought to herself.

‘This is Team Alpha,’ she replied, ignoring a sniggering Davie. ‘We’re in position! We need to find someone with the appropriate access to the lab building.’

‘The Sanctimonious has powered down about two clicks from the base. I’m hidden behind a range of small hills,’ Mac reported. ‘So, keep the comms open, and I’ll wait for your call. Just be careful.’

‘Will do, Alpha Out.’ She replied.

As she watched the guards follow their patrol routes, she tried to fight the feelings of guilt. Her former master, the Imperial Senator, had contacted her about this plant sample. He required it to be liberated from this settlement. Although she was no longer his slave, her old master still had some leverage over her.

When Mooka and her mother were kidnapped from the senator, her father was severely injured. After she’d been freed, it had been six months until Mac and Davie managed to get her home, only to find her father didn’t even recognise her. It was well within the senator’s rights to free or sell his slave, despite his mental condition, but there was nowhere her father could go. The establishments that could look after him were too expensive for Mooka to afford. So, the senator arranged with Mooka that he would pay those fees if she did the occasional job for him.

Typically, these would amount to her being a glorified courier, but lately, some of these jobs weren’t exactly what you could call legal. In this case, the base was researching some new strain of wheat, and the senator wanted a sample of it for his organisation to analyse. He didn’t tell her about the heavy security or that the base was owned by the Brazillian League of Pilots, a faction which she had a good reputation with.

She’d realised she’d have very little chance of success if she tried to do it alone. So, she’d asked Mac and Davie for help. The worry that her new family could be hurt doing this job was overwhelming, and if they were caught, the damage to their reputation could also have fatal consequences.

‘Just let me get this straight in my head,’ Davie said over the communicator. ‘We find someone with security clearance high enough to get into the lab, clone their security profile.’

‘Yep.’

‘… use their privileges to sneak into the Lab and get the sample,’

‘Correct,’

‘Then we casually stroll off to the pickup point where Mac picks us up, all without any guards or workers scanning us.’

‘Pretty much,’ replied Mooka.

‘OK, if we’re scanned, then we’ll need a backup plan,’ Davie pointed out.

‘Well, I guess we have to grab and run?’

‘That’s not an option,’ Davie gestured to the two huge turrets at either end of the settlement. ‘Look at those anti-ship defences. The Sanctimonious will be a sitting duck if Mac has to pick us up under fire.’

Mooka paused for a second, thinking through the options. The command centre is where all the controls for the turrets, alarms and security records would be. However, it would be heavily guarded, and they’d have to fight. She sighed, spotting the power building, and allowed herself a small smile.

‘OK, I’ve got a plan B,’ she said confidently.

***​

With a slight whooshing sound, her jet pack let her land effortlessly on the lab building roof. She felt the vibrations on the floor as Davie landed right behind her. She walked over the top of the building until she came to windows allowing her to see down into the Lab itself.

She was grateful that a lot of these smaller settlements used pre-fabricated buildings. If you want to set up a settlement quickly, buy a habitation building, a power building and a command building straight off a production line. Then you plop them down on a planet’s surface, add people, and have an instant base.

This meant that because they were using the standard floor-plans, Mooka knew a skylight was on the top of the Lab. She could use her scanner to clone someone’s security profile from above. The target wouldn’t have a clue because people don’t tend to look up. She glanced down and saw several people in uniforms walking around.

Although the guards normally strutted around in combat vac suits, the civilian staff wore much simpler jumpsuits with Remlock masks. If there was a sudden decompression, the Remlock would activate and keep a person safe from the vacuum of space. However, Remlocks weren’t very good at keeping you safe if bullets or lasers started flying.

She spotted a technician concentrating on his work at the lab station in all the activity below them. She pointed the scanner at him and saw he had level 2 security, so she flipped the scanner into its clone mode and activated it. She held her breath as the scanner attempted to replicate the technician’s security profile.

There was a small ping, and Mooka let her breath out slowly. The technician didn’t seem to react. He just carried on working at his station. She gave Davie a quick thumbs up and felt him pat her shoulder. She turned to see the Sanctimonious' First Officer drawing his weapons and checking them over.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked urgently.

‘Getting ready to go in,’ he replied.

‘Look, I told you,’ She said, trying to keep the frustration out of her voice. ‘With this security clearance, I should be able to walk into the lab, get the sample and just walk out.’

She wished she was as confident as she sounded.

‘You walk in with all guns out; we’ll get the wrong kind of attention.’

‘OK,’ Davie said. ‘If you think you can do it that way.’

‘You stay up here and get ready if something goes wrong.’

Davie gave her a thumbs-up signal and then moved across the top of the roof to get a better vantage point of the base. Mooka walked to the back of the building and dropped down, firing her jet-pack to cushion her impact. Even in low gravity, she discovered that long drops can still hurt. Taking a couple of deep breaths to steady herself, she started walking around the front of the building where the main airlock was.

Just as she approached, there was a bleep from the door. The airlock began to cycle. Mooka moved back around the corner as two security guards left it. She felt frozen to the spot. If either of them turned to their right, they would see her. She was under no illusions about what would happen then. They would detect her cloned ID and then simply open fire. Guards around these bases don’t arrest people; they just put them in the dirt.

The two guards split up, one heading in the opposite direction from her, the other continuing walking to the command building opposite the Lab. She counted to three and then walked inside. The automated access system detected that she had the proper access level and cycled her airlock. She walked casually inside. There was a hissing sound as the airlock pressurised, and her helmet opened. She could now breathe the Lab’s air instead of her suit’s. It certainly smelt different, fresher and lighter.

A couple of people were milling about, mainly dealing with whatever tasks they’d been assigned. She tried to adopt the same posture and walk like the others, trying to blend in. The Lab was situated at the back of this building, so she had to first walk through a habitation section. Walking through the living area, she noticed a data slate on one of the seats. She quickly picked it up and walked through the living quarters. She stared intently at the data slate, trying to look engrossed.

She wondered how you convince people to work in small settlements like this. A small village of twenty to thirty people who toiled away in a hostile environment with nothing to look forward to but a bed at the end of the day. There were only three that occurred to her. Firstly, they were indentured or slave labour. Secondly, they were committed to their work. However, it was more likely that they were paid a lot better than whatever the alternative was.

She came to a junction, quickly turned, and examined a wall panel as two people walked past her from the other direction. The lab entrance was straight ahead, with the words ‘Restricted Access’ plastered all over the door.

Subtle, She thought.

Walking up to the Lab’s entrance, the doors opened with a soft hum, and the smell from the Lab hit her. She was not prepared for the fresh aroma. This Lab smelt like the senator’s gardens, not the recycled air she was used to. Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she walked into the Lab and stood to the side. A few technicians worked away at their workstations, but none looked up. She noticed that one of the workstations was free, so she casually walked over and started to access the system.

Thankfully the senator had given her the specification for these workstations, so she knew exactly what she needed to do to retrieve the sample from storage. She activated the controls, and the workstation hummed as it began to deliver a suitable sample from the seed bank.

The sample would take thirty seconds to arrive, and she hoped the other technicians were too busy to notice what she was doing. She also hoped that Davie was in a position to cause a diversion if this went wrong. She had seen an SRV next to the command centre, which looked like it was undergoing maintenance. If it had an accident, surely that’s more exciting than a wheat sample going missing?

She pretended to alter the workstation’s controls and mark off items on the data slate, trying to mimic the other technicians around her. The console beeped softly, and a small container emerged from the workstation. Casually picking the container up, she acted as if ticking a mark on the data slate and closed the workstation down.

After giving the Lab, a glance around, not one of the technicians at their stations had moved. She pocketed the container and started towards the door she came through.

‘I’ve got the sample,’ she whispered into her comm-link.

‘Great,’ Davie’s voice replied. ‘Now, just walk out there as if you own it, and we can get back to the ship for coffee and cookies.’

‘Nice to see your priorities straight,’ she replied, suppressing a smile.

She walked through the lab door without being stopped. She thought she heard footsteps behind her for a second until she realised it was her heart thumping in her chest too hard. Thankfully the corridor ahead was empty, so she continued walking briskly. She wanted to run but knew cameras were all over the base. If anyone watched the camera feeds, someone running through the halls would be flagged for investigation.

As she rounded the corner, the exit airlock came into view. She allowed herself to feel a momentary sense of relief. However, as she approached it, she noticed it was beginning to cycle. She began to shake a little as two security guards, the same ones she had avoided earlier, walked through the airlock and turned to face her.

She nodded to the two men, walked around them, and into the airlock. She tried to look relaxed as the airlock began to cycle. However, out of the corner of her eye, she could see a reflection of them. One was pointing at her and saying something. Her heart began to thump harder. The other guard reached into his belt and pulled out his security scanner.

‘Oh Hell,’ She said into the comlink, trying to stop the panic in her voice. ‘I’m stuck in the airlock, and I’m going to get scanned.’

‘Right,’ commented Davie. ‘I’m over at the power station. Get yourself over there as quickly as possible.’

‘We’re not going to run for it?’

‘No, they’d gun us down before we get half a click,’ replied Davie. ‘It’s time for your plan B, so get over here.’

She noticed one of the guards had raised his security scanner in her direction and was about to trigger it.

‘Don’t move,’ came an order over the general comm-link frequency. ‘We don’t know who you are, and you need to submit to a security scan.’

She looked at the airlock, it was going to open to the hard vacuum in just a second, but it wouldn’t be quick enough. Her suit detected the scan, and she knew the game was up. Her only chance was to get a running start, while the airlock had to cycle again before they could start to pursue her.

She booted up her suit’s combat systems and marked Davie’s position on her heads-up display. He was about 200 meters away, slightly over to her left. ‘Scan Complete!’ appeared on her Suits HUD.

Oh, Flux! she thought to herself. Here we go!

‘Hold it right there!’ ordered one of the guards. ‘You have an unknown item in your backpack.’

The airlock opened in front of her. She bolted out of the door.

‘Alert, Alert. We have an unknown intruder leaving Lab 2,’ came an announcement over the general comm-link frequency. ‘All security staff respond.’

‘The base has just lit up like a Christmas tree,’ came Mac’s voice over their frequency.

‘Yup,’ replied Davie. ‘Complications!’

‘I’ll be there in thirty seconds.’

‘Negative,’ replied Davie. ‘The site is too hot for extraction.’

The onboard scanner in Mooka’s Hud lit up red to her left. She could see red dots on the scanner begin to move towards her. In addition, two red dots appeared behind her on the scanner. She began to sprint towards Davie’s position. She could see him on top of the power building. Red laser flashes began to pass her from the left.

‘Put your shield up,’ Davie ordered.

She cursed to herself and hit the activate shield button on her arm. She was always forgetting to start them when things got dangerous. Before collapsing, the shields would save her from a few laser and slug-thrower hits. However, using shields deplete the suit’s power cells at a frightening level. She knew the suit would shut down in about two minutes unless she found more power cells.

She started running towards the power building. As she was now in a vacuum, any sounds she heard were generated by her suit to help give her more situational awareness. There was the sound of the airlock behind her opening, and she knew she would be an easy shot for the two security guards. She gritted her teeth and waited for the impact on her shields when she saw something flying over her head towards the airlock.

‘Egg in the air,’ cried Davie, and she heard a dull thump of a grenade as it impacted the ground.

‘Grenade!’ shouted a guard.

‘Take cover!’ ordered the other.

There was a blue flash from behind her. She knew that particular grenade would knock out shields but leave the target unharmed. She hoped the two guards would take cover and wait until their shields recharged. She saw Davie fire lasers towards the guards behind her and drop down from the roof.

‘What are you doing?’ Mooka cried.

‘Get in the power building!’ Davie ordered.

‘What?!’ Mooka sounded astonished. ‘There will be tonnes of guards in there.’

‘Trust me.’

More laser fire came from Mooka’s left-hand side. There was a glancing blow in her shields, but she kept her legs pumping towards the door. Davie appeared to change focus from the guards behind her to the nearby SRV. Red flashes from his rifle poured into the defenceless craft until it disintegrated in a yellow fireball.

‘That will keep them busy,’ he crowed as he landed beside her.

They dashed into the power building’s airlock and waited for it to cycle. She noticed that the power levels on her suit were already down to the lower thirties percentage.

‘On the left-hand side, there should be some new power packs for you to use,’ said Davie. ‘Pull your laser pistol and knock down anyone’s shields. Hopefully, they’ll just run away.’

Mooka drew one of her pistols and checked that she had a full charge.

‘Gotta love Plan B,’ Mooka said sarcastically.

‘Well, while you were busy mucking about with dirty plants, I scanned one of the power techs,’ Dave said smugly. ‘We’re going to switch the power off, and that means Mac can bring the Sanctimonious in without it being shredded by the anti-ship defences.’

The airlock finished cycling, and the two burst out into a large room with workbenches and tool cases strewn about the place. Mooka saw a case that held power packs. She ran over to the case and activated one of her spare power packs to recharge her suit. She then pulled a power pack out of the case to replace the one she’s just used.

‘Hey!’ cried a voice from above her.

A couple of red flashes hit her shields, and she panicked as she saw the rings representing her shields quickly disappear from the Hud. She fired her pistol in the voice’s general direction and ran after Davie. He had run on ahead to a door leading to the reactor. He burst through the door and fired a few shots. There were yells from technicians who ran out of the reactor room, knowing their weapons didn’t match the battle suit he was wearing. Mooka ran in behind and closed the blast door.

‘Now what?’ she gasped, trying to catch her breath.

‘Cover the door while I shut down the reactor,’ Davie ordered.

Dutifully, she holstered her pistol and drew her plasma rifle. She noticed her aim was wavering due to the adrenaline coursing through her body. She heard the console Davie was operating made bleep a compliance sound, and then the base’s public address system came to life.

‘Attention, the reactor is shutting down,’ it said in a matter-of-factly female voice.

‘How long?’ Asked Mooka.

‘Hopefully not too long,’ replied Davie as he pulled his laser rifle out of his backpack.

Suddenly, an explosion rocked the base. Mooka felt the vibrations through the floor. Davie looked questioningly at her. Obviously, the Sanctimonious didn’t have the firepower to do that. Screaming started over the public frequency. People on the base were dying. The questioning look turned to horror.

‘Oh My God, they blew up the gardens!’ cried one voice.

‘Not the Hab!’ cried another.

The explosions continued.

‘Please don’t shoot!’ came a voice over the comm-link. ‘We need to restart the power.’

‘We came here for a just bio-sample,’ replied Davie. ‘We just need the power off so you don’t shoot down our ship.’

‘Do you think I care about a bio-sample?’ pleaded the voice. ‘There is something more important happening here!’

Yet another explosion rocked the base.

The voice got even more desperate. ‘Look, you can keep the sample if you reboot the power. We need those anti-ship weapons to remain online.’

‘Those need them offline so we can leave.’ Davie countered.

‘You have an incoming ship?’ the voice asked. ‘Can we do a deal?’

‘What?’ Davie sounded disbelieving. ‘A deal?’

Mooka couldn’t believe what she heard, so she walked through the power centre’s airlock and looked out. Her mouth went immediately dry, and she was unable to move. One of the base’s habitation and agricultural modules was on fire. She looked up in the sky to see ships flying above, eight-sided saucer-like vessels that looked like they had been grown, not built.

Thargoids Scouts!

The base defences were targeting them, firing energy pulses at the alien ships, keeping them from getting too close. However, Mooka realised when the power plant switched itself off, there would be nothing to stop them from wiping them all out.

‘Davie…’ she forced herself to speak. ‘Take the deal, and power the weapons back up!’

‘What?’

‘Do it.’

She heard the click of Davie switch to the public channel.

‘OK, Deal.’ He said. ‘I’ll put the power back on. In exchange, clear any record of us being here, and we’ll evacuate you. But no weapons are allowed on the ship.’

‘Deal,’ said the other voice. ‘I’ve got about twelve people left. We’ll all come to the power plant empty-handed!’

Davie looked back up to Mooka, who nodded in reply. Mooka switched her comm-link to the Sanctimonious’ frequency.

‘Mac? We need Evac.’

‘Is the LZ clear?’

‘The situation has changed,’ she replied, noticing all the red markers on her hud change to green, indicating they were friendly.

‘We are under Thargoid attack,’ she reported. ‘We’ve agreed to evacuate the base staff in exchange for them clearing our records.’

The room was plunged into darkness as the power went off. Mooka turned to see Davie remove the reactor’s power regulator and replace it again. He then ran over to the console and activated the controls.

‘Thargoids have never attacked any port or settlement before?’ Mac sounded disbelieving.

‘We’ll they are now!’ Mooka shot back, trying to keep the panic out of her voice.

‘OK, dusting off,’ replied Mac. ‘ETA 60 Seconds.’

‘Power will be restored in 10 seconds,’ the automated voice announced over the public channels.

‘Can we come in?’ said the negotiator’s voice over the comm-link. ‘They seem to be targeting the labs!’

‘Yes, but remember, no weapons.’ ordered Davie.

A couple of seconds later, twelve people appeared at the airlock, hands in the air. Mooka waved them in, giving each of them a quick once-over to ensure they were unarmed. The number of explosions increased. That told her the Thargoids were taking advantage while the bases’ defences were down.

She glanced outside just in time to see the leading Lab disintegrate in a ball of yellow fire. She was only in there two minutes ago! Davie joined her by the airlock.

‘Flux me!’ he exclaimed as he observed the destruction. ‘They’ve come for us.’

The Thargoids had already destroyed most of the base. At least four Alien vessels were hovering above them. The only target the enemy had left was the power building. They were going to bomb the building and take her with it. The base defences hadn’t rebooted yet. There was nothing to stop them.

For the first time in her life, she felt she couldn’t move. Rooted to the spot, it was like waiting for an executioner’s axe to fall. She was as good as dead; she’d never see her father again or walk around the senator’s beautiful garden. She wouldn’t taste the lousy caff in the Sanctimonious kitchen or hear her stepfathers argue about where to head next. She felt a tear slowly run down her cheek as she realised it was all over. She saw the thargoid glow a little as it prepared to fire.

Then it exploded!

She took a breath.

She was still alive.

The Sanctimonious flew over the base. The Krait MKII’s AXI turrets ripped the Alien ships apart. The wreckage began falling slowly to the ground in weak gravity. Out of the four Thargoid vessels, only one was still flying. It darted away in retreat as the base defences again began to fire!

She was going to stay alive.

She saw her ship begin its landing cycle on the landing pad.

‘Everybody,’ She yelled into the comm-link. ‘let’s move!’

She ran in the lead, reaching the Sanctimonious in record time and raced up the boarding ramp. Their guests came in next, and she made sure everyone was seated and secured in the living area. Davie entered last, and the ship started moving even before he’d had a chance to make his way to the bridge. He ran past them all and up to the bridge.

Mooka joined their guests and secured herself into a spare seat in the living area. She activated the entertainment view screen and displayed the external camera feed. There was a collective gasp from their guests, who could now see their home vanish in small mushroom clouds of light.

Above the base, they all could see a black cloud form, blocking out the stars and the planet below. A vast eight-sided vessel seemed to force its way out of the cloud. It looked like a giant flower with eight red petals around a circular centre. She recognised what it was immediately.

‘Medusa Class Interceptor!’ said one of their guests in horror and awe.

Mac must have also realised what had just arrived because everyone was thrown about as the booster thrusters kicked in. If Mooka hadn’t secured people, they’d be a bloody smear against the back wall. There was another lurch of g-forces as the boosters fired again. They could see red fire bolts of energy emanating from the vast Alien vessel on the viewscreen, straight towards them.

The Sanctimonious shuddered as its shields took the impact. She heard the familiar whine of the frame-shift drive begin to spool up. An alert sound made her start; the alien vessel had just launched caustic missiles. The feeling of dread began to reform in her stomach. She closed her eyes, waiting for the impact. There was the familiar stagger as the frameshift drive activated. She opened her eyes, and the Medusa, the scouts, and the burning base had all vanished. In their place was the familiar tunnel of hyperspace.

After a few seconds, once the hyperspace jump was complete, they found themselves in orbit around a small red sun. She unbuckled herself from the seat and stood up, letting her mag boots attach her to the floor. She looked around at the guests they’d rescued. They all looked shell-shocked and broken.

Mac entered the living area and quickly assessed their guests.

‘Who’s your leader?’ he asked.

‘We don’t have one, ‘ replied a middle age woman with short black hair. ‘He was killed when the Hab module went up.’

‘OK, you’ll do for the moment then,’ replied Mac. ‘We’re going to have to find a safe port to drop you off, but that might be easier said than done.’

‘Why?’ replied the black-haired lady.

‘It seems that the Thargoids have just launched a massive attack on human settlements,’ He explained. ‘We’re only getting news of it now.’

‘Where did they come from?’ The black-haired woman asked.

‘You know about the Stargoids?’ Mac asked.

‘Those glowing lights that have been approaching human space for months?’ She asked. ‘Yeah, we thought they were just the Empire and Federation false flag. You know, something to keep the news networks busy.’

‘Turns out each of those Stargoids is some kind of Thargoid mother ship,’ Mac explained. ‘They’re burning any human settlement, outpost, port or space station they can find. Millions are already dead!’

Mooka started her breathing exercises again. She’s been dreading this moment since HIP 24360. The Thargoids had changed everything yet again, and she realised there was no escaping the fight this time. It was going to be either them or her. She gritted her teeth, determined to make sure it was them.