We were all sitting on the bridge, helmets off but still suited up. Honestly, it was probably a bit premature. Just flying by the station would take hours. The readings we got showed multiple ships engaged in combat around a heavily damaged section of the station. As the picture grew clearer, Zoia poked at the screen and commented: “There’s one of our tagged SMG ships.”
Sure enough, among the vessels was a Sentinel Mercenary Group craft we’d been tracking. It was involved in a dogfight alongside several other ships. Something about the display kept nagging at me. No matter how many times I looked it over, I couldn’t pinpoint what felt off.
“My readings are showing higher acceleration profiles for some of those ships,” X-Talia said.
The moment she spoke, the detail that had been bothering me snapped into place. We couldn’t see the ships with human-visible-spectrum cameras. Only through gravitational and infrared signatures, but those signatures didn’t all make sense: at least half the vessels were burning hotter and moving faster than I was used to.
Zoia leaned forward, her face practically on the screen, staring so hard she might have been trying to burn a hole through it. “Son of bitch. Those are Zatochi.”
There was some discussion between Zoia and Sam about what that actually meant, while X-Talia and I mostly stared at our screens. One of the Sentinel vessels we’d identified blinked out, likely destroyed. More ships were inbound from Azore, and another large group approached from Nexus. My initial assumption had been that the group from Nexus was Sentinel Mercenary Group forces rushing in to “defend” the Free Light Mining station, but as we got closer, it was looking more like a third party was present in the system.
Eventually, we reached the right angle and distance for X-Talia to lock on telescopically to one of the raiding craft. All I saw was a box with a giant cone at one end behind a tiny star. My brain, so accustomed to reading the grill-like patterns of gravitational data, took too long to recognize I was looking at the rear end of a chemical-based rocket.
As we drew nearer, X-Talia started overlaying numbers on the screen. Each zig and zag of each ship came with an estimated G-value for their acceleration. Many were running between 15 and 30 Gs.
“X-Talia, what’s the max G on our current tech?” I asked.
“Eighteen, maybe twenty,” she replied.
“How can they physically sustain so many Gs for that long?” Sam asked.
Zoia shrugged. “We’re better than humans.”
What a bitch. Obviously, she believed her people were physiologically superior, more as a matter of fact than gloating. Then again, whatever genetic engineering they’d done seemed to have given them remarkable advantages in space travel.
“Picking an approach,” X-Talia said, showing several possible vectors for our pass by the station.
“That one,” Zoia said, pointing to a trajectory that would bring us low and to the right from our perspective. “It’ll help those friendlies and give them a better fighting chance.”
I had no objection, so off we went. Missiles were launched, and as we fell through that sector of space, they ignited and headed for their targets. Two missiles aimed at one ship were destroyed. Another ship, already dealing with multiple missiles from a different vessel, took at least one hit from ours. Then, because we’d never decelerated, we were past the engagement.
Part of me couldn’t believe it wasn’t the Sentinel Mercenary Group attacking the station. I’d grown used to their presence and the reality that the only “pirates” in this system, for as long as we’d been here, had basically been the same mercenaries. I never considered a third party might show up. Nor did I expect a full-out assault on a station and its ships. It seemed far less logical than the profit racket the Sentinel Mercenaries had going on. On the other hand, it was exactly the sort of large-scale chaos that favored our “scrap-and-build” tactics. Using wrecked ships as raw materials for our own projects.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Two vessels are coming at us,” X-Talia stated.
I looked at the display to see two arcs from enemy ships. Projected trajectories showed they’d intercept us in about thirty minutes. “Damn, they're fast,” I muttered. These guys were basically trying to match and exceed our velocity in hardly any time. “Well, we’re not exactly outrunning them. Launch missiles, drones, and flip us around,” I ordered.
X-Talia nodded, wearing a sly grin. I swear she was getting more bloodthirsty. Our new ship was a bit too long—and incomplete—to pivot quickly. Flipping the entire structure took a while. Still, we had enough minutes in our operating window to deploy our nasty surprises. The Sentinel Mercenary Group might have caught on to our old tricks, but this new faction wasn't expecting missiles launched well before engagement or our unidirectional stealth drones.
While we kept flying backwards, our ballistic ordnance gained distance from us. “They'll be in effective missile range in three minutes,” X-Talia stated, a timer popping up.
“When will they be in our effective missile range?” Zoia asked before I could.
X-Talia’s grin widened like a machine about to add fresh scrap into her foundry. “One minute, thirty seconds.”
One of the vessels must have detected something, because its point-defense cannons opened up practically the moment our missiles “activated,” reorienting themselves for a full burn toward the incoming threat. Shields flared, but both ships, still mostly intact, took heavy punishment once the initial wave of our warheads concluded. Their drained shields didn't last long under the micro-missile barrage from our unidirectional stealth drones.
“X-Talia, tag those ships and plot a new arc for another pass,” I said.
X-Talia, with her hands clasped behind her back, nodded. “Aye, Captain. Marking targets and calculating approach.”
“You two are enjoying this too much,” Zoia observed.
“They're always like this,” Sam commented dryly.
We were halfway back, meaning we’d almost slowed to a stop, while on a curve that would bring us back around to the station from another angle, when X-Talia notified me of something interesting. I stared at the display. Sam and Zoia were in the common area grabbing food in the lull before our next pass.
“He's coming here?” I didn't need to phrase it as a question. It was obvious.
The fleet that had left Nexus included the corvette believed to hold our target. That entire fleet wasn’t huge, so we just might stand a chance.
We made another pass at the station, taking out one more ship. This was so much simpler than the old days with our rickety ship that had only a couple of guns and no shields. Admittedly, our missile supply was running low, and we'd lost a few drones.
“Think we should go for another pass?” I asked, letting the question hang. Everyone stared blankly at the center table, where a hologram showed the station, some markers X-Talia believed to be other ships, and the incoming fleet. Sam looked ready to say something but stopped and then glared in my direction.
“What, do we hit the pirates or the Sentinel mercs?” she asked.
X-Talia shot me a look that clearly said “no,” as though she knew what I was thinking. “If you’re considering going after that corvette, that’s a suicide charge.”
I was considering it, actually. Part of me figured, in the midst of all this chaos, maybe we could disable it somehow.
“We need a better plan than that,” she added pointedly.
“How about tailing the back end of that fleet?” I offered. “At least trim some of their numbers.”
“...And in the process undermine the good will we’ve created with the Free Light Mining Consortium?” Zoia asked, as if it were blatantly obvious that it would be a bad move.
She was right. As twisted as things had become, we and our so-called target—Reginald Maximus—were technically on the same side for now, by virtue of circumstance. I slumped in my seat.
“So how are we going to deal with that damn corvette?” I asked.
Everyone just shrugged. We still had no solid plan.
