‘Ten minutes until we exit our jump. Get ready to deploy the invisibility shield.’ Ala commanded.
Voss made the necessary preparations and gave her the thumbs up. Exiting these jumps was always a weird surreal moment where the boredom of having to wait around, doing very little for days on end during a jump made way for the excitement and uncertainty of what you were about to encounter once you were back in perceivable space.
They were nearing their fourth target. If Ala’s calculations were correct, and they had been thus far, they were about to arrive behind the moon of a distant gas giant, eight hundred million kilometers removed from their target planet. They'd hide behind it and use the gas giant's gravitational force to slingshot their recon drone towards the target planet before laying in wait until the drone sent them back any useful footage.
Exiting a jump was always a risky affair because you had to do it blindly, never knowing what you’d find lying in wait for you. They had already been saved by their invisibility shield once when they had been spat out from their jump less than a hundred thousand kilometers away from some new mining station that wasn’t on any of their charts.
‘Two more to go, Voss. If this goes well we’ll be home before the end of the year.’. Ala’s voice sounded hopeful as she said it. Their relationship had warmed up significantly since the truce they had made after he had scared the living daylights out of her, but even so, being forced into small confines with each other for such a long time, and with so little to do, did cause tension. The kind of tension that you could expect between a man and a woman locked up together. He couldn’t blame Ala for wanting to return home before anything happened that either of them could come to regret.
He looked over at her and gave her a smile. ‘More importantly, zero signs of military build up yet. Starting to look like these reports were drunken sailor stories after all.’
He couldn’t help but notice that their conversation was built upon a good deal of wishful thinking by both of them. If anything, the chances of discovering proof of military build up increased with each planet they visited. Those reports had to come from somewhere and there were too many of them to make a believable case for drunken talk.
Ala’s voice pulled him out of his thoughts. ‘Lewen jump ending in 30 seconds. Prepare to engage the cloaking engine.
‘Just give me the countdown Ala, I’ll do the rest.’. He looked over at her. A hundred days in the void had caused her hair to grow longer. He liked it better like this. It suited her better than the bobcut she wore back on Fosfat. The lace running down on the side of her suit revealed a little more to him than what would have been proper for a situation like this. It was odd, she had been dressed in this outfit for a hundred days now and he still caught himself staring like he was some thirteen year old kid seeing boobs for the first time in his life. He gave himself a mental slap to the head. Now wasn't the time for dirty thoughts. He had to focus.
They were set to leave their jump in a location that would obscure them from their target planet. It was highly unlikely that anything would detect them here, hidden away and millions of kilometers away from anything inhabitable, but one could never be too sure. All it took was one satellite or ship to spot them and they’d have to make a run for it, fast. Hence why they had prepared the cloaking device. There was about a five second window between shutting off the Lewen engine and reappearing in perceivable space. Just enough time to redirect the energy supply towards the cloaking generator.
‘Turning off the Lewen engine in three… two… one…’
Ala gave the signal as soon as she turned the engine off. Voss entered the command for the cloaking device to turn on. He had spent the last hour ensuring that the device was preheated and fully functional, so that it would turn on smoothly and in time. The bar in front of his screen ran up quickly and was already beyond ninety-five percent by the time the first light came through the cockpit’s windows. When in Lewen jump, you couldn't see through the cockpit's window. The universe turned pitch black due to how out of sync you were with light traveling through the void. When you re-entered perceivable space, it was as if someone turned the lights back on. In a matter of seconds space formed around them again with lights becoming distinguishable again and forms becoming visible.
Nothing could have prepared them for what they ran into as they exited the warp tunnel. In the distance was a gigantic space station, so huge that it dwarfed even the Saltpetersburg spaceport. Around the station floated hundreds of warships of varying sizes. Some of them looked like they were at least a dozen kilometers long.
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Warning lights began flashing through the cockpit. Warnings that he could read, but Ala couldn’t.
‘We have to turn around as fast as possible, Ala. We..’
‘Shut up!’ she yelled at him. ‘I’m the pilot here.’
One look at her told him what he needed to know. Her face looked calm and he could see her mind working overtime to come up with a solution. He decided it was best to let her be and focus on his own mission, which was to collect as much data as possible. He gave the computer the order to record and analyze everything and it sprung to action. Schematics and analyses shot by on his screen at a dazzling pace.
‘We can’t turn around.’ Ala said with a stern voice. ‘They’ll spot the heat of our engine well before we can make any pace. At this distance, they’ll laser our ship in half before you can say escape.’
‘So then what? You want to surrender?’
‘Strap yourself in, we’re going to accelerate at maximum throttle.’
He looked at her like she was mental. ‘Maximum throttle? Are you going to suicide bomb us into that station?’
‘Don’t be stupid. We’re going to use the moon and then the gas giant to slingshot us, before Lewen jumping the hell out of here.’
‘That’s madness! We’d never make it. They’ll gun us down midway through the maneuver!’
‘It’s the only chance we’ve got. Shut up and trust me.’ she snarled at him.
There was no time to get into a discussion with her. She was nearly finished strapping herself in and he knew she’d waste no time in turning the engine full throttle once she had. He quickly strapped himself in too and braced himself as the ship began to accelerate at five G’s, stressing their bodies to their limits.
‘I need you to take the wheel, Voss.’
‘What? You want me to pilot us through this suicide plan of yours?’
‘Shut up and just do it. Steer us towards the right side of the moon straight down its middle. I need to calculate a Lewen path out of here before the armada in front of us has time to react to our presence.’
‘Hurry up then, because I see movement down there. I think some of their forward surveillance has spotted the heat coming from our engine. It’s either that, or their gravitational sensors are picking us up.’
‘Shut up, and pilot the ship. I’m doing this as fast as I can without making errors.’
They were minutes away from the fleet now and it was looking like they’d barely make it towards the right side of the moon without crashing into it. Their only hope now was that it would take long enough for the fleet to pinpoint their exact location so that they could fly behind the moon and use it for cover.
The screen in front of Voss displayed a message. ‘They’re trying to contact us, Ala. They’re telling us to halt the ship and surrender for talks. What do you want me to reply?’
‘Don’t!’ she screamed at him. ‘They’ll use your message to pinpoint our location. You send them a message and we’re dead.’
‘I’ve got an idea then,’ he replied. He typed in a set of commands and made the computer perform calculations. ‘I’m releasing a recon drone on the far side of the ship. It should benefit from our invisibility long enough for it to reach a significant distance from our ship. It will broadcast a reply from us that we’re willing to surrender in about thirty seconds. If what you say is true, they’ll shoot the drone to bits. If they don’t, then we should at least consider surrendering.’
He pressed the button and the drone shot out of their starboard side torpedo tube. If there was one benefit to the endless days of being stuck inside a Lewen jump, it was that it gave you ample time to prepare everything. He’d loaded all the tubes days ago, and now it turned out to save them.
Ala began to provide him with a retort. ‘We’re not surrendering, not under any circumstances. Don’t forget that our best case scenario is them believing our cover story about being intergalactic drug smugglers. They’d torture us to death if they found out. I’d rather die out here than…’ she didn’t have to finish her sentence, because a bright flash of light told them everything they needed to know. Dozens of lasers had simultaneously fired at their recon drone, turning it into a liquid plasma so hot, it shone brighter than the sun.
‘Thirty seconds until we’re behind cover!’ he yelled at her. It was obvious now that no matter how desperate or impossible her plan may seem, it was still their best option.
‘They’re firing with scattershot in our direction now. Looks like they’re trying to get a hit on our ship so they can pinpoint our exact location. Seems like they know we used a decoy.’
‘Shut up and focus, Voss. I’m giving you a trajectory to follow, Voss. They should flash on your screen now.’
‘I got them, copy.’
Voss was so pre-occupied with keeping their ship heading into the right course, that he didn’t even notice that the ships stopped firing into their general direction and instead began to launch dozens of fighters, and other types of ships, from several of the main battle cruisers. Staying on course took him every bit of focus he had. One small mistake now could mean they’d be misaligned for their jump to safety. Even the tiniest of misalignments could mean being blown of course by billions of kilometers, or even worse, the jump failing to commence. You couldn’t do a gravitational jump if there wasn’t a source of gravity where you were jumping towards.
‘Here they come!’ Ala exclaimed. ‘We’re moving faster than them and we’ll keep gaining ground on them, but if they can pin their laser weaponry on us from this distance, we’ll be toast.’
‘What about their homing missiles?’ he asked.
‘Just shut up and fly, Voss. Let me finish up my calculations and prepare for a jump to safety. We don’t need more reasons why we’re not going to make it.’
‘You’re the one who started it.’ He replied angrily. He held on tightly to the steering wheel of the ship. They were mere seconds away from cover now. A red light flashed and an alarm went off.
‘What’s happening?’
‘We’ve been hit!’ He exclaimed. ‘The ship’s been hit!’