One thousand two hundred eighty-four cycles ago, System Standard Time (SST), a military-class cruiser was just inside the outer limits of an unknown solar system:
"Take it and get to a fighter before the capacitors fully discharge!" Gareth shouted to his first officer over the earsplitting sounds of multiple alarms going off simultaneously as he shoved a silver grapefruit-sized orb into the officer's chest.
"We can still evade; we have—" The first officer started to say, but Gareth cut her off.
"No! Follow your orders, officer!" Gareth knew better than her what was at stake and their chances. "I'll plot you a course for one of the moons orbiting the third solar body from this star! Avoid the planet; it is too densely populated!" He was still having to shout over the alarms.
There was a muffled explosion, and the ship shuddered. Both officers were suddenly thrown against the wall of their corridor, then to the ceiling as the ship rolled. Gareth heard the whine of the mana engines and thrusters as the pilot, one of the best in the fleet, initiated evasive maneuvers. The beams holding the bulkhead together groaned under the stress, and Gareth instantly knew they were out of time.
"They hit one of the dampeners! Move it, Cara!" Gareth grabbed the first officer's shoulder and half dragged her across the ceiling to the fighter bay, where nearly fifty pilots were waiting in their ships. Every pilot had a sober look in their eyes. They knew their job and knew it was a suicide mission. They would be a distraction and a shield for the first officer and her precious cargo. Not a single pilot questioned their role. They all believed in the greater purpose of their clan, which is why they had all volunteered to be out here on the fringes of the known verse.
Gareth pushed her into the fighter bay and handed Cara off to a tech officer wearing a jet suit. He could get her to her fighter, clamped to the ceiling that had formerly been the floor. Gareth turned and sprinted back to the bridge without looking back. He had a job to do.
***
Cara helped strap herself in the cockpit and looked at the tech officer. His four arms were a blur as he pulled straps and set the moon's coordinates Gareth had just sent him through their chat function into her nav computer. "Come with me, Toka." Cara implored, "I might need a weapon systems officer."
"You know I cannot do that, Cara—" Toka cut off his words and grabbed the side of the cockpit as the cruiser performed more evasive maneuvers.
Cara reached to grab his arm and pull him into the cockpit with her, but an explosion rocked the ship, blowing a hole in the side of the fighter bay farthest from their position. The force of the blast threw her back in her seat, and she missed Toka's arm by a centimeter.
Toka's final action before he was sucked into the vacuum of space was to hit the button to raise Cara's shield and close her windscreen. Cara watched in horror as one of her closest friends was sucked into the outer fringes of space. His jet suit was not powerful enough to compensate for the force of depressurization.
"On your orders, Ma'am." A voice crackled over her comms.
Cara took her chaotic emotions and suppressed them. Emotional suppression was a required skill for all officers in the military, and Cara was no exception. With her feelings suppressed, Cara responded to the surviving fighters in a calm voice, "Spin up mana engines and release clamps on my mark." She then sent Gareth a message through chat, "Prepped for evac. Waiting for all clear."
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“Hold…go now!” was the final communication Cara ever received from her captain.
"Mark," Cara said through comms and, following her instruction, spun up her mana engine and released the mag clamps holding her fighter in place. Instantly weightless, Cara and every pilot in the hangar did what they had done hundreds of times before. As one, they shot out of the hanger doors. Into chaos.
***
The instant Cara was out of the hangar, she had to bank hard to avoid the debris from a destroyed fighter. As a level eighty-six Technmancer, Cara had already melded her mind with her fighter, turning it into an extension of her body.
Cara's mind was calculating complex equations faster than her AI-assisted flight computer could keep up with, so she disabled the system and flew manually. “13-degree pitch, 87% thrust for 3…2…1…hard roll to 283 degrees. 100% thrust, fire forward lasers for 1.2 seconds, kill confirmed.” Three fighters on her wing erupted in silent explosions, taken down by enemy fighters that outnumbered them five to one. The downed fighters were replaced immediately by more of her allies. Cara noted all this absently as she escaped from the swarming enemies. "18-degree pitch while roll to 134 degrees, 13% reverse thrust…hold…100% forward thrust. Fire forward lasers for 1.6 seconds…. Kill is confirmed. Shields at 7%...initiate mana infusion into engine core. Escaper vector realized in 2…1…firing mana boosters…maximum velocity realized in…7…6—”
Just as Cara cleared the swarming fighters and initiated her sub-light boosters, an alarm blared! An enemy missile was locked onto her ship's mana signature. Cara initiated the limited evasive actions she could perform at her current speed. "Adjusting trajectory by .0001 degrees. Firing rear turret…negative impact. Missile in range in 7 seconds. Maximum velocity reached, turning mana boosters off. Forward thrust to 0%. Pitchback 180 degrees…stop pitch. Roll and stabilize. Firing forward lasers for .7 seconds. Missed; target taking evasive maneuvers." The missile was traveling in an unpredictable pattern but slowly closing the distance. Cara could see the battle still raging in the distance behind the missile. No other enemy ships could be seen following her, so she knew if she managed to take down this missile, she would be in the clear…for now, at least.
With resolve, Cara continued firing at the missile in short bursts as she hurtled backward in her starfighter at two hundred seventy thousand kilometers per second. Her weapons systems were running low on mana. Still, she needed to keep her reserves high to inject into the engine core for deceleration. The missile was less than two seconds from impact when one of her lasers clipped its nose cone.
The missile instantly exploded, sending shrapnel in every direction. Unfortunately, one of those directions was toward Cara's fighter. Hundreds of tiny pellets from the warhead struck her shield, taking it down. A single piece of the missile hit her fuselage, tearing through the armor and into her ship's mana wiring.
At first, Cara thought she had managed to avoid damage. She was already pitching her ship back forward to correct her course when the hologram in her console lit up with a damage report. "Shit!" She snapped; she had turned off her emotional suppression to conserve mana. Looking at the readout, she zoomed in on the 3D image of her ship and groaned, "Of course, it would have to be the navigation system!" The damage wasn't even that bad, from what she could tell.
"I could probably fix it in ten minutes," Cara mumbled as she tried to find a redundant system to route around the damage, "except I would have to be outside, and I'm not sure I could survive in the vacuum that long and still have enough mana for the engine to slow the ship down in time." She gave up looking for a reroute after a while with a sigh. She would have to do everything manually. Usually, that would be fine, but Gareth hadn't sent the destination coordinates to her; he had sent them to Toka, and she hadn't seen him input them into the now-broken navigation system. "It doesn't look like a rescue will be coming anytime soon anyway. Surely Gareth will forgive me if I miss one of the moons." She thought, knowing Gareth had probably sent the coordinates for the less populated moon not because of rescue but because it would be easier for her to hide the precious cargo she carried in her storage ring. However, she knew her best chance at making a successful manual landing would be on the planet. “Assuming I don’t miss by a fraction of a degree and wind up in the star.” She thought grimly.
Cara closed her eyes in meditation. She committed to memory the ultimate sacrifice of those dying so she could escape and, hopefully, one day save her clan.