„This is the DSF Volcano. Emergency, emergency, emergency. All nearby vessels. Urgent evacuation required. Crew: 20. Life support: 34 hours.“

Corporal Khon leaned back in his chair and slowly turned his head towards Captain Zala: „Emergency call set up. Repeats every minute.“

She acknowledged with a nod. Behind her through the mess hall crewmen were retreating to their quarters. She had ordered everyone to rest, to sleep if possible, to reduce oxygen consumption. The emergency warp had blown out both hyperdrives and the hits they had taken from the Qyrl had done the rest. Their sub-light engine was crippled, half of the crew had lost their quarters and had to set up improvised beds in the mess, corridors and other rooms. The main reactor was intact, but the regeneration systems were badly damaged. CO2 scrubbers would keep the atmosphere breathable for days, but oxygen generation was close to nothing.

„How far out are we?“, Zala asked. She knew the coordinates were transmitted in the emergency call on a data channel.

„About fifty light-hours from Noctua 7469. If we had a powerful enough optical telescope we could make a recording of our own battle the day after tomorrow.“, Khon joked.

„Can they reach us in time from Dephyr?“

Khon ran a quick calculation just to confirm what he already knew.

„Negative.“, he said slowly, „We’re seven-point-seven lightyears away. No ship in the fleet can get here in under three days.“

„Dangorod is even further.“, Zala added. She knew the cosmography of the Junkstorm. „What about Erulas?“

Khon had already done the math: „A bit closer than home, but still almost six lightyears. If they have a fast enough ship they could reach us in just over two days. Fifty-odd hours if we assume their fastest ships are about equal to ours.“

„No difference to us if we’re sixteen hours dead or forty.“, Zala responded with a hint of sarcasm in her voice. „So it’s really on some ship that’s in transit somewhere out here.“

Khon nodded. It really was down to that. Or to the pirates, he thought, but they would have to deal with the Qyrl first. They had scanned Binary Bloom and there was some evidence that the outpost did have some weaponry. Which may or may not still function after the EMP.

A thought crosses Khon’s mind. What if the purpose of the EMP had been precisely to disable the outpost’s defenses? A space station had much fewer restrictions on the types and energy requirements of weapons and could power beam weapons much stronger than what even a battleship could carry. It’s all a matter of size. The Aegis Prime had three- or four-hundred crew. But a major space station had thousands of inhabitants, and often some energy intensive industry. Binary Bloom had the size for two large fusion reactors.

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Their scans didn’t reveal details, but with that kind of power available, Binary Bloom just might have a quantum coherence cannon.

About sixty light-hours away, the Aegis Prime had been more lucky. Their emergency jump had taken them slightly deeper into the Junkstorm, and they had gone away with more hits but all in all less damage. Mostly due to its considerably larger size allowing for more redundancy. The battleship was designed to take heavy damage and still remain able to shoot back.

Commander Frason and General Norge were looking over the damage report. It was Frason’s job to make the tactical decisions, but Norge could call in reinforcements or order an immediate counter-attack.

„Life support is operational, half of our sub-light engines still work.“, Frason summed up what the display to his right was showing in status reports, „But the hyperdrive will most likely blow up if we try to use it.“

„Weapons?“, Norge asked, „We can’t be sure they won’t hunt us down to finish the job.“

Frason looked over the detailed status: „Most are functional. We lost one disruptor beam and a plasma cannon.“

„Comms“, the general barked, „Give me HQ on a priority call.“

He didn’t wait for the „Yes, sir“. Instead he turned back to Frason: „We keep the ship on alert until we know the situation. I’ll leave the rest to you.“

Frason looked at the damage and status reports once more while the general walked over to the communications section. Then he started giving repair orders to the engineering crew. What systems to check first, which repairs to do now and which could wait. He needed to get as much of his ship back as possible. The hyperspace drive was the most important and he ordered his most senior engineers there. If it could be at least patched up to let them make one more jump, things would be a lot easier.

To the side of the screen he had calculations similar to the ones Khon on the DSF Volcano had made. The numbers barely differed. Sixty light hours are less than one percent of a lightyear. Space is big. Really big.

The numbers also told him that they were still within the Oort Cloud of the Noctua system. The chance to be hit by one of its objects was minimal. It was quite counterintuitive. There were probably one- or two-hundred billion comets in it. But still, due to its sheer size, the cloud was essentially empty space. The average distance between these objects was in the millions of kilometers.

Frason turned back to the ship. Outer space bothered him. He preferred just passing through in hyperspace. One more reason to get the the hyperdrive working. The other was that outer space meant no protection from cosmic radiation by a star’s heliosphere. A few hours should be fine, but if they had to wait for a rescue mission, several days would cause health issues with at least some crew members. The rule-of-thumb he remembered from the academy was about 1% of the crew per day.

„Commander, I have a suggestion.“, a voice came from the data scientist team. A young men named Aarix. „Speak up.“, Frason answered, turning around.

„We are days away from Erulas. The other planets are even further. Except for Calidor.“

Frason tilted his head skeptically: „Calidor? The desert planet?“

The young scientist nodded emphatically. „That one. Terraforming will take another forty or fifty years, but there are already engineers and some early settlers. People who want to get a head start on land or just like the challenge. Probably a few ships as well.“

Frason understood.

„It’s closer than Erulas by about a light-year. They could reach us about half a day earlier.“

„Give it a try.“, Frason ordered, „See if you can reach someone there.“