Everything was falling into place. The brig was ruckus-filled, Mortifera’s additional warship was on its way to flank the Dominus, while the Mortifera itself had undocked and began cruising behind Salvation.
All fighter craft were spread wide across all areas surrounding Salvation which had been powered down and playing ‘half-dead’ and our orders had come across for all to match velocity and completely power down our craft.
It was another moment of quiet solitude, gliding along the vast emptiness knowing that soon lights would be flashing across my visor and ship alerts ringing through my ears.
A lot of thoughts crossed my mind for the next couple of hours including how I’d find Lilly, or if she was even alive anymore. One thing I learnt from Nuvora is that time dilation is aggressive from the stationary positions of planets we discover. Nuvora had probably gone through another hundred or so years of civilisation already and I couldn’t even fathom what could have had happened on Biterra since we had left after discovery.
Had Biterra become a planet with thriving civilisation and cities like Nuvora, or was it slowly ticking along going through different ages. Did humans even survive a war with the Solari. My train of thought kept flicking between picturing a prosperous world and a grim one. One thing I knew though was that we tainted that planet as soon as we set foot on it.
All I had was the hope that the General from Nuvora was right about eight systems connected by the anomalies, but I was stuck with one question. How were we to know, or figure out how to travel to a desired system at will.
So far it seemed completely random where we jumped to and it was only by sheer luck that we ended up back in the Biterra system where we needed to be.
The curvature of B-004 started to become more prominent, a sure sign that my moment of peace was about to be flipped upside down.
B-004 as far as I knew wasn’t surveyed by humanity yet and I wasn’t surprised that there was no rush in doing so.
Its atmosphere looked hazy and from what I could see it looked dry, dusty, and inhabitable. Kind of like Mars back in our solar system and what Earth would most likely be on the brink of.
Large weather systems with swirls of bronze from the dust they sucked up dotted the massive planet. Even hostile planets had their own type of beauty when backed by the deepest of blacks.
I could see lights ahead, slowly getting brighter and larger. As they approached they fanned out to surround the Salvation and like us, their fleet had become larger. More lights flickered on from craft that were running dark on approach, sending a shiver over my skin as I prepped myself to power my fighter on when signaled.
A bright flash spread across the light speckled black, and that was the signal. I powered on my fighter, flicked down my visor, and pushed thrust to max.
Salvation, that was just up from my position, powered on and started reverse thrusting, flashes from the defensive weapons in full swing straight away as I zipped past it.
My visor was lit up with dozens of red dots. A moment of hesitation on which to follow gave away my edge as my alarm for being locked on started to sound.
“Nuvora warship you’re a go,” said Miltech control over the comms as I pulled my fighter into an evasive turn from the lock.
The flashes of impacts taken on either side were numerous as I was able to clock a look while banking out of my turn.
So far the first wave of the ambush on the Dominus fleet looked successful. They had no idea a second warship of ours was coming in from the flank or that we were faking a wounded Salvation to lure them in.
Filled with motivation at the sight of having the upper hand, I managed to get the Dominus fighter off my tail and get onto theirs, chasing them down to an explosive end.
“Carter turn back to the Mortifera, you’re too far out,” called Ro over comms.
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I checked my position and sure enough I managed to push out several thousand kilometres during the dog fight.
It took all my concentration and energy as I made my way back toward Mortifera. It wasn’t only enemy fighters that you had to look out for but also the massive debris fields created by the battle.
Craft could take numerous small hits from scattered debris but you had to mitigate collision the best you could, evident by several craft that appeared to randomly explode as I got closer to the Mortifera.
More red targets appeared on my visor now I was weaving between larger debris fields, disabled ships, friendlies, and enemies before a familiar enemy craft appeared.
A Miltech fighter painted red on my visor that had a special tag against it. There was only one of those getting around. My good old friend Kai. The defecting piece of scum that was a part of starting all of this shit.
I banked and thrusted full, until the red circle expanded to a crosshair and pulsed to a locking flash. I had him and there was no way I was going to let him go.
Both of our fighters pushed to the limits as Kai tried his hardest to lose my lock. He flew dangerously close to the Mortifera, hoping I’d make a mistake and crash, or abandon chase — neither of which happened.
Movements became more erratic, he was starting to panic. Although I had him locked, I hadn’t fired yet and I could tell it was starting to mess with his head. He was making mistake after mistake, giving me plenty of time to line up perfect, small shots. My goal was to disable the fighter. He didn’t deserve death as far as I was concerned.
A stream of white poured out of the fighter, I pieced the hull and his oxygen was venting. He slowed but was still thrusting back toward the Dominus, the backup supply of oxygen that’s in all Miltech craft would allow him survival.
I pushed my fighter harder to swoop in front of him, engaging the disabling mines before hearing the thud thud thud as they released.
With full reverse thrusters engaged I spun around to face the disabled fighter, an orange flickering crosshair letting me know that it was successful.
“Ro. I need Mortifera to capture this craft. I’ve tagged it on the system,” I called over to Ro on the voice-link.
“We’re in the middle of a fucking fight Carter, I’m not going to ask Mortifera to pick up a craft.”
“It’s Kai.”
The voice-link fell silent for several painful seconds before she responded.
“Copy that. Mortifera on the move.”
Once confirmed I hightailed it away to join the last fighters that were still active which were becoming less and less.
“Nuvora warship to Mortifera,” called the warship. “Requesting permission to fire on Dominus.”
“Permission granted warship. Disable only,” responded control.
Debris pulsed out from the Dominus, taking a huge long range hit to its port side as it started thrusting further away from B-004.
I was just outside of weapons range and was one of the closer crafts to the Dominus at that stage. I pushed my fighter to its capacity in a last ditch effort to gain on the Dominus, hoping to fire off some more crippling shots to prevent its escape.
But just as I was on the brink of being in range, the fighter started to malfunction and my visor overlay haywire.
Oh hell no.
Ahead were the cluster of anomalies, appearing out of absolutely no where and the craft start to move erratically as if I were in a choppy sea. I pulled as hard as I could to bring myself out of the path with no luck. It sent me hurling toward one of the anomalous orbs.
This time though, there was no blacking out.
Light stretched around me as I started to fall through the anomoly, unable to comprehend how fast I would have been travelling at that moment until my mind started to play tricks on me.
I wasn’t entirely sure if I was moving. As the pressure on my body eased, I began to feel ‘still’ and that everything around me was in fact moving instead of me.
It felt like I was suspended in time and during those moments like nothing else in the infinite universe was taking place. Just frozen until I reached my destination, wherever that would be.
How long have I even been in this anomaly, I started to wonder.
It started to feel like eternity. Panic evoking, like ‘I’m trapped in here forever’ type of panic. My stomach started churning nauseas anxiety that pumped through every inch of my being. I was certain that this was it. The end of my journey, stuck in an infinite shortcut loop.
My despair eventually turned into curiosity. I had been on the outside of Salvation during another jump. It started to make me wonder if I could leave my craft and just swim on out, just push myself out and exit the anomaly.
Anything at that stage seemed possible. Beyond the stretched fragments of light I could have sworn I could see perfectly still stars, like I was in the middle of a raging river and I just needed to get to the edge to save myself.
Just as I began to unbuckle my harness my body started being forced forward and out of my restraints as the hypothetical brakes were being applied.
The stretching streaks of lights became less prominent and my fighters’ systems started to come back online with the centre sight repeating, going left to right. It was in a spin.
I started to get forced further out of my seat and further away from the controls. It was becoming harder to fight the G’s and less likely that I’d be able to pull myself out of the spin.
Finally after chaotically spinning the fighters systems fully restored and began to correct itself, slowly easing me back into straight flight and back into my seat.
After clicking my harness back into place and regaining control of the fighter I could finally assess where I had ended up. It was nothing to jump to joy over, but rather the opposite.