CHAPTER 27 - CHAOS

Rachel's vision blurred as she felt the acceleration stomp on her body. Kuw screamed in fear and pain. Jamaad yelled an order to throttle down immediately. Artur, startled, fired off the particle-bomb. Due to the ship's extreme acceleration beyond all thresholds, it clanged off the rim of the missile tube on its way out and spun wildly out of control, its engine spouting a hurricane of sun-hot death. Of course, the ship rapidly overtook it, but not before an entire half of a radiator was shorn off by the plume. The detached, tumbling fin was then blown into shreds by a stray missile, causing a shower of fragments to pummel several areas near the ship's center, including the warp drive, heavily damaging the casing. The sensor dish was, too, grazed by the stream of plasma, and overheated in an instant. Swearing and panicked yells filled the command room.

With all his strength, Grant pulled himself up towards the console. He slammed the lever upwards, and the engines went back to a mere full throttle, cutting off the overdrive mode. The sudden deceleration threw him upwards, and everything went black.

"The screen is fuzzy! No radio! No micro! No IR!" Rachel shouted as soon as she regained clarity. She felt extremely nauseous.

"Look at the fucking visuals then!" Jamaad replied.

"It's going! It's going forwards! Towards the dread!"

Artur howled in triumph. "Fuck me sideways, are we still alive?!"

Jamaad completely lost any semblance of calm. "DISENGAGE! DISENGAGE! PATCH, STEER US THE FUCK AWAY FROM THIS FUCKFEST! KUW! CALL UP VHOKK NOW!"

The ship swung as fast as it safely could.

The relmai was crying, cowering in utter terror and grasping limply at Rachel's sides. As soon as she heard the captain, she hastily selected the Kbyl. "Let me talk!" Jamaad said as he stood up from his seat.

As soon as Vhokk's face appeared on the display, Jamaad began speaking. His voice was uneven.

"Look! We did what you wanted! We helped! That missile has a particle beam pump. It'll wreck that dreadnought. Let us go! If we stay here for any longer we will NOT survive the next few hours!"

Vhokk's segmented lips pulled back in a way no mammalian lips would. "Let's see if it will, first."

"Are you trying to get us killed?! Is this just some kind of trap? We have no cargo or anything of note to salvage. Let us go," Jamaad said.

"Maybe you do. I can't believe you," Vhokk said.

"...we will call you again once the missile blows," the captain shook his head and shut off the feed.

Everyone was too wracked by fear to do anything but watch. Except for Artur, who chuckled to himself and looked wistfully at the blurred screen of the weapons monitor. Finally, the sensors began to recover somewhat. The bright blob heading towards the battle must have been the missile…

In the engineering bay, Temo Sabauri assessed his unconscious friend's situation. His nose bled. There was likely a concussion. He called the medics while remaining to Radd's side, holding him so that a sudden swing of the hull wouldn't send him headfirst into some machinery.

…it flashed. In an immense burst of molten and torn metal, the dreadnought Rkua was split into two tumbling halves as the invisible yet unstoppable lance ripped through its hull…

…yet at the same instant, in a stroke of truly cosmic unluck, a blue-striped corvette exploded, a blip thousand kilometers behind the fallen dreadnought.

"WHAT?!" was the mutual exclamation that shook the air of the command room. Even Artur, who would normally celebrate what was probably the biggest kill of his whole career, sat there slack-jawed.

Nobody there had ever seen this happen over the course of their career. In fact, they were fairly sure anything like this had never happened in the history of deep-space combat. A loose railgun shell, macron cloud, or even a micromissile, during an orbital battle where ranges were lower and there was far less room to maneuver, sure, those incidents were the stuff of base-side stories. But a singular particle beam, away from any notable celestial bodies? The chance was far, far lower than one in a million. And yet it happened.

They watched the expanding debris in stunned silence, interrupted only by the modulations of the now-sputtering drive and the zaps of point-defense doing its job. Nobody knew what would happen now.

"Vhokk is calling us. Again," Kuw mumbled.

The captain shoved her aside and answered it. He tried his best to calm himself down, in order to diplomatically resolve this ridiculous misunderstanding.

Some kind of draped red mask covered the face, and only the face, of the akyzh captain, leaving only three eye-holes.

"You have failed our request."

Jamaad was livid. "ARE YOU SHITTING ME? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, FAILED YOUR REQUEST?! WE BLEW UP THE BIGGEST THREAT IN THE ENGAGEMENT!"

"Yet you have taken a hostile action against our Collective," Vhokk hissed.

"Are you fucked in the head or is your whole… do you… do you think we lined up this shot to blow up a random corvette on the other end of the swarm for no reason? If we wanted to betray you for I-don't-know-what, then we would have targeted you with the missile."

"We cannot trust non-sharers, non-feelers. Without proof that you couldn't have done this to betray us, we will treat it as a hostile action. We cannot trust non-sharers, non-feelers," Vhokk's grin became visible through the red velvet. "Prepare for your death, Terrans."

Jamaad facepalmed, with both hands. "If you wanted to backstab us in the first place, say it. No need for this stupid charade. This is just cruel…"

Vhokk chuckled. Or perhaps squeaked. The call shut off. Jamaad just looked down. He should not have trusted them. They should have just high-tailed as soon as Vhokk made their demand. Then there may have been a chance of avoiding the consequences. Now there was none.

"Ten small missiles heading our way!" Rachel said, her voice and eyes weary. "We're… fucked. Is there enough time for Elektra to baptize me befo–"

Kuw squinted at the screen. "Look! They mooove so slow."

"Really slower than us now?" Rachel couldn't believe the sensors at this point. She was ready to die, and it was hard to shake off that feeling of doom.

"Well, not quite, but bareeely faster."

Jamaad sprinted back towards his chair. "Patch! Overdrive! Again! I know this will fuck our engines from overheating, but we have to try. Put some distance."

Rachel shook her head in disbelief. "But Vhokk said their missiles are faster than us?"

"Vhokk is a fucking liar," Jamaad said.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Artur snorted. "I don't think any word he said is even true."

Meanwhile, in the officers' bunk room, Elektra simply hid under the bedsheets. Of course, she prayed… or tried to, despite the stuttering and involuntary whimpering. Thoughts raced in her head, while fear for both herself and her friends and coworkers sent her heart into a cascade of pounding. She calmed a bit once the ship began disengaging, however. But while the overdrive had just turned off, Elektra decided to take no chances trying to get to the command room: the empath trusted the other five to not mess everything up, and as she had a creeping feeling that it would turn on again soon, she did not feel like potentially needing to put the proverb of 'physician, heal thyself' into action. She did see a notice that Denisov was carrying the concussed engineer to the medbay by himself. A brave man.

The battle gradually distanced from view as the afterburners kicked in– right as the wounded man was delivered to the cot. Even the missile swarm fell behind. These were clearly short-range missiles, less meant for chases and more meant for close engagements.

Yet, they were joined by another. A much larger one, with a cigar-shaped hull and a bulging warhead. It accelerated even faster, and was poised to catch up with the ship, even despite the speed boost. And said boost was impossible to sustain for long enough to evade it; while the short-range missiles would have run out of fuel before the overdrive was over, this missile appeared to possess a low-grade torch drive of its own. Simply fleeing couldn't have done it. But surely, it would have been moving slowly enough, relative to the Pheidippides, that the defense turrets could have shot it down, or they could have swept it with the exhaust of their engines.

As Rachel elaborated upon all this, of course in a more succinct yet jargon-laden manner, Patch had a realization.

"The large missile is likely some kind of anti-PD bomb, akin to the particle warhead we launched. Waiting for PD response or performing Lingxin maneuver: huge risk."

"Well then, what now?" Rachel said and turned around. Her voice was cracking with nervousness once again.

The console behind her pinged. Another missile was launched… from the ship itself. Artur could be seen grinning.

"What did you do?" Jamaad raised an eyebrow.

"You'll see, sir!"

The captain called up the sensor readings onto his command chair's screen. The uranium-slug missile was heading directly towards the automated pursuer, its control thrusters making minute adjustments every split second. In fact, it seemed to jitter from side to side: a sophisticated protocol meant to stump evasive maneuvers.

Everyone just watched in trepidation as the two radar blips drew closer and closer. And then, both projectiles were vaporized in an immense flash of light.

"It appears that the explosion is thermonuclear," Rachel said. "Looks like the chasing missile had a very strong fissile and fusile load that the impact compressed into being set off. A torch projectile doesn't really need that big of a nuke. So yes, it was a nuke-pumped laser or PB… Artur! You saved us all!"

The wolf-man chuckled. "I wonder what that motherfucker is thinking now."

Rachel zoomed in on a tiny section of the screen. "I cannot pick up any sign of their ship's transponder."

"...are they…?" Jamaad said.

"Most likely."

Artur snorted. "Good riddance."

The next two hours were spent getting to a safe distance while emotionally recovering from the experience of the battle. The overdrive cut off immediately after.

***

"I think we're far enough out to actually assess the damage," Rachel said. "No hostiles anywhere nearby."

Elektra stumbled in through the door. Her already-large eyes were even wider, and her breathing was ragged while her ear-fins were folded back. "I thought we would all die there… what even happened?!"

"Patch can explain to you after this. I won't. I'm tired. I want this clusterfuck of a mission to end already," Rachel said. "In short, we… got attacked. One of our radiators got mangled. We had to flee quickly anyway, which probably damaged the engines even more. Right now it's going to see what exactly went FUBAR," she saluted the robot as it scampered out of the room.

"I'll… check in on Ensign Grant. Stay safe," Elektra followed.

***

Patch's omnidirectional spread of tiny cameras quickly found what it was looking for in the engineering bay, more than the tools which it had already gathered: the ensigns Sabauri and Mo. Though the ship was currently within the boundaries of its regular throttle, the engineers were still hard at work: fixing ruptured pipes, replacing burst capacitors, and rewiring melted cables. A lot of the consoles displayed alarms, and a faint haze of smoke hovered in the room, the light from the lamps visible as trapezoidal beams thanks to the aerosol.

"The two of you must go with me," the robot said, pointing to both. "An eva-based inspection is needed due to the situation…" the robot paused.

"We know what the 'situation' is, chief," Temo said, running his fingers through his beard as he walked over to the eva suit storage units and began donning a hardsuit. "I was waiting for you. I dunno about Mo, he's been replacing all the cracked glass on the screens. I heard the warp drive got hit by the worst of the shrapnel. I guess our luck's ran out since that incident with the glubb-enn."

A chime of approval echoed from the fractal robot's speakers, followed by a few of its limbs curling up. "If Ensign Mo Laren is occupied with this trivial task, I will assume that shipside maintenance is nearly complete. Do not worry about the warp drive, I am sure it is operable."

Sabauri, still unhelmeted, glanced around the room. A spurt of sparks rained from a cut cable in the ceiling. The gray-furred genemod, kneeling in front of a console, did not dodge or even notice them, causing scores of tiny black marks to appear on the back of his jumpsuit. He was unfazed.

"Well, the ship won't explode. That's the most I can say about it," Temo said, and walked up to Mo. "We'll keep flying even with that spiderweb, so go with us," he placed a gloved hand onto the shoulder of his coworker.

Mo sighed, and his tail twitched in annoyance. Nevertheless, he silently suited up, and did so even faster than Sabauri did.

Temo Sabauri mused silently about how much easier it was to move within the ship during acceleration with the suits engaged. His legs had long since grown used to the immense weight of everything, but now all that was in the ship, including himself, seemed as if hollow.

With lightness in their movements, the three exited the main airlock. The adaptive glare-shields on the hardsuits engaged, dimming the triplet suns. Unlike primitive anti-glare mechanisms from centuries prior, this one blotted out only the stars themselves, adjusting their brightness to a tolerable level while leaving everything else as vibrant as if viewed through diamond-nanoglass. And yet, not only did Sabauri instinctively squint, so did Laren. There was something deep-seated in every organic being's brain that urged them to not directly look at anything resembling a star, and neither years of eva experience nor extensive whole-body augmentation could remove that. Likely for the best.

Patch led them to the damaged radiator, their magnetic boots helping them stay attached to the hull during acceleration, helped of course by their grappling hooks. They scaled this artificial metal mountain with ease. The port radiator, located on the same side as the airlock, looked as if someone took a gigantic, jagged knife to it, heating it up first for good measure. The ragged cut was melted in places, and even the pipes near the structurally-intact base were bent out of shape. Fumes, which were perceptible only through the non-visible-light camera modes, still leaked from the cracks and gashes in the capillaries.

"...I think this thing is toast," Sabauri said. "Seriously. Do we even need to waste time inspecting this? We're not fixing it in the field. Even if we had spare sections, and we don't, that rad is totaled. When a medic sees a guy who got cut in half, they don't check his pulse."

Mo looked at him, his annoyance visible via body language, in lieu of a face obscured by a golden plate.

"Understandable. Move on to the other radiator units," Patch chimed.

The fore radiator, meanwhile, was miraculously intact. Nevertheless, the team had to verify that it had no hidden faults. It did not. The starboard radiator was apparently hit by debris, and one of its major pipes was leaking, but that was nothing some welding couldn't fix. The aft radiator was in a similar state, but with many small holes instead of one large one. These were tedious to repair.

But the work was not over yet. Not nearly so. After circling the ship once more, the three engineers rappeled downwards, to the warp module. It felt almost like bungee jumping, in a way. As the team impacted the outer wall of the drive chamber in unison, Sabauri felt thankful for the power of the foot-springs in the hardsuit boots.

The chamber's casing was indeed roughed up, but thankfully the heavy armor restricted the external damage to clusters of dents, with seemingly no breaches. This solid cuboid stood relatively undamaged amid bent and melted girders. And as if by miracle, the ring was completely intact. Said miracle did not apply to the non-airtight entrance door: it was outright missing.

Mo hastily entered the first leg of the warp maintenance corridor by swinging into the empty doorway, rushing ahead of even Patch. The robot was about to stop him when it heard the materials engineer's calm voice over the radio.

"The inner door is heavily damaged. Compromised, in fact. The drive chamber is vented. The crystal is cracked."

Temo Sabauri and Patsch simply hung there on their rappels. The radio channel was now as noisy as a graveyard in the early morning.

"...what now?" Sabauri broke the silence.