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Chapter 6:

"How long before the Brykar leave this planet's orbit?" The Oyati captain demanded.

"A minute and 42 seconds," The navigator answered instantly. "Then we leave the orbit in 3 minutes and 11 seconds. That means the Brykar ship will have a lead of 1 minute and 29 seconds."

The captain just grunted. A minute and a half more to get you back on my radar, then a 3-minute battle, after that you're mine.

Meanwhile, Anji's fingers danced furiously in his own console as she set up and customized the new parameters for the magnetic thrusters. She was just glad that in this moment of crisis her brain is able to calculate the seemingly impossible math behind the physics she was planning to do.

This is a bad idea, Anji thought fearfully.

"I believe that this a bad idea," the voice said.

"Shut up and just apply the new command parameters I am sending you to our flight plan."

"Understood."

"I need you to double check the new source program I just created and in particular, check my calculation for the dampeners."

"I don't need to invest a sizable amount of my computation power to conclude that your calculation is completely inaccurate."

"How inaccurate?" Demanded Anji.

"The maximum energy output I can transfer to the dampeners barely covers 30 percent of your overall requirements."

Anji smiled coldly. "Good enough," She said to herself. Before the listening AI could ask the human girl to repeat herself, Anji snapped another order to the AI. "I need you to activate the probes in your compartment and bring them here in the bridge."

"I do not understand the nature of your command," Said the AI.

"Just do it!"

Without any other thought, The AI sent the activation command to the probes with lesser AI in its belly. The structure of all Brykar ship is made up mostly of nanites and except for the position of the main engine and thrusters behind the ship, all other places in the ship can be customized and arranged as the AI see fit. This gave the Brykar ships versatility and a way to immediately repair damages by simply replacing damage nanites and reforming themselves into the appropriate matter. The AI known as Command One began to create a corridor for the newly awakened probes to move and to have access to the bridge and to the precious human.

Anji smiled even wider when he noticed the two floating ball of nanites with a single eye in the middle. Anji recognized the design as the same one that scooped her up from the first alien ship. "Which one of you is the charming young probe that rescued me from the clutches of evil aliens?" Anji said, smiling.

One of the probes bobbed in the air and chirped, "I believe that will be me, Drone 51582. I await your command, Command Alpha."

Without any more time to spare, Anji told the probe exactly what she wanted to do in a clear and concise way with no room for interpretation. When she is satisfied that the probes knew their part, She went back to the console and double check her program.

Suddenly, The ship AI gave its update, "Command One is about to break orbit in ten seconds."

"Go to your positions gentlemen!" Anji said as she strapped herself again to the just repaired mechanical arm in the middle the command bridge.

The two probes went to the opposite side of the ship and faced Anji. Only then did a yellow cone of light showered down on Anji and held her in place. The probes beep simultaneously and they too poured the same blue light that held Anji before, until the woman was covered by a protective shield on three different places.

"3...2...1... Engaged!"

***

"The Brykar ship is escaping orbit and is going to maximum power!" The Navigator of the Oyati pirate Destroyer announced to every one of his crew.

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"Go after them!" said the captain. Every one of the crew can taste the fluid excreting from the captain that gave away the captains fear and excitement. One or two of the crew showed their row of teeth that showed their contempt of the captain's lack of personal discipline.

"Patience, in a minute and 12 seconds more, we will be out of our own orbit," The navigator said, his eyes remained focus on his instrument, but he too can taste the glands of excitement oozing out of him. Just a little more, and you will be in my missile envelope once more, he thought

***

The Brykar ship tore through space slightly below the speed of light but Anji's full attention is on her console as a timer click the seconds down. She gave herself exactly 12 seconds, then ordered the AI to cut the engine.

Out in space, there is nothing to actually stop something that is already moving. theoretically, if you throw something in space and barring that it hit any heavenly bodies or get entangled by its gravity, that thing will continue to move forever and ever. So in order to stop something that is moving in space, you need to apply force on the opposite side where the object is moving.

A ship that is moving at high speed will, therefore, need a thruster at the opposite side of the ship's movement in order to stop it, but when a ship is moving just under lightspeed, then the thrusters need a tremendous amount of force to stop the moving ship, or you can apply a constant amount of forced and let time do the rest to stop it. This is how every starship in the known universe is designed simply because any starship moving at a sublight speed that suddenly stop, will have its carbon-based life-form piloting the ship to splatter itself on the side of the ship's bulkhead if he tries to make a sudden stop.

When Brykar ship known as Command One, reach a specific time, it activated a preprogrammed maneuver wherein thrusters below its front nozzle and on top of its main thruster behind the ship, both suddenly ignited a second after the main engine deactivated. While still moving forward, the Ship flips over and for a just for a few seconds, it was actually moving backward. Then the main thrusters reignited.

This is where the danger to the primary occupant happens, since the ship is moving "only" several thousand faster than the speed of sound, a fragile human can still be splattered by the inertia alone. That is when the full force of the ship's inertial dampener activated directly at Anji's location, simultaneously the blue shield from the drones increases in intensity to keep Anji in place.

Even then, Anji felt like laying in bed while a half dozen Sumo wrestlers were on top of her. She gritted her teeth despite the fact that she couldn't breathe. It felt like every cell in her body was being pressured in one direction. She lost count how many times she blackout, and she thank the AI for having the presence of mind to preprogram her nanites inside her body to forced circulation of both air and blood into her entire being, especially her brain, and so everytime she blackout, she wakes up a split second later.

The ship moving backward gradually slowed down then stopped completely and then began moving again, first very slowly then faster and faster. Eventually, both the gravity and inertia inside the ship stabilize and Anji found that she can breathe again, and she took a long gasped of air.

"Are you alright, Command Alpha?" said the AI.

"Forget about me," Anji snarled at her companion. "Activate your damn weapons! Now!"

"All weapons activated."

***

"The fleet will disengage from orbit in 10 seconds!" The Navigator said.

The captain bared his teeth in the main console. Finally. "I want you to refresh the scanner the moment we are out of orbit. I want to see that Brykar ship as soon as possible!"

"Already done, captain," said the clipped voice of the navigator.

"Good," The captain said with pleasure.

"In 3...2...1... Activate scanners! Full power to the engine!"

"Where is-"

The Oyati manning the scanner suddenly screamed," Captain! We are on a collision course with the Brykar ship!"

Red alert sirens blared across the bridge while the captain stared in disbelief towards the main screen showing the Brykar ship charging right at them.

"All ships, break formation and spread out!" Screamed the navigator.

***

"Surprise, motherfuckers..." Anji said under her breath, as she watched from the screen as the pirate ships scattered. But it was too late.

"All pirate ships are locked on and my weapons are hot."

Anji closed her eyes for a second, then opened it again. Her eyes glinted in steely hard coldness. "... Give them hell." She said.

The AI didn't need any other prompting. Four missile tubes began spitting four bluefire missiles every second and in 36 seconds it was able to fire almost two hundred of the deadly bluefire missiles towards the pirate ships. The autocannons are already spinning even before they fire and they eagerly added more metals bracketing space. And most important at all, the pirate ship is now within range of the multipurpose Jackal2 Ion cannon.

The cannon sat directly in front of the ship with a stealthy box-like design. A row of red lights from the base of the cannon to the edge of its muzzle started to lit up as a massive hum vibrated the weapon. Once the light reach the end of the cannon, a burst of highly pressurized hybrid of solid matter and heated energy screamed out of the cannon and hit a maneuvering frigate 2.4 million miles away. The Ball of semi-energy projectile smashed both into the shield and armor of the pirate ship like it was nothing. Then it burst out at the other end. At first, nothing seems to happen, but the frigate ship suddenly exploded, adding its radiation into the cosmos.

Pirate corvettes maneuvered like crazy all around the area while missiles hounded them. The small crafts were faster and highly maneuverable, but the Bluefire missiles tracking them were designed to fight missiles and there are no pilots inside to hamper its High G maneuvers. It is like Pavarotti and Usain Bolt running away from a pack of velociraptors. The only difference was that the fat guy gets eaten ten seconds earlier. One after the other, corvettes and fighter ships bloomed the dark emptiness of space as the missiles smacked right into them again and again.

Another Frigate received a massive blow from the Ion cannon, cutting it in half. One part blew up spectacularly, while the other part simply stumbled around space, completely dead in the water.

The ion cannon can only fire every six seconds, that is why Anji ordered the AI to switched to cannon when the destroyer went pass then barely 700 KMs away. The Destroyer was already hit once by the Ion cannon and leaking gasses everywhere, also have the same idea. 8 Railgun cannons from the destroyer and 5 from the Brykar ship exchange fire almost at point blank range. Both sides raked the exposed part of their enemy's flank pouring metal upon metal into protective armor.

Anji screamed as a console to her left burst inside the bridge and rained shrapnel all around her, luckily, the blue drone shield inside the bridge saved her.

After the exchange, both starships lose all their autoguns on that side of their ship, but the Brykar ship followed a direct instruction from Anji and performed a barrel roll until it showed its belly- where 4 more Autocannons are placed and started firing again at the Pirate Destroyer. Bullets the size of a Coca-cola 2 litter plastic bottle buried itself by the thousands at the destroyer's flank.

And then the Ion cannon was ready again and another burst of the powerful gun signaled the end of the pirate destroyer as it exploded in a mini supernova.

Twelve minutes later, when the Brykar ship left the miserable star system after its void engine was finally recharged, 16 pirate ships lay in ruin and is now orbiting the unnamed Gas giant.