Seraph’s Gambit- Episode 52
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Olivia
“I am preparing to complete the connection between the Hack and the FTL,” Vlasa’s voice echoed in Olivia’s ear.
Involuntarily, her leg
“Everyone ready?” Ariana asked.
“Sickbay
“
“Shields powered and holding steady,” Squee declared.
Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Olivia said, “Helm ready.”
“Weapons are powered and ready,” Ariana finished. “Okay, Vlasa, let’s go.”
Olivia squeezed her eyes shut and focused on her leg. She could solve this problem. She had to solve it. With her leg shaking, her whole body trembled. That would make precision maneuvering difficult. She wasn’t going to let some damn AI blow her ship away because of something as stupid as that.
“Jump complete.”
Snapping her eyes, open Olivia prepared to fly the ship. She was ready to go down in legends as the best pilot in the galaxy. Single-handedly saving the ship from being ripped to shreds. Instead, her hands froze.
“There’s the command ship. It’s turning to bring its weapons to bear.” Ariana commented.
“We’re out of Porter range,” Noah said.
The trembling returned to Olivia’s leg, but this time it included her hands. She couldn’t do this. How could she fly with shaking hands? She would get them all killed. How could they trust her with this? How could they put this on her shoulders? It wasn’t fair. She was just a kid.
“Olivia.” Ariana’s voice came into her ear. It was measured and soothing. “It’s time to get to work. You can do this.”
Olivia just shook her head. No, no she couldn’t do this.
“It’s time to move. You can do this.”
Why didn’t Ariana get it? She couldn’t do it. If she could do it, she would have already. She should quit wasting her time and get someone else up to the helm.
“Fire the port thrusters. Your left thumb trigger.”
Without really thinking about it, Olivia obliged. Her thumb depressed the thruster control, and the ship started moving to starboard on a perpendicular course to the now approaching LFD command ship. As Seraph drifted, the first test shot from the command ship flew through the space they had just occupied.
Those damn drone lovers were firing on her, Olivia thought. Fuck them. She threw the throttle forward, and Seraph blasted ahead. The next barrage from the command ship slipped through space behind them. Olivia laughed.
Three missiles rocketed out from the command ship. Instead of banking away, Olivia brought Seraph to maximum acceleration. The gap between them and the missiles decreased rapidly, but at a mere fraction of the speed of the energy pulses. The missiles suddenly fired their retro thrusters, trying to kill their kinetic energy enough to slip through Seraph’s shield before detonating.
Redlining the engines, Olivia felt herself being squeezed back into her seat. The artificial gravity field couldn’t compensate for the acceleration enough. Red spots started to appear around her vision. She wanted to yell in defiance, but the pressure on her lungs made it hard to even breath.
Almost as soon as it had started, it ended. Seraph flew right through the middle of the missiles as they desperately tried to slow down. Their proximity sensors would trigger the detonators as soon as they detected the ship, but before they detonated, the three missiles collided with the shields and vaporized. Instead of the missiles matching speed and slipping through the shields, Seraph had rammed them.
“Noah!” Olivia yelled once she could breath normally again. “Take out those damn missiles first!”
“Yeah, no worries kid. I don’t want to go through that again,” Noah said, his voice strained. “Sending over the first Rokma team now.”
A few seconds later, the voice of one of the Rokma said, “We are in the missile control room engaging the enemy.”
As Seraph rocketed past the command ship, several energy pulses struck them, too close for Olivia to dodge. In weapons control, Ariana returned fire from both of the ship’s energy cannons. All five blasts landed with all but the last casually absorbed by the big ship’s shields. In only fractions of a second, the two ships were past each other, flying in opposite directions.
Olivia rotated the ship, and again fired the main engines. She decelerated as fast as she could without overtaxing the gravity field. Only a slight pressure pushed her against her seat, enough to be uncomfortable, but not enough to interfere with her control.
“Shields down from the last ion blast,” Squee said. “I am attempting Vlasa’s bypass trick. Shields restored to level one. Residual ion energy dissipating. Full power in twenty seconds.”
The big command ship started to rotate to again bring its guns to bear. Olivia fired the thrusters to put them in orbit around the command ship. There was no way they would be able to gain enough speed to keep ahead of the command ship’s rotation, but it did give them an extra few seconds before a dense energy beam lanced out through the space between them.
Moving at the speed of light, the energy beam was impossible for Olivia to dodge. It struck them and cut a swath across the entire ship. Fortunately, Squee’s trick had worked, and the shields harmlessly deflected the beam. Had the ion pulse still had them defenseless, the beam might have opened half the ship to space.
“Porter is just about recharged.” Noah said, “Still want the next group going to the shields? Eventually, that beam is going to find us without shields.”
“Yes, Noah. If we can disable or even just damage their shields, I can destroy the beam emitter with our weapons. Right now we can’t make a dent.”
“Okay, porting them over. We’re loading the special delivery next.”
Olivia continued Seraph’s acceleration, staying relatively close to the command ship. She dodged incoming energy blasts as best she could, but at this range, she couldn’t avoid them all. Several pulses hit their shields and a few even penetrated. But they were too close for the missiles to engage them and she was able to stay out of the beams line of fire.
“Hull breach.” Vlasa said, “Crew quarters. Sealing that section.”
Even though the cycle times between the teleporter were objectively not very long, to Olivia, it felt like an eternity before Noah once again announced, “We’re ready. Incoming special delivery!”
A few tense seconds later, the grave voice of a Rokma spoke, almost sounding giddy, “Package received. Firebomb worked. Shield room is now on fire.”
“As is missile control.” The other team said.
“That’s our queue, Squee. Get down here.” Noah said
“On my way.”
“The defenders are fleeing from the fire. Beginning shield power down.”
As Olivia watched, the shield strength from the command ship started to weaken. Despite the Rokma’s control of their shield room, shutting down their shields quickly was not possible. The system was designed to give a crew time should anyone gain control. But between the fire and the Rokma causing additional destruction, the shields would eventually fail.
Ariana timed her response to coincide with Olivia bringing Seraph in direct line with the beam weapon. All five of Seraph’s energy bolts connected. Only the first two were dissipated by the weakened shields, allowing the remaining three to strike the beam emitter. They melted the metal housing and focusing crystal, rendering the beam inoperable.
With the beam taken care of, Olivia accelerated away, gaining some distance from the command ship. Dodging the remaining ion and energy blasts suddenly became much simpler with the added distance and time between shots. She started to feel confidence growing.
“Teleporter alarm!” Vlasa shouted, “We have boarding drones in engineering!”
Continue to Episode 53
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