“It's not your fault, it's amazing that you got away at all,” Alice said as they stepped into the lift. It shuttled them up then towards the front of the Command Deck.
Agameg Price saw the hologram of Alice Valent appear right where he was sitting in the Captain's chair and moved to his tactical station. It immediately started giving orders. “Flight Deck, do we have any fighters on long range recon?”
David Monroe, the night watch for the Flight Deck didn't look up from the central station beneath the bridge as he replied; “We have a Uriel thirty one minutes out manned by Scrubber and Hardcore. Assigned to medium range recon, still no word from Hitman.”
“Don't worry about Hitman, he's on long range retrieval. Recall all fighters and secure the hangars for faster than light. Helm, plot a course to intercept Scrubber and Hardcore's next scheduled wormhole exit point. We're going to pick them up before we go on mission.” Alice's hologram turned towards Agameg. “Tactical, how many torpedo stations do you have ready?”
“Five, the rest of the crews report that they're on their way to stations. What about cloaking?”
“We have a bare section of hull from the work being done on the main emitters, it'll stick out like a sore thumb. What about our gunnery posts?”
“Can't find Frost, but his second is already on the gunnery deck and emergency decompression is underway. Readiness estimate stands at forty nine seconds.”
“What do you mean you can't find Frost?” Alice asked, exasperated.
“His locator isn't coming up. It's like his personal command unit is powered down.”
“Anything on the bio trackers?”
“Nothing, but they're only active on sixty three percent of the ship, he could be in one of the dead sections.”
“Contact Stephanie, have someone from security on it. Until then, tell the torpedo and gunnery teams that anyone not in their seat and ready in the next ninety seconds gets left at the next port. How long until the first drones are in firing range?”
“They're launching and holding station around their carriers, but if they started moving now they would be on us in under two minutes.” Agameg replied.
“I have eight fighters ready to launch and six on their way into our gravnet about to be picked up. We could scramble them and try to buy some time,” interjected David.
“Not going to happen. My tactical screen shows there are over three hundred drones out there, each with a quarter the firepower as one of our fighters and three times the armour. We'd be murdering our own pilots with those numbers. The order to recall stands.”
“Aye, Ma'am,” replied David passively. He was a cool headed young pilot with more experience than most on the ship, Paula had recommended him as the night shift watch for the Flight Deck, and he accepted it even though he quietly made it known that he'd rather be out in a fighter himself. His call sign was Diver.
The large, heavily armoured split oval doors leading onto the main bridge parted just enough to allow Alice and Ashley through. They walked straight to their seats. Alice's holographic representation disappeared, while Ashley's holographic representation of the controls hovering in front of her faded the moment she replaced the nafalli night pilot, who took a seat beside the communications station, just in case she was needed later.
The main holographic display on the bridge appeared in front of everyone and Alice closed her eyes. Everyone had seen it happen in simulations, where she looked at the status of the Triton through that electronic eye and saw more information at once than most could stand. “Laura, how are our shields?”
She was just arriving on the bridge then, and the main doors closed, the sound of them pressing together and sealing filled the compartment. Laura stopped to stand at field control as the hologram above her wrist faded. “Refractive and energy shielding are up and at full, gravitational shielding will be up in six seconds.”
“Thank you, Liam, how much power do we have for a wormhole?”
Liam and Finn appeared at the engineering stations on the bridge, even though they were actually standing at two completely different sections of the ship. “Power isn't the problem, it's the main emitter's capacity that you should worry about,” his hologram relayed from the main engineering control centre.
“Finn here. As the Chief was saying; some of the fine circuitry we installed to work on the main emitter array is just a quick fix. It's not actually made to take a heavy power load, it's more for testing while we try to rebuild the system. I can't say it'll even work, it's not supposed to,” Finn reported from the emitter control room several decks beneath them.
“Helm, complete your plotted course with a wormhole set to fifteen point five compression. That should get us to our fighters in about ten minutes.”
“Nine point two one minutes,” confirmed navigation. “good estimate, Captain.”
“Ma'am? The drones are coming,” Agameg announced, looking up from his station to the main hologram where on one end the Triton was represented along with the last fighter being drawn into its underbelly by an energy field and on the other end three Eden carriers drifted lazily in space, their hundreds of fighter drones starting to make their way across.
“All rail cannon batteries, fire explosive flak rounds, switch to solid core rounds once those drones are within one point five kilometres. Torpedo stations, load fusion munition five and fire at will at those carriers.”
“Each torpedo bay will only have one shot using that ammunition,” Agameg advised.
“Don't worry, they'll either turn and run or be destroyed after that volley,” Alice replied.
The Triton came to life, filling the space between it and the enemy carriers with flak rounds that exploded in front of and amidst the hundreds of sleek, silver fighter drones. The lower deck defence guns, beam turrets and torpedoes began launching from armoured tubes lined up along the front and sides of the ship as well.
The bridge crew that had time to look at the main holographic display saw dozens of drones blown to pieces or shredded by a churning wave of fragmented flack fire, while the majority of the enemy ships pressed on. It took them only seconds to cross the gap between the carriers and as soon as they were in firing range they split up. The broad wave of fighters became a scurrying mass that surrounded the Triton in the blink of an eye.
“The drones are trying to drain our energy shields with particle weapons. We're down to ninety three percent,” Laura reported. “We need to divert more power.”
“We're on it,” reported Chief Grady.
“Chief Vercelli reports hangars are secure, pilots are aboard,” relayed the Flight Deck officer.
“Charging up our main emitters, we've already lost one power circuit, I was able to re-route, but I won't be able to do it again,” Finn reported. “This is a bad idea. If we shut down the emitters now we could save some of the temporary components and rebuild.”
“How long until we have a wormhole?” Alice asked, ignoring Finn's objections.
“Three minutes at fifteen point five compression.”
“Do better.”
“I don't want to burn the systems out, we don't have any replacement parts.”
“Do what you have to, just get us out of here,” Alice ordered.
“Ma'am, all but two of our munition five torpedoes have been destroyed by beam weapons. The pair that haven't been destroyed are slowing down,” Agameg informed.
“Slowing down?” Alice asked as she opened her eyes. She used her command console to take control of the main holographic display and zoom in on one of the fusion torpedoes. There were two drones attached to it. “Detonate them!”
“I can't, they've been hacked.”
The propulsion system on the torpedo flared out and the drones turned the fusion weapon around.
“That's coming for us, can we take two direct hits?”