“With full shields, yes, but we're down to sixty eight percent and dropping. We're looking at possible hull damage.”
“All guns and missile bays, focus on those torpedoes, ignore everything else!” Alice ordered as she focused the view of the main holographic display on both of the munitions. They each had drones attached and both were being guided back to the Triton from the half way point between it and the enemy carrier. They began to evade, dodging flak, beam and rail cannon fire.
A group of missiles fired from the Triton's underside launchers and to Alice's surprise they all headed towards one of the captured nuclear torpedoes, not both. She glanced to Agameg then back to the main display in time to see one of the torpedoes explode as three of the seeker missiles struck it. One of the fusion torpedoes was destroyed, leaving the other to finish closing the distance between it and the Triton.
“All hands, brace for impact!” Alice announced ship wide. The sounds of the inertial dampener systems powering up in anticipation of the massive explosion was nearly deafening. The main tactical display on the bridge pulled back to show the Triton, its guns still firing at the incoming torpedo while all the other drones fled in every direction at incredible speed.
Many of the crew members closed their eyes in anticipation of the worst, or started to pray, but as the ship shook mildly and systems went down for a second, it became obvious that for the moment, they had survived. All the holographic representations of the absent crew members had disappeared while the systems that projected them reset.
“Damage report!” Alice called out as she held the right side of her head in her hand.
Agameg's systems began to come up first. “We're down eleven turrets, they took too much electromagnetic damage. The main emitter is still charging and is at forty nine percent, it should be completely charged up in twenty three seconds. All other stations are reporting ready so far, but only half the ship is online.”
“Energy shields are down to six percent, gravitational shielding is gone. We're recharging but it's slow,” Laura reported.
“Hangar decks reporting one small fire, other than that they're fine,” reported David Monroe. “No injured.”
“Botanical Garden is fine, life support is good ship wide, the computer core was unaffected and is re-establishing its link with all systems,” reported the operations station at the rear of the bridge.
The bridge returned to normal but to the crew's horror a new wave of drones were on their way from their enemy carrier to join their current assailants, which were already swooping in, firing at the Triton with renewed vigour.
“Finn, get us a wormhole, now!” Alice ordered.
“I increased the charge rate, I'll need Triton stationary in nine seconds,” replied Finn's flickering hologram.
Alice looked to Laura, who was startled at the sight of her. “Shields?”
“Trying to charge up, but they're almost gone. Your eye is bleeding,” she said as she managed the controls.
Alice brought her hand back up to her right eye. She knew there was something wrong already from the stabbing pain that started the instant the fusion torpedo went off, but to see her hand come away covered in blood confirmed that something in the electronics had burned out and done damage to the delicate socket. “I'll live,” she said quietly.
“We are stationary,” Ashley reported.
“Several of the drones are making suicide runs against the shields, two have broken through and impacted our hull,” Agameg reported, trying not to sound alarmed.
“Where? Show me.”
Agameg brought up a second large hologram in the middle of the bridge and focused in on the dorsal section, right between damaged turrets. The two drones had attached themselves to the hull and as they looked on they were joined by three more.
“This is Frost! The little buggers are drillin' inta the hull an' my gunners can't get a shot on 'em.”
“Stephanie, get your people in there!”
“Already on my way with four squads Captain,” Came Stephanie's reply, “If this lift would move faster we'd already be there.”
“Wormhole ready!” announced Finn.
“Open it and just go!” Alice ordered.
The main emitters released all the energy contained within its capacitors and power cells at once, compressing the space in front of it and initiating a firing sequence of smaller energy emitters located across the Triton's hull as it crossed the wormhole threshold and began moving through compressed space.
Ashley brought the engines up to full power gradually, adjusting their mass profile to accommodate for the five unwelcome guests attached to their hull.
The bridge medic was at Alice's side before she could even think about doing anything else and as he drew her hand away from her face his professionalism held, but barely. “The EMP from the nuke must have burned the cybernetics out, I'm sorry Captain.”
“Do what you can,” she said, trying not to cringe as her fears were confirmed. The eye would have to come out.
Uninvited Guests
Stephanie was already on her way to the gunnery deck with fifty six armoured counter-incursion team members. They stood behind her holding their heavy assault rifles across their chests, dispositions ranging from hardened and cool to jittery and nervous. The large express car stopped and the doors opened to a sight that she couldn't believe.
A drone was finishing cutting a hole in the inner layer of the Triton's hull and through its transparent surface she could see the inhuman, featureless metal face and forward arms of whatever kind of machine hid inside its outer armour. Its angled surface looked eager somehow, as though anxiously awaiting its opportunity to get inside and wreak havoc.
You're giving an object personal traits, psyching yourself out, stop it. She mentally chided herself. Stephanie tuned in to the gunnery deck's command channel while leading her people out of the car.
“Armour! Make a circle round these bastards and pound 'em inta the deck before they know what hit 'em. I'll take down the first one, watch how it's done!” Frost ordered. “All unarmoured units clear the deck, we don't want ta be steppin' on ye!”
“Frost! Keep your people back! We don't know what kind of weaponry they have and your loader suits are unarmed,” she argued.
“Keep back lass, we've got this. Go get the one tryin' ta break into the hallway in section nine. It'll hit a main corridor and lord knows what else!” Frost argued as his black and red armoured suit crouched, waiting for the invader to break through the hull.
“There are six teams on that incursion, we can take care of the gunnery deck!”
“This is my deck lass, watch how it's done.”
Stephanie shook her head in irritation as her men and woman took formation all around her, spreading out one meter apart at the shoulder to maximise their firepower. “Alpha, beta teams, take the other end of the deck. Watch out for falling loader suits,” she ordered.
“Theta and delta teams, with me, we're taking the next incursion point, let Frost play with his new friend,” she ordered as she broke into a dead run across the deck towards the hole forming over thirty meters away from Frost. She couldn't help but bring up a secondary display on her visor and focusing in on the scene behind her.
The three quarter meter wide plate cut from the inside of the hull fell to the deck with a violent crash, it would have been a colossal sound if there were an atmosphere to hear it through, and long metal arms stretched out from the drone pod as the machination inside pulled itself inside. Frost picked up a full flak magazine and his armoured suit leapt up, swatting the intruder so hard that one of its arms was awkwardly bent out of shape.
As Frost's heavily armoured feet touched the deck the rest of the intruding machine fell out of its small hole. It poured out like a silver stream of struts and oval segments, landing and turning towards Frost. The edges of several plates across its front glowed blue and violet as though the insect like machine was just coming to life, and as its arms began to unfurl as though in preparation for a grand melee plasma blades across its arms and body lit up, jagged fingers clicked and scraped together.