Anaxandros slammed his fist down on the side of the unit. The main display showed the enemy ships had already closed half the distance to them.
“What the hell is going on? Why are we still here?”
“Gravity well, they have an interdictor in their fleet,” called out one of the officers. He couldn’t see who it was, and right now he didn’t care.
“Secondary engines, evasive action! Get us away from the well…now!” he barked.
The conventional engines kicked in and pushed the ship forward at high speed. Compared to the movement of the ships in orbit, they were moving quickly. But in the vast distances of deep space, it would take millennia for them to reach even the nearest star at this speed. The enemy warships didn’t need to catch them, they just needed to line themselves up to use their forward weapons. Anaxandros watched in dread as two purple beams appeared from the front of both ships. They were powerful cutters and hit the Odysseus before they could take evasive action. The first struck aft and smashed into the engines. The shields absorbed over half of the energy, but it still wasn’t enough. One engine was cut completely off, and a dozen pipes and feed rods sheared off to leave a series of gashes in the hull. The second beam missed but then arced across to hack through the same section.
Anaxandros flew across the deck and crashed into the line of chairs and displays being used by the rest of the officers. Explosions wracked through the interior, and one explosion ripped out a chunk of the ceiling. Exposed pipes and cabling dropped down to strike one of the officers. Anaxandros lifted himself and turned back to see the carnage aboard his ship.
“Return fire, evasive action!” he called.
But it wasn’t necessary. The gunners were already working away, all of them working as a team to fire salvoes of plasma at the approaching ships. Multiple hits were scored, but their shields deflected most of them. One of them must have struck part of the manoeuvring system, as one of the two ships pulled away from the chase and started to spin uncontrollably. It wouldn’t stop her, but it would keep her out of the chase, at least for a few more minutes.
Ka’Veras left his post for a brief moment and helped Anaxandros to his seat. He then brought up the tactical operations display and continued sending specific orders to the gunners and engineering, while conferring with Dekarchos Ezekiel. Anaxandros might be in charge of the ship, but it was the role of the kybernetes to pass the orders of the commander through to the relevant parts of the ship. It took just seconds for him to seal the breached sections of the ship, increase their speed and direct their gunners against the single remaining pursuer.
“Good work. News on the FTL drive?” asked Dekarchos Ezekiel.
“Another three minutes until we are out of range of the gravity well.”
Another beam flashed nearby, but the helmsman expertly avoided it with a spin of the ship across its length. It was a flashy manoeuvre and avoided the impact by a matter of just a few metres. Three flashes appeared in front of them, and only the skills of the crew enabled them to avoid smashing into the path of three more warships. These were even larger than the ship that was pursuing them.
“Sir, signal from the new ships. It is their commander. They wish to discuss our surrender,” said Auletes Sarjek.
Anaxandros shook his head.
“Jam them, put all reserve power into the shields. We have to get through!”
The warships unleashed a torrent of plasma fire, sending hundreds of superheated projectiles hurtling towards the small ship. Even the skill of the crew couldn’t withstand the ferocity of the bombardment. Multiple strikes to the centre section of the ship severed the fuel cells and started a number of massive fires. Alarms announced the critical damage, and emergency crew ran about, each trying to minimise the damage caused. Anaxandros watched the destruction and knew it was over. They were a scout and not a warship, and they were already outnumbered. They were never going to make it out of here. He just had one last job to do.
“Get me through to Clearchus and the Armada, quickly! Before it’s too late!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Laconian Titan LLS Valediction, Tarsus Assembly Point
Cyrus, the tall and enigmatic half-brother of the Emperor watched the fleet review with a mixture of excitement and pride. It had taken many months of subterfuge and cunning to bring together so many people from such diverse parts of the human domains. From his position on board the Laconian flagship, he had the perfect few of his Armada. The Tarsus system was the last area of neutral space between the worlds of the humans and his own race. Just a short distance from there were the feral borderlands, occupied by a mixture of humans, Mulacs and a myriad of other races. For the last two hundred years, this area had become one of the most important bridges between the empires of the humans and the greatest power in the region, the Median Empire. The two great civilisations had moved into the same territory at the same time, with bloody consequences. In total, the Terran worlds contained only a fraction of the planets and inhabitants of the Empire, yet they flourished when they should have been consumed centuries earlier.
The interior of LLS Valediction was unlike any of the other heavy warships in the fleet. A Titan was something out of the ordinary as it was, but this vessel was even more unusual. Valediction was the oldest of the Titans, and the most famous ship in the Laconian fleet. She had been present at the great battle of Sala when the combined Terran fleets had smashed the invasion force sent by the Median Empire. It was an epic battle of which scores of poems, songs and plays had been constructed to celebrate the achievements of humanity. With hundreds of decks, many corridors and untold rooms, the ship was more a society in space as opposed to an actual vessel of war. Cyrus has listened with interest days before when a human, an old engineer from the supply fleet, had explained to him about the Titan. He had said that to Terrans, the Titans were mobile colonies, more a marching polis than a ship of war. Each Titan contained enough citizens, warriors and supplies to operate for years. They were fully self-sufficient and could function in deep space without even an escort.
What I would give for my own fleet of these behemoths, he wished.
The command deck was wide and large enough to house a hundred officers. Banks of computer displays ran in columns, each one attached to the ribbed inner skin of the ship. What really made this ship special was its large-scale virtual observation system. The entire inner surface of the deck was controlled at a molecular level to give it the characteristics of a flawless three-dimensional video display. Standing on the deck was like flying through space, with the full ability to see outside of the ship, past the armour and into space itself. It was as if only the command deck itself existed, and there was no more to the ship. Lesser versions of the technology were used on frigates and cruisers but nothing on such a grand scale. Dozens of officers moved about, some checking the scanners, others leading security patrols throughout the ship.
Cyrus watched the scores of Laconian military personnel and smiled inwardly.
So many warriors, all so dedicated to a cause they don’t even know yet.
He looked to the inner skin of the command deck and noted the positions of the many ships, great hulks of Titans, long and slender cruisers plus the small but deadly wings of destroyers. In a much larger formation above the Armada was his own fleet of Imperial ships. Unlike the rough, angry looking shapes of the human ships, the ships of the Median Empire were small, sleek and looked incredibly fragile. What they lacked in brute strength, they more than made up for in sheer numbers. Each vessel was crewed by contingents of completely loyal automatons, the artificially created slaves used throughout the Empire. Cyrus thought of them pale and weak compared to humanity; but they could drown the human colonies in numbers they couldn’t imagine.