"Captain, we've got atmosphere venting from decks three hundred and twelve to six hundred and fifty-three." Joshua told Captain Prey as he passed his fighter over the damaged portion of the nest.
"I am aware of that, officer. The hit was taken in the uninhabited portion of the ship and damage control has already sealed off that section from the rest of the ship. Repair drones have been dispatched to effect repairs. Just get your men back aboard. Those two alien cruisers may be in pursuit."
"Rodger that sir." Joshua but his fighter into a high degree turn into the landing pattern and took his hands off the controls.
At close to ten times the speed of sound, Joshua's fighter controls were taken by Central. With computer precision, it maneuvered the craft in through the atmospheric shield and into the vast hangar bay. Almost six hundred acres in size, the single hanger bay into which he flew was bigger by far than any hanger, any vessel built by man. The first time he'd seen one, his eyes couldn't take in the vastness of the space. From one side to the other was a distance almost too wide for the human eye to see. People standing on one side were visible as nothing but tiny dots standing on a huge steel expanse, and this was only one hanger within a craft that sported over seven hundred of them.
Touching down in seconds, Joshua disengaged his suit from the fighter's systems and lept out of the craft's cockpit. His canopy went flying into the ceiling, but he was out of the hanger before it hit the floor. He was needed in damage control.
"Captain, I have two warp signatures closing on our position. One will be here in five minutes, seventeen seconds, the other four minutes behind that." Centrals calm voice sounded throughout the bridge.
"Can you give us a reentry point for the first of them?" Captain Prey asked.
"To within a few degrees, yes. Anything more than that, I can not guaranty."
"That will have to do. Mr Jenkins, once Central has those coordinates, lock the main starboard cannons on them and prepare to fire."
"Aye, Sir."
The nest floated in the vastness of interstellar space.
A nebula off to starboard painted space the color of blood. Then off in that same direction, space itself distorted, rippling outward in a series of concentric waves. In an instant, where nothing had been before, the Rougarian fleet carrier Salmez now floated.
The carrier's captain, though one of the most experienced in their fleet, had made a fatal error. In the rush of battle, seeing what he took as a crippling hit on his enemy, he had not waited before jumping after his foe. Prier battles had long ago shown that one should never, ever jump blindly after an enemy until you could determine what condition they were in. Even then, any jump should be made far enough away from their position as to make a surprise attack out of the question. The kind of attack he had just blundered into.
Any capital ship moving into the slip stream that is jump space has to drop its shields to funnel that power into the engineering spaces. The consequences are that when it exits, those same shields had to be recharged, which could take as many as thirty minutes. When the Salmez exited into real space, it was a cold target. None of its defensive systems were operational, neither were its cannons ready to fire. So when the nest began its cannonade, the Rougarian carrier had no way to fight back.
"Fire!" At the Captain's order, seven huge energy rounds shot from equally immense barrels.
The first three were wide of their target, sailing high and wide of the target. The next four found their target, carving large hunks off the enemy vessel. With its shields down, the huge craft, even if less than half the nest's size, took frightful damage from just the first four shots. The next salvo was concentrated in one area. The first three shots tore the armor from the hull, allowing the next four to tear deep into the hull.
With two types of shots to choose from, the gunnery officer choose armor piercing for the first two salvos. These energy rounds were compressed, super dense plasma bolts designed to penetrate through armor plate. For the third salvo, gunnery imputed the command to have Central switch to energy high explosive rounds. These would explode on contact, transmitting their power forward, as well as in a sphere around the explosion zone.
All seven high explosive rounds hit the target, five hit the hull, exploding in bright flashes against armor. The last two passed through the hole that had been punched through the armor and exploded deep within the armored box of the immense vessel.
Lights that had just been flickering to life blinked off across the entire ship. Then an explosion burped a gout of flame from the aft part of the vessel. Another blew a huge section from the starboard side amidships. Smoke and flames poured out of the rents in the hull, leaving it quacking from internal explosions and fire. The tremors grew to a full vessel vibration until a series of detonations, starting aft, worked their way forward until an eruption of unprecedented magnitude split the ship into three pieces. Debris spewed over millions of cubic miles of space, and the fires within the three main pieces were snuffed out in seconds by the airless vacuum of space.
"Well done gentlemen." Captain Prey told the bridge crew. "Now, Central, where will that next craft come out of jump space?" On the main viewer, a small red dot was superimposed to the rear of the expanding debris field.
"Bring us to a stop directly across the debris field from that spot. Just make sure we're far enough away that they have to close the range before they can open fire."
"Yes Captain."
"Captain, we've lost all communication with the Salmez." The communication officer aboard the Tekthal told his captain from his crew station on the port side of the bridge crew pit.
"All? Have you determined the cause? Did they exit jump space?" Captain Tovathis asked from his command chair.
"Yes sir, they exited to real space, then nothing."
"Reverting to real space in three, two, one." The call came from engineering and with a sudden lurch, the Tekthal reverted to real space.
A chorus of competing voices rose from the various stations throughout the bridge, each calling for a specific type of data.
"Get those shields up." Tovathis roared.
"Captain, the enemy vessel is twelve degrees off the starboard bow." His navigation officer shouted to make himself heard.
"We'll be in range in four minutes. Main cannons are charging and will be able to five in three minutes and twelve seconds." Main gunnery reported.
Counting the seconds off in his head, Captain Tovathis was almost thrown from his feet. He just regained his footing when he was thrown forward again.
"That wasn't an energy blast. What just hit my ship?" He grabbed the rail above the crew pit to keep from losing his footing again.
"Captain, we're in a debris field," one of the many crew from below yelled up to him.
The main viewer shifted from a long range scan centered on the Nest to a close range scan of surrounding space. Huge pieces of metal spun towards them in different but converging courses. A large hunk spun straight towards the main viewer, it seemed.
"Get us under it! Get us down!" The deck tilted downward, and all the crew on the bridge held their breath.
From somewhere along the ship's hull, a great scraping could be heard, then felt, as the massive piece of debris bounced along the hull. The worst was yet to come.
All at once, the sound of collision alarms began to sound from almost every deck along the forward edge of the ship.
"Captain! We're venting atmosphere from over two hundred decks. Weapons are off line, engineering says we're down to forty-six percent power and falling."
"Turn us about, plot course to rejoin the rest of the fleet."
"But my captain, what of our enemy? They can follow us just as easily as we followed them." Tovathis's executive officer asked, in between giving out rapid fire orders.
"I think they'll stay here. They need to lick their wounds and prepare before they make a foray back to face the rest of our fleet."
"And the Salmez? There is no sigh of her anywhere."
"This is the Salmez! We're flying through her, or what's left of her. Now turn this ship around while we still have power." He winced as the sound of one of his ship's horizontal stabilizers tore off and went drifting to join the rest of the debris field.
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