<First Contact +3 days 05 hours 20 minutes>
“All stations open fire!” roared the General as he turned away from the display and the aliens that had been on it a moment ago.
The order was quickly relayed, every encrypted communication channel, every human ship communicating with every other, every weapons platform synced on the target in orbit above Mars all received the same message.
The Phobos Cannon, the main weapon of Mars during the war and one of her most devastating Kinetic weapons turned. To the Terran’s the cannon had lived up to the name of the moon on which it was stationed, the cannon was only 100 mm in diameter but her specialty was hurling rounds that for most ships served as main weapons fire at a rate of nearly one round every five seconds, the metal accelerated to nearly 5% the speed of light.
The weapons platforms in orbit around Mars meant to fend off attacks from Terran frigates like the Yamato all turned and began to fire as well, all one hundred twenty five satellites in the network firing together for the first time in history. The satellites on the far side of Mars from the alien ship slowing their shots enough so that the pull of Mars curved their fire into their target.
The now combined fleets of Mars and Earth burned from orbit and the largest collection of space born warships in human history advanced. Guns large and small let loose, missiles which had for nearly three-hundred years been a war crime to even consider using were fired. Kinetic, atomic, chemical, humanity brought to bear their entire history of weapons and warfare on the singular enemy.
Space lends a small amount of warning, distances being vast and objects moving only so quickly. For a moment the entire cacophony of weapons fire seemed to hang in space, the burning metal of kinetic rounds heated by the intense magnetic forces glowing against the stars light years behind them. The flare of missiles as the chemicals carrying them towards their target burned off.
For a moment it was still and for that moment humanity stared defiantly at the enemy.
The first rounds hit the alien ship and melted away into plasma slag with a small burst of light. Within a fraction of a second the entire alien ship was consumed in a glow of plasma, radiating with the brilliance of human weaponry.
The nuclear warheads hit moments behind the first coordinated kinetic volley, a total of 10 devices equivalent to the Tsar bomb of Earth detonated in perfect unity, and the fireball of atomic energy flared more brightly than the fusion reaction of the Sun.
Humanity held its breath, waiting for the fireball to clear.
“If we give them any more time they might find a way to win.” Said Charles as he turned away from the display.
“Incoming Fire!” said Jack.
Charles looked up and for the first time he felt a small amount of panic, the amount of weaponry the species was bringing to bear was primitive but plentiful “All power to shields!” shouted Charles.
The first rounds hit, and the Singer rumbled as she absorbed the Kinetic fire, the Empire had never used kinetics in the amount that this species was, and it taxed the shields to defend against them. Still the Class C species weapons were weak when compared to the energies the Empire used to test ship shields.
The nuclear blasts which followed were even less trouble. The Shields of the Singer were built to handle energy weapons. That energy was usually in the form of Plasma weapons but the shields handled the nuclear blasts, the Singer shuddered under the onslaught and Charles winced concerned for a moment that a shot might actually get through the Singer’s defenses.
“Status?” asked Charles as the shuddering died down. The forward display was nearly useless being covered in plasma and the remains of the weapon detonations.
“Shields are down to 70% but weapons capacitors are full, we need to discharge now!” said Jack.
Charles was momentarily surprised, the Singer funneled as much enemy weapons energy as possible into her reserves when fired on. The process was incredibly inefficient but when attacked with energy based weapons the Singer was able to absorb some of the excess, it was not tuned to kinetics though since the Empire never used them, and they had only absorbed the nuclear blasts.
For the capacitors to be at full charge was impressive, it showed how much energy the Class C species was clumsily utilizing, it was lucky they had been discovered when they had another century of development and they would be a serious threat to the Empire.
“Identify the most damaging Kinetic weapons and open fire,” said Charles.
“Go!” Shouted Janus through the communication channel, the Ark’s dry dock having been drained of an atmosphere only a few hours ago.
The Ark, already full to capacity with the refugees she had been selected to carry slowly moved out, her vacuum engines flaring up for the first time creating the recognizable haze behind them.
Red glanced down at the display and then back up at James, “Remind me why I’m flying this tub again?” he asked.
“We needed the best pilot in the fleet flying the Ark, that’s you,” said James.
Red turned back to the controls as the Ark moved out of the station, the false façade that normally would have hidden the clandestine dry dock slid away and Red quickly moved the Ark out through the hole in the Station superstructure.
On one side of the ship was the cable running down to the surface of Mars, and on the other the battlefield.
Looking out Red was in awe for a moment, three entire fleets were engaging the alien ship, and it was somehow still alive. The Ark was launching in the wake of the nuclear strike, when hopefully the sensors of the alien ship would be blinded like the human ships. A nuclear warhead tended top release a lot of electromagnetic energy after all.
James reached over to the com unit of the bridge, “This is the Ark all ships prepare to follow us out! I want at least a kilometer between every ship until we need to jump!” Said James.
The fleet responded, and as Red swung the Ark around to accelerate along Mars’s orbital path the other ships fell in around him including the third Terran fleet and the third and fourth Martian fleets, every civilian and corporate ships that would be able to keep up with the Ark and her escort as she accelerated also quickly fell into formation around, all gravitating towards the larger war ships for protection.
The fourth Martian fleet was in front of him, the third was surrounding the Ark and the Terran fleet was bringing up the rear, with the Yamato tailing behind the rest of the fleet, her antimatter stocks replenished thanks to a contribution from the Martian Senate.
The Yamato would have the grim task of reporting the failure or victory of the assault on the alien ship to the Ark after she made her jump.
“Here we go!” said Red and he slowly brought the thrusters up to maximum. Vacuum drives were efficient and could get you moving, but on almost any type of ship unless designed specifically for speed the acceleration was dismal, he barely felt the acceleration pushing him back into his seat.
A warning flashed up on the console in front of him, and Red glanced down at it, “engine room what’s going on?” he asked.
“Thruster balancing is off! Normal for a new drive, under usual circumstances I would ask you to shut down so we could fix it without breaking anything,” A sharp bang in rattled through the mike, “But we don’t have time for that! We’re good!” said Megan.
Turning around from the com panel Megan took another of the small fire extinguishers off of the wall and tossed it to Ben. The second engineer took it gracefully to the stomach, and recovering quickly turned and sprayed it at the small electrical fire that had formed underneath the redundant engine control module quickly quenching the flames.
“So much for backups,” said Ben.
“I didn’t think we would be hotwiring her right out of the gate!” said Megan.
“Well she was rushed towards the end and most ships do get a shakedown run before trying to do the impossible, it’s not like anything big has failed.”
Diana popped out of the access hatch in the wall next to them, the two engineers turned to look at the girl.
“You fix it?” asked Megan.
“What would you define as a big failure? You just had me crawl through the ductwork to fix the antimatter containment unit!” said the girl.
“We’re still here that means you fixed it so it’s not a very big problem,” said Ben.
Diana glared at him and pulled herself out of the small duct, “I had to wire it to main power directly, so we need to adjust the engine output for the jump and we’ve got to make sure we use up every atom of the antimatter if we lose main power the magnetic bottle is going with it,” said Diana.
“So we just have to make sure we don’t lose main power,” said Megan, “In the middle of a battle and a mad dash to another solar system, seems simple enough.”
The General shook his head in amazement in grim admiration for the aliens, their ship had survived an assault which would have destroyed an entire Terran fleet in an instant. They had stood up to ten Tsar Bombs!
As the nuclear blast cleared the General winced, he had hoped they would be disable if not destroyed, but they had shaken off the attack almost immediately. The alien ship was turning and he knew what was coming, the ships in the first Martian fleet saw it as well and tried to scatter.
The plasma lanced out from the alien ship carving through the Martian fleet, the smaller and more agile ships dodged away from it, but the larger frigates and battleships even stripped of most of their ineffective armor could not turn in time.
Like above earth the ships were cleanly cleaved in two, the beam of plasma acting almost like a scalpel on an immense scale.
The engines on several of the larger ships died as main power was lost, but prepared for this many of the now bisected ships continued to fire on the alien ship, the secondary explosions from the attack contained and backup capacitors and generators powered the ship guns.
The Martian ship Dancing Grace took a full hit to the port side shearing off her armor and systems there, her engines flared and several chemical rocket backups kicked in stabilizing her trajectory as she burned at full throttle bypassing all safeties, the vacuum engines usually producing only a small haze actually formed a small gout of flame as the virtual particles of space were violently expelled in her wake.
The General watched, he knew what the ship was doing, every other Captain in the fleet could see what the frigate intended was planning to do and with her weapons still firing the Dancing Grace accelerated directly for the alien ship.
The aliens noticed as well, and the plasma beams quickly turned away from the rest of the fleet concentrating on the approaching ship, within moments several more sections of the ship had been carved away, but already on her path the Dancing Grace did not stop even as her engines flickered and died.
The Martian ship slammed into the alien one, and the shields around the ship stuttered for a moment before flaring back up in a burst of light, carried forwards by her momentum the Dancing Grace was consumed in a gout of plasma completely vaporized against the alien shields.
The General grimaced, the fact that the alien ship had tried to stop the impact told him that a suicide run would in some fashion be effective towards combating the technology, how much of an affect that would be still needed to be investigated.
Ordering the fleet to perform suicide runs would have to be the last resort, and many of the Captains were no doubt going to attempt them when they were disabled, the Terran fleet was being particularly aggressive as well no doubt already enraged. It was something which normally would have been frowned on, pure rage had no place in a battle, but this was not a battle of strategy or tactics, this was a fight of a cornered animal. Rage would only make them fight harder.
“All ships break formations and spread out, get as much distance between yourselves as possible, don’t let the beam get a fix on you!” ordered the General. So far the alien ship had fired only a singular large beam, the smaller ones were shots that simply punched through the ships of the fleet instead of shearing them in two. A clean punch through was something that Kinetics did as well so the fleet was enduring them well enough.
The General glanced at the weapons readout showing him the status of all weapon systems in the fleet, as well as a countdown to when the Ark would jump. They still had an hour to go. It was going to be the longest hour in history.
<T- 58 Minutes>
Janus watched as the Ark began to slip away into space, the rest of the ships around her. She had told Diana that her private yacht would be following close behind the Ark, but she couldn’t leave Mars, she couldn’t leave her Station. Diana would understand it someday.
“We’re almost in position, another few seconds,” said the engineer.
Janus nodded, “Tell me when,”
The Engineer nodded his eyes locked on the display, hand in the air.
“Now!” he said brining his hand down.
Janus flipped the cap on the detonator up and pressed the button underneath it.
There was a faint rumble and the station shook as the explosive charges detonated, five thousand pounds of explosives was all that it took to sever the bundle of carbon fiber wires binding the Station to the surface of Mars far below.
Similar charges along the length of the cable detonated shredding it into thousands of pieces, many of which would burn up in the atmosphere of Mars. Janus had just stepped down and relinquished her control of the Station to Isaac Newton.
“We’re on track,” said the Engineer.
The communication unit crackled, “Janus what the hell happened? Did the cable get hit?” asked the General.
Janus smiled and keyed the mike, “We’re fine, just making sure you don’t get to have all of the fun, tell that fleet of yours we’re providing cover.”
There was a pause, “Holy hell Janus, you’re heading right for them. You planned this!?” shouted the General.
“Yep.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me!?” shouted the General.
“You would have tried to stop it, now stop whining like you always do, we’ve got a fucking alien ship to blow up!” Said Janus.
Turning around Janus looked around the cavernous chamber that the Bar was in. The men who had illegally built the Yamato, the criminals who ran the various parts of her side operations, the grunts who worked the streets. All of the men were present, all of them had the same grim determined look on their faces.
Their families had been evacuated, but even among thieves and criminal syndicates on the station there was honor. They would not take the seat that another child could fill, so they stayed ready to atone for the sins of their life in the grandest and most time honored fashion possible, a blaze of glory.
“Everyone clear on what we’re doing?!” shouted Janus.
A muffled cry went up from the group, but even in the vacuum Janus could feel the energy in the air.
“Open her up!” said Janus.
The engineer next to her nodded, and hit the second detonator.
The shaped charges on the side of the chamber blew, a small section of the cylinder turned almost instantly to plasma and debris all of it blown out into space. For a moment Janus looked out of it and towards the stars, imaging that she could see Epsilon Eridani, even though she had no idea which star it was.
“Let’s get those guns in place!” shouted Janus,
The men moved forwards, old kinetic guns stripped from ships were placed at the breach, stolen missiles and their launch tubes quickly bolted into place, other older and stolen weapons were quickly lines up along the hole, other men armed with nothing more than side arms quickly took aim.
Parts of the Martian and Terran fleet were already retreating towards them, and Janus smiled, the Station might not have the firepower of the battleships, but she would be the shield they needed.
<T- 50 Minutes>
“This species is insane!” said Jack as he stared at the readout in front of him.
“What happened?” asked Charles as the Singer vibrated underneath another hit, the species certainly was persistent, even going so far as to perform suicide runs.
“The orbital station they had tethered to the surface, they just cut the lines! It’s on a collision course with us!” Said Jack.
Charles looked up and squinting through the plasma burning in front of the shields he spotted it, a mass of haphazardly attached modules and frames. The thing looked more like a floating junk heap than anything used in the Empire, but it was moving slowly towards them.
The species ships were retreating behind the thing, employing a strategy rarely used in space battle, cover.
The ships behind the mass of metal were quickly rotating out of cover to fire their main weapons as the Singer. The amount of plasma on the front of the shields was rapidly decreasing as their smaller arms fire petered off, but protected the ships were now able to line up precise shots with their main guns.
Charles looked at the mass of metal and shook his head in dumb amazement, that construction as crude as it was probably represented decades of work. They had thrown it away to vainly try and destroy the Singer.
“Look at that!” said Sam.
“At what?” asked Charles.
Sam turned around in her chair and quickly zoomed the main display in, focusing it on the bottom half of the station. A section looked as if it had been blown apart, and inside the breach Charles could see members of the species rapidly brining to bear large and small weapons alike, even pointing handheld weapons in the Singer’s direction.
As if knowing they were being watched the first volley of fire launched, and Charles watched in dumb amazement as the rounds struck the shields directly in front of the bridge, the concentration of the fire landing not twenty meters from him.
The Singer shuddered again and the lights on the bridge flickered.
“Jack, no more small shots, charge the main weapons to maximum,” said Charles.
“Aye!”
If they were eager for death he would deliver it to them.
<T- 45 Minutes>
“I need more acceleration!” shouted Red through the com.
“Well I need you to pull over! Neither of us is getting what we want!” Shouted Megan.
“We’re falling behind!” said Red.
“No we’re not!” shouted Megan.
In the engine room another small explosion went off as Megan tore the small control console regulating power through the lighting system in the ship. The lights around her died and independent emergency lights flickered on.
The issue had something to do with how the ship was protecting her electrical systems, and a fault in the wiring of the lighting system was messing with one of the automatic shutdown sensors somewhere on one of the vacuum engine modules, which in turn meant she was having to cycle that engine on and off.
With the lights off that sensor wherever the hell it was could no longer send false reports.
Megan saw the wall behind her moving quickly towards her as the acceleration kicked in and she quickly braced herself, Diana spotted it as well and grabbed onto the nearest handhold. Ben working on keeping the buggy communication system working didn’t and he was flung away from the panel and into the far wall of the engineering section.
Ben groaned, but said nothing as he pushed off of the wall to return to his work.
“We’re falling apart around the seams!” said Diana.
Megan glanced up at the girl, “New ships always need to have the bugs worked out, the fact that half the ship was built in secret and the other half in just a few days it’s amazing we’re still in one piece, now could you fix the error in the life support system?” asked Megan pointing at the warning light on the console.
Diana twisted around to look at it and nodded, pulling her herself up she flew out of the main engine room to the life support module.
“We are falling apart at the seams,” said Ben.
“I know that! Will you shut up!” shouted Megan.
The Ark jerked violently to the side, both Ben and Megan slammed into the nearest port side wall.
“What was that?” asked Megan.
The com lit up, “Sorry about that a transport in front of us just had their drive blow up took some debris, we alright down their?” asked Red.
Ben and Megan were both staring at the engineering display, the FTL system was offline, the forward launch tube for the antimatter charge disabled.
“Nothing we can’t fix!” said Ben.
Pushing off from the communications console Ben drifted over to the emergency cabinet and quickly pulled out an engineering suit.
“God damn it!” said Megan as she drifted over to help him get the thing on.
Ben quickly slipped into the suit and donning the engineering harness he paused and turned to Megan.
“Uh,” he didn’t know what to say, and he felt his skin turning red.
Megan rolled her eyes and grabbed his helmet shoving it onto his head.
“You come back alive!” She growled at him, her own face blushing, “Then maybe!” she said as she shoved him out of the engineering section.
<T- 39 Minutes>
The Station was now close enough to the alien ship that Janus could see the individual windows in the side of her hull, and the small protrusion on the top of the ship.
The aliens were confident enough to have windows in the side of their ships, and to place their command center directly on top of it exposed in almost every direction. The men manning the weapons were sinking round after round into the shields of the alien ship, all of them staring out at it as they slowly drifted forwards.
There was no sound in the vacuum of space, but Janus imagined she could hear the massive weapons as they went off directly next to her, firing through the hole in the side of her Station.
The alien ship had not moved for several minutes even as they and the rest of the fleet continued to fire rounds into it, and she was starting to get a bad feeling.
A feeling which was validated a moment later, the alien ship rotated in space slightly, and her main cannon was now lined up directly with the heart of the Station. The weapons at the front of the ship glowed for a moment before they fired.
A beam of Plasma larger than anything yet carved through the station, the entire frame shook and looking up Janus caught the tail end of the beam as it arced over her head, disintegrating the Bar.
The heat from the blast set off every alarm in her suit and Janus watched as several of the men closer to the beam clawed at their suits for a moment as the material melted away.
“God damn it!” shouted Janus and twisting around she grabbed the nearest weapon, a shoulder mounted rocket launcher. Activating the jets on her own suit Janus kicked the small thrusters into overdrive and shot out through the new hole in the Station.
The men still alive at the original breach point in the Stations hull once again resumed fire.
For a moment Janus floated above the battle, several of the ships that had been using the Station as cover were now tumbling in space completely destroyed, and one whole half of the Station was gone, cut down the long way the entire superstructure of her domain was exposed.
Turning in space Janus felt her lip curl up, she was going to make sure they paid for that.
Firing the jets on her suit Janus shot towards the alien ship, moving directly towards the bridge.
Magnetic rounds and plasma beams tore through the space around her, and several impacts registered on her suit, Janus winced as her leg was hit, a piece of metal flying through it.
Her suit sealed and administered an anesthetic.
It took her several minutes, her suit was more powerful than a standard mobility package but it had its limits. Flying towards the bridge of the ship Janus let a snarl rip through her throat, it had been years since she had done anything like this, years since she and the General who had been only a green recruit at the time had done something like this.
Those had been the days, when Mars was still a fight for survival, when everything had been for the taking.
Now those days were gone, now there were only two things in humanities future survival, and more prominent in her own mind revenge.
Rocketing towards the alien ship Janus slowed as she neared the location of the shields, only guessing how far they were projected from the ship.
Her glove grazed it and buzzed, she felt heat from it but her arm did not disintegrate. Surprised Janus slowly drifted forwards and reaching out touched the hull of the ship. Grinning now Janus drifted up along the hull towards the bridge.
Moving up to it Janus looked in through the glass at the aliens, seeing the whites of their eyes.
One alien sitting at a station looked up at Janus and surprise crossed her face, she shouted something.
Raising the rocket launcher up Janus let it float beside her.
“Fuck you!” she shouted, knowing they couldn’t hear her.
She hit the trigger and the small missile streaked forwards, slamming into the clear material at the front of their bridge, the launcher flew backwards away, and was vaporized by the shields.
The window material exploded outwards blowing Janus backwards away from the hull her jets fighting wildly to retain her position. Looking at the damage Janus cursed, some sort of energy field had formed replacing the glass.
Moving forwards again Janus alighted onto the bridge of the ship for the first time feeling gravity’s pull on her, unholstering her pistol she pointed it at the alien who had been negotiating before the Captain of this ship.
Janus fired off a shot at him, which bounced away on the shield that had formed.
Janus stared at the aliens for a moment and took several steps forwards, putting her hand out she touched the new field and winced as it burned away at her suit.
Another alien off to the side pulled out a weapon and Janus turned to him, locking eyes with the alien as he leveled the gun at her chest.
<T- 30 Minutes>
Jack put his sidearm back away and turning around slowly expanded the force field back out, pushing the corpse of the rather large specimen of the species out into space.
Charles was stunned, the members of C1764 were insane enough to try and attack a frigate with person mounted weaponry. She had figured out how to get through the shields, blown up the main display and nearly shot him! If not for the force fields he would be dead!
Charles watched as the body began to slowly tumble away into space, it was surreal, no species that the Empire had rightfully exterminated had ever made it through the shields of a ship, let alone onto the bridge!
“Sir!” said Jack.
Charles turned to look at his officer shaking the feeling off, “yes?”
“A large portion of the species fleet has left orbit of the planet, they’re accelerating away into deep space, and I’m detecting an FTL drive!” said Sam.
Charles looked up, “What?” he asked.
The scenarios quickly ran through his head, and he quickly settled on the most likely one.
“This is a distraction, they’ve been pouring on the fire hoping it would blind our sensors. They’re trying to save the FTL ship and keep it from us,” said Charles.
Standing up Charles walked over to the station Sam was at and looked at the readout, the FTL ship was accelerating away from the planet, but it was still well within the Singers ability to catch up too.
“Let’s clean this up, all stations fire!” said Charles.
The main plasma cannon of the Singer fired again. Within moments the station that had been floating towards their position was reduced to its constituent atoms, just another dust cloud in space.
The ships hiding behind it seemed to realize this was the end, and all of them began to accelerate forwards.
“Take them out!” said Charles as a dozen ships moved towards them.
The Singer had only 10% shields at the moment, and although they were regenerating any more impacts and the matrix around the impact site would fail.
“Trying!” said Jack, the stoic and argumentative officer for the first time looking concerned.
The shields on any Empire ship could take a lot of punishment, but slow kinetic strikes were impossible to defend against effectively, the shields would be drained.
Several more of the species ships were disintegrated, the plasma weapons of the Singer were now moving as quickly as possible rotating and twisting in place to line up on the targets.
The Singer fired, and the plasma ate into the approaching remnants of the species fleet.
One ship more agile then the rest dodged through its brethren, using them as a shield like the Station and quickly accelerated towards the Singer.
“Jack!” shouted Charles as the ship approached the starboard section.
“It’s out of the firing arc!” said Jack as the Singer twisted around at his command trying to get a targeting solution on the ship.
He didn’t get it in time, and the ship impacted. The entire front section of the ship was eaten away by the shields before they failed three fourths of the way through the collision, and a moment latter the ship impacted the hull of the Singer.
The deck beneath Charles’s feet shook and he was thrown to the floor.
“Report!” shouted Charles.
“Starboard living quarters have been hit! Force fields and bulkheads are in place but we’ve sustained heavy damage in that section. We won’t be able to reengage shields around that section or cloak until what’s left of the enemy ship is removed and the profile restored!” said the engineer on the bridge.
Charles looked out through the force field in front of him at the derbies field in front of them, there were no enemy ships still operating, he could see some signs of life, and a few floating sections were still firing off kinetic rounds, but it was negligible.
“Get the engines up, Jack restore as much of the shields as possible, we need to get that FTL ship!” said Charles.
<T- 20 Minutes>
“They’re not going to make it,” said Takuya.
Ken hesitated but nodded, “They won’t no.”
Captain Takuya looked at the fleet of escaping ships in front of him and turning looked at the alien ship quickly gaining on them.
“Turn us around Ken, we’ve got to stop them, tell the other fleets to hold steady.”
The Yamato quickly twisted around in space to face the enemy cruiser, and firing the engines Ken slowed the Yamato in relation to the rest of the fleet, bringing their speed down to something closer to the velocity of the alien ship.
“The First Terran fleet fell, and they just destroyed all three fleets defending Mars. Do you have a plan?” asked Ken.
Takuya closed his eyes and took a breath, the stale suit air was nothing close to the air on Earth but he wasn’t going to ever taste that air again.
“How many short FTL jumps could we make, within 100 kilometers?” asked Takuya his eyes still closed.
Ken surprised turned back to his console and consulted the equations that Dr. Lincoln had provided, “At least 5, its horribly inefficient.”
“Get ready to make five jumps then, all weapons free!” said Takuya.
Once again the Yamato took to her task, no longer in a war based on ideals or rhetoric, no longer forcing brother to fight brother, but in a fight for the very survival of humanity the Yamato was resolute.
Her guns blasted metal through space, ripping into the shields of the alien aggressor, doing no more damage to them than anything else. The alien ship twisted slightly protecting her damaged starboard side.
“Jump!” said Takuya.
Ken punched the drive, and once again the strange matter and antimatter were fired in opposite directions. The Yamato consumed by the explosion slipped into subspace.
Takuya looked out at the spectacle, it was clearer now, where before it had been a smearing of light and energy beautiful and incoherent, now he could almost make out shapes.
The Yamato dropped out of FTL barely 100 meters from the hull of the alien ship, on her starboard side where the damage form the fleet was evident, a large chunk had been scraped out of the hull and embedded in it were the remnants of the human ship.
It took Takuya a moment to get his bearings, everything around him looked almost fuzzy, all of it like a badly projected image shaking his head he cleared the numbness.
“Fire!” shouted Takuya even as the Yamato’s cannons did so.
Reaching the shields the accelerated rounds slowed, but managed to punch through the weak point.
Takuya watched with savage glee as the alien ship seemed to stutter for a moment the lights throughout its hull changing from a static white to a red, four whole fleets flung at the ship and they had managed to knock them into emergency lighting.
The alien ship was quickly turning trying to hide her injured flank from the Yamato, the smaller plasma based weapons seemed to have been weakened, the shots impacting the armor of the Yamato were dying on impact sizzling out only eating a small bit of the metal away.
As the alien ship swung her main gun back into range Takuya turned to Ken.
“Jump!”
<T- 15 Minutes>
Ben looked up at the fleet around him, on the nose of the Ark he could see almost all of them, they were close enough to the final countdown that many of the ships were without orders beginning to drift into a closer formation trying to get into the radius of the Ark’s jump.
“Have you tried resetting the magnetic coils?” asked Megan in his ear.
Ben rolled his eyes, “That’s the first fucking thing I did! I’m telling you it’s in the sensor relays and command circuits!”
“That’s not what the data in here is telling me!” said Megan.
Swearing under his breath Ben reached into the nose of the Ark and ripped out the small command junction box.
“Anything change?” asked Ben.
“No.”
“It’s the command circuits then, I just tore out the chips,” said Ben.
“You did what!? Are you trying to kill us!” Shouted Megan making his ears ring even through the com channel.
Ben winced, “No! It’s not like we would be able to repair those circuits in ten minutes anyway!” Looking up at the fleet around him Ben sighed, “Tell me when to fire off the antimatter charge!”
Inside the ship Megan hit the console in front of her, “You want to be on the outside of the ship when we fire off an antimatter charge, and for FTL travel!? We have no idea what that will do!”
“I don’t want to be on the outside of the ship! But It’s not like we have much of a choice!” shouted Ben.
“God damn it!” said Megan.
<T- 10 Minutes>
“Divert power to the shields!” shouted Charles as once again the C species ship jumped, and reappeared on their starboard side their weapons still firing full tilt doing far more damage then they should have.
The single ship was causing more damage than the rest of its fleet had been able to, concentrating on the small weakness that they had managed to carve into the Singer.
The ship was the same one they had encountered around the moon of the primarily inhabited planet. It was equipped with the FTL drive, and was performing maneuvers with it that were breaking every doctrine that Charles knew of regarding space based combat.
The ship was moving via small FTL jumps accurately placing itself only a few hundred meters off of the hull of the Singer with each jump, its momentum preserved through each jump it quickly moved away from the Singer before they could rotate to get the main weapons on it and when they were almost lined up it would jump away again only to reappear and repeat the process.
The military applications of the technology that the Class C species was now evident, in space it provided an enormous advantage not restricting a ship to any classical maneuver. It was large enough of an advantage that for a moment Charles entertained the thought that the ship might actually destroy the Singer.
“Jack!” shouted Charles.
“I’m trying! The computer’s having a hard time getting a lock! It’s like they’re only half their or something!” He growled.
Charles leaned in on the com, “All fighters launch!” he ordered.
The small craft had been inside the Singer for the battle mostly because the Class C species ships were able to break down the shields of the fighters when they concentrated fire on them, but a single ship would not be an issue.
The fighters launched from the port side of the Singer and Charles watched as they began to loop around the hull towards the FTL ship.
<T- 5 Minutes>
Takuya stared at the alien fighters as they approached, their time was up.
“Ken, what do you think would happen if we were to jump into that ship?” asked Takuya.
Ken looked up from the display and back to the Captain of the Yamato, every other crew member on the bridge did the same.
Ken let out a small laugh, “I have no idea but it won’t be good I know that.”
Takuya nodded, “that’s my guess as well.”
Takuya thumbed the control panel next to him, “Engineering, I want the reactor set to overload in thirty seconds.”
“Aye!” came the voice of the engineer.
Takuya looked around the bridge at the officers, “It’s been an honor,” he said.
Ken turned back to his controls, and stared at the countdown to the reactor meltdown, timed just right and its energy would be added to that of whatever the Yamato would do when she materialized inside the alien ship.
Twenty.
The alien fighters were now circling the Yamato, their weapons trained on her. The communication channel in front of Takuya opened and the alien from before standing on the bridge of his ship appeared.
He spoke and the translation program took a moment, “Surrender your ship and you will be spared.”
Ten.
Takuya laughed and looked back at the alien, “take it!”
Five.
Four.
Three.
Ken hit the controls of the Yamato for the final time, the ship fired off its antimatter and strange matter charges, and was once again thrown into subspace.
Takuya looked up and around him again, the images were almost clear, only what looked like a small layer of plastic or something over them. It was a garden, the Yamato was drifting through the sky over a lush garden of Earth.
Takuya stared in wonder at it, this had been what he had been looking at through every jump into subspace, this same garden. It had been blurry and his mind had trouble even putting it together, but here and now he could see it.
The Yamato materialized and Captain Takuya of the Yamato was no more, his atoms scattered along with his crew and the ship in an explosion of energy.