> Ambush the Patrol
Enough was enough.
"Mr R'Tynn, Alert One, Action Stations. Tactical, load all tubes, open all gunports, power all coils and polarize the hull plating."
As the bridge was bathed in the eerie black-purple of a combat alert, Aqyr fancied she could hear the faint
thunk of the
Star Seeker's armored weapons blisters folding open, and the subsonic hum of the accelerator coils spinning up.
"Helm, three-quarters impulse, slide us under and behind them. Tactical, stand by torpedoes, stand by accelerators, prepare disabling solutions. I want captures to examine, not vapor clouds that cannot answer questions."
Invisible to the patrolling gunships, the
Star Seeker slid beneath the trio of craft that were
almost small enough to fit in her aft shuttlebay.
"Launch torpedoes, full spread. Lances and guns to follow."
For the first time in twenty years¹, a ship of the Stellar Union fired its weapons in anger.
There might not have been sound in space, but there absolutely was sound on a Starship, alloy bones carrying the deep
TZAOW of her torpedoes and the shrieking scream of her particle guns to all within.
For the patrol, one moment, there was nothing—the next, proximity warnings screamed as a ship—enormous,
how could anything that large be that stealthy—appeared from
nowhere, yellow-orange stars already streaking from torpedo bays and searing, stabbing hydrogen-ion particle beams—primitive perhaps by the standards of the galaxy at large, but still powerful, still dangerous—lashing out with the precision born of many, many hours of gunnery drills and algorithm refinements.
To call it a fight would be a misnomer—caught with shields cold by a ship that outmassed all three vessels combined, the tiny gunships simply… came apart. A single, stabbing blue-white beam lashed from the lead ship's port aft emitter, passing through the
Star Seeker's Nacelle ring close enough to singe the (proverbial) paint, but that was all—but a tick later, two photonic torpedoes detonated under the ship's wings, snapping her cannons like toothpicks, and the searing beam of a particle lance slashed across her engines and aft beam emitters, leaving smashed, half-molten ruin in their wake. The other two, less alert, didn't even manage that much—and one pilot's desperate evasion of a torpedo spoiled the solution of two particle lances, and shots meant to slash away engines and weapons practically sawed the ship in half, before it vanished in the sun-bright broil of a breached fusion bottle.
A single salvo, and it was over.
At least for the starships, now it was up to the Marines.
Stand by...
1: about a hundred years, Terran time
