Last Time, on Stellar Trek…
"As the Second year of our five-year mission—and the ship's out-bound voyage—draws to a close, we have stopped some ten months from the Torkan Nebula…"
"Holy- That's a damn battlecruiser!"
"They're powering weapons!"
"Captain! Whatever that station's doing is dumping power right into the warp drive! We're going to warp whether we want to or not-"
"Divert all nonessential power to the Deflector and inertial dampeners! All hands, Brace for uncontrolled maneuvers! Repeat, All Hands, Brace, Brace, Brac-"
"We appear to be inside the Torkan Nebula, captain. Deep inside."
"Gods, what happened here?"
"That station is very heavily armed, captain."
"Mr R'Tynn, Alert One, Action Stations. Tactical, load all tubes, open all gunports, power all coils and polarize the hull plating."
"Launch torpedoes, full spread. Lances and guns to follow."
"Field density rising…"
"Externally Driven Warp in five… four… three… two… one-"
And now, the conclusion…
Mere ticks after the
Star Seeker reverted to realspace fully, the ship abruptly bucked like it was a grouncar driving over a pothole. Alarms sounded even as the lights flicked to the purple-black of Alert One.
"Report!" Aqyr T'Fen demanded, having been half thrown from her seat.
"We're under attack! Hull breach on aft ports side, decks twenty to twenty Three!"
Like predatory birds harrying a grazer, the trio of gunships dove in—Cannons flashed, two of the ships throwing forest-green teardrops while the lead ship instead hurled anctic blue-white stars. Bare moments after, as polarizer-generators strained to turn aside the powerful weapons, beams lanced out from the pair of emitters mounted besides the cannons, raking over the strained plating for a weak point—again the lead ship's were a searing blue-white to the greenish spears of the other pair. There, a segment of hull plating suddenly sputtered, its energy field overwhelmed by the strikes, and the three ships pounced. This time, what spoke was the single emitter in each ship's nose, and
these weapons were the same—a helical blue-and-green lance like the heavy beams of the battlecruiser in miniature, slamming into the weakened section of hull with searing force. Exotic particles stripped away the heavy Duranium even as more conventional boiling, burning and blasting ravaged hull and underlying compartments alike—but while the wounds were by no means trivial, the
Star Seeker was still more than half a million tons of vessel, and those beams
were still only light emitters. The Union ship was hurt, yes, but not—yet—seriously so… and the attackers didn't have it all their own way, either.
Explosive bolts blew like firecrackers as the armored blister over the ship's Number Six particle lance flew apart in its emergency-jettison sequence, the wickedly pronged barrel of its secondary linear accelerator already slewing around as its main coil spun up in a crash cold start. Angles aligned, and a screaming line of hydrogen-ions accelerated to a respectable fraction of light-speed drew itself between the weapon and the lead ship.
The gunship reeled—shields sputtering as the powerful beam smashed into them with shocking force for a pure physics weapon. In a single hit that weapon had slashed away nearly a tenth of the gunship's best defense! Startled, the trio aborted their attack runs, clawing for distance even as the Stellar Union ship's other weapons were unveiled and fire-control sensors lashed out with deadly intent.
This was a mistake.
The wounded explorer heeled around, even as more of its beams slashed out at desperately evading gunships, and then, at last, brought all three within arc.
"Full spread, triple ripple!"
Yellow-orange stars blasted from the ship's torpedo bays, three waves of deadly photonic torpedoes for each of the now-panicking gunships. The first wave, set for maximum yield proximity detonation, threw the tiny vessels around like toys as short-lived suns burst against their screaming shields. The second wave arrived with a salvo of beam-fire on its heels even as aft emitters on the gunships slashed green-white arcs through space, trying to intercept the munitions before they could reach optimal range, and overstressed shields screamed as the emitter grids overloaded.
To their credit, those seeking aft beams found two of the third salvo quickly enough to overcome the torpedos' own sheilds, and evasion managed to send a third into forward guns as it passed under the lead ship, mere tels from the target.
The other four, however, struck true, and the trio of gunships were smashed apart like plastic models under a sledgehammer.
"Status Report!"
"Moderate damage to the port aft side, captain. Damage control teams are responding. Port fore torpedo bay is offline due to mechanical failure from the rapid launch. Sixteen casualties reported so far, no known fatalities."
"We've been dropped near the edge of the nebula, captain. If we can find a way out of these tunnels, we should be able to escape to open space. The local pocket appears to be between a pair of what I can only describe as storms—both have large, spiral shaped clear areas which are rotating at a fixed rate."
"It's almost certain these storms are artificial, captain—both are turning at the same rate, and are the same size to within the margin of error of our sensors. We could travel to the center where any such generator is likely located, or skirt the edges of the vortex and look for exit passages."
[ ] Enter the Vortex
[ ] Skirt the edges
