“JEEZ! They’re all over our sensors!”
“We’re losing the stealth field!” Mason
declared worriedly.
Aaen
retrieved the tricorder and began waving it near the ‘prize’, reading the data
on the display. . . Son-of-a—you’ve-gotta-be-kidding-me,
“Alright, I think I know how they’re getting
so close!” He looked at Maxon and Jonathan; both of them looked curiously at
Aaen, a look that told him they thought they had a good idea of what he was
going to say next—“They installed a freaking tracking device on this thing.”
Mason
snapped at the announcement, and Jensen looked up briefly and paused for an
instant.
Aaen
calmed slightly, returning to the thruster controls, narrowly dodging a few
more green bolts. He eyed the view screen and said, “The stealth field is distorting the tracking signal, for now—but if we don’t repair it we’re going to be
lit up like a light bulb in a dark room.” The shuddering was getting sharper, faster. Maxon and Jonathan briefly observed the prize’ on-and-off
blue glow with a silent combined skepticism over whether this was going to be it—one spy shuttle versus an entire-freakin-armada, they both thought
silently.
Maxon
gasped. “Is there any way to disarm the tracking device?”
“It’s embedded into the device’s
infrastructure—the only way to
completely stop them from picking up the tracking signal—Urgh!—is to—“
“Activate the device,” Jonathan quipped.
“We don’t have enough power!” Mason
interjected. “I’m working on the stealth field and the translight engines. It’s
going to take some time. Maybe a few more minutes before we have translight power?”
“I don’t
think we’ve—URGH—!” Aaen forced
himself upright from another near-miss. “Got
it. . . Captain, if we take a hit, we won’t be able to run for much longer,”
But, maybe—“Do we still have that decoy standing by?” The viewscreen was full
of variably-sized bright-green hulls soaring in different directions, like
predators looking for their prey.
Maxon
turned to Jensen. He looked back at her and nodded.
“If we’ve still got it, now’s a good time to
use it! They might mistake it for
us and redirect their fire!”
“Fire the decoy!” Maxon commanded.
“Decoy–away!” A brief sharp mechanical
scream filled the bridge for a second.
. .The lightning stopped. .and then a
massive oval-shaped distortion became visible, then as a warbird which
approached the decoy and fired another bolt of green. A brilliant, violent
fiery explosion filled the upper-right corner of the viewscreen as metallic
debris scattered in every direction. The warbird slowed as Aaen maneuvered them
into a roll and then hard to port around the warbird.
“More ships are decloaking! There’s gotta be
over a hundred ships out there.” Jonathan declared bleakly.
“It won’t be long before they realize it was
a decoy!” Aaen added. “Mason, where
are you at on the translight drive?” he asked frantically.
Mason
gasped hard. “I’m working on it! The
stealth field’s struggling. I don’t think I can repair them both!. . Which one should I focus on?”
Maxon
took a deep breath as she contemplated her response, leaning forward as she held
onto her armrests to try to stay upright amid the building turbulence from
numerous continuous near-misses. None of the rest of the crew blamed Aaen, this
was like riding a turbulent maelstrom with high-waves while dodging lightning
and falling flaming asteroids. Aaen wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep
dodging all this fire—he silently asked Maxon and Jonthan, ‘do we run, or hide?’
“. .Repair the translight drive.”
“They’re gaining on us, and closing!”
Jonathan boldly declared.
“Permission to increase to ‘Emergency impulse’?”
Aaen asked Maxon.
“Granted!”
Aaen
noted the yellow speed meter continued along its track, the end turned a dark orange
and the impulse engines’ heat level was climbing almost twice as fast as
before. The floor began vibrating, a sensation that built to a firm grumble.
“They’re starting to take-up formation around
our position!” Jonathan announced. “We’re barely staying ahead of them!”
“—The stealth field is failing!” Mason
declared in terror.
“Cannons are fully charged, but I doubt they’re
going to do much good against that many ships on our tail, Captain.” Jensen
declared.
Maxon
was at a loss for words.
“How long until we have translight drive?” Jonathan
asked Mason directly.
“I need another three minutes, but the stealth field won’t last for that long!”
“Do we still have time to interface the cloaking
device will our systems?” Aaen asked.
“We don’t enough power! That blast from those warheads, or mines or
whatever, damaged the main power grid. We’re lucky the translight core is still
online!”
The crew
started doubting whether or not they would survive.
“I need two more minutes to repair the translight drive.” Mason announced.
Maxon
turned to Aaen, “You got this, Commander—”
a thundering explosion lit the viewscreen and the bridge and threw the nose to
port. The crew was nearly thrown from their seats to starboard. The hull
groaned from the physcial stress and pressure of trying to stay upright.
“DIRECT HIT–TO STARBOARD SHIELDS!” Jensen
declared as his computer exploded, shooting debris into his face as the rest of
the crew ducked threw their arms up to protect themselves from the explosion. Jensen
threw his arms up to shield himself but the sheer force of the blast threw him
out of his seat hard against the back cabin wall, then he crumbled to the floor
behind Maxon.
The crew
recovered. Jonathan touched his fingers to Jensen’s throat to check his pulse, then
looked at Maxon and nodded.
A subtle
mechanical hiss turned into a thundering scream—“Translight drive’s repaired! You’ve got all the power we’ve got left in the engines
in the translight drive!”
“MAXIMUM SPEED!” Maxon bluntly commanded.
Aaen watched the speed indicators change position as the stars again became rapid streaks of light—translight five.
“Oh, no—!” Mason said bleakly.
“What?” Jonathan asked directly.
Mason looked shocked, “The stealth field’s gone!”
*****
Steve H. told Jordan Foutin, "You are the next Tom Clancy. You really are a gifted writer."
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