Past the Redline

Throttle Sixty

“Weapons free. Fire to intercept. No limiters. We can’t afford to play fair for the next bit.”

“Understood, mistress.”

Nearly as soon as ChaOS had finished speaking, one of the railguns on the Hercules twisted around and fired. Its projectile flew out less than a kilometre before meeting another round—this one fired by the Federation—in empty space. The two exploded apart spectacularly.

The ship started to fire, seemingly at random, but every shot intercepted another, and only those that weren’t going to miss the Hercules. The ship’s point-defence lasers lanced out against the Federation ships in tiny but powerful bursts.

They were aiming at the very laser emplacements burning into the Hercules’ shields. The Federation needed to leave a small opening in their shielding array to fire out of. Most of those openings were relatively large, but they were plugged by a second shield being cast by the very weapons that needed the opening.

There was still a gap though, one which needed to be left open to allow their lasers to dart out at the Hercules. The gap was only millimetres wider than the laser they allowed through, but that was enough.

As the Hercules hurtled through the formation, flashes of light speared out of it, culminating in ruined laser arrays and tiny gaps opening up on the Federation ship’s sides.

Diana couldn’t afford to split her attention too much. She was flying straight towards the middle of the formation, past frigates and destroyers which took ineffective potshots at her. Or at least, mostly ineffective.

She grit her teeth as the Hercules was battered from all sides. Debris and stray rounds ramming against its shields and clipping off a percent or two with every blow. The constant barrage of lasers was slowing down barely, but it was still strong enough that she knew her shields wouldn’t last forever. And then she’d be tanking hits with her armour.

Twisting around a corvette, Diana laid eyes on the four ships in the centre of the formation. Four sleek cruisers, each one of them a hundred times longer than her own ship and armed to the teeth.

She leaned forwards, concentration locking on the nearest of the ships. “G-force stabiliser,” she muttered.

Her arteries went cold as liquid was pumped into her.

Then she pulled back on the throttle of her main engines and took over manual control of the Hercules’ control thrusters. As she zipped closer to the cruiser, slowing all the way, she spun her ship around and started a hard deceleration burn while feathering the manoeuvring thrusters to keep her speed even with the cruiser’s.

The move threw off the aim of the fleet, and more shots went wide. Or, maybe they didn’t want to accidentally brush their own ships.

“Launch the EMP at our apex,” Diana said.

“Launching,” ChaOS replied. He was terse, as was common when she was tense.

The bomb left the Hercules with a heavy clunk just as her momentum reversed. She’d performed the first half of a needle-point turn around the nearest of the cruisers, leaving her EMP behind right in the middle of the pack.

“Detonate once we’re in the cruiser’s shadow,” she said. “Highlight their hanger too.”

“Oh no.”

Diana grinned. “You caught on to my plan?”

“Yes, and it’s a foolhardy one.”

“Good, then they won’t expect it.”

The Federation returned fire, though it was a little anaemic now. They might be assuming that she was going to race away.

They were probably confused when she whipped around the moment she had looped around the cruiser and started burning as if she wanted to return to it.

“Detonating.”

Space filled with a brilliant burst of cracking lightning following a wave of energy so great it lit up the void itself and splashed against the shields of the nearest ships.

Arcs of energy bigger than some ships jumped between the Federation vessels, cooking their shields even as they used those same shields as lightning rods. The nearby cruiser’s shields flickered, and Diana’s eyes locked onto a highlighted section on the vessel’s side. A square of armoured plates that she knew could pull back to launch fighters and support craft.

Her finger tightened on the trigger and every forward-firing gun on the Hercules opened up in the same moment, ramming hundreds of rounds into the weakened shield over a tiny space.

The shield cracked about a second before the Hercules stabbed into the cruiser’s side.

Diana was thrown forwards, eyes squeezing shut even as every last panel in her cockpit fritzed out. There was a loud grinding of metal on metal, and small explosions rocked the hull far too close for comfort. She suddenly felt as if she was on her side, even though she was still sitting tight, stuck in her crash seat.

The lights in her cockpit came back on with a flick.

“Status?” she asked past the thundering in her chest.

“We are entirely crippled. I’m reading black-level damage across forty-percent of the hull. Most of the forward and side thrusters are either gone or unresponsive, the weapons systems, save for a single point defence array at the rear, are offline. Ninety percent of our power banks are missing. The reaction engine is offline and has suffered critical damage. Nineteen of our twenty printers are non-functional. I suspect our total mass was reduced by nearly thirty-percent.”

“Okay,” Diana said. “Where are we?”

“Somewhere in the cruiser’s hanger. Or the section beyond that. I hardly have the sensor capabilities to tell at the moment.”

“That’s fair,” she said. She smacked her chest over her centre of her restraints and they snapped apart. She fell a metre to the side of her cockpit and met the new ground with a hard thump. “Ow.”

ChaOS paused for a long second before snarking. “We are in an artificial gravity field, by the way.”

“Nice,” Diana said. Groaning, she stood up, then shook her head. The crash hadn’t rattled her too bad. The cocktail of drugs she’d taken, on the other hand… “I need a gun and that virus you made.”

“You plan on leaving the ship?”

“How else am I going to deliver the virus?” she asked. “In the meantime, start up phase three.”

“Phase three assumed that we had a lot more ship to work with.”

Diana gestured around her, vaguely. “You have an entire cruiser.”

“Mistress, are you certain that revealing our capabilities like that is wise?”

Diana chuckled. “No, but since when has wisdom ever factored into my choices? Besides, we’ll be blowing them up later, right? That won’t leave much evidence behind. Come on, ChaOS, I need a working ship. You have the materials.”

“How much time do I have to work on this project?” he asked.

Diana shrugged. “About ten minutes.”

“Mistress!”

“What? You have nearly half a ship to work with. Besides, you know I say ten minutes but I really mean more like fifteen. Or five. Anyway.” She jumped up and grabbed onto her seat, then she ripped her handgun from the seat’s side. “Oh, and I need some gear, and the thing to carry the virus.”

ChaOS played another audio clip of someone sighing and the back of the cockpit opened up to reveal a small compartment with tightly-packed armour pieces within. “This should do for the moment. It’s class three armour. Hardly above civilian grade, so, do avoid getting shot.”

“Nice,” Diana said. “How’s our air situation?”

“The Federation ship seems to operate entirely in-vacuum, so things are not particularly good in that respect. You will have thirty minutes of air in the suit, with an additional hour of recycled air of decreasing quality. Our own stores aren’t ideal either.”

Diana got dressed in a hurry. The armour mostly fit over her jumpsuit, which was already air-tight and somewhat armoured, though mostly for the purpose of resisting burns and sudden depressurization.

She slung the armour’s backpiece on, then connected it with a breastplate at the front before finally slipping on a helmet with an armoured visor. A small hose connected the backpack to her helmet and fed her with a supply of oxygen.

Once she was hooked up, she checked her gun. Thirty micro-rockets. It would have to do.

“The left vambrace has a cord with a universal plug at the end. It should adapt to whatever standard the Federation uses. I’ll be able to take over the ship once you connect me. Assuming their ship isn’t properly segmented to prevent exactly this kind of subterfuge.”

“I’m sure they’re not that clever,” Diana said.

“Yes, I’m sure underestimating our adversaries will absolutely not backfire on us,” ChaOS said.

Diana laughed. “You’re just a worrywort. This situation’s great so far.”

“You are aware that the Bolgian fleet will likely enter combat ranges with the Federation fleet within the next twenty minutes, yes? And we are onboard an obviously damaged Federation ship in the middle of their formation.”

“Huh… I hadn’t thought of that, actually,” she said. “Well, we’ll figure it out.”