Compered to the previous chapters, this one has more apocalyptic feeling about it, I am hoping this don't put the people off... Oppinions are of course welcome.
I am splitting my time between studies, girlfriend, friends, and writing a new chapters for Unknown Heroes and rewriting the old ones (basically, chapters 1 to 6 are being rewritten). So I am forced of reducing the frequency of new realeases
Mastermue had offered to help me with grammar. At some point he will realize that this is a gigantic task (The story have well over 40.000 words…) and pull out
- but until then the rewritten chapters will be getting a grammar revamp, giving readers somewhat more enjoyable read ------------------
Links to other chapters:
Chapter 9: New Player
Chapter 8: The Hunt Begins
Chapter 7: Among the rogues
Chapter 6: Anger of the Giants
Chapter 5: Awakening of the storm
Chapter 4: Trade run to Hell
Chapter 3: Old connections
Chapter 2: Means for revenge
Chapter 1: First kill (updated to 1.1)
The glossary of Unknown Heroes
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Chapter 10: The Khaak
The ships were beautiful, Yoshiro Fujiwara thought watching the unknown ships on huge screen dominating the room. The feed was from one of the outer telescopes, which Yoshiro expected soon to be destroyed as just as five satellites were before. The ships moved around in a pattern around a larger pyramidal spacecraft, just like if they were dancing. To Yoshiro Fujiwara came a picture from his childhood, when he and other children from his family, would dance the traditional dances around the statues of their ancestors.
The voice of the sector commander Khama interrupted Yoshiro’s thoughts,
“Well, what is your conclusion Lieutenant Fujiwara?”
“The enemy ships travel attached to each other and separate just before combat, Sir. That is all we know…”
“Hmm…Report any new data immediately to me. I will be at “Constellation”, where Navy will need my help in coordination of Militia squadrons,” commander Khama gave his order, before turning and hurriedly began moving toward the door. Then he apparently remembered that he was being watched and changed into a more nonchalant pace.
Son of a…, Yoshiro thought watching the commanders back. The commander obviously had figured out that a destroyer would be safer place than a trading station. Well, there was nothing I can do about it, he told himself and focused at his task.
Yoshiro turned back to his screens, watching yet another satellite being destroyed, as invaders approached the central part of the sector.
“Jane? This is Forsyth speaking. Do you receive me?”
“Yes, I hear you now Sir,” Jane answered. The COMSAT network was overloaded by the intense pressure from people who called their relatives in President’s End system, hoping to find out what was happening with their nearest, making the delay in the line longer than usual.
“Listen Jane, I haven’t much time for explaining. I want you to take certain documentation and all code books from sector’s trade station and get out of there”
“Sir?”
She could hear Colonel Forsyth taking a deep breath before continuing,
“I can’t explain anything over an open line. Just do what I say”
“Sir, I believe I can be of more use here. This new Xenon ships….”
“Listen to me! Those aren’t Xenons!”
Jane could hear the colonel taking another deep breath.
“This is an order Jane. You are field agent, not a fighter pilot…Do your duty”
“But, sir, what about the two men we captured?”
“Jane, we have more important tasks ahead of us than being tools of corrupt corporations and politicians… ”
“Agreed, Sir”
“Good. Now this is the documentation I want you to fetch,” the colonel began explaining.
The panic was spreading like fire in the dry grass. It was contagious, starting in the bars with few people, spreading quickly to the corridors. The people were wild from fear. Already fifteen mizuras after the news of attack began to spread, the Station Security had lost any resemblance of control. Everyone was fleeing towards the docks, creating jams in the corridors. But the worst was yet to come.
Suddenly, few Argons began to run, just as the alarms increased their sound even higher indicating that the battle between station and the yet unknown enemy was imminent. Within few moments everyone was running towards to docks. The screams of those trampled over, were ignored as if the panic had driven the people into mindless frenzy…
At the F Docking bay, a man and woman looked at the chaos. The woman was calm and collected, while the man looked somewhat desperate.
“This will be the story of the century and I can’t get to the Viewing Deck,” Roussel de Bailleu declared desperately looking for some way to get past the ocean of people that were trying to reach the docks.
“The network promised me 260.000 for direct broadcast…We have all equipment in the place…Now we can’t…”
“Try the fire emergency shafts,” Jade Maria suggested, interrupting his moaning.
“They are locked,” Roussel de Bailleu said sadly.
“Not when an emergency alarm is sounded”
Roussel’s eyes brightened, “You are right, why didn’t I think of that!”
Because you are an idiot and a disgrace for human race, Jade thought, her face not revealing her inner feelings.
“Ok, off I go then. While I set up…”
“I will use my contacts to gather information about our attackers. I will patch it up to you as soon as I get it,” Jade interrupted him before he could involve her in anything stupid.
“Nice! Then I can report it directly to the viewers. I am sure that Network will give you a bonus if you manage to dig it up,” Roussel de Bailleu said, trying to encourage her to greater efforts. He knew that everything Jade dug up would reflect positively on him.
Yeah, they will send me flowers on my funeral, Jade thought watching Roussel de Bailleu go.
She turned again to the docks, looking for a face. She knew that she had to escape from here if she would stay alive. President’s End forces were deployed outside the system and the locals knew it. Why else would they try to run away so desperately before even a beam had been fired from station’s laser towers?
Around her, the pilots with ships were holding auctions for desperate people who needed a ship.
“Come on people, bidding starts at 15.000 credits, take it or die here when this place goes down,” one pilot was shouting few meters away from Jade. People were already forming offering whatever they owned desperate for a place on that ship. The end price was 34.000 and some jewelry. The bid was won by a woman. A teenager boy, obviously her son, was desperately looking at her, his mouth forming words that never came out. She kissed him on the forehead, stroked his hair and sent him with the pilot. The boy’s eyes were on his mother, tears streaming down his face as he walked beside the pilot. His mother was smiling, but Jade could see that the smile was forced.
Jade averted her eyes and promised herself never to get kids.
Finally, she spotted the face she had been looking for, her ticket from here. The man with the ship…
“Tim? Tim! I am so happy to so you! I was so worried about you!”
Tim “The Vulture” Ericsson looked at the stunningly beautiful woman in front of him, halfway expecting some other Tim to answer back. She walked right to him and gave him a hug. She looked him right in the eyes, smiling happily. Feeling her body through the thin fabric of her dress, stirred in him old passions as he remembered back to the tazura he first met her.
She had been blonde then, in a dress that revealed enough to make every man’s head spin. Tim had managed to charm her and get her in bed, a fact that he was immensely proud of until a female colleague had derisively said that the woman was a nymphomaniac, always looking for new flesh. His ego has taken a mighty blow that moment, especially when he throughout the week did not get any replies on his calls.
And now, the proof that he still got his touch with woman was here, worrying about him. Tim looked around smugly to see if anybody witnessed the moment. Unfortunately, all that people around him cared about was survival.
“I have so much to tell you! But first we will have to get some sort of transport. I had hired a pilot, but I wanted to make sure you got out too… Then my purse with all the money got lost,” to Tim it was obvious that Jade was in distress.
His protection instincts kicked in, “Don’t worry about it – I have a ship”
“You do?” Jade asked with a doubting voice.
“Yeah, baby, I do. There is my ship,” Tim said pointing to the nearby yellow painted, short range civilian spaceship.
Jade got her ticket out.
Ha’nt Wyrta* was sitting, in now empty bar, ignoring the alarms sounding throughout the station. His mind was on his future. Last tazura he got the message that his family had disavowed him. His name was removed from the public records. If he ever identified himself as of family Wyrta, he risked being executed by other Split. Now he was known as Ha’nt Nameless, a man without honor and family. A renegade…
By chance, he received the news of renunciation at same time as Otto, the man he was tracking, and his friend, Erich Campbell, were captured by local Argon forces. Usually he would have rejoiced by prospect of revenging his humiliation. After all, Otto was caged somewhere in lower levels of the station, without a chance of escape. However, as a Nameless, a renegade, Ha’nt had no longer an honor to uphold.
He had spent last tazura in an attempt to distract himself, reading the news bulletins regarding the two criminals. To a Split eye, the two Argons were true warriors. They flew through three hostile sectors before being captured. He grudgingly had to admire Otto’s piloting, watching the holographic recordings of the battle. The respect for Erich Campbell, whom Ha’nt watched defeat the mighty Mailed Fist, was even greater.
Slowly, an idea began emerging in young Splits head, first as a young man’s fantasy then taking more and more shape of a firm plan.
What if he freed the two Argons and joined forces with them? Now that everyone was bent on leaving the station as fast as possible, it would be easy for Ha’nt to rescue the two men. Joining up with them would give him a purpose in life, an anchor point, and most importantly a chance to greatness and glory. Perhaps a chance to prove to the ones that had renounced him that he too was a worthy warrior.
With new purpose in his life, Ha’nt stood up and determinately began walking towards the Station’s prison section.
“This is “Helix 8” to Central”
“Central here,” Yoshiro Fujiwara responded. He and few navy guys were only left in the Control Center. All the high ranking officers and the important personnel had been evacuated to the “Constellation”. Nobody considered Yoshiro to be important so he was left in charge of coordination of parameter stations* and satellite network. So far his job has consisted of reporting the invader’s movements.
“We got unknown ships on our scanners. Does Central know anything about this?”
Yoshiro checked the position of “Helix 8“. It was furthest parameter station away from Trading Station.
“Haven’t you received the message about the attack?” he asked.
“No! Nobody is telling us anything out here!”
“Calm down. Can you evacuate?”
“Is it that bad?” the voice on the other end, considerably downcast, asked. Yoshiro noticed this. Probably they got no spaceships out there, he thought.
“Yeah,” he said after few moments of silence.
“Should have guessed when we lost the beacon signal from “Helix 7”...What now? Is Constellation able to help us?”
“Sorry, ““Helix 8”, all resources are tied up here in the around the station cluster”
“I guess we’ll have to go down fighting”
“Make them bleed, “Helix 8”. Make them bleed…”
“Will do Central. Over and out”
Yoshiro checked the info on the parameter station. It had the crew of six. Soon to be dead.
“Every one, please make your way to AgroTrade Wheat Station!”
the com-link operator of huge Squid* kept repeating this message.
“We will make you safe! We jump with the station out!”
Seeing the huge ship making its way towards the station, people rushed towards the inertia shuttles.
The panic and fear of being left behind caused a stampede of humans and aliens, everyone trying to get a place aboard one of the inertia shuttle*. A shuttle stewardess was shouting in vain that people should calm down – the crowd was already beyond reasoning, panicked even more by increased rhythm of alarm sirens.
Those who fell had no chance to stand up back again – they were mercilessly trampled to death. Non-aggressive Borons suffered the most. Being the smallest of the races, they were easily pushed over. Other Borons suffocated when their breathing helmets cracked under the pressure by the crowd.
The stewards seeing that nobody was listening to her, stopped shouting and sat down, with tears running down her cheeks.
Jane looked trough her cockpit glass how the Boron Squid, the “station mover ship”, attached itself to the nearby station.
“Good thinking,” Stella commented.
“Shut up Stella, until ordered,” Jane ordered her AI. Easily amused AI with never ending desire to comment on whatever the ships’ sensors picked up.
She concentrated again on what was happening in the sector. The Squid continued to emit signal urging the people to head to the station Squid had attached itself to. Inertia shuttles from the stations in the sector began heading towards the sector’s Trading Station. The Trading station itself was functioning as hub for inertia shuttle network, connected with every major station in the sector.
Jane began counting the inertia shuttles heading towards the Trading Station. She was not even halfway before she realized that there were too many shuttles. Only two inertia shuttles serviced the AgroTrade station, the station that the Squid ship was attached to and there were well over twenty shuttles heading towards the Trading Station at the moment.
The destroyer “Constellation” moved towards the incoming ships, having at last assembled the militia ships needed for screening operations. The amount of chatter between the ships told the Jane that militia consisted of mostly untrained, badly armed pilots. Only small numbers of Navy ships were among them.
Jane also knew that Constellation’s crew was depleted. The ship had been heading last few months back from the Interworlds, having been deployed against local rebels in over one jazura. The scars from numbers of skirmishes were still visible on the ships hull.
Her scanner computer notified her to the presence of familiar ships. Echo team, the RDF team she used to hunt for Erich Campbell. Two Busters trailed the light frigate. They haven’t recovered the Discoverer yet, Jane thought observing the progress of Echo team.
Her humor improved with the arrival of the RDF team. Together with the destroyer and the frigate, sector defenders could hold the unknown enemy back, until the Jump Fleet could reinforce the defenders.
At that point, Stella decided to ignore Jane’s command of silence and announced that her scanners registered a jump event.
Jane refocused one of the ship’s cameras to the position where the jump event had occurred. Had the Jump Fleet already jumped in?
Jane’s heart sunk at the sight of huge unknown ship that immediately started to target the “Constellation”. Yellow rays were hitting the destroyers, eating large chunks of its shield level. One of the inertia shuttles had to engage its emergency thrusters, in order to avoid the obstacle in its path. The shuttle managed to change course sufficiently, avoiding the collision. Still it was doomed. Now the shuttle was heading towards the enemy ships and with no engine and emergency thrusters spent, it had no way of changing the course.
Fifty meters away, Mercury was targeted by one of the yellow rays from the huge ship, giving the Jane clue that she was within the range of enemy ship’s weapons. Wasting no time, she ordered Stella to initiate the jump to Argon Prime.
The station was silent. Erich Campbell’s audio amplifiers were on maximum, yet he heard nothing, except occasional vibration. Then entire station shook and lights went out. Distant hull breach alarm could be heard. Otto tried to open the door to no avail.
“Physical lock,” he commented disappointed.
“Does Argons think we will perish here?” Ni Lan asked. His tentacles were twitching with their tips getting white, a sign that the poor Boron was stressed.
“Not if I can help it,” Erich reassured him.
Otto gave him a doubting look. The situation was not promising.
A level above them, Ha’nt finally breached the door leading to the prison section. He was worried. The hull breach alarms had sounded. Ha’nt was not afraid for his life. Having no family honor to defend, his life was worthless. No, he was afraid that station would collapse before he accomplished his mission of joining with two renegade Argons. With them, he could start new life, new clan and again regain the purpose of his life. He pushed the door aside and began his careful advance. The infoscreen above his head warned of intruder alert.
Ha’nt tensed at first and then relaxed when he realized that only intruder was he and that no one was around to react to that. He picked up his pace, the dark presenting no obstacle for his Split eyes with their night vision.
Slowing to see if he was on the right way, he again picked up speed. Some instinct, ingrained in him back from the age when his ancestors were not on the top food chain on his homeplanet, told him that something was wrong. He stopped and listened. Some scraping sound could be heard. Ha’nt told himself that those were the usual sounds of the station, hull contraction and expanding or something like that.
He continued again, more slowly this time. The scraping sounds stopped, then resumed again. Ha’nt noticed that the sound increased and was coming from the direction he was traveling. He turned the corner. And froze.
Before him was an insectoid creature he had never seen before…
Inside the doomed Xenon destroyer, A89.0001 finished its POST* sequence without problems. Another two picosezuras went as computer overseeing the construction of A89, loaded the memory from its predecessor A88. First when that was done, the computer running the assembly and configuration of A89 became aware that the time before he managed to run all of the post-assembly configurations, was less than the time before the hull breach suffered by dying destroyer would lead to catastrophic disintegration. The computer, faced with such consequences, gave one last command to A89.
As the assembly’s section walls gave under pressure of the vacuum, A89’s jump engines activated.
Olav Lie always personally removed or supervised the removal of any traces of his machinations. The mercenary group, “Freelance Marine Corps” was one of such traces and had to be removed.
Olav Lie had hired them to capture Erich Campbell, something the mercenaries had failed miserably at. Right now, the mercenary TL was in queue to dock with one small Wharfstation. Olav Lie knew that they would be here because he had arranged to meet the mercenaries for debriefing and payment meeting. Unknown to the mercenaries, Olav Lie was already informed about their failed attempt and had no intension of meeting the mercenary leader aboard the station. He watched the TL on one of the monitors in his cabin.
The queue had formed due to a trader accidentally suffered an engine failure. It was positioned in such way that any docking and undocking of TL-class of ships was impossible, causing irritation and delays to ships in increasing queue. Off course, the “engine failure” was not at all accidental…
A Customs Buster fighter approached the mercenary TL ship. The TL was ordered to shut down shield generators so it could be scanned. This procedure was nothing out of the ordinary in this part of the space, so the TL’s pilot did not object. In few sezuras, Olav Lie’s scanners told him TL shields were shut off.
The assassin aboard the Buster smiled, ignoring the smell of decay that the dead body of dead Customs officer, strapped to the co-pilot seat, emanated. He scanned the TL, locating the fitting empty area for the bomb he had in Buster’s cargo hold. The assassin quickly used the freight beamer to transport over the bomb that usually was used for dam creation on planets. Then he used transporter to transfer himself aboard Olav Lie’s yacht floating 4 km away.
Four sezuras later, a huge explosion engulfed the TL, disintegrating both the TL and the Buster.
The news media would report that unexplained explosion killed the TL’s crew and one Customs officer. Probably it will be ignored, overshadowed by the ongoing events in Presidents End…
Ha’nt stood absolutely still. The creature in front of him smelled the air and clutched it claws couple of times. It knew that something was nearby but it seemed like it did not see him. Perhaps it had no night vision, Ha’nt wondered. Mizuras passed. Finally the creature returned to its work. Ha’nt began moving his hand towards his laspistol, when creature stopped working and started to sniff air again. Footsteps could be heard.
“Someone there?” somebody shouted. The creature turned to the direction of where the voice was coming from, the other end of the corridor. The footsteps resumed and next moment, Ha’nt could see an Argon woman with his night vision. The creature could not see the woman, but it had heard the footsteps. Faster than Ha’nt could ever imagine possible, the creature moved towards the sound, using its appendages as feelers. It soon come in contact with the woman and using its claws it started to tear her apart.
Shocked by the woman’s screams, it took Ha’nt few moments to realize that this was his chance. He took out his laspistol, aimed and unloaded entire charge. He did not stop until he got audio warning that his laspistol needed recharging.
The creature was still alive, only suffering grazing wounds from Splits inaccurate fire. It turned and charged. Ha’nt could not use his laspistol again until it recharged. He regretted on not buying faster recharging capacitor upgrade.
Erich's augmented hearing picked up a faint scream and laspistol discharge in distance. At same time, Otto pointed to the infoscreen flashing with “intruder alert” and “hull breached” alerts.
“I just heard the laser fire,” Erich said.
“You think the station is being stormed?”
“The only logical conclusion”
“Pirates?”
Erich shook his head, “President’s End is too well defended for that type of pirate raids”
“New Great War?” Ni Lan suggested.
“Paranids wouldn’t dare without Split support and their relationships are deteriorating,” Otto said.
“Besides, we are on the wrong side of the Federation,” Erich added.
“Then it is Xenon,” Ni Lan concluded.
Erich had his doubts. Never had he heard about machines storming a planet or station. Their motto is “Find and Kill”. But then who? And what will happen with Erich, Otto and Ni Lan when assaulters discover them?
“What are you thinking about?” Otto asked. Erich started to answer but then tilted his head, signaling with his hand that he was picking something up. Otto could not hear anything. Ni Lan tried to hide in the shadows of his cell.
“Somebody is approaching. Carefully, like if he or she is on the guard,” Erich explained.
“What now, Argons?” Ni Lan whispered.
“We sit and wait,” Otto whispered back.
A89.0001, the first in its series, “awoke” in sector 064. The default command was loaded in its memory banks, ordering it to travel to sector 609, and then to Connected Systems, provided no enemies were following.
A89 assessed this command and decided to disregard it. A-series were utility ships, what use it would be to the Network if it returned, it reasoned. Unknowingly it had just done something unprecedented in the history of the Network.
It also considered its chances of survival. The route to 609 was infested by dangerous biological
entities, according to the information its predecessor, A88.0087, had gathered. The information was outdated by many billions gigaclock cycles by now…
The Xenon ship scanned the sector. The 0064 had been an empty sector, the last time a Network expedition passed here. Now it had couple of structures that A89 assessed with 0,93 probability were of non-Network origin. Fortunately for A89, the biological entities’ scanners were of poor quality, not even having half the reach of A89’s scanners.
It detected HF signals emitting from largest of the structures,
“Welcome to the lassst race in this jazuras SunRacesss and may the profitsss come your way! The Freedom’s Reach sssector had never ssseen thisss many ssspectatorsss! We are all exited to sssee who…”
Not understanding the message, A89 decided to store the signal. Perhaps, in future the Network will be able to break the protocol of the signals between the biological entities.
It picked up another signal, one that was not there before and much closer. A89 concentrated its scanners on the area of sector the signal was detected. Once again the signal came, in short bursts. A89, localized the source to be a rock floating in the space 20 seconds flightime away. The Xenon ship was not confused by this attempt of hiding a satellite.
The standard command for enemy satellites was to destroy them. A89 again ignored the standard command and decided to investigate the satellite further. It approached the rock carefully with its scanners on passive. Three meters away, two robotic arms extended from the ship. One had tractor beam projector that A89 used to hold the rock steady. The other arm consisted of a combined drill and probe mechanism. It drilled the rock gently until the probe could be sent in. A89 studied the mechanism carefully. The schematics of the internal workings of the satellite told him that this was a unidirectional optical and sensor spy satellite. If it had been a standard omni-directional satellite, A89 would have been detected, something that also would have happened if A89 had acted on standard commands. A89 concluded that standard commands were to be considered as suggestions.
It turned its attention again to the satellite. Most of the hardware in the satellite was ASIC type that he could not change. However, certain parts were programmable logic of similar type that A89 control and command electronics were made of. It retracted the arm and replaced the drill and probe module with hardware reprogramming module.
First it caused the satellite to shutdown. Then, using only two tenths of sezura, it reprogrammed the programmable logic in the satellite. Now it had total control of the satellite. A89 turned it back on, before the software running the satellite grid could detect that one node was missing.
A89 continued his study of the satellite. It could not yet interpret the optical feed, lacking the necessary software. However, it had no trouble interpreting the standard gravidar scan.
A89 assessed the probability of other satellites being around. The calculation resulted with number close to 1, so A89 decided that if it wanted to avoid destruction it had to find all the satellites.
A89 made modification to the communication protocol satellite used. It made the satellite send a “send the packet to the next node / read the packet message”. Packet message consisted of request of gravidar values.
Since the dawn of satellites, gravidar values were used to determine where a satellite was positioned and A89 had no reason to believe that biological entities used other, more primitive system. On contrary, it calculated that they were not capable of inventing a more advanced system.
In case a satellite that depended on directional radio communication was moved, the next satellite in the grid would know where to direct its communication antennas with help of received gravidar values. A gravidar values request would never be refused, however it would be heavily coded. A89 had no problems decoding the code, since the satellite it had taken control over had the decode sequence stored in its memory. Tampering with hardware would have caused the erasure of the memory, but the human designers never thought of Xenon breaking into their design.
The first values were received and A89 could see that entire 0064 sector was covered by spy satellites. After a pause, more data was received, something A89 had calculated probable. Analyzing the structure of the new data, A89 concluded that the data received, was outside this sector. More interesting to A89 was the beginning of the every packets received. The data from 0064 sector started all the same with long string of bytes, but new data had started differently. A89 was not sure if it was the code for sector or merely subgroup code for each group within the grid. The probability calculations were undecided in the matter. A89 had recognized that same string of bytes had been present in the HF transmission it had stored in its memory. However, the Xenon was puzzled by the fact the spy large number of satellites in the sector seemed to spy on the biological entities in the sector. It came up with a theory:
There were rival biological species, something the Network had established long time ago. The structures in the sector belonged to one species while the spy satellite grid belonged to another. The codenames used for the sector, were same in both species. Therefore the “Freedom’s Reach” is codename/identifier for 0064 sector. A89 stored this fact in his memory. Following that logic, A89 realized that the identifier for 0054 sector was “Danna’s Chance”.
A89 concluded that this information could be the key for breaking the communication protocol of biological entities. It decided to stay on present position until it had gathered all data he managed to extract from the spy satellite grid.
By chance and unknowingly, the A89 had done something the creators of the spy satellite network had never imagined possible - that a Xenon machine could hack into the EYE network*…
Yoshiro Fujiwara looked worriedly at the tactical hologram in the middle of the room. The already small Federation forces were stretched thin by the invaders attacks on the outlaying posts, when huge enemy warship jumped in the middle of the sector where “Constellation” had just finished assembling her militia escort.
Within sezuras, the new ship, firing the unidentified type of beams, cut through the groups of inexperienced militia. It launched a swarm of missiles, causing even more casualties. Then it accelerated, its shields barely lowering a iota by collisions with small militia fighters. Four beams struck the “Constellation”. Destroyer’s shields dropped fifteen percent. “Constellation” responded by firing a barrage of missiles and torpedoes, halving the enemy warship’s shields. Unfortunately, some missiles struck friendly militia fighters and even more casualties were caused when destroyer’s photon pulse cannons’ beams opened their fire, hitting the friendly ships who got in the way.
The enemy warship had destroyed around half of the Argon fighters with its unexpected attack, but it was now paying a high price. After what Yoshiro thought was eternity, Trading station’s own defense batteries finally opened fire. The enemy ship’s shielding quickly reached zero level. Its faith was sealed by a light frigate that unloaded its both torpedo tubes into the enemy ship from close range. Torpedoes slammed into the hull of the warship, almost at same time, creating a huge, gaping hole in the hostile warship. The strange ship’s weaponry ceased firing as if someone had magically turned off a switch. The people around Yoshiro cheered.
Then another warship, similar to the destroyed one, jumped in concentrating its fire on the
frigate. She could not take it and her shields dropped in few sezuras and one side of the frigate melted, opening a huge rift in its side. The vacuum did the rest.
“Constellation” had no more torpedoes to fire, Yoshiro thought. The loading had barely started when attack began.
More enemy ships jumped in, surrounding the “Constellation”, in a deadly lightshow of beams.
Mesmerized by sights on the tactical hologram, nobody in the room noticed the intruder alarm flashing on their screens. Yoshiro had ordered all audio alarms turned off in order that he could work undisturbed by sirens.
Only when a station security officer burst into the room, wide eyed with ashen face, did Yoshiro understand that something was terribly wrong.
“The creatures…” security officer repeated, struggling with his breathing.
“Calm down and tell us what’s wrong,” a tech tried to calm him.
“The creatures…I have never seen something like this before…They assaulted the lower levels and are heading towards here. We tried to stop them, but there is just too many of them. Most of my men…”
The officer’s voice cracked and Yoshiro noticed that officer’s hands trembled. Nobody needed to be told that with most of the Station Security gone, nothing stood between assaulters and them.
Yoshiro Fujiwara felt a knot in his stomach. He knew what had to be done.
“Computer? This is Lt. Fujiwara Yoshiro, pr.num. 789-1304746-AP120. Execute order 17T”
“Voice identification and relevant authorizations confirmed. Please add perimeters for the order 17T.”
“Presence of unidentified species not conforming to bioscans of known species”
“Perimeter conformed. Are you sure of this order, Lt. Fujiwara?”
“Yes, Computer.”
Yoshiro felt the stares of his coworkers. All understood the consequences of order 17T. It was the suicide order to the station's computer. The CCI level of the station will be reduced to bright light and heat by hundreds of small anti-matter charges. The rest of the station will be ripped apart by the vacuum. Both the invaders and anyone left on the station will die. Yoshiro sat down at his chair and watched the death struggle of the "Constellation".
She too has no chance, Yoshiro thought. At least we will take our killers with us when we die...
Continue to next chapter
- the cliffhanger was unplaned... There is half page more after "One minute passed" that did not make it... Oh well, I'll add it next time.
I hope it becomes a hero or something 
.