Chapter 5: Chapter Five No Retreat

Erisa was now in a small control room staring at screens. She could see how the ship’s entry into the battle had turned it into a rout. The Neku were desperately trying to clear the range of the weapon, and the gravity well of the star the ancient ship was orbiting. The Constellation was close enough to a star that its gravity prevented hyperspace jumps in the vicinity of the ship. Thankfully the ship wasn’t so close that radiation became a problem, but the Erali had been lucky to find it in the first place.

That first shot had been stunning. In an instant a mighty dreadnought had been vaporized. Completely, there was nothing left of it. Never before had she seen a weapon capable of such total destruction. That kind of power scared her, and finally put into perspective how powerful this ancient vessel had truly been. This could really change the course of the war, but a part of her was thinking it might have been better if they had found a battlecruiser.

The second shot reinforced her feelings about what she was seeing, and she spoke her thoughts aloud, “What kind of monster brought this ship down?”

Melia giggled, “That description is quite apt. She went down in battle with the Darkations, and since they use organic vessels, they can be described as a space monster. No single Darkation vessel brought her down though. This ship is a match for any Darkation vessel short of a Superdreadnought, and her shields are strong enough to protect her from a superdreadnought. Not indefinitely, but long enough to disable the ship and escape when handled by a skilled crew. A solid hit with her main cannons can do that in fact. The Darkations only win battles through sheer numbers, and that is something they are good at given how prodigiously they breed, and how quickly they can grow entire fleets. However, I should point out that while the Constellation may have gone down, she still won the battle.”

Erisa blinked. It took her a moment to process that, and then she repeated the last line. “Won the battle?”

Melia gave her a look, “Oh, come on. It should be obvious. A battle can easily be considered won, if you achieved all your objectives. The Constellation went down because she stayed behind to delay the enemy fleet, buy time for her own fleet to retreat, and to ensure that the intergalactic stargate was destroyed. She achieved all three objectives, in fact she annihilated the enemy fleet, but was disabled by the subspace shockwaves of the stargate exploding. That’s what overloaded the shields, but it also destroyed everything within ten lightyears of the gate. Every ship, every planet, everything. Only reason the Constellation survived is that her shields were up at the time, and they could absorb the brunt of the blow. What was left of her armor took the rest. There was some internal damage in areas already breached, but nothing of consequence was damaged. Most of what was in those sections was already offline at the time.”

Erisa wasn’t quite sure what to say. The ship had survived a shockwave of such magnitude? She really wondered what had happened, given that there were breaches in the hull big enough to fly a ship through. After a while she sighed, “I guess we’re lucky to find a ship like this in the first place, but maybe a battlecruiser would have been better for us.”

Melia scoffed, “I would be very impressed if you found a Solean Battlecruiser. SO would the ship. The Soleans don’t build battlecruisers. Too fragile, it’s more cost effective to just build a battleship. Besides anything a battlecruiser can do, a fast battleship can do just as well or better.”

She was about to respond, when suddenly a frigate exploded. She stared at the expanding debris for a moment or two on the screens, and then she turned to Melia. “What the heck happened to that frigate!!?”

Melia never said a word, a different voice spoke up from behind her. “Her hyperdrive destabilized on jump out due to extreme subspace distortion in the local area. The result was naturally the total destruction of the vessel. In other words she self-destructed.”

She turned around, and found a naked winged woman standing behind her. The door had never opened, and she had never seen the strange alien woman before either. “Who are you and how did you get in here?”

As she shifted her stance, the alien lazily looked around the room, “Name’s Megumi. I am the ship’s AI. I just repaired the projectors in this room, and decided to test them. Figured I would answer your question while I was at it.”

“You're a hologram?”

The alien gave her a look, “That’s all you got out of that?” Then she surveyed the room before saying, “I have more important things to do though. Bye.”

With that, she just suddenly vanished, and Erisa just slumped down onto the floor. Deliberately avoiding the chairs in the room, as she did not trust them. She was afraid they would attack her, like the one chair had attacked Melia. Not realizing what had happened to her earlier meant there was no need for that.

“Weird girl. Who just shows up, answers a question and then leaves like that?”

Melia who was watching the screens replied, “Be glad she answered it in the first place. She is busy after all. Maybe not so busy she can’t also hold a conversation with us, but busy enough. Not to mention from her perspective we are a pair of Rodai trapped in a maze. We interest her, but ...”

She sighed, “I get your point. I am no Rodai though!”

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Melia giggled, “No we aren’t. Doesn’t change how she sees us.” then she pointed at the screens, “Nor does it change how she sees them.”

Erisa glanced at the screen, and could see the Neku fleet was moving away at full speed, but no further ships had been destroyed.

She couldn’t help but observe, “You know if nothing is done, they are going to get away.”

Melia gave her a look, “I know she didn’t tell you everything, but didn’t you think about what the cause of that extreme subspace distortion was?”

Erisa returned a blank look, and said, “everyone knows that it is dangerous to jump hyperspace near a star. Wasn’t it the star? Didn’t they miscalculate the safe jump distance?”

Melia broke out laughing. After a couple of moments she said, “No, this was not a gravimetric subspace distortion. You are a Military woman, you know the value of retreat right? You also know the value in preventing a retreat, yes?”

Erisa very much did know that, and quickly made the connection. There was a hyperspace jammer aboard this ship. In battle the strongest tactical move was the one that reaped the highest gain for the least cost. For the Neku, at this moment that would be a retreat, but allowing the Neku to retreat may not be of benefit to the ship. She already knew that the ship had chosen to act, but she did not know why. The ship’s info on things was likely limited. That meant those ships out there were a source of intelligence, and any intelligence would be useful. She would try to capture those vessels. Erisa was sure of it, but the how eluded her. The ship was heavily damaged, and she didn’t even know if it had sublight capability. Not to mention it was lacking in troops to use to capture those vessels. The local fleet of Erali vessels would provide some, but not enough for a fleet that large.

Then again, this ship’s orbit around the star was so perfect that it very well might have been intentional. If the ship had minimal sublight it could have used it to enter its current orbit. It made sense, a lot of sense. Especially if the ship wanted to be found, but overlooked by its enemies. The ship was just close enough to the star that the radiation obscured its sensor signature, not completely but enough that unless you did a close pass it would look like an asteroid caught in a close orbit. Not all that unusual in this system, there were quite a few large rocks found in close orbit of the primary. Only reason they found the ship was because of a survey to determine the value of those rocks, and they were lucky to spot the damn thing.

“So their drives are being actively jammed. I have never heard of a hyperdrive jammer that causes ships to self-destruct when they engage their hyperdrives. Makes it a bit scary, but the point is moot if they get out of range.”

Melia laughed, “That would take them about eighty years. The jamming field has a range of fifteen lightyears.”

That really put things in perspective. There was no retreat for the Neku. They were facing a vastly superior foe, albeit a heavily damaged one. Erisa already knew that the ship was actively repairing itself though. Thanks to Melia repairing its automated repair system. Something she thought was stupid, especially given what the fool traded for knowledge. By the gods what use was knowledge if you traded away your free will for it? Not that she could do anything about that foolish choice. She glanced back at the screens, the Neku were still clearly trying to make a run for it.

Her thoughts were broken suddenly when Melia said, “It seems they don’t yet realize their position. The ship has decided to make another demonstration.”

She turned to the screen expecting to see another orange-green beam vaporize a ship, but that is not what she saw. A vibrant blue-green energy stream cut across the vast distance in an instant, instead. The beam struck with precision, and penetrated the shields of the rearmost battleship. Punched right though the dorsal stern, and exited through the ventral plating before continuing on into an escort destroyer where it punched through amidships, penetrating the shields and dorsal armor. Before continuing through the ship and out into the void. The beam faded a moment later, and then she watched as the battleship fell out of formation, her lights going dark. At the same moment an explosion occurred on the destroyer, one that triggered a series of secondary explosions that claimed the ship.

This weapon seemed less powerful, but no less terrifying. She had no doubt it could have done far more damage, but the ship was exercising restraint. That weapon was clearly capable of cleaving the battleship in two, and in some ways that made it more terrifying than simply being vaporized. The screen shifted to display what was clearly an active scan of the battleship with accompanying alien text. Text she could not read, but she was sure Melia could read that text.

She glanced at Melia, “Let me guess, that shot was meant to disable that battleship.”

Melia nodded, “Yes, PPBs are powerful, and highly accurate long range beam weapons. Making them well suited to the task. That shot was precisely calculated to knock out their main engines, and disable their primary reactor. While also doing enough secondary damage to complicate repairs without destroying the ship. They should have auxiliary power shortly, but restoring main power or the engines will take awhile. Half their engineering section was just vented to space, and they rely too much on emergency force fields, and not on physical bulkheads. It will give us plenty of time to approach, and capture that ship.”

Suddenly she noticed a strange hum, and it took her a moment to realize that a powerful sublight engine had just come online. A moment after she realized that, she felt the ship break orbit, and then noticed their closing on the fleet. Melia then commented, “I can imagine the surprised faces over there. Most would think a ship this big would be quite slow, but even with only a single working engine, the Constellation is more than twice as fast as even the fastest Neku frigates. I am sure you can just imagine how fast she would be with all eight engines in working order, and the sub-engines.”

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