AN: No way it was November when I last updated the other book! Been really demotivated, but back in the swing of things now and should probably get right on that. In the meantime, enjoy this! Quillon out.
Chapter One. Pilot.
Commander Jonathan Walker swore loudly as the red alert went off. The reason? He'd been about three minutes from going off shift. He stood from the seat he'd been sitting in, and called "Computer, bring ship to flight readiness and call Lift Three to Deck Seven. Priority override."
He felt the deck thrum beneath his feet as the ship started her engines and brought herself to flight readiness. The lift closest to him, Lift Three, dinged softly and the doors slid open. He entered the lift quickly but without hurrying, hoping that this would all just turn out to be another drill. As soon as he was inside the lift, the doors hissed shut behind him, and before he could even give a voice command he felt his weight increase exponentially as the lift accelerated upwards. Struggling to stand, he called out "Computer, verify the operation of Lift Three!".
"Lift Three is currently in Priority Override Mandarin. Lift Three is returning to the bridge."
He sighed, feeling his weight return to normal as the acceleration tapered off, the lift streaking upwards at nearly twenty metres per second. Of course, the ship was designed to override all systems and return all bridge crew in lifts to the bridge if a red alert was triggered. It was a good emergency measure. It just got annoying sometimes. He felt the lift suddenly start decelerating, and he got the slight tingles in his stomach that he always got when danger was approaching. Shit. The lift stopped and the doors slid open, but he didn't even have time to exit the lift before a red light nearly blinded him and the entire ship rocked. He barked "Computer, get this ship out of danger. Now!"
"Primary system control conduits beta-seven and alpha-three are offline, presumed destroyed. Thrusters disabled."
"Reroute!"
"Rerouting, please wait... Thruster controls rerouted, maximum acceleration burn commencing in twenty seconds."
He nearly ran to his seat, and as soon as he sat down he felt the protective gel that would keep him safe from harm reach out, all across his body. It could be a weird sensation at first, and worse naked (you don't want to know) but in a RemLok suit it was only a sensation of cold. Slightly unnerving to the untrained, sure, but he'd been doing this nearly twenty-five years. The computer interrupted his thoughts with the message "Ten seconds to maximum acceleration burn." There was another jolt, and he heard the ship creak and groan around him as the armour soaked up the damage the shields failed to deflect. A sudden terrifying suspicion entered his mind, as there was only one way for laser damage to penetrate a shield before it failed - syncing it to the shield frequency! Gripped by sudden fear, damped a second later as his mind flooded his body with adrenaline, he barked "Computer! Randomise shield frequency and override countdown on maximum acceleration burn!".
"Shield frequency randomised. Initiating maximum acceleration burn."
He suddenly felt himself pressed back into the seat, his vision flickering and dimming, as the massive, hulking ship did something incredibly unlike what it appeared to be. It went from idling to accelerating at fifteen gees near-instantly, the engines running far beyond their recommended performance envelope. The hull creaked and groaned, signalling its protest at the incredible stresses it was under. A second later, the ship pushed the engines further, to nearly twenty gees, and he blacked out. He came to as the ship hit two kilometres per second, acceleration dropping to just under ten gees, and as he looked up at a monitor displaying a scanner readout he saw that one of the enemy ships was keeping pace with him. Even as he watched, a little red dot indicating a projectile appeared in front of it and started streaking towards the little white arrow that represented his ship. He saw the blue lines appear indicating that his point defence had targeted the projectile and started trying to destroy it. That meant it was firing missiles. A second later he heard the whump as the point defence hit the shield warhead, causing it to detonate before it reached him. "Computer, deploy all hardpoints, target enemy vessel and prepare to fire on my command."
"Enemy vessel targeted, but out of firing envelope."
"Give me manual control." The ship deployed a little joystick on the right side and a little throttle on the left, sliding them up and out of the armrests of his chair as little panels that hid them slid aside. A second later the protective gel around his arms melted away, although it remained fixed around his body. He throttled up and back to zero to override the maximum burn command, and then disengaged flight assist with a button press. He swung the ship around in its own length, meaning it was now reversing at two kilometres per second. The enemy ship was suddenly in his crosshairs. He pulled his triggers and the laser beam of his aiming laser lanced out and splashed against the enemy's shields. He heard the hum and felt the whole ship start to vibrate as the much more powerful weapons below him - the rail guns and plasma accelerators - charged up. As soon as they reached maximum charge they fired. All at once. He watched the enemy ship yaw wide as the kinetic plasma slugs, only a little slower than the light rails that the railguns fired, chewed into the armour of the enemy ship, the shields having already failed under the onslaught from the railguns. A ragged hole, glowing around the edges where the metal had been heated to upwards of two hundred thousand kelvin, appeared in the hull and he saw a little sparkling cloud puff out as the interior areas that had been breached lost their air. He saw a tiny figure go spinning out into deep space. The point defence, misinterpreting the body as a missile, fired at it, and he watched dispassionately as it disintegrated into a cloud of red smoke, dissipating quickly. A small flash on the hull of the enemy vessel caught his eye, and then the entire ship detonated. He swung the ship back around to point forwards, and re-engaged flight assist. "Computer, disengage manual control and restart burn. Accelerate at one point seven five gees. Heading -"
There was a cataclysmic flash from behind him, lighting up the front of his ship. All his monitors went momentarily dead, and then as they flickered back to life his brain caught up. He knew what that flash meant, and it wasn't good. Someone had just detonated a hypernuclear weapon and the EMP shockwave had just washed over him, travelling as fast as light. He knew that the main shockwave wouldn't be far behind, travelling at zero point nine times the speed of light. "Computer! Re-engage manual control and s-"
There was a sound. Or rather, there was an absence of sound. In exactly the same second his ship seemed to bend. He was rammed sideways in his seat, feeling the edge of the belt that was there if the gel failed dig into his neck, drawing blood. He felt himself drifting away from his body, and was dimly conscious of the stars wheeling past the plastisteel window, the entire ship rotating wildy, caught up in the shockwave. He saw monitors break free of the ceiling, and then a panel covering a life-support conduit ripped away and hit him in the side of the face. There wasn't even time for pain, as everything went black.
1,277 words.
Review!