Supernova
Chapter 6
by Black Dragon
revcoll@peoplepc.com
http://www.angelfire.com/anime2/fanficlair/index.html
Standard disclaimer applies. If I owned Ranma or the Star Wars universe, I'd be living it big, eating caviar and swimming laps in my olympic-sized root beer pool, and I could simply pay someone else to do stuff like this...... great, now I'm depressed again. Just read it, will ya?
Chapter 6
The Morcan Menace
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Unit 01 was one of the robots that Rayden had created and Arak had perfected. It had everything standard on a regular labor droid, plus Arak's prototype plasma cannons and special armor. The speed and power output had been increased, and a computer uplink had been added, making the powerful robots another of RAC's drones. It was the perfect machine, capable of manual labor and intense combat, plus possessing a mind of which few humans could hope to match.
Right now, the oversized automaton was busy holding a young girl in front of its master, keeping her from escaping if need be.
Ranma groaned and massaged his forehead. Arak frowned.
"Well, so we have a stowaway. What are we gonna do about this, huh?"
Ranma remained silent with his hands still held over his eyes.
Arak smirked and walked up to the young woman, looking her right in the eyes. Yuri simply blinked, unaware of what she had gotten herself into.
"My, such a pretty thing, too. What a waste. How shall we deal with you, eh? Throw you out the airlock? Disintigrate you? Dissect you and use your organs to fix Shikodan up quicker?"
Yuri went pale as a sheet. "For-for stowing away? Y-y-you c-can't be serious!"
Arak gave her a flat stare. "This is a pirate ship dearie. What were you expecting, a welcome party? Augh!"
Ranma lifted Arak up by his shirt and threw him into one of the chairs. "Will you cut that out? You're gonna give her a heart attack."
Yuri looked up to Ranma fearfully, her earlier wonder and adoration being quickly replaced with horror. "You... you're a pirate?"
Ranma nodded, as if the fact should have been obvious and was of no importance. "Yeah, I'm a pirate. Mind explainin' why you hid on board?"
Yuri tried to answer, but either through fear or excitement, she couldn't remember. "I... I... I don't really know... I just wanted to, um......"
Ranma sighed. "Unit 01, let her go." The robot released Yuri immediately, then turned around and left down the hall.
Yuri gulped. "You... you're not really going to kill me, are you?"
Ranma rolled his eyes and shook his head. "No, we're not gonna kill you. Unfortunately, we can't return you, either. Everyone on that huge chunk of rock we just left is trying to kill us." Ranma plopped down in one of the large white chairs, and steepled his fingers under his chin.
"Well, it looks like we'll just have to drop you off somewhere else. You got a home?" He glanced over at her, and she gulped.
"I, uh, Daddy has a place on Morcan III... I suppose I could stay there..." She felt paralyzed simply by the unreality of the situation. To have stowed away on a pirate ship!
Ranma nodded. "Morcan III it is, then. Arak, set a course."
"Hmph. A real pirate would've just killed her," Arak grumbled as he walked over to the navigation panel.
"Yeah, well you can call me a fake pirate then. We don't need to involve innocents in this." Ranma turned back to Yuri, who had a very surprised look on her face. "Unit 01'll take you to a guest room. From then on, Rac'll be your host. He'll explain everything until we get to Morcan."
Yuri blinked, and then felt the hardened metal of Unit 01's "hands" poke into her back, leading her into the hallway and away from the bridge.
Arak watched her go, then turned to Ranma. "She has a crush on you, you know."
Ranma stumbled, and almost fell out of his chair. "What? How do you know?"
Arak rolled his eyes. "1: I've only known three heterosexual human women that have seen you that didn't develop a crush on you over time. 2: Following you is the only half-way reasonable explanation for her coming aboard. 3: I saw the look in her eyes when she saw you before I told her we were pirate,." Arak finished, ticking off the points on his fingers.
Ranma just ignored him. "You're reading into this too much. We're just gonna fly to Morcan, drop her off, then get this heap fixed. That's that. Whether or not she's got a 'crush' doesn't matter. Now if you'll excuse me, I believe that blinking red light means we're leaking atmosphere into space." Ranma jumped out of his chair and rushed out of the bridge, leaving Arak alone and confused.
Arak turned around, and stared at the glaring crimson button.
"Oh, bugger. I thought I fixed that hole."
___________________________________________________________________________ _______
"I can't believe it. He's a pirate! A real, live, space pirate! Oh why oh why did I sneak aboard this thing? I'm gonna get myself killed!" Yuri would've stopped to bang her head on the wall, but was still under the watchful eye (and itchy plasma cannon) of unit 01.
So instead she sighed submissively and trudged behind the towering robot, eventually coming to a small room. She was surprised that it wasn't actually a holding cell, but a full-sized officer's room, complete with a fairly large bed and dresser.
She heard a beep, then turned around to see a moniter on an actuated metal arm come down from the ceiling to face her. It activated, showing a small red lens.
"I AM RAC, SUPER-SENTIENT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. AS YOU WILL MOST LIKELY BE STAYING HERE A WHILE, I SHALL LAY DOWN A FEW GROUND RULES."
The screen blinked, and a layout of the main floor of the Wild Horse appeared. "THIS IS THE WILD HORSE. YOU ARE CURRENTLY IN THE FORWARD SECTION OF THE SHIP, WHERE PERSONNEL QUARTERS, LIVING FACILITIES, AND THE BRIDGE IS LOCATED. MAKE SURE TO STAY IN THIS AREA. OTHERWISE, YOU WILL BE SHOT." A large area of the forward section of the ship was suddenly highlighted in green, while most of the back area was highlighted red.
Yuri flinched.
The layout was cleared of color, and then several small areas of red appeared, mostly on the bridge, but a few squares in other areas, though most were back in the restricted area. "THESE ARE CONSOLES THAT CAN BE USED TO CONTROL THE SHIP, CONTACT OR USE CERTAIN PROGRAMS OF MINE, OR JUST PLAY A QUICK GAME OF TETRIS. YOU WILL NOT BE TOUCHING THEM. OTHERWISE, YOU WILL BE SHOT."
Yuri gulped, but nodded for the computer to continue.
The layout changed yet again, this time to different various areas distributed widely around the ship, though once again they were clustered in the bridge and rear sections of the ship. "THESE ARE ACCESS HATCHES OF SYSTEM PATHWAYS. THEY ARE NOT TO BE TAMPERED WITH, EXCEPT BY A MEMBER OF THE CREW. OBVIOUSLY, IF YOU CHOOSE TO TAMPER WITH THEM ANYWAY, YOU WILL BE SHOT."
Yuri sighed and sat down on the bed. "I'm starting to see a pattern here..." she mumbled bitterly.
The layout cleared once again, and this time several small pathways near the outer hull were shown. "THESE ARE THE ESCAPE POD ACCESS HATCHES. I THINK YOU KNOW WHAT THEY'RE FOR. SURPRISINGLY, YOU MAY USE ONE AT ANY TIME WITHOUT GETTING SHOT, THOUGH I DON'T REALLY SEE THE POINT."
Yuri sweatdropped, then flopped down backward onto her bed.
The moniter adjusted to her new line of sight, and the layout now showed three large red areas, rather clos to each other, and all in the "accessible" part of the ship. "THESE ARE THE CURRENT CREW'S QUARTERS. THE ONE ON TOP IS CAPTAIN SAOTOME'S, THE BIGGEST ONE IS TETSUMI'S, AND THE OTHER ONE IS SHIKODAN'S. I HAVE NO ORDERS REGARDING WHAT TO DO SHOULD YOU WANDER IN ONE OF THESE ROOMS, THOUGH I WOULDN'T PUSH YOUR LUCK IF I WERE YOU. ESPECIALLY WITH RAYDEN. HE HAS A FETISH FOR VIOLENCE. THAT IS ALL. ENJOY YOUR STAY."
The moniter retracted itself, leaving Yuri to curl up in her covers while thinking about her current situation. She would have cried, but oddly enough, felt that crying was totally inappropriate for her predicament. So instead, she laid her head down, and slept.
___________________________________________________________________________ _______
Morcan III was a colony planet. This in itself was hardly noteworthy. Most civilized worlds were not populated by the species that evolved there, but by other species that moved in before sentient life could develop.
However, Morcan III had been colonized recently, and the only city on the globe was Charita, a trading city enclosed in a transparisteel dome with a space port.
Morcan III had absolutely no useful mineral deposits, and its atmosphere was barely above survivable level for standard oxygen-breathers. However, it did have a useful position, as Morcan's sun was a common gravity well that ran through over 170 hyperspace routes commonly used by traders. In truth, the Wild Horse had been notorious for hitting this same system every couple of months, though they left the colony alone.
Thus, Morcan III had a huge and effeciently run spaceport right outside the dome, with over 30 ships belonging to the government of Morcan, and over 60 more privately owned vessels speeding in and out each day.
They also had excellent scanners, in order to detect and organize space traffic.
"Sir, we're reading an exit from hyperspace." The tech at the control glanced worriedly at the display. His supervisor simply nodded.
"Uh, sir, the exit is unusually far off. The course intercepts tell us it's probably headed here, but it's much farther away than it should be."
This got the supervisor's attention. "What? Are they pirates? What's the readout on the approaching ship?"
The tech looked ready to say something, then frowned. "I don't think so sir. The deep-space scanner readouts are all very odd... they're not close enough for us to get a good reading. Wait! I'm detecting more hyperspace exits!"
The supervisor stepped back and grimaced. He could only think of one reason why someone would warp in so far away from the planet when they intended to move there anyway. If a large war fleet had been moving in, the best thing to do would be to stop and gather just out of effective scanning range, then move in after they were coordinated. Fortunately, they didn't seem to realize the effectiveness of the new scanners.
'But why would a war fleet attack here? Possibly for supplies... which means it's probably another Imperial warlord's fleet or something.'
"Keep scanning the incoming ships and alert me to any new developments. Communications, issue a warning to the city and prepare in case of evacuation. Fleet command, send out a scout ship to make contact and send us more data."
The various people in the room all confirmed their orders and the alarm was readied.
___________________________________________________________________________ _______
Dell hated his job.
Most people thought it was exciting and noble to be a fighter pilot in today's mess of constant wars and space battles. Heck, he had thought so himself.
And it was exciting sometimes. Heart attack level exciting. The kind of exciting that sends so much adrenaline into your body you can't even think straight.
But the rest of the time it was so blasted boring!
Take this mission, for example. He was to take out a fighter, unarmed and refitted with a multitude of scanners, and contact a huge fleet while sendng data back to HQ. He couldn't shoot anything if he wanted to. Damn commander, if he'd known that that little practical joke involving Yammil Lice would've landed him scout duty, he never would have pulled it.
He was so busy griping about how incredibly unfair it all was, that he never got a good look at the opposing fleet until his console beeped to inform him that he was within scanning range.
Dell was utterly baffled by what he saw. The biggest ship, which had warped in third, remotely resembled a Mon Calamari cruiser, except less........ metallic.
It was larger than the massive warships, for one thing. The entire hull of the thing was blue with webs of black stretched across it, and was in an incredibly bizarre shape; it was as if someone took several huge ovals of hull and mashed them together. Again, reminiscent of Mon Calamari design, but at the same time very different. Poking out of the ovals at what seemed like random intervals were large dark blue crystals. There were only 2-4 crystals on each oval, and they only appeared to be on the areas directly exposed to space.
Looking around, Dell saw that the other ships just seemed to be made up of one of the same ovals that made up the large ship, except those ones had strange-looking tails on the end which he assumed to be engines of some sort, and a single larger crystal on the front of the vessel.
"HQ, are you gettin' this?"
*Roger. Continue scanning, and hail them.*
Dell looked at his controls. "That might be a problem HQ."
*Why?*
"I'm not picking up any communications receiver to send a message to."
*.................... Yes, that would be a problem. We're trying to interpret the data you're sending us. Please stand by.*
Dell nodded and was about to check his scanners again when he noticed one of the smaller ship's crystals lighting up.
He wasn't able to dodge in time as a small white pinnacle of energy hit his fighter.
He blinked. Considering that appeared to be the only weapon on the alien ship, he'd have expected it to be more powerful. Looking at his shield gauge, he saw that his shields hadn't been damaged at all, though another one of his scanners showed that he was now emitting some kind of weird energy signal.
Then the crystal lit up much more brightly than before, and a lightning bolt shot toward him, instantly frying the shield and utterly destroying the scout fighter.
___________________________________________________________________________ _______
Yuri was out of bed exploring the ship again. Though it was probably much safer to stay in the room, where she wouldn't get shot, it was still boring enough to prompt some exploration. She was, of course, taking every precaution to stay away from the rear sections of the ship, and that took a lot of the fun out of it, but she'd rather be alive and bored than, well, dead.
She remembered the first time she'd ever been on a space ship traveling on a hyperspace run. It was new and exciting then, and she had spent the entire trip looking at everything in the ship and asking the people nearby how the equipment worked. She was quite sure she annoyed the hell out of everyone else on board, but she had wanted to get on the return trip as soon as possible.
Ever since then, she had taken many more trips, and discovered that space travel was actually quite monotonous. Especially on those well-maintained diplomatic ships. There was never anything interesting on those heaps. She was greatly disappointed that her first trip aboard a warship had to be under such circumstances. But then, who wouldn't be?
She stopped in front of the ship's sick bay as she heard some movement inside.
The door opened, and she found herself looking at somebody's bare chest. Looking up, she saw Rayden blinking at her in confusion.
They stared at each other for a few moments more.
Rayden stuck out a hand. "Rayden Shikodan, ship mechanic and pilot of the Dark Angel. And you are?"
Yuri shook his hand, remembering her lessons on diplomacy and tact. "Yuri Xero. I'm a stowaway. Nice to meet you."
Rayden nodded. "Very good. You get on when we left Keeryu?"
She nodded.
"You an enemy spy waiting to sabotage the ship at a moment's notice and leave us all to die while you jet away in an excape pod?"
She shook her head.
Rayden smiled. "Good. We should get along just fine then." He found his shirt hanging on the outside of the door and put it on.
One of Rac's spheres floated by. "AH, SHIKODAN. I TRUST YOU'RE WELL?"
Rayden nodded. "Well enough. Damn scars'll take weeks to fade, but I can fly if I have to."
"EXCELLENT. WE ARE CURRENTLY IN THE PROCESS OF RETURNING MS. XERO TO MORCAN III. WE WILL BE COMING OUT OF HYPERSPACE IN 4 MINUTES. YURI, YOUR PRESENCE IS REQUESTED ON THE BRIDGE." the sphere wandered off a bit, disappearing around a corner.
Rayden clapped Yuri on the back. "Well, c'mon kid, let's get you back home." Yuri sighed and nodded.
The pair entered the bridge to find Ranma and Arak watching several displays. Ranma turned and greeted them.
"Ah, Yuri, Rayden, good to see you! How are you holding up, old buddy?"
Rayden shrugged. "Pretty good. Still a bit sore though. Let's drop her off and get this thing to a good dock so I can fix 'er up."
Ranma nodded. "In good time. Yuri, you want anything before you leave?"
Yuri blushed slightly as she was once again the center of attention. "Uh, no, not really."
To be perfectly honest, Yuri wasn't looking forward to going home nearly as much as she thought she'd want to. The whole experience with being kidnapped had been exciting, despite everything else, as well as mostly painless. For pirates, these guys didn't seem half bad (well, Rayden and Ranma didn't. Rac and his creator creeped her out big time).
Ranma smiled at her. "Well then, we'll just-"
"EMERGENCY HYPERSPACE TRANSMISSION." Rac's metallic voice rang out in the bridge, interrupting Ranma.
"What?"
"MESSAGE READS AS FOLLOWS: MORCAN III UNDER ATTACK BY UNKNOWN ALIEN FORCE. EVACUATION OF PLANET HAS BEEN ISSUED, BUT ENEMY BLOCKADE IMPEDING ESCAPE. PLEASE SEND REINFORCEMENTS."
Ranma was about to ask something when the ship lurched slightly, and the ship entered the haze of blue that signalled the end of its hyperspace run.
"What the blazes.......?" Rayden looked on in awe at the scene that was placed before them.
The alien ships had surrounded any feasible escape vector from Charita, and had locked in the escaping forces with a blockade of smaller battleships cutting off the escape routes, with the main ship slowly crawling toward the planet itself.
Morcan III had its own defense fleet, which was unusual for a colony of its size, but vital in such situations as this. These ships were currently trying to punch a hole in the blockade so that the transports could get through. Many of the traders that were currently docked at the spaceport contributed to the effort by using their ships as transports, along with the few standard transports that made up Morcan's fleet.
Unfortunately, the alien weapons proved deadly against all capital ships, as their strange crystal weapons would emit ribbons of plasma that would sear and melt away the shields and hull, and wouldn't stop until the entire structure they were attacking had been destroyed. The Nebulon-B frigate had been destroyed in 2 minutes, while the modified Corellian Corvette had been taken down in under a minute, with the help of a second alien vessel.
Luckily fighters seemed to evade the "tagging" blasts of the crystals fairly easily, and so were quickly employed to take out the smaller oval ships. That's when the alien fighters had been deployed.
Roughly spherical, with a fringed hole in the back and a spiked hole in the front, the strange... things went down easily, but hunted their targets relentlessly. They weren't very fast, and their weapons, which was some sort of short-ranged energy ball, wasn't very powerful. However, the things seemed to be in total control of their manueverabiliy in space, able to seemingly ignore the laws of momentum as they easily trailed the fighters wherever they went.
Thus it was the vision that greeted those aboard the Wild Horse. Fighters, both alien and human were blown apart left and right, the former exploding in a cloud of blood and flesh, which only served to further confuse the hell out of the crew. Meanwhile, the huge bulbous command cruiser slowly lurched toward the cornered fleet, promising death to its targets.
Yuri was in hysterics. "What's going on? What are those things? Why are they attacking Morcan?" nobody had any answers for her, so they mostly ignored her.
Ranma was the leader. Therefore it was up to him to act. He assessed the situation, and made his decision.
"This sucks. This really, really sucks. Damn. Okay, Rayden, get into your fighter and prepare to launch with me on my signal. Rac, assess how much damage those little oval things can take, then divide up our missile and torpedo launchers among the targets to take 'em out. Don't fire until me and Shikodan are away. Arak, once all the nearest small vessels have been destroyed, charge up your tach gun and see if you can't do something about that big ship. Got it?"
"Right." Rayden grimaced and ran for the docking bay.
"Gotcha boss." Arak started making out calculations.
"AFFIRMATIVE. PROCESSING...... TARGETS LOCKED ON. MISSILE AND TORPEDO LAUNCHERS ONLINE. ON YOUR MARK, CAPTAIN."
Ranma nodded and turned around, to see Yuri looking up at him fearfully.
"Wha-what's going on? What are you doing?"
She froze as Ranma put a hand on her shoulder and smiled reasurringly at her. "Don't worry. Everything's gonna be okay. Just leave this to us." She watched him, entranced, as he ran out of the bridge and down to the rear of the ship.
Arak watched the entire scene with his head propped up by his fist. "Feh. Casanova."
Yuri blinked as Ranma came back, hit him over the head, then left again.
___________________________________________________________________________ _______
"Sir, we have some readouts on the new ship that appeared behind the enemy fleet!"
The captain of the light cruiser Morgan Douglas, the biggest ship in the Morcan fleet, quickly turned toward the sensory display.
"Well, speak up! Are they reinforcements?"
The tech sweatdropped. "Uh... I know you really don't want to hear this sir, but it's the Wild Horse. It would appear Saotome's gang is here to rummage through the remains of whoever loses."
*Bam* The officer hit the deck of the bridge before pulling himself up again. "What?! Now?! We have an unidentified alien fleet attacking our planet, and now these vermin show up?! DAMN!!!"
The communications officer, who was trembling slightly for fear of giving more bad news, slowly coughed to get the captain's attention. "Uh, sir, it would appear the final civilian transport is having engine problems. It can't get off the ground, and most of the techs already left in other ships. I'm afraid that there are no more civilian craft available to take them off-planet."
The captain started breathing heavily, and fell down into his chair. "What's the status on the last fighter group? Why aren't they up here yet?"
The officer shook his head slowly. "I'm sorry sir... but with the transport crowding the exit bay, the fighters have to launch one at a time, since they were supposed to be the last ones to leave. It'll be a while until they'll leave the atmosphere."
Everyone on the deck watched with heartfelt sympathy as the one man deemed responsible for the entire evacuation procedure covered his face with his hands, trying in vain not to project the utter hopelessness he felt.
A lone tear slid down the captain's face. There was no way out of this one. So many people were going to die. Some might get through, but there was no way to win. His own family had been on that final transport.
Suddenly, a shocked and confused voice shot through the haze of grief and sorrow among the bridge crew.
"Sir! The Wild Horse is launching fighters! The Ion Storm and Dark Angel are taking attack positions! The Wild Horse is now firing upon the enemy!!"
The captain's eyes widened. "WHAT?!?!"
The entire bridge crew all turned toward the tactical readout screen in front of the captain's chair. The many red dots represented active enemy units, while the bunched up green represented the evacuation forces. The light green and light red units represented fighters. Right now, the Wild Horse was colored red. Even so, the many small white dots (representing missiles) were pouring forth from the pirate ship, and many of the other reds were disappearing.
"Why would the Wild Horse fire upon the aliens?"
Nobody on the bridge could answer the captain's question.
___________________________________________________________________________ _______
{The new vessel is an enemy. It has declared itself a threat. It will be destroyed.} The psychic speech poured out into the damp, fleshy halls of the alien ship, informing the inhabitants of the battle's proceedings.
The giant node that made up the ship's psychic transmitter pulsed softly, sending the command out to all the other ships in the fleet.
{Be careful. The new vessel is powerful. It is also behind us. We will destroy it quickly.} The giant sack of neurons, suspended by two strings of bundled nerves, quickly sent the signal to the transmitter. This was to be a quick and total conquest, and this particular ship didn't like having unknown factors brought into the equation. It would simply destroy the new ship with the nearest Tyron vessels, then continue with its obliteration of the pitiful human defense fleet.
Ignorance is bliss.
___________________________________________________________________________ _______
"This is Ion Storm to Dark Angel. Form up on my wing, then take out the alien fighters. We'll let Arak and the Morcan fighters worry about the larger ships until we can get the pods off their backs." With that Ranma took a flanking position and wasted two alien fighters quickly. It had become apparent that the aliens were ignoring them, though he had a feeling that would change soon. He flew by the human fighter that they had been trailing, moving right on to a large dogfight.
Rayden's black ship zoomed in from the side, staying close and sticking a few lasers here and there into the fray.
*Ranma, I don't think Arak can hold out very long. We haven't had a chance to replace our ordinance, so he's gonna run out of ammo quick.*
Ranma had to think about that. He had chosen missiles instead of lasers not only because they did more damage at a longer range, but also because their energy drain was minimal, and Arak would need all the power he could get to use the Apocalypse Cannon with their ship in such poor shape.
"All right, stick to the plan, except keep to the outer edges of the battle zone. If Arak runs out of missiles, we may need to keep him alive."
Ranma took out four alien fighters as he flew straight through the cloud of lasers, metal and flesh, while wounding two more and destroying the crystal weapon of the alien ship that had wandered in there.
As he broke through to the other side, Ranma noted a sudden, complete change in the enemy's attitude towards them. Many of the alien fighters that were farther off broke off from fairly easy targets to chase after him and Rayden, which made Ranma wonder how they were coordinated in this battle.
Looking towards the outer ring of alien ships, Ranma also noted that several vessels had started to turn around to attack the Wild Horse, apparently all at the same time. Odd.
Ranma started picking off whatever aliens came within his field of vision. It was obvious that him and Rayden were already having a profound affect on the current battle, as many of the human fighters were now free to continue attacking the larger vessels without molestation from the aliens.
He idly noted that he had picked up a few pods on his tail as he buzzed by one of the transports that had strayed just out of range of the alien's main weapons. It was soon apparent that the little pests couldn't be outmanuevered, though it was just as apparent that they were so slow that he could safely ignore them.
He hit his boosters and shot away from his pursuers, then turned around and picked them off one at a time. Just because he could've ignored them didn't mean he had to.
He was just turning around to make another run across the thick of the battle when his comlink buzzed. The signal didn't come from Rayden.
*Ion Storm, this is Admiral Yaram of the Morcan flagship The Morgan Douglas. Please respond.*
Ranma smiled and edged away from the fighting for the moment, idly checking to make sure Rayden was okay. "This is Ranma Saotome, pilot of the Ion Storm and captain of the Wild Horse. What can I do ya for Admiral?"
*First, you can tell us what a pirate is doing interfering in a battle of this magnitude.*
Ranma snorted. "Don't sound so ungrateful. If you must know, I happen to be returning a citizen of your fine planet, and decided to help when I saw your situation. Attacking what is obviously an evacuation fleet is cowardly and unneccesary. Though if you want, I'll leave."
There was silence at the other end of the comm system, then the admiral's voice returned. *Very well, I apologize for my mistrust, though I'm certain you can understand my position. Any help you can offer will be greatly appreciated. Which reminds me, do you have a plan or anything?*
Ranma smiled. "Well, here's the thing. Can you create a line directly between the Wild Horse and the alien flagship on your readouts? Now, if that line keeps going, it creates an area that reaches into the midst of your cluster of ships. You might want to clear that area."
To his satisfaction, he saw many of the Morcan capital ships and fighters move out of the way of the imaginary line.
"Excellent. Please stand by." He switched frequencies on his comm system. "Arak, the path's clear. Fire when ready."
___________________________________________________________________________ _______
Arak nodded. "Right. Just ran out of ammo, anyway. Rac, activate the tachyon accelerators. Prepare to fire the you-know-what."
"TACHYON ACCELERATORS AT 70%. TACHYON EMITTERS FUNCTIONAL. PLASMA FLUX COILS ARE HOLDING. PRIMARY CELL CHARGE HAS REACHED CRITICAL MASS. SECONDARY CELL CHARGES ARE AT 0%."
Arak frowned. "Hmmmm... the beam'll be weaker than usual, then. Flood some power into the secondary cells from the capacitors. Fire at 60% power."
From her position off to the side, Yuri idly wondered what all the high- tech jargon meant.
"AFFIRMATIVE. FIRING ON YOUR SIGNAL."
Arak grinned. "Let 'em burn."
He sat back in his chair lazily as a fairly thick orange beam, surrounded by a hazy ribbon of stray charged electrons blasted forward and punctured the length of the strange vessel, blowing out flesh and...... other stuff out the other end. The beam continued on toward the planet, unobstructed by the other nearby ships.
The ribbon of energy that had followed the beam collided with the alien ship and scattered, scarring the outside and blasting apart the nearest crystals.
Yuri gaped, simply amazed by the destructive power this ship held. She couldn't imagine how strong it'd be at full power!
She would have been absolutely terrified too, and rightly so, if this power hadn't been used against the enemies of what she considered her home planet. She smiled with a sort of smug look as she watched the alien ship get speared, feeling that justice had been served.
Arak nodded, satisfied with his work.
"POWER LEVELS DROPPING. PRIMARY GENERATOR FAILING."
Arak's eyes widened. "WHAT?!?!?!"
"I SAID, POWER LEVELS-"
"I know what you said! Now explain how it happened!"
Yuri blinked, then bigsweated. This couldn't be good.
"FUSES ON THE SECONDARY ENERGY CELLS BLEW FROM AN UNEXPECTED ENERGY BACKLASH FROM THE TACHYON ACCELERATOR, DUE TO THE THEIR RECENT USE LEAVING KEERYU WHEN THE DAMPERS WERE OFFLINE. THE ACCELERATOR UNDERWENT SOME MINOR PARTICLE DAMAGE. THE SECONDARY CELLS ARE NOW OFFLINE. THE MAIN GENERATOR AUTOMATICALLY TRIED TO COMPENSATE FOR THE DRAIN OF THE APOCOLYPSE CANNON, BUT DUE TO THE POWER CORE ONLY ABLE TO GENERATE AT 85% CAPACITY, PLUS THAT LUGNUT YOU LEFT LYING AROUND IN THE COOLANT SYSTEM, IT WAS UNABLE TO DO SO."
Arak gulped. "Status report?"
"ALL SHIELDS AND WEAPONS ARE OFFLINE. CLOAKING DEVICES ARE OFFLINE. ENGINES OFFLINE. WE ARE RUNNING ON REDUCED SECONDARY POWER. AND IT LOOKS LIKE OUR ALIEN FRIENDS HAVE TAKEN OFFENSE AT US SERIOUSLY DAMAGING THE 'MOTHER SHIP'."
Yuri stared at him. "That's............ bad, right?"
The scientist looked out the window of the bridge, to see that now all the alien vessels were heading towards him. There weren't more than 30 left, including the really big one, but that was still a lot, and from what he had seen just one of those could quickly and easily kill the Wild Horse.
Arak's mouth gaped, and his jaw started opening and closing independent of thought or speech, until he suddenly broke down crying.
"Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!! We're all gonna die!! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!"
Suddenly, he was brought to his senses by a large metal sphere banging him on the head repeatedly.
*Whang* *Whang* *Whang* "SNAP OUT OF IT MAN!"
Yuri pulled him up in his chair, then shook him strongly. "Pull yourself together! You can't give up now!"
Arak grunted and grabbed his aching head in pain for a moment before he refocused his attention on the advancing ships. "Well, at least the evac transports are making it into hyperspace. Now Ranma's gotta go save us again." Arak sighed and hit the communications transmitter.
"Ion Storm, this is the Wild Horse, we're dead in space, and the weird ugly things are closing in. Do you copy?"
*Dammit Arak! What'd you do this time?!!* The Dark Angel's reply blasted through the speakers, blowing back his hair a bit and knocking away Rac's sphere.
After a moment, Ranma replied. *All right. Rayden, take a run on the opposite side of the big ship. Somehow its gained speed and it'll be within projected firing range in two minutes. We have until then to disable all the crystals that could attack him.*
*Gotcha. If you survive, we're gonna talk about this, Tetsumi.* Both transmissions were cut off as two special lights on the tactical display suddenly took up strafing positions on the alien mother ship.
Arak gasped and fell back into his chair, sweat running down his forehead.
Yuri blinked. "Are you going to be okay?"
Arak turned toward her, then sighed deeply. "I'm sorry. But these recent string of events have been rather hard on everyone here, and I guess I've just been taking it the worst."
Yuri looked down sympathetically at the man before carefully holding his shoulder and pushing him so he could look her in the face.
"Hey," she started softly, "just you wait, Ranma will see us through this one. Don't worry. Everything's going to be just fine." She smiled at him, and he managed a weak smile back. In a moment of introspection, Yuri realized that pirates or not, these people were just that, people. They weren't sadistic or cruel, just........... well, she didn't know enough to come to a conclusion herself, but they weren't sadistic or cruel.
"ALIEN FIGHTERS INCOMING."
Yuri's expression was replaced by one of horror.
Arak shook his head. "Great. Just ****ing great."
___________________________________________________________________________ _______
Ranma checked the time on his status board as he unconsciously avoided another tagging projectile. He blasted another crystal node with a few rounds of lasers, then looked on with satisfaction as it glew more brightly than it did when discharging a blast, and exploded outward, sending shards of crystal and arcs of electric plasma raining out into space.
Ranma then noticed that several fighters were attacking the Wild Horse, and that one of the smaller vessels was closing in on his ship faster than the big ship was.
He groaned as he passed the next bulge and noticed the veritable forest of crystal weapon nodes among the largest bare portion of the ship.
'Enough of this!' He thought, and came up away from the beams, then turned toward the ship's side with a slight clockwise spin.
"Chestnuts roasting on a neutron disruption field! HYAH!!!"
A wave of proton torpedoes poured out of the Ion Storm, and impacted the fleshy skin of the alien vessel violently, causing the crystals to rupture instantly and the rest of it twist into hideous scars and gashes.
Ranma's eyes widened as a something happened in his mind. He could hear a scream of agony... yet it was not his own and his transmitter was off. The yelling lessoned, and was followed by... anger. Unspeakable hatred.
Ranma shook his head to clear it, and the thoughts seemingly went away. Refocusing on his current situation, and promising to check into the disturbing experience later, Ranma noted with no small sense of pride that his side of the enemy ship had been totalled, with torn, blistering craters wherever the torpedoes hadn't burnt straight through to the superstructure.
Then he realized that those holes were shrinking. And fast. The huge hunk of...... whatever was regenerating!
That was when his mind was brought to a more immediate problem. Every alien ship in the enemy fleet was making a beeline for his fighter.
Ranma gaped and flipped the switch for the engine restart. As usual, his ship was helpless after unleashing such a lethal attack. As expected, nothing. It didn't restart. He kept trying, however.
Looking at how the behavior of the enemy ships were, Ranma was totally baffled. They still had a good chance to kill the Horse, but instead they had all focused on him. It was obvious that it wasn't the plan of whoever was piloting those ships, because even mynocks had more sense than that.
No, the command had obviously come from whoever was commanding the big ship, though he had never met a captain stupid enough to give up the destruction of any capital ship in favor of a fighter, no matter how much damage it may have caused on its own.
Ranma sighed. "Great. It's the most short-sighted, feather-brained strategy ever created, and yet I still get it in the pants." Ranma hit the switch again, and the engines fluttered to life, if only for a moment before they darkened again.
Ranma watched out of the corner of the window as an alien fighter pod got close enough to fire its weapon. The sphere of white, quickly dissapating energy sailed towards him. It wouldn't destroy him, but who knows how many volleys trailed after it to finish the job?
Ranma stopped his attempts to restart his engines momentarily to watch a streak of red fly by and impact the nearest pod, blowing it apart in an incredibly gory fashion.
Ranma held himself steady as the energy ball hit and shook him violently, peeling off outer layers of armor and stripping the dark blue to a hot white on the site of impact.
Strangely enough, that seemed to jump-start the engines, and he quickly jetted out of the way of a steady stream of energy orbs.
Looking behind him, Ranma could see clearly that his savior had been the pilot of an A-Wing. The rest of the man's wing flew past behind him, and dove straight into the mess of alien fighters.
Looking around, Ranma could see that the transports were even now retreating to the safety of hyperspace. The warships, however, were starting to take the offensive, blasting apart the enemy now that they had an advantage.
Over his shoulder, he could see the Dark Angel dropping plasma grenades indiscriminantly along the alien mother ship.
His comm system crackled. *I don't know why I just saved your ass, so you'd better have a good explanation for why you're here.*
Ranma shook his head. "You saved my ass because I saved yours. Don't think that anyone owes anyone else any favors here."
He switched over his comm as he watched the aliens accelerate away from the planet and the battle. "It looks like they're retreating. What's the status?"
Arak's voice sounded back to him. *I have the engines online. That's about it. Rac keeps telling me not to touch the rest of it or else I'll break something.*
Ranma nodded. "Listen to the computer, would ya? In any case, stand by for a sec." He flipped his comm signal again.
"This is Ranma Saotome calling the Morgan Douglas. We currently have a citizen of yours aboard our ship. Can we drop her off on one of your ships?" With no small amount of satisfaction, Ranma watched the big alien vessel getting pelted with laser shots as it retreated. The huge bulbous mass opened up a blue portal in front of it, then slowly lumbered through.
*This is the Morgan Douglas. Though you must understand that we're not quite on friendly terms yet, we thank you sincerely for your assistance in fighting off the alien fleet. As for your prisoner-*
"Stowaway." Ranma interrupted harshly.
*...... Stowaway, there is a transport that has just repaired its engines that's still on the planet's surface. It will wait for you before leaving to the rendevous point.*
Ranma nodded. "Good. Ion Storm out."
He switched his comm signal over again, then sweatdropped at the messages that filtered through to his ship.
*Oh yeah, you wanna piece 'a this, A-boy?*
*That blackened hunk of scrap couldn't possibly compare to a New Republic- class ship! Go crawl back to your hole, criminal scum!*
*It's not 'blackened', it's painted black, you dolt! Is there anyone with brains on this frequency?*
Ranma sighed, then readjusted his frequency to include the Wild Horse in the signal.
"Dark Angel, form up with me. We're landing on the planet's surface. Arak, land the Wild Horse at these coordinates and meet me at the Charita spaceport. Also, turn off your comlinks. I'm not gonna give you an excuse to paint another wing of A-Wings on your fuselage, Ray."
With that he turned off his own comm system to cut off the scathing reply from the Morcan pilots.
___________________________________________________________________________ _______
Ranma coughed as he jumped out of his fighter, then started breathing quickly, trying to get his lungs used to the thin oxygen.
Behind him, Rayden took a few deep breaths himself before starting off toward the dome. He was more adaptable than Ranma toward such things, but not by much.
"Nice place they got here. Pretty, at least." It wasn't as densley wooded as Keeryu, but there were other things of consideration.
"Hey Ranma, look at this!" Rayden regretted shouting, as it released all the meager air in his lungs and he was forced to sharply inhale.
Ranma looked over and raised an eyebrow. "Well well. So here lies the crater at the end of the tachyon pulse."
The crater was nearly 15 meters long, which was impressive considering that the blast had been from so far away and was at 60% power. Ranma also noted that mounds of deep-fried alien flesh caked the rim of the impression, as well as puddle of shattered crystal on one part of the lip. That had to hurt.
"I guess it's fairly obvious now, but those ships were biological, huh?"
Ranma nodded. "Yup. Here comes Xero."
Ranma smiled as the girl ran up to them followed by one of Rac's drone spheres, then nearly collapsed on the ground.
"*Pant* I never *Pant* liked *Pant* this planet. *Pant* Too little *Pant* air."
Ranma smiled and patted her on the shoulder. "It's all right. They're not sticking around here any longer. Let's get to that transport."
Rayden continued observing the crater, with Rac's drone by his side, recording the surroundings. Then he picked up one of the shards of crystal, and turned it over in his hands, letting the light reflect off it and play with its colors.
Then it glowed.
Most people would have dropped the crystal in fright and run away, but Rayden was never particularly sensitive to signs of danger.
It stopped glowing, then briefly lit up again, going on and off like a strobe light.
"Would'ja look at that?" Rayden said in wonder, holding it up.
"SCANNERS INDICATE THAT THE CRYSTAL IS REACTING WITH SOMETHING IN THE VICINITY."
Rayden blinked, then looked around, trying to find the source of the reaction. The only thing of even remote interest around was a cave surrounded by eroded rock that looked really out of place. Next to it was a sign that said 'Mysterious Ancient Ruins'.
Rayden glanced at the small hovering orb, then shrugged.
They went inside.
___________________________________________________________________________ _______
Ranma looked up at the rounded upper hull of the last transport left on the planet, then looked down at Yuri.
"Well, so long kid. It's been real."
Yuri looked up at him. "I'm only maybe a year younger than you, you know," she stated flatly.
Ranma smiled and patted her on the head fondly. "Yeah, well, I was never good at farewells. You take care, all right?"
Yuri smiled sadly at him, then stopped to glance at the transport while she thought up something to say herself. Ranma waited patiently, his hands in his pockets.
"The door is closing."
Ranma blinked. "Huh?"
"The door to the transport. It's closing... uh, it's closed now. The transport's taking off."
Ranma looked suddenly over to where the transport had gunned its engines and was lifting off.
His eyes widened and he started waving his hands in the air as he shouted at the transport. "HEY!!! WAIT!!! YOU FORGOT YURI!!! SHE'S STILL HERE!!! STOP!!! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!?!?!"
Needless to say, his yelling didn't have much effect as far as stopping the transport went. It continued to rise above the city, eventually becoming a small dot in the sky as it broke through the atmosphere.
Ranma's comlink crackled to life.
*Ranma, we've got trouble. Alien ships moving at very high speed have appeared near the planet. We haven't encountered vessels of their particular structure before. They've already penetrated the planet's atmosphere and are landing outside the city. I suggest you drop off Xero and get out of there!*
Ranma bigsweated, and his face darkened. "Uh......... the transport already left without her."
*Whatever! Then bring her back here! We need to leave!*
Ranma nodded, then turned to Yuri, who was watching something in the sky. Looking up himself, he saw what looked like one of the small oval-shaped capital ships from before, except this one lacked a crystal to attack with, and seemed to have a bony skeleton surrounding it like an impact shield.
Which was probably what it was, considering the way that it smashed into the ground, flexing and bending, but not breaking.
Yuri shook his shoulder slightly. "Ranma? We'd better get out of here. This looks pretty bad."
Ranma stared for a moment more. "Just a sec, okay?"
She blinked in confusion as Ranma walked over to a nearby support pillar for the dome.
Then he started banging his head against it. "Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!"
He stopped right before his vision fully seperated into two images, and drunkenly stumbled back to where Yuri was sweatdropping at the scene.
He shook his head to clear it, then took out his blaster. "Come on. This is gonna get messy."
The pair stopped as part of the transport pod was torn open from the inside.
Ranma had seen many, many different species of creatures in his travels, but this one was new. It stood about 7 feet tall, and was colored a semi- transparent light blue. Its chest stood as the largest hunk of mass on its body, and it was large and triangular, with two vertexes making up the shoulders while the third pointed down towards the abdomen. Its head was long and rounded at the end, and connected to it by a 1-foot tube that made up its neck. In the head several little black spots outlined what were obviously its eyes. It had no visible mouth, ears, or nose.
It was bipedal, with two thin reverse-joint legs sprouting from the smaller triangle that was its pelvis. Its arms were the same way, though attached to their back were four thick tentacles, light blue like the rest of its body.
Yuri had to make these observations in less than two seconds, because that's how long it took for Ranma to take aim and blast the creature's neck, causing the head to fall to the ground. Its body wobbled upright for a moment, before collapsing heavily to the ground.
Ranma pulled out cylindrical object, then pushed a button on the side and pushed up a switch near the top. His arm made a sweeping motion as he threw it into the hole in the pod, then turned to grab Yuri. To his surprise, Yuri was already running back to the ship ahead of him, and he started running to catch up.
The plasma grenade detonated, blasting everything inside of the transport to ashes. The transport itself, being made to withstand the extreme heat of sailing through an atmosphere, was mostly unscathed during the attack.
As Yuri passed the now blazing corpse of the alien, she noted how it had some sort of metal apparatus on its slim hands, wich was connected through several tubes to a large metal pack over its chest that seemed to serve as both an energy source and armor.
They watched as several more alien transports hit the ground, most of them stationed around the city, but a few landing in-between them and the ship.
Ranma grimaced, then leaned down and brought up his right hand, pulling back his sleeve slightly. Yuri stopped and saw that it was covered by a high-tech looking gauntlet, with the glove being made of thick leather while the wrist down was metal and covered in switches and buttons. Ranma put in some commands, then pulled his sleeve back over it.
In moments, the Ion Storm could be seen rising in the air above the sparse trees, then turned toward their direction. Yellow energy bolts pummeled the shields from the ground, but they held as the large fighter slowly accelerated and then deccelerated toward its pilot. Reaching an area just two meters from Ranma and Yuri, it slowly settled onto the ground.
Yuri blinked and looked at him. Ranma sighed and jumped into the fighter. "We'll have to share the pilot's seat. Do you mind?"
Yuri stood shock still for a moment before quickly shaking her head no. Ranma leaned up out of the seat and held his arm out expectantly. Blushing profusely, and mentally berating herself for getting so distracted when they should be running for their lives, she accepted his hand and was promptly pulled into his lap. She continued blushing as Ranma told her to lean back against him and he reached around her for the controls.
___________________________________________________________________________ _______
"It's getting brighter. It's definitely reacting with something in here!" Rayden looked around at the interior of the cave, trying to see if there were any golden chests or jewel-laden caverns around. He had never really explored such a place before, so he didn't really know what to expect.
"TRY LOOKING TO YOUR LEFT."
He did so, and discovered some faint green lines tracing something on the wall. He held up the crystal, and it began to flash brightly, eventually glowing to a climax and then shattering.
Suddenly the wall was swept up in a pool of green energy, and the thin, barely visible lines he saw earlier were now completely visible.
Rayden blinked. Then he frowned. "Figures. We go all this way, and all we find is some weird runes on the wall. I don't recognize the language. Do you Rac?"
The sphere next to him beeped quietly. "PROCESSING...... NEGATIVE. IT IS OF NO LANGUAGE USED IN THE CURRENTLY KNOWN GALAXY."
Rayden rolled his eyes. "Great. What a waste of time." Even as he complained about it, the runes stopped glowing as brightly and settled down to their normal state.
Then he turned around, and saw one of the aliens step into the cavern.
It was the same one that Ranma and Yuri had seen, but this one was red, and lacking any gear at all, though it did hold a large crystal in its hands.
Apparently the creature was more surprised than he was, because it just stood there, its gelatinous black eyes distorting.
Rayden calmly pulled out his blaster and fired.
Coming to its senses just in time, the alien raised its hand, and the blaster bolt impacted an invisible shield of some sort.
Rayden blinked, and was distracted enough to allow the creature to lower the shield and attack.
The tentacles on its back shot into the ground, and seemingly phased through it, stretching and coming up right under Rayden without disturbing rock or soil.
Thus he was too surprised to fire another blast as one tentacle grabbed onto his leg and the other gripped his weapon. Rayden growled and tried to wrestle his sidearm back into his control, mostly ignoring the other tentacle which tried to throw him off balance.
Rac wasn't impeded, however. A small hatch on one side of the drone opened, and a small gun barrel shot out.
The alien screeched in pain as the small red laser pierced its belly, and stepped back in agony, bumping into a few more blue aliens that had just arrived behind it.
Rayden dropped his gun, then reached into his trench coat for his blaster rifle. Bringing it out, he shot two holes into the red creature, then hit the others before they could retaliate.
The red alien stumbled, and his tentacles suddenly slid back into the ground, before they pulled themselves up to the rest of the body.
It fell down, and its entire being started to crumble to dust and float away. Soon there was no trace of the red alien save the crystal that lay on the ground, softly glowing from its proximity to the ruins.
Rayden blinked, then picked up the crystal while looking at the other alien corpses. "That's odd. The others didn't disintigrate. Why did that one?"
Rac would've shrugged had his drone had shoulders. "UNKNOWN. I SUGGEST WE ANALYZE THAT LATER, HOWEVER. RIGHT NOW, SURVIVAL TAKES PRIORITY."
Rayden nodded, then pocketed both the crystal and his laser pistol before fighting his way back to his ship.
___________________________________________________________________________ _______
Eyes unseen watched from the alien invasion cruiser as the Wild Horse lifted out of the atmosphere. Two other, smaller ships docked within it before it took off into hyperspace, unmolested by the aliens still in space. The other transport had already left, meeting with the last of the evacuation defense fleet and making the jump.
The invasion cruiser, just as large as the biggest ship from before, but possessing a bony, barrel-like structure, watched impassively as the humans left.
It had not expected the first attack to fail. Its brother had proved incompetent. That wasn't to be totally unexpected, as it had never been in an actual battle before, and commanding a large fleet against such a pathetic defense force had given its brother ship arrogance. In any case, the planet was theirs, though if the humans made off with the ruins in their transports (unlikely, but they could take no chances), all was lost.
It was very aggravated when the psion it had sent down to read the runes was destroyed. The psychic link that the vessel held with all the invasion troops had been cut. Now it had to send down another psion to the ruins.
But there was time. Time had always been their ally, gifting them with vessels such as he and his brothers, warriors such as the Psion and Unguru, and above all, protection from their enemies.
After eons of waiting, revenge would be theirs.
But first they had to find those blasted runes!
*************************************************************************** *******
End Chapter 6
Chapter 6
by Black Dragon
revcoll@peoplepc.com
http://www.angelfire.com/anime2/fanficlair/index.html
Standard disclaimer applies. If I owned Ranma or the Star Wars universe, I'd be living it big, eating caviar and swimming laps in my olympic-sized root beer pool, and I could simply pay someone else to do stuff like this...... great, now I'm depressed again. Just read it, will ya?
Chapter 6
The Morcan Menace
*************************************************************************** *******
Unit 01 was one of the robots that Rayden had created and Arak had perfected. It had everything standard on a regular labor droid, plus Arak's prototype plasma cannons and special armor. The speed and power output had been increased, and a computer uplink had been added, making the powerful robots another of RAC's drones. It was the perfect machine, capable of manual labor and intense combat, plus possessing a mind of which few humans could hope to match.
Right now, the oversized automaton was busy holding a young girl in front of its master, keeping her from escaping if need be.
Ranma groaned and massaged his forehead. Arak frowned.
"Well, so we have a stowaway. What are we gonna do about this, huh?"
Ranma remained silent with his hands still held over his eyes.
Arak smirked and walked up to the young woman, looking her right in the eyes. Yuri simply blinked, unaware of what she had gotten herself into.
"My, such a pretty thing, too. What a waste. How shall we deal with you, eh? Throw you out the airlock? Disintigrate you? Dissect you and use your organs to fix Shikodan up quicker?"
Yuri went pale as a sheet. "For-for stowing away? Y-y-you c-can't be serious!"
Arak gave her a flat stare. "This is a pirate ship dearie. What were you expecting, a welcome party? Augh!"
Ranma lifted Arak up by his shirt and threw him into one of the chairs. "Will you cut that out? You're gonna give her a heart attack."
Yuri looked up to Ranma fearfully, her earlier wonder and adoration being quickly replaced with horror. "You... you're a pirate?"
Ranma nodded, as if the fact should have been obvious and was of no importance. "Yeah, I'm a pirate. Mind explainin' why you hid on board?"
Yuri tried to answer, but either through fear or excitement, she couldn't remember. "I... I... I don't really know... I just wanted to, um......"
Ranma sighed. "Unit 01, let her go." The robot released Yuri immediately, then turned around and left down the hall.
Yuri gulped. "You... you're not really going to kill me, are you?"
Ranma rolled his eyes and shook his head. "No, we're not gonna kill you. Unfortunately, we can't return you, either. Everyone on that huge chunk of rock we just left is trying to kill us." Ranma plopped down in one of the large white chairs, and steepled his fingers under his chin.
"Well, it looks like we'll just have to drop you off somewhere else. You got a home?" He glanced over at her, and she gulped.
"I, uh, Daddy has a place on Morcan III... I suppose I could stay there..." She felt paralyzed simply by the unreality of the situation. To have stowed away on a pirate ship!
Ranma nodded. "Morcan III it is, then. Arak, set a course."
"Hmph. A real pirate would've just killed her," Arak grumbled as he walked over to the navigation panel.
"Yeah, well you can call me a fake pirate then. We don't need to involve innocents in this." Ranma turned back to Yuri, who had a very surprised look on her face. "Unit 01'll take you to a guest room. From then on, Rac'll be your host. He'll explain everything until we get to Morcan."
Yuri blinked, and then felt the hardened metal of Unit 01's "hands" poke into her back, leading her into the hallway and away from the bridge.
Arak watched her go, then turned to Ranma. "She has a crush on you, you know."
Ranma stumbled, and almost fell out of his chair. "What? How do you know?"
Arak rolled his eyes. "1: I've only known three heterosexual human women that have seen you that didn't develop a crush on you over time. 2: Following you is the only half-way reasonable explanation for her coming aboard. 3: I saw the look in her eyes when she saw you before I told her we were pirate,." Arak finished, ticking off the points on his fingers.
Ranma just ignored him. "You're reading into this too much. We're just gonna fly to Morcan, drop her off, then get this heap fixed. That's that. Whether or not she's got a 'crush' doesn't matter. Now if you'll excuse me, I believe that blinking red light means we're leaking atmosphere into space." Ranma jumped out of his chair and rushed out of the bridge, leaving Arak alone and confused.
Arak turned around, and stared at the glaring crimson button.
"Oh, bugger. I thought I fixed that hole."
___________________________________________________________________________ _______
"I can't believe it. He's a pirate! A real, live, space pirate! Oh why oh why did I sneak aboard this thing? I'm gonna get myself killed!" Yuri would've stopped to bang her head on the wall, but was still under the watchful eye (and itchy plasma cannon) of unit 01.
So instead she sighed submissively and trudged behind the towering robot, eventually coming to a small room. She was surprised that it wasn't actually a holding cell, but a full-sized officer's room, complete with a fairly large bed and dresser.
She heard a beep, then turned around to see a moniter on an actuated metal arm come down from the ceiling to face her. It activated, showing a small red lens.
"I AM RAC, SUPER-SENTIENT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. AS YOU WILL MOST LIKELY BE STAYING HERE A WHILE, I SHALL LAY DOWN A FEW GROUND RULES."
The screen blinked, and a layout of the main floor of the Wild Horse appeared. "THIS IS THE WILD HORSE. YOU ARE CURRENTLY IN THE FORWARD SECTION OF THE SHIP, WHERE PERSONNEL QUARTERS, LIVING FACILITIES, AND THE BRIDGE IS LOCATED. MAKE SURE TO STAY IN THIS AREA. OTHERWISE, YOU WILL BE SHOT." A large area of the forward section of the ship was suddenly highlighted in green, while most of the back area was highlighted red.
Yuri flinched.
The layout was cleared of color, and then several small areas of red appeared, mostly on the bridge, but a few squares in other areas, though most were back in the restricted area. "THESE ARE CONSOLES THAT CAN BE USED TO CONTROL THE SHIP, CONTACT OR USE CERTAIN PROGRAMS OF MINE, OR JUST PLAY A QUICK GAME OF TETRIS. YOU WILL NOT BE TOUCHING THEM. OTHERWISE, YOU WILL BE SHOT."
Yuri gulped, but nodded for the computer to continue.
The layout changed yet again, this time to different various areas distributed widely around the ship, though once again they were clustered in the bridge and rear sections of the ship. "THESE ARE ACCESS HATCHES OF SYSTEM PATHWAYS. THEY ARE NOT TO BE TAMPERED WITH, EXCEPT BY A MEMBER OF THE CREW. OBVIOUSLY, IF YOU CHOOSE TO TAMPER WITH THEM ANYWAY, YOU WILL BE SHOT."
Yuri sighed and sat down on the bed. "I'm starting to see a pattern here..." she mumbled bitterly.
The layout cleared once again, and this time several small pathways near the outer hull were shown. "THESE ARE THE ESCAPE POD ACCESS HATCHES. I THINK YOU KNOW WHAT THEY'RE FOR. SURPRISINGLY, YOU MAY USE ONE AT ANY TIME WITHOUT GETTING SHOT, THOUGH I DON'T REALLY SEE THE POINT."
Yuri sweatdropped, then flopped down backward onto her bed.
The moniter adjusted to her new line of sight, and the layout now showed three large red areas, rather clos to each other, and all in the "accessible" part of the ship. "THESE ARE THE CURRENT CREW'S QUARTERS. THE ONE ON TOP IS CAPTAIN SAOTOME'S, THE BIGGEST ONE IS TETSUMI'S, AND THE OTHER ONE IS SHIKODAN'S. I HAVE NO ORDERS REGARDING WHAT TO DO SHOULD YOU WANDER IN ONE OF THESE ROOMS, THOUGH I WOULDN'T PUSH YOUR LUCK IF I WERE YOU. ESPECIALLY WITH RAYDEN. HE HAS A FETISH FOR VIOLENCE. THAT IS ALL. ENJOY YOUR STAY."
The moniter retracted itself, leaving Yuri to curl up in her covers while thinking about her current situation. She would have cried, but oddly enough, felt that crying was totally inappropriate for her predicament. So instead, she laid her head down, and slept.
___________________________________________________________________________ _______
Morcan III was a colony planet. This in itself was hardly noteworthy. Most civilized worlds were not populated by the species that evolved there, but by other species that moved in before sentient life could develop.
However, Morcan III had been colonized recently, and the only city on the globe was Charita, a trading city enclosed in a transparisteel dome with a space port.
Morcan III had absolutely no useful mineral deposits, and its atmosphere was barely above survivable level for standard oxygen-breathers. However, it did have a useful position, as Morcan's sun was a common gravity well that ran through over 170 hyperspace routes commonly used by traders. In truth, the Wild Horse had been notorious for hitting this same system every couple of months, though they left the colony alone.
Thus, Morcan III had a huge and effeciently run spaceport right outside the dome, with over 30 ships belonging to the government of Morcan, and over 60 more privately owned vessels speeding in and out each day.
They also had excellent scanners, in order to detect and organize space traffic.
"Sir, we're reading an exit from hyperspace." The tech at the control glanced worriedly at the display. His supervisor simply nodded.
"Uh, sir, the exit is unusually far off. The course intercepts tell us it's probably headed here, but it's much farther away than it should be."
This got the supervisor's attention. "What? Are they pirates? What's the readout on the approaching ship?"
The tech looked ready to say something, then frowned. "I don't think so sir. The deep-space scanner readouts are all very odd... they're not close enough for us to get a good reading. Wait! I'm detecting more hyperspace exits!"
The supervisor stepped back and grimaced. He could only think of one reason why someone would warp in so far away from the planet when they intended to move there anyway. If a large war fleet had been moving in, the best thing to do would be to stop and gather just out of effective scanning range, then move in after they were coordinated. Fortunately, they didn't seem to realize the effectiveness of the new scanners.
'But why would a war fleet attack here? Possibly for supplies... which means it's probably another Imperial warlord's fleet or something.'
"Keep scanning the incoming ships and alert me to any new developments. Communications, issue a warning to the city and prepare in case of evacuation. Fleet command, send out a scout ship to make contact and send us more data."
The various people in the room all confirmed their orders and the alarm was readied.
___________________________________________________________________________ _______
Dell hated his job.
Most people thought it was exciting and noble to be a fighter pilot in today's mess of constant wars and space battles. Heck, he had thought so himself.
And it was exciting sometimes. Heart attack level exciting. The kind of exciting that sends so much adrenaline into your body you can't even think straight.
But the rest of the time it was so blasted boring!
Take this mission, for example. He was to take out a fighter, unarmed and refitted with a multitude of scanners, and contact a huge fleet while sendng data back to HQ. He couldn't shoot anything if he wanted to. Damn commander, if he'd known that that little practical joke involving Yammil Lice would've landed him scout duty, he never would have pulled it.
He was so busy griping about how incredibly unfair it all was, that he never got a good look at the opposing fleet until his console beeped to inform him that he was within scanning range.
Dell was utterly baffled by what he saw. The biggest ship, which had warped in third, remotely resembled a Mon Calamari cruiser, except less........ metallic.
It was larger than the massive warships, for one thing. The entire hull of the thing was blue with webs of black stretched across it, and was in an incredibly bizarre shape; it was as if someone took several huge ovals of hull and mashed them together. Again, reminiscent of Mon Calamari design, but at the same time very different. Poking out of the ovals at what seemed like random intervals were large dark blue crystals. There were only 2-4 crystals on each oval, and they only appeared to be on the areas directly exposed to space.
Looking around, Dell saw that the other ships just seemed to be made up of one of the same ovals that made up the large ship, except those ones had strange-looking tails on the end which he assumed to be engines of some sort, and a single larger crystal on the front of the vessel.
"HQ, are you gettin' this?"
*Roger. Continue scanning, and hail them.*
Dell looked at his controls. "That might be a problem HQ."
*Why?*
"I'm not picking up any communications receiver to send a message to."
*.................... Yes, that would be a problem. We're trying to interpret the data you're sending us. Please stand by.*
Dell nodded and was about to check his scanners again when he noticed one of the smaller ship's crystals lighting up.
He wasn't able to dodge in time as a small white pinnacle of energy hit his fighter.
He blinked. Considering that appeared to be the only weapon on the alien ship, he'd have expected it to be more powerful. Looking at his shield gauge, he saw that his shields hadn't been damaged at all, though another one of his scanners showed that he was now emitting some kind of weird energy signal.
Then the crystal lit up much more brightly than before, and a lightning bolt shot toward him, instantly frying the shield and utterly destroying the scout fighter.
___________________________________________________________________________ _______
Yuri was out of bed exploring the ship again. Though it was probably much safer to stay in the room, where she wouldn't get shot, it was still boring enough to prompt some exploration. She was, of course, taking every precaution to stay away from the rear sections of the ship, and that took a lot of the fun out of it, but she'd rather be alive and bored than, well, dead.
She remembered the first time she'd ever been on a space ship traveling on a hyperspace run. It was new and exciting then, and she had spent the entire trip looking at everything in the ship and asking the people nearby how the equipment worked. She was quite sure she annoyed the hell out of everyone else on board, but she had wanted to get on the return trip as soon as possible.
Ever since then, she had taken many more trips, and discovered that space travel was actually quite monotonous. Especially on those well-maintained diplomatic ships. There was never anything interesting on those heaps. She was greatly disappointed that her first trip aboard a warship had to be under such circumstances. But then, who wouldn't be?
She stopped in front of the ship's sick bay as she heard some movement inside.
The door opened, and she found herself looking at somebody's bare chest. Looking up, she saw Rayden blinking at her in confusion.
They stared at each other for a few moments more.
Rayden stuck out a hand. "Rayden Shikodan, ship mechanic and pilot of the Dark Angel. And you are?"
Yuri shook his hand, remembering her lessons on diplomacy and tact. "Yuri Xero. I'm a stowaway. Nice to meet you."
Rayden nodded. "Very good. You get on when we left Keeryu?"
She nodded.
"You an enemy spy waiting to sabotage the ship at a moment's notice and leave us all to die while you jet away in an excape pod?"
She shook her head.
Rayden smiled. "Good. We should get along just fine then." He found his shirt hanging on the outside of the door and put it on.
One of Rac's spheres floated by. "AH, SHIKODAN. I TRUST YOU'RE WELL?"
Rayden nodded. "Well enough. Damn scars'll take weeks to fade, but I can fly if I have to."
"EXCELLENT. WE ARE CURRENTLY IN THE PROCESS OF RETURNING MS. XERO TO MORCAN III. WE WILL BE COMING OUT OF HYPERSPACE IN 4 MINUTES. YURI, YOUR PRESENCE IS REQUESTED ON THE BRIDGE." the sphere wandered off a bit, disappearing around a corner.
Rayden clapped Yuri on the back. "Well, c'mon kid, let's get you back home." Yuri sighed and nodded.
The pair entered the bridge to find Ranma and Arak watching several displays. Ranma turned and greeted them.
"Ah, Yuri, Rayden, good to see you! How are you holding up, old buddy?"
Rayden shrugged. "Pretty good. Still a bit sore though. Let's drop her off and get this thing to a good dock so I can fix 'er up."
Ranma nodded. "In good time. Yuri, you want anything before you leave?"
Yuri blushed slightly as she was once again the center of attention. "Uh, no, not really."
To be perfectly honest, Yuri wasn't looking forward to going home nearly as much as she thought she'd want to. The whole experience with being kidnapped had been exciting, despite everything else, as well as mostly painless. For pirates, these guys didn't seem half bad (well, Rayden and Ranma didn't. Rac and his creator creeped her out big time).
Ranma smiled at her. "Well then, we'll just-"
"EMERGENCY HYPERSPACE TRANSMISSION." Rac's metallic voice rang out in the bridge, interrupting Ranma.
"What?"
"MESSAGE READS AS FOLLOWS: MORCAN III UNDER ATTACK BY UNKNOWN ALIEN FORCE. EVACUATION OF PLANET HAS BEEN ISSUED, BUT ENEMY BLOCKADE IMPEDING ESCAPE. PLEASE SEND REINFORCEMENTS."
Ranma was about to ask something when the ship lurched slightly, and the ship entered the haze of blue that signalled the end of its hyperspace run.
"What the blazes.......?" Rayden looked on in awe at the scene that was placed before them.
The alien ships had surrounded any feasible escape vector from Charita, and had locked in the escaping forces with a blockade of smaller battleships cutting off the escape routes, with the main ship slowly crawling toward the planet itself.
Morcan III had its own defense fleet, which was unusual for a colony of its size, but vital in such situations as this. These ships were currently trying to punch a hole in the blockade so that the transports could get through. Many of the traders that were currently docked at the spaceport contributed to the effort by using their ships as transports, along with the few standard transports that made up Morcan's fleet.
Unfortunately, the alien weapons proved deadly against all capital ships, as their strange crystal weapons would emit ribbons of plasma that would sear and melt away the shields and hull, and wouldn't stop until the entire structure they were attacking had been destroyed. The Nebulon-B frigate had been destroyed in 2 minutes, while the modified Corellian Corvette had been taken down in under a minute, with the help of a second alien vessel.
Luckily fighters seemed to evade the "tagging" blasts of the crystals fairly easily, and so were quickly employed to take out the smaller oval ships. That's when the alien fighters had been deployed.
Roughly spherical, with a fringed hole in the back and a spiked hole in the front, the strange... things went down easily, but hunted their targets relentlessly. They weren't very fast, and their weapons, which was some sort of short-ranged energy ball, wasn't very powerful. However, the things seemed to be in total control of their manueverabiliy in space, able to seemingly ignore the laws of momentum as they easily trailed the fighters wherever they went.
Thus it was the vision that greeted those aboard the Wild Horse. Fighters, both alien and human were blown apart left and right, the former exploding in a cloud of blood and flesh, which only served to further confuse the hell out of the crew. Meanwhile, the huge bulbous command cruiser slowly lurched toward the cornered fleet, promising death to its targets.
Yuri was in hysterics. "What's going on? What are those things? Why are they attacking Morcan?" nobody had any answers for her, so they mostly ignored her.
Ranma was the leader. Therefore it was up to him to act. He assessed the situation, and made his decision.
"This sucks. This really, really sucks. Damn. Okay, Rayden, get into your fighter and prepare to launch with me on my signal. Rac, assess how much damage those little oval things can take, then divide up our missile and torpedo launchers among the targets to take 'em out. Don't fire until me and Shikodan are away. Arak, once all the nearest small vessels have been destroyed, charge up your tach gun and see if you can't do something about that big ship. Got it?"
"Right." Rayden grimaced and ran for the docking bay.
"Gotcha boss." Arak started making out calculations.
"AFFIRMATIVE. PROCESSING...... TARGETS LOCKED ON. MISSILE AND TORPEDO LAUNCHERS ONLINE. ON YOUR MARK, CAPTAIN."
Ranma nodded and turned around, to see Yuri looking up at him fearfully.
"Wha-what's going on? What are you doing?"
She froze as Ranma put a hand on her shoulder and smiled reasurringly at her. "Don't worry. Everything's gonna be okay. Just leave this to us." She watched him, entranced, as he ran out of the bridge and down to the rear of the ship.
Arak watched the entire scene with his head propped up by his fist. "Feh. Casanova."
Yuri blinked as Ranma came back, hit him over the head, then left again.
___________________________________________________________________________ _______
"Sir, we have some readouts on the new ship that appeared behind the enemy fleet!"
The captain of the light cruiser Morgan Douglas, the biggest ship in the Morcan fleet, quickly turned toward the sensory display.
"Well, speak up! Are they reinforcements?"
The tech sweatdropped. "Uh... I know you really don't want to hear this sir, but it's the Wild Horse. It would appear Saotome's gang is here to rummage through the remains of whoever loses."
*Bam* The officer hit the deck of the bridge before pulling himself up again. "What?! Now?! We have an unidentified alien fleet attacking our planet, and now these vermin show up?! DAMN!!!"
The communications officer, who was trembling slightly for fear of giving more bad news, slowly coughed to get the captain's attention. "Uh, sir, it would appear the final civilian transport is having engine problems. It can't get off the ground, and most of the techs already left in other ships. I'm afraid that there are no more civilian craft available to take them off-planet."
The captain started breathing heavily, and fell down into his chair. "What's the status on the last fighter group? Why aren't they up here yet?"
The officer shook his head slowly. "I'm sorry sir... but with the transport crowding the exit bay, the fighters have to launch one at a time, since they were supposed to be the last ones to leave. It'll be a while until they'll leave the atmosphere."
Everyone on the deck watched with heartfelt sympathy as the one man deemed responsible for the entire evacuation procedure covered his face with his hands, trying in vain not to project the utter hopelessness he felt.
A lone tear slid down the captain's face. There was no way out of this one. So many people were going to die. Some might get through, but there was no way to win. His own family had been on that final transport.
Suddenly, a shocked and confused voice shot through the haze of grief and sorrow among the bridge crew.
"Sir! The Wild Horse is launching fighters! The Ion Storm and Dark Angel are taking attack positions! The Wild Horse is now firing upon the enemy!!"
The captain's eyes widened. "WHAT?!?!"
The entire bridge crew all turned toward the tactical readout screen in front of the captain's chair. The many red dots represented active enemy units, while the bunched up green represented the evacuation forces. The light green and light red units represented fighters. Right now, the Wild Horse was colored red. Even so, the many small white dots (representing missiles) were pouring forth from the pirate ship, and many of the other reds were disappearing.
"Why would the Wild Horse fire upon the aliens?"
Nobody on the bridge could answer the captain's question.
___________________________________________________________________________ _______
{The new vessel is an enemy. It has declared itself a threat. It will be destroyed.} The psychic speech poured out into the damp, fleshy halls of the alien ship, informing the inhabitants of the battle's proceedings.
The giant node that made up the ship's psychic transmitter pulsed softly, sending the command out to all the other ships in the fleet.
{Be careful. The new vessel is powerful. It is also behind us. We will destroy it quickly.} The giant sack of neurons, suspended by two strings of bundled nerves, quickly sent the signal to the transmitter. This was to be a quick and total conquest, and this particular ship didn't like having unknown factors brought into the equation. It would simply destroy the new ship with the nearest Tyron vessels, then continue with its obliteration of the pitiful human defense fleet.
Ignorance is bliss.
___________________________________________________________________________ _______
"This is Ion Storm to Dark Angel. Form up on my wing, then take out the alien fighters. We'll let Arak and the Morcan fighters worry about the larger ships until we can get the pods off their backs." With that Ranma took a flanking position and wasted two alien fighters quickly. It had become apparent that the aliens were ignoring them, though he had a feeling that would change soon. He flew by the human fighter that they had been trailing, moving right on to a large dogfight.
Rayden's black ship zoomed in from the side, staying close and sticking a few lasers here and there into the fray.
*Ranma, I don't think Arak can hold out very long. We haven't had a chance to replace our ordinance, so he's gonna run out of ammo quick.*
Ranma had to think about that. He had chosen missiles instead of lasers not only because they did more damage at a longer range, but also because their energy drain was minimal, and Arak would need all the power he could get to use the Apocalypse Cannon with their ship in such poor shape.
"All right, stick to the plan, except keep to the outer edges of the battle zone. If Arak runs out of missiles, we may need to keep him alive."
Ranma took out four alien fighters as he flew straight through the cloud of lasers, metal and flesh, while wounding two more and destroying the crystal weapon of the alien ship that had wandered in there.
As he broke through to the other side, Ranma noted a sudden, complete change in the enemy's attitude towards them. Many of the alien fighters that were farther off broke off from fairly easy targets to chase after him and Rayden, which made Ranma wonder how they were coordinated in this battle.
Looking towards the outer ring of alien ships, Ranma also noted that several vessels had started to turn around to attack the Wild Horse, apparently all at the same time. Odd.
Ranma started picking off whatever aliens came within his field of vision. It was obvious that him and Rayden were already having a profound affect on the current battle, as many of the human fighters were now free to continue attacking the larger vessels without molestation from the aliens.
He idly noted that he had picked up a few pods on his tail as he buzzed by one of the transports that had strayed just out of range of the alien's main weapons. It was soon apparent that the little pests couldn't be outmanuevered, though it was just as apparent that they were so slow that he could safely ignore them.
He hit his boosters and shot away from his pursuers, then turned around and picked them off one at a time. Just because he could've ignored them didn't mean he had to.
He was just turning around to make another run across the thick of the battle when his comlink buzzed. The signal didn't come from Rayden.
*Ion Storm, this is Admiral Yaram of the Morcan flagship The Morgan Douglas. Please respond.*
Ranma smiled and edged away from the fighting for the moment, idly checking to make sure Rayden was okay. "This is Ranma Saotome, pilot of the Ion Storm and captain of the Wild Horse. What can I do ya for Admiral?"
*First, you can tell us what a pirate is doing interfering in a battle of this magnitude.*
Ranma snorted. "Don't sound so ungrateful. If you must know, I happen to be returning a citizen of your fine planet, and decided to help when I saw your situation. Attacking what is obviously an evacuation fleet is cowardly and unneccesary. Though if you want, I'll leave."
There was silence at the other end of the comm system, then the admiral's voice returned. *Very well, I apologize for my mistrust, though I'm certain you can understand my position. Any help you can offer will be greatly appreciated. Which reminds me, do you have a plan or anything?*
Ranma smiled. "Well, here's the thing. Can you create a line directly between the Wild Horse and the alien flagship on your readouts? Now, if that line keeps going, it creates an area that reaches into the midst of your cluster of ships. You might want to clear that area."
To his satisfaction, he saw many of the Morcan capital ships and fighters move out of the way of the imaginary line.
"Excellent. Please stand by." He switched frequencies on his comm system. "Arak, the path's clear. Fire when ready."
___________________________________________________________________________ _______
Arak nodded. "Right. Just ran out of ammo, anyway. Rac, activate the tachyon accelerators. Prepare to fire the you-know-what."
"TACHYON ACCELERATORS AT 70%. TACHYON EMITTERS FUNCTIONAL. PLASMA FLUX COILS ARE HOLDING. PRIMARY CELL CHARGE HAS REACHED CRITICAL MASS. SECONDARY CELL CHARGES ARE AT 0%."
Arak frowned. "Hmmmm... the beam'll be weaker than usual, then. Flood some power into the secondary cells from the capacitors. Fire at 60% power."
From her position off to the side, Yuri idly wondered what all the high- tech jargon meant.
"AFFIRMATIVE. FIRING ON YOUR SIGNAL."
Arak grinned. "Let 'em burn."
He sat back in his chair lazily as a fairly thick orange beam, surrounded by a hazy ribbon of stray charged electrons blasted forward and punctured the length of the strange vessel, blowing out flesh and...... other stuff out the other end. The beam continued on toward the planet, unobstructed by the other nearby ships.
The ribbon of energy that had followed the beam collided with the alien ship and scattered, scarring the outside and blasting apart the nearest crystals.
Yuri gaped, simply amazed by the destructive power this ship held. She couldn't imagine how strong it'd be at full power!
She would have been absolutely terrified too, and rightly so, if this power hadn't been used against the enemies of what she considered her home planet. She smiled with a sort of smug look as she watched the alien ship get speared, feeling that justice had been served.
Arak nodded, satisfied with his work.
"POWER LEVELS DROPPING. PRIMARY GENERATOR FAILING."
Arak's eyes widened. "WHAT?!?!?!"
"I SAID, POWER LEVELS-"
"I know what you said! Now explain how it happened!"
Yuri blinked, then bigsweated. This couldn't be good.
"FUSES ON THE SECONDARY ENERGY CELLS BLEW FROM AN UNEXPECTED ENERGY BACKLASH FROM THE TACHYON ACCELERATOR, DUE TO THE THEIR RECENT USE LEAVING KEERYU WHEN THE DAMPERS WERE OFFLINE. THE ACCELERATOR UNDERWENT SOME MINOR PARTICLE DAMAGE. THE SECONDARY CELLS ARE NOW OFFLINE. THE MAIN GENERATOR AUTOMATICALLY TRIED TO COMPENSATE FOR THE DRAIN OF THE APOCOLYPSE CANNON, BUT DUE TO THE POWER CORE ONLY ABLE TO GENERATE AT 85% CAPACITY, PLUS THAT LUGNUT YOU LEFT LYING AROUND IN THE COOLANT SYSTEM, IT WAS UNABLE TO DO SO."
Arak gulped. "Status report?"
"ALL SHIELDS AND WEAPONS ARE OFFLINE. CLOAKING DEVICES ARE OFFLINE. ENGINES OFFLINE. WE ARE RUNNING ON REDUCED SECONDARY POWER. AND IT LOOKS LIKE OUR ALIEN FRIENDS HAVE TAKEN OFFENSE AT US SERIOUSLY DAMAGING THE 'MOTHER SHIP'."
Yuri stared at him. "That's............ bad, right?"
The scientist looked out the window of the bridge, to see that now all the alien vessels were heading towards him. There weren't more than 30 left, including the really big one, but that was still a lot, and from what he had seen just one of those could quickly and easily kill the Wild Horse.
Arak's mouth gaped, and his jaw started opening and closing independent of thought or speech, until he suddenly broke down crying.
"Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!! We're all gonna die!! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!"
Suddenly, he was brought to his senses by a large metal sphere banging him on the head repeatedly.
*Whang* *Whang* *Whang* "SNAP OUT OF IT MAN!"
Yuri pulled him up in his chair, then shook him strongly. "Pull yourself together! You can't give up now!"
Arak grunted and grabbed his aching head in pain for a moment before he refocused his attention on the advancing ships. "Well, at least the evac transports are making it into hyperspace. Now Ranma's gotta go save us again." Arak sighed and hit the communications transmitter.
"Ion Storm, this is the Wild Horse, we're dead in space, and the weird ugly things are closing in. Do you copy?"
*Dammit Arak! What'd you do this time?!!* The Dark Angel's reply blasted through the speakers, blowing back his hair a bit and knocking away Rac's sphere.
After a moment, Ranma replied. *All right. Rayden, take a run on the opposite side of the big ship. Somehow its gained speed and it'll be within projected firing range in two minutes. We have until then to disable all the crystals that could attack him.*
*Gotcha. If you survive, we're gonna talk about this, Tetsumi.* Both transmissions were cut off as two special lights on the tactical display suddenly took up strafing positions on the alien mother ship.
Arak gasped and fell back into his chair, sweat running down his forehead.
Yuri blinked. "Are you going to be okay?"
Arak turned toward her, then sighed deeply. "I'm sorry. But these recent string of events have been rather hard on everyone here, and I guess I've just been taking it the worst."
Yuri looked down sympathetically at the man before carefully holding his shoulder and pushing him so he could look her in the face.
"Hey," she started softly, "just you wait, Ranma will see us through this one. Don't worry. Everything's going to be just fine." She smiled at him, and he managed a weak smile back. In a moment of introspection, Yuri realized that pirates or not, these people were just that, people. They weren't sadistic or cruel, just........... well, she didn't know enough to come to a conclusion herself, but they weren't sadistic or cruel.
"ALIEN FIGHTERS INCOMING."
Yuri's expression was replaced by one of horror.
Arak shook his head. "Great. Just ****ing great."
___________________________________________________________________________ _______
Ranma checked the time on his status board as he unconsciously avoided another tagging projectile. He blasted another crystal node with a few rounds of lasers, then looked on with satisfaction as it glew more brightly than it did when discharging a blast, and exploded outward, sending shards of crystal and arcs of electric plasma raining out into space.
Ranma then noticed that several fighters were attacking the Wild Horse, and that one of the smaller vessels was closing in on his ship faster than the big ship was.
He groaned as he passed the next bulge and noticed the veritable forest of crystal weapon nodes among the largest bare portion of the ship.
'Enough of this!' He thought, and came up away from the beams, then turned toward the ship's side with a slight clockwise spin.
"Chestnuts roasting on a neutron disruption field! HYAH!!!"
A wave of proton torpedoes poured out of the Ion Storm, and impacted the fleshy skin of the alien vessel violently, causing the crystals to rupture instantly and the rest of it twist into hideous scars and gashes.
Ranma's eyes widened as a something happened in his mind. He could hear a scream of agony... yet it was not his own and his transmitter was off. The yelling lessoned, and was followed by... anger. Unspeakable hatred.
Ranma shook his head to clear it, and the thoughts seemingly went away. Refocusing on his current situation, and promising to check into the disturbing experience later, Ranma noted with no small sense of pride that his side of the enemy ship had been totalled, with torn, blistering craters wherever the torpedoes hadn't burnt straight through to the superstructure.
Then he realized that those holes were shrinking. And fast. The huge hunk of...... whatever was regenerating!
That was when his mind was brought to a more immediate problem. Every alien ship in the enemy fleet was making a beeline for his fighter.
Ranma gaped and flipped the switch for the engine restart. As usual, his ship was helpless after unleashing such a lethal attack. As expected, nothing. It didn't restart. He kept trying, however.
Looking at how the behavior of the enemy ships were, Ranma was totally baffled. They still had a good chance to kill the Horse, but instead they had all focused on him. It was obvious that it wasn't the plan of whoever was piloting those ships, because even mynocks had more sense than that.
No, the command had obviously come from whoever was commanding the big ship, though he had never met a captain stupid enough to give up the destruction of any capital ship in favor of a fighter, no matter how much damage it may have caused on its own.
Ranma sighed. "Great. It's the most short-sighted, feather-brained strategy ever created, and yet I still get it in the pants." Ranma hit the switch again, and the engines fluttered to life, if only for a moment before they darkened again.
Ranma watched out of the corner of the window as an alien fighter pod got close enough to fire its weapon. The sphere of white, quickly dissapating energy sailed towards him. It wouldn't destroy him, but who knows how many volleys trailed after it to finish the job?
Ranma stopped his attempts to restart his engines momentarily to watch a streak of red fly by and impact the nearest pod, blowing it apart in an incredibly gory fashion.
Ranma held himself steady as the energy ball hit and shook him violently, peeling off outer layers of armor and stripping the dark blue to a hot white on the site of impact.
Strangely enough, that seemed to jump-start the engines, and he quickly jetted out of the way of a steady stream of energy orbs.
Looking behind him, Ranma could see clearly that his savior had been the pilot of an A-Wing. The rest of the man's wing flew past behind him, and dove straight into the mess of alien fighters.
Looking around, Ranma could see that the transports were even now retreating to the safety of hyperspace. The warships, however, were starting to take the offensive, blasting apart the enemy now that they had an advantage.
Over his shoulder, he could see the Dark Angel dropping plasma grenades indiscriminantly along the alien mother ship.
His comm system crackled. *I don't know why I just saved your ass, so you'd better have a good explanation for why you're here.*
Ranma shook his head. "You saved my ass because I saved yours. Don't think that anyone owes anyone else any favors here."
He switched over his comm as he watched the aliens accelerate away from the planet and the battle. "It looks like they're retreating. What's the status?"
Arak's voice sounded back to him. *I have the engines online. That's about it. Rac keeps telling me not to touch the rest of it or else I'll break something.*
Ranma nodded. "Listen to the computer, would ya? In any case, stand by for a sec." He flipped his comm signal again.
"This is Ranma Saotome calling the Morgan Douglas. We currently have a citizen of yours aboard our ship. Can we drop her off on one of your ships?" With no small amount of satisfaction, Ranma watched the big alien vessel getting pelted with laser shots as it retreated. The huge bulbous mass opened up a blue portal in front of it, then slowly lumbered through.
*This is the Morgan Douglas. Though you must understand that we're not quite on friendly terms yet, we thank you sincerely for your assistance in fighting off the alien fleet. As for your prisoner-*
"Stowaway." Ranma interrupted harshly.
*...... Stowaway, there is a transport that has just repaired its engines that's still on the planet's surface. It will wait for you before leaving to the rendevous point.*
Ranma nodded. "Good. Ion Storm out."
He switched his comm signal over again, then sweatdropped at the messages that filtered through to his ship.
*Oh yeah, you wanna piece 'a this, A-boy?*
*That blackened hunk of scrap couldn't possibly compare to a New Republic- class ship! Go crawl back to your hole, criminal scum!*
*It's not 'blackened', it's painted black, you dolt! Is there anyone with brains on this frequency?*
Ranma sighed, then readjusted his frequency to include the Wild Horse in the signal.
"Dark Angel, form up with me. We're landing on the planet's surface. Arak, land the Wild Horse at these coordinates and meet me at the Charita spaceport. Also, turn off your comlinks. I'm not gonna give you an excuse to paint another wing of A-Wings on your fuselage, Ray."
With that he turned off his own comm system to cut off the scathing reply from the Morcan pilots.
___________________________________________________________________________ _______
Ranma coughed as he jumped out of his fighter, then started breathing quickly, trying to get his lungs used to the thin oxygen.
Behind him, Rayden took a few deep breaths himself before starting off toward the dome. He was more adaptable than Ranma toward such things, but not by much.
"Nice place they got here. Pretty, at least." It wasn't as densley wooded as Keeryu, but there were other things of consideration.
"Hey Ranma, look at this!" Rayden regretted shouting, as it released all the meager air in his lungs and he was forced to sharply inhale.
Ranma looked over and raised an eyebrow. "Well well. So here lies the crater at the end of the tachyon pulse."
The crater was nearly 15 meters long, which was impressive considering that the blast had been from so far away and was at 60% power. Ranma also noted that mounds of deep-fried alien flesh caked the rim of the impression, as well as puddle of shattered crystal on one part of the lip. That had to hurt.
"I guess it's fairly obvious now, but those ships were biological, huh?"
Ranma nodded. "Yup. Here comes Xero."
Ranma smiled as the girl ran up to them followed by one of Rac's drone spheres, then nearly collapsed on the ground.
"*Pant* I never *Pant* liked *Pant* this planet. *Pant* Too little *Pant* air."
Ranma smiled and patted her on the shoulder. "It's all right. They're not sticking around here any longer. Let's get to that transport."
Rayden continued observing the crater, with Rac's drone by his side, recording the surroundings. Then he picked up one of the shards of crystal, and turned it over in his hands, letting the light reflect off it and play with its colors.
Then it glowed.
Most people would have dropped the crystal in fright and run away, but Rayden was never particularly sensitive to signs of danger.
It stopped glowing, then briefly lit up again, going on and off like a strobe light.
"Would'ja look at that?" Rayden said in wonder, holding it up.
"SCANNERS INDICATE THAT THE CRYSTAL IS REACTING WITH SOMETHING IN THE VICINITY."
Rayden blinked, then looked around, trying to find the source of the reaction. The only thing of even remote interest around was a cave surrounded by eroded rock that looked really out of place. Next to it was a sign that said 'Mysterious Ancient Ruins'.
Rayden glanced at the small hovering orb, then shrugged.
They went inside.
___________________________________________________________________________ _______
Ranma looked up at the rounded upper hull of the last transport left on the planet, then looked down at Yuri.
"Well, so long kid. It's been real."
Yuri looked up at him. "I'm only maybe a year younger than you, you know," she stated flatly.
Ranma smiled and patted her on the head fondly. "Yeah, well, I was never good at farewells. You take care, all right?"
Yuri smiled sadly at him, then stopped to glance at the transport while she thought up something to say herself. Ranma waited patiently, his hands in his pockets.
"The door is closing."
Ranma blinked. "Huh?"
"The door to the transport. It's closing... uh, it's closed now. The transport's taking off."
Ranma looked suddenly over to where the transport had gunned its engines and was lifting off.
His eyes widened and he started waving his hands in the air as he shouted at the transport. "HEY!!! WAIT!!! YOU FORGOT YURI!!! SHE'S STILL HERE!!! STOP!!! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!?!?!"
Needless to say, his yelling didn't have much effect as far as stopping the transport went. It continued to rise above the city, eventually becoming a small dot in the sky as it broke through the atmosphere.
Ranma's comlink crackled to life.
*Ranma, we've got trouble. Alien ships moving at very high speed have appeared near the planet. We haven't encountered vessels of their particular structure before. They've already penetrated the planet's atmosphere and are landing outside the city. I suggest you drop off Xero and get out of there!*
Ranma bigsweated, and his face darkened. "Uh......... the transport already left without her."
*Whatever! Then bring her back here! We need to leave!*
Ranma nodded, then turned to Yuri, who was watching something in the sky. Looking up himself, he saw what looked like one of the small oval-shaped capital ships from before, except this one lacked a crystal to attack with, and seemed to have a bony skeleton surrounding it like an impact shield.
Which was probably what it was, considering the way that it smashed into the ground, flexing and bending, but not breaking.
Yuri shook his shoulder slightly. "Ranma? We'd better get out of here. This looks pretty bad."
Ranma stared for a moment more. "Just a sec, okay?"
She blinked in confusion as Ranma walked over to a nearby support pillar for the dome.
Then he started banging his head against it. "Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!"
He stopped right before his vision fully seperated into two images, and drunkenly stumbled back to where Yuri was sweatdropping at the scene.
He shook his head to clear it, then took out his blaster. "Come on. This is gonna get messy."
The pair stopped as part of the transport pod was torn open from the inside.
Ranma had seen many, many different species of creatures in his travels, but this one was new. It stood about 7 feet tall, and was colored a semi- transparent light blue. Its chest stood as the largest hunk of mass on its body, and it was large and triangular, with two vertexes making up the shoulders while the third pointed down towards the abdomen. Its head was long and rounded at the end, and connected to it by a 1-foot tube that made up its neck. In the head several little black spots outlined what were obviously its eyes. It had no visible mouth, ears, or nose.
It was bipedal, with two thin reverse-joint legs sprouting from the smaller triangle that was its pelvis. Its arms were the same way, though attached to their back were four thick tentacles, light blue like the rest of its body.
Yuri had to make these observations in less than two seconds, because that's how long it took for Ranma to take aim and blast the creature's neck, causing the head to fall to the ground. Its body wobbled upright for a moment, before collapsing heavily to the ground.
Ranma pulled out cylindrical object, then pushed a button on the side and pushed up a switch near the top. His arm made a sweeping motion as he threw it into the hole in the pod, then turned to grab Yuri. To his surprise, Yuri was already running back to the ship ahead of him, and he started running to catch up.
The plasma grenade detonated, blasting everything inside of the transport to ashes. The transport itself, being made to withstand the extreme heat of sailing through an atmosphere, was mostly unscathed during the attack.
As Yuri passed the now blazing corpse of the alien, she noted how it had some sort of metal apparatus on its slim hands, wich was connected through several tubes to a large metal pack over its chest that seemed to serve as both an energy source and armor.
They watched as several more alien transports hit the ground, most of them stationed around the city, but a few landing in-between them and the ship.
Ranma grimaced, then leaned down and brought up his right hand, pulling back his sleeve slightly. Yuri stopped and saw that it was covered by a high-tech looking gauntlet, with the glove being made of thick leather while the wrist down was metal and covered in switches and buttons. Ranma put in some commands, then pulled his sleeve back over it.
In moments, the Ion Storm could be seen rising in the air above the sparse trees, then turned toward their direction. Yellow energy bolts pummeled the shields from the ground, but they held as the large fighter slowly accelerated and then deccelerated toward its pilot. Reaching an area just two meters from Ranma and Yuri, it slowly settled onto the ground.
Yuri blinked and looked at him. Ranma sighed and jumped into the fighter. "We'll have to share the pilot's seat. Do you mind?"
Yuri stood shock still for a moment before quickly shaking her head no. Ranma leaned up out of the seat and held his arm out expectantly. Blushing profusely, and mentally berating herself for getting so distracted when they should be running for their lives, she accepted his hand and was promptly pulled into his lap. She continued blushing as Ranma told her to lean back against him and he reached around her for the controls.
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"It's getting brighter. It's definitely reacting with something in here!" Rayden looked around at the interior of the cave, trying to see if there were any golden chests or jewel-laden caverns around. He had never really explored such a place before, so he didn't really know what to expect.
"TRY LOOKING TO YOUR LEFT."
He did so, and discovered some faint green lines tracing something on the wall. He held up the crystal, and it began to flash brightly, eventually glowing to a climax and then shattering.
Suddenly the wall was swept up in a pool of green energy, and the thin, barely visible lines he saw earlier were now completely visible.
Rayden blinked. Then he frowned. "Figures. We go all this way, and all we find is some weird runes on the wall. I don't recognize the language. Do you Rac?"
The sphere next to him beeped quietly. "PROCESSING...... NEGATIVE. IT IS OF NO LANGUAGE USED IN THE CURRENTLY KNOWN GALAXY."
Rayden rolled his eyes. "Great. What a waste of time." Even as he complained about it, the runes stopped glowing as brightly and settled down to their normal state.
Then he turned around, and saw one of the aliens step into the cavern.
It was the same one that Ranma and Yuri had seen, but this one was red, and lacking any gear at all, though it did hold a large crystal in its hands.
Apparently the creature was more surprised than he was, because it just stood there, its gelatinous black eyes distorting.
Rayden calmly pulled out his blaster and fired.
Coming to its senses just in time, the alien raised its hand, and the blaster bolt impacted an invisible shield of some sort.
Rayden blinked, and was distracted enough to allow the creature to lower the shield and attack.
The tentacles on its back shot into the ground, and seemingly phased through it, stretching and coming up right under Rayden without disturbing rock or soil.
Thus he was too surprised to fire another blast as one tentacle grabbed onto his leg and the other gripped his weapon. Rayden growled and tried to wrestle his sidearm back into his control, mostly ignoring the other tentacle which tried to throw him off balance.
Rac wasn't impeded, however. A small hatch on one side of the drone opened, and a small gun barrel shot out.
The alien screeched in pain as the small red laser pierced its belly, and stepped back in agony, bumping into a few more blue aliens that had just arrived behind it.
Rayden dropped his gun, then reached into his trench coat for his blaster rifle. Bringing it out, he shot two holes into the red creature, then hit the others before they could retaliate.
The red alien stumbled, and his tentacles suddenly slid back into the ground, before they pulled themselves up to the rest of the body.
It fell down, and its entire being started to crumble to dust and float away. Soon there was no trace of the red alien save the crystal that lay on the ground, softly glowing from its proximity to the ruins.
Rayden blinked, then picked up the crystal while looking at the other alien corpses. "That's odd. The others didn't disintigrate. Why did that one?"
Rac would've shrugged had his drone had shoulders. "UNKNOWN. I SUGGEST WE ANALYZE THAT LATER, HOWEVER. RIGHT NOW, SURVIVAL TAKES PRIORITY."
Rayden nodded, then pocketed both the crystal and his laser pistol before fighting his way back to his ship.
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Eyes unseen watched from the alien invasion cruiser as the Wild Horse lifted out of the atmosphere. Two other, smaller ships docked within it before it took off into hyperspace, unmolested by the aliens still in space. The other transport had already left, meeting with the last of the evacuation defense fleet and making the jump.
The invasion cruiser, just as large as the biggest ship from before, but possessing a bony, barrel-like structure, watched impassively as the humans left.
It had not expected the first attack to fail. Its brother had proved incompetent. That wasn't to be totally unexpected, as it had never been in an actual battle before, and commanding a large fleet against such a pathetic defense force had given its brother ship arrogance. In any case, the planet was theirs, though if the humans made off with the ruins in their transports (unlikely, but they could take no chances), all was lost.
It was very aggravated when the psion it had sent down to read the runes was destroyed. The psychic link that the vessel held with all the invasion troops had been cut. Now it had to send down another psion to the ruins.
But there was time. Time had always been their ally, gifting them with vessels such as he and his brothers, warriors such as the Psion and Unguru, and above all, protection from their enemies.
After eons of waiting, revenge would be theirs.
But first they had to find those blasted runes!
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End Chapter 6