CIVILIAN VESSEL WINDRIDER

BEYOND THE ORGIT OF K'LRATH VI

K'LRATH SYSTEM
GEMINI SECTOR FRONT LINES
1430 HOURS CST
OCTOBER 12, 2565

Zannah Lyles frowned as she floated from the back compartment of her Centurion-class picket ship and into the command couch, artificial gravity a luxury a vessel of her size did not have. The fox nearly growled as she looked at all the data scrolling over her display. She had taken this contract because it seemed like easy money, sneak in, drift through the outer portion of the system gathering SigInt or signals intelligence through a nifty little gadget that the Confederation had provided her to install in her ship, and then sneak out again.

What the blasted intelligence snob had neglected to tell her was that the jump point he had provided for her navicomputer was the entrance vector for a pirate Jump Point into the bloody Gemini sector command for the Kilrathi!!

She sighed as she slowly powered up her maneuvering systems. No changing that now she knew. Best thing to do was get out of here, collect her money, then pay the intelligence weenie a visit to put him out of her misery.

The problem was, getting out. The Kilrathi were no fools, that was for sure, especially after loosing their Enigma Sector HQ a couple months back to the 6th Fleet when they had sent a small detachment of fighters through a pirate point to recon, for the fleet. They had littered this system with remote sensors, her passive detection gear, another present from ConFed for another mission she had performed was picking them up by the droves. The pirate Jump Point she had used had been actually inside the gravity well of K'Lrath VII, another reason she wanted to get her hands on Lieutenant Felippe Gerringer. The gas giant had masked her entry, but almost tore the Windrider to shreds exiting in the gravimetric shear. It had however, given her ship the slight kick it had needed to drift through system powered down so none of the inferred detection systems would ping her.

Unfortunately as soon as she lit up her main drive, her heat corona would show up like a beacon to any sensor within range, and with hyper-burst com arrays attached to each, the Kilrathi would know about her in moments, and would have a flight of fighters detailed to bring her in, if they were feeling generous. Hopefully though firing her maneuvering thrusters would not be an adverse effect. With her hydrogen ram scoops closed, she didn't have to worry about the drag the energy fields created as they sucked in the stray atoms needed to fuel her ships fusion reactor. With them closed, her ship maneuvered through Newtonian physical laws in space, with them open, they had the strange effect of creating an almost atmospheric like drag to allow her to maneuver her ship as if it were an atmosphere.

She sighed as she looked at her computer display, a fighter base within striking range of her exit Jump Point did not make her happy, but she really didn't have a choice. "Computer, activate main drive," she ordered through the voice command options she had installed on the ship as she gripped the control stick and throttle.

There was only a slight chirp from the computer in acknowledgement of the command but she could feel the Windrider come to life around her. Equipped with over-sized engines for a ship of her class, she was just as fast if a little more sluggish than some of ConFed's best fighters. And she would need that speed here and now as she saw warning lights going off on her threat display even as she jammed the throttle full forward and smashed her finger onto the afterburner button, shoving her into her seat as the inertial damper tried to keep up.

Unfortunately the Kilrathi were better prepared than she thought, two Krant-class fighters had been on patrol coasting through the system just as she had been, so her sensor package hadn't picked them up, just as theirs had likely not detected her either. However as soon as she lit her drive, she had flared into life on those sensors and the Krants had given chase, alerting Zannah to their presence.

She growled looking at her display, thirty seconds to her Jump Point, twenty till the Krants reached her, not good odds, especially since she would have to slow down for the jump. Taking a Jump at more than a hundred KPS was considered a suicide act among most sane spacers.

"Computer, activate tail turret, set targeting to Armageddon Mode," Zannah ordered as she felt her muzzle curl a bit. The computer again chirped in a positive as she felt through her command couch the shudder of the twin mass gatling weapons in her rear turret firing. While not the most powerful of weapons known to Terrans, one thing could be said for mass gatlings, the filled space with tiny shards traveling at high relativistic speeds, making them extremely dangerous to anything flying into said space. With her rear turret locked into computer controlled 'Armageddon Mode' a term carried over from twentieth century naval warfare, the onboard tracking system automatically picked out what it believed to be the most dangerous threat and engaged it first, and continued to engage it until it was dead, or a new, more imminent threat appeared. Personally, Zannah didn't trust it all that much, but, she didn't have a second crew member needed to man the guns, and there was no way she was going to let the computer pilot the Windrider while she manned the rear turret.

Fortunately for her, these pilots must have been new recruits or unfamiliar with the Centurion design. The computer in a nanosecond decided that the leader of the wing pair was the more dangerous of the two fighters, tracked in, and opened fire with the guns in the turret. The Kilrathi pilot didn't even have time to react as the mass shards filled the space his fighter was flying through. His shields held for the briefest of moments before they collapsed in a shimmering rainbow effect and the mass shards tore into the hull of his fighter. The unlucky pilot was shredded in his cockpit as his canopy was shattered. No more intelligence at the controls of the fighter it kept on its coarse, flying straight into the turret fire till a series of shards penetrated the fusion reactor annihilating the fighter in a brief but spectacular fireball.

That explosion clouded the Windrider's rear sensors so the turret couldn't track the second target. It gave the now lone Krant time to get off a shot in return, however, he didn't bother with his guns, he had two Image Recognition or IR missiles loaded on his fighter and his computer had a lock, he triggered off one. The computer, upon realizing there was a missile inbound screeched at Zannah through a warning tone to evade as the turret tried to track in on what it now classified as the most dangerous threat. However, a missile moved infinitely faster even in modern space combat than a fighter and the first burst missed the missile and it found its target exploding against Zannah's shields.

If they had been recon fighter spec shields like most Centurions carried, Zannah would have been free-floating atoms most likely at the moment. However, she had spent money upgrading her shields, along with the rest of her craft and now, was simply sent tumbling off coarse with sparks flying around her. She growled wrench the controls about, willing them to obey her as she brought her ship back on course. She took a look at the display, and knew she wouldn't make it to the jump in time to keep from being plastered by the Krant. So, she did the one thing the pilot most likely would not have expected.

Windrider's spaceframe howled in protest as Zannah treated her like the fighter she almost was. As she brought the ship around in a tight hard burning loop she brought her forward guns online. A quad mount of powerful tachyon cannons, the weapons drew so much power from the blaster generators that she only had a few seconds worth of firepower at her disposal before the generators were drained and had to flash charge. A few seconds was all she needed however as she lined the crosshairs up on the Krant who was at the moment pulling high and to port of his previous path, trying to evade the now head on attack from the Windrider. Zannah gave a sly smile as her finger gently squeezed the trigger and let loose with the tachyon cannons.

The effects were telling in moments. While based upon particles that normally traveled faster than light, the burst from the tachyon guns traveled just slow enough to show up as brilliant spears reaching out for the Krant. The burst ignored the shields as if they were not even there and the front portion of the fighter crumpled then sheared away, killing the pilot as the rest continued on a ballistic path out of the system.

Zannah sighed as she pulled back on her throttle and brought Windrider back towards her jump. Good she thought no targets on scopes, which meant no one was close enough to get to her before the jump. After she jumped, she could orient herself to her next Jump Point, power down the drives and cost along like a good little piece of space debris, the sensor baffling systems she had had installed aboard would make it hard for anyone other than a SWACS craft to pick her up, and even then Gerringer had said that an SWACS would need to point a high-energy scan pulse at her in order to pick her up. Granted, she didn't trust the wolf then anymore than she did now, but, she knew if there was one thing ConFed took seriously was keeping people alive to get information back to them, one reason Zannah had stayed alive to collect so many paychecks from them. If she didn't trust the Intel Winnie, she'd trust the techs that installed the new widget, along with all the others.

She smiled gently as she pulled back, on her throttle to slow the Windrider down for the jump, well, even if it was a little exciting she was getting paid quite well for this job, now she'd collect.

Just as the Jump Drive kicked in though, a shrill warble announced a destroyer rising from the moon of the sixth planet. It couldn't catch her in time to stop her, but it knew what Jump Point she was using, and those, where she was going, and it would be able to chase her easily. Maybe this wasn't going to be so easy after all...

"Oh Damn..." was all she was able to say before the Jump Drive shot her across thousands of light years, though not quite to safety yet.