Finally another chapter. This author stuff would be a lot easier if my little brother didn't magnetize my computer by accident´ every two weeks with his magnet collection. That kid definitely has magnets on his brain.
But here it is. The third chapter in my trilogy.
Chapter three: Nowhere to run?
Information, the first principle of warfare, must form the foundation of all your efforts. Know, of course, thine enemy. But in knowing him do not forget above all to know thyself. The commander who embraces this totality of battle shall win even with the inferior force.
Federation Battle Manual
The great harbor platform Marcadia
High orbit over Antiaga 5
Several large warships accompanied by many smaller ships dropped out of hyperspace just outside the platform.
The larger warships had a single-wing design with a powerful impulse-engine at the tip of each "wing".
The front party of the ship resembled an eagle's head and the ships hull-plating had a green color.
The ships were armed with several beam weapons that looked like a cross between a phaser and a disruptor.
The smaller ships had a more sleek design.
They where propelled by a powerful 3x12 engine at the back of the ship and there was an opening underneath the ship so the ship was probably a type of carrier.
The carriers instantly started to launch a large number of fighter, bomber and corvette squads as the impulse-engines on the large ships roared to life and started to push the large warships forward at a tremendous speed.
Karen saw all this on the view screen in the command module and she knew that this was an enemy that would be hard to beat.
She recognized the larger warships.
The ship class was called ray-eagle and the ship itself was very agile despite it's size.
She remembered when she encountered one of the ray-eagles outside Zarum III when she was captain at the GFM Dauntless.
There was by share luck that they escaped with their lives when a solar flare disabled the ray-eagle long enough for them to reach the jump point.
She instantly recognized the Black-hammer insignias branded on the ships.
"Admiral. Half the station just requested a permission to evacuate of the sector." The inter-platform communications manager informed.
"NO. We cannot evacuate." Karen shouted, "These are Ray-eagles, One of the most lethal Black-hammer ships. Not just because of their weaponry, but also because of their extreme speed and agility. If we try to escape to a jump point they'll annihilate us before we reach it. We must stand our ground.
Karen wrestled herself out of the medic team's grip and managed to get to the main fleet-command terminal.
"Call the interceptor squad back. Now." She commended a Kweltekwan that sat at the terminal before the medic team caught up with her.
The Kweltekwan turned the attention of all his four eyes to the terminal and started to access the comm. Network.
He quickly patched a link up with sanders and the rest of his squad.
"Break to high-32 tactics, increase speed with 29-kilo'qans and go for it." They heard Sanders command over the radio.
"He's making a run for the station again." It was Az's who spoke this time.
"Make 7-type-effect turn and intercept." Sanders responded.
"Ok. Making turn. We should see the station again once we clear this old wreckage." Az informed.
"Ok, there is the station, but…"
"What the Z'ach are those warships doing here?" Az asked in confusion.
"I don't know Az. But Peirce is making a run for them." Sanders replied.
"Set speed to max and follow him" Sander added.
The Kweltekwan opened the link and started to give orders.
"That is not goingk to happen" the Kweltekwan said in a Russian like accent.
"What do mean by that, Quadra?" Sanders asked.
"It vill be meaning that Karen is calling you off." Quadra replied.
"But… pierce is getting away." Said Az.
"Don't matter. You are to return to hangar. That's an order!" Quadra ordered.
"Admiral! The large warships are powering up their weapons." Someone from the sensor terminal yelled.
"Go to priority-one alert." Karen ordered.
"What are your orders Karen?" Quadra asked.
"Launch all ships." Karen ordered, "Authorization, Karen zero-niner-alpha-zulu."
"Aye admiral." Quadra said as he activated the platform vide intercom system.
"All pilots, this is a scramble alert. Report to hangars immediately. This is not a drill. I repeat. All pilots are to report to hangars immediately. This is not a drill."
They saw on the main screen that one of the Kweltekwan Mako-class battlecruisers detached from the platform and started to move towards the attacking ray-eagles.
The Mako-class battlecruiser was a large bulky ship covered with plasma cannons.
It had five powerful gravity engines on the back of the ship and titanium hull plating enhanced by magnetic shielding.
"I think they vill be havingk some trouble vith the Mako cruisers." Quadra chuckled as he watched the main screen.
Two of the ray-eagles suddenly broke formation and started to fly towards the approaching Mako cruiser.
The Mako cruiser responded by firing waste amounts of plasma charges towards them.
But the ray eagles simply evaded the plasma charges with an extraordinary agility and they soon came up on each side of the Mako cruiser.
They then started to assault the Mako cruiser with their beam weapons as they flew past it.
The Mako cruiser's shields were soon evaporated by the ray-eagle's assault.
Then a third ray-eagle came from behind and finished the job by firing their beam weapons directly into the Mako-cruisers reactor compartment.
The Mako-cruiser soon flared up in a bright explosion that destroyed the smaller ships that didn't get away in time.
"I can't believe it." Quadra said with panic in his voice, "They viped out a Mako cruiser in less than five minutes."
"Heads up! The bombers are in range of the platform!"
"More ships detected on the hyper grid." A Plorginar informed from a nearby sensor console.
Several more ships exited hyperspace around fifty clicks away from the station.
These ships where smaller than the other ships and was equipped with kinetic turrets.
Meanwhile, the ray-eagles had reached the platform and were now pounding on the platform's various sub systems with their beam weapons.
The fire was responded with several volleys of stinger missiles from the platform's missile turrets.
Several Ion beams, coming from the planet's surface suddenly hit one of the ray-eagles, destroying its starboard engine.
The turret crew followed the defense station's example and stared to fire the platforms ion cannons at the ray-eagles.
The platform's retrofitted ion-cannons weren't as powerful as the planetary defense cannons but they made up for that with their large numbers.
The damaged ray-eagle soon crumpled under the pressure from the ion-cannons and flared up in an explosion just seconds later.
In the mean time, several more ships had undocked and launched from the platform and was now moving to intercept the wave of fighters coming towards the platform.
Suddenly the ray-eagles turned towards the platforms many dry docks and started to blast the ships that hadn't launched from the platform yet.
They managed to destroy most of the docked ships before they had to turn about.
Meanwhile the platform's fighter squadrons had reached the advancing wave of strike crafts and were now fighting them with all the strength they could muster.
The platform's fighters where backed up by several squadrons of gunship corvettes.
Several more ships suddenly dropped out of hyperspace into the heat of the battle.
These ships had a more frigate-like design and were equipped with two heavy flack cannons each.
The newcomers immediately started to fire their flack cannons at the platform's fighter squads, greatly decreasing their numbers.
They where responded with several volleys of ion charges produced by corvettes that had intercepted the frigates.
Several other frigate type ships exited hyperspace a few minutes later.
These ships looked like they where built around a massive ion-cannon (witch they where).
One of the new ships turned towards one of the Antiagan Kyloth-class torpedo frigates and fired a beam of concentrated green energy towards the frigate.
The ion-beam pierced right through the frigate without any trouble, causing the torpedo frigate to implode second later.
Karen and the rest of the command crew watched it all from the command module.
From the looks of it, they where losing the battle.
"We can't take this much longer. We need to contact the federation." Karen ordered as she rushed towards the comm. Station.
A powerful explosion suddenly rocked the platform, causing many to lose their balance and fall to the floor.
Several alarms blared out as a grid model of the platform replaced the external view on the main screen.
The comm. Section on the grid model was flashing red.
"Warning! Warning! Warning! Long-range communication destroyed!" computer informed.
"What now?" Karen asked.
"I'm sorry." The Plorginar at the comm. Station said, "But we cannot communicate with Turo or any other planet without the long-range communication system."
"Are there any commercial traffic within the vicinity of the platform?" Karen asked.
"Yes, there is an automated supertanker over sector 26-L. But I don't know how that can be of help to us." The Plorginar replied.
"If it's an automated supertanker, it should be equipped with a ship-to-station sub frequency transmitter." Karen said.
"And that means that we can patch a link to another station via the tanker." The Plorginar finished, "Karen. You're a genius."
"Can you patch a link to Chimera station?" Karen asked.
"Can pure Lytranium increase the capacity of an x-7 impulse engine by 750 percent?" He asked rhetorically.
Karen just raised an eyebrow at this remark.
"Establishing comm. Links." The Plorginar informed as he turned back to the terminal.
The words "Communication links established" appeared on the screen a few minutes later and were then replaced by a video link with the station.
They could see Jacob who just noticed that the link was established on the screen.
"Karen, what's going on? We can see explosions and heavy gunfire on the mid range sensors." He asked with concern.
"What we have feared has now happened. The Black hammer clan is attacking. We have sustained heavy losses and the platform has received moderate damage to its outer hull." Karen informed while she brought up a grid model of the station on one of the other screens.
"Karen, why are you transmitting on a sub-wave ship-to-station frequency?" Jacob asked just after Jenkins had handed him a holo-pad (portable holographic display and memory unit).
"The station has lost its long-range communication array. The only way we could contact any one was via an automated supertanker within the vicinity of the short-range comm. System. Karen replied as one of the medics handed her a holo-pad.
"And we couldn't contact Antiaga 3 directly since the tanker only carried a ship-to-station sub frequency transmitter. So we will need you to send a message from us to the galactic federation H.Q. on Turo" She said as she used the grid model of the station to survey exactly how much damage the ray-eagles had done.
"If you record a message and send the file's to us. Then we can redirect the message to Turo." Jacob said as he punched in some commands at the console on his side.
Suddenly several red light started to blink on and off on the terminal on Karen's side at the same time as most of the lights in the command module started to fade.
"What's going on?" Jacob asked.
"The pirates just knocked out another PowerStation, the platforms system is shutting down unnecessary systems like lighting to preserve power." Karen informed.
"Hurry and record the message. Your signal is starting to dissipate." Jacob said.
Karen nodded and punched in the "record message" command at the terminal.
She sent the message a just after she finished the recording a few minutes later.
"There is another thing we need you to send to the federation." Karen said after Jacob confirmed that the message was through.
"And what is that?" he asked with curiosity.
"As you might have already guessed, Peirce dropped into hyperspace during the confusion of the battle." She said as Yoki handed her a small laser-disk.
"This laser-disk contains all the information we gathered on Lex's ship as well as the hyper-core decay traces. That should at least give the federation some clue as of where he was heading."
Karen slid the disk into a slot on the side of the screen and punched in the "Uploadandsend" command.
"Ok, we have the data." Jacob informed a few minutes later. We'll transmit the data to the federation when we deliver your message."
A large explosion rocked the station once more and the picture in the comm screen faded.
"I'm sorry Karen, but we have just lost the short-rang communications array." The Plorginar informed.
"What do you want to do now that we don't have any way of communicating with the ships?" Yoki asked.
As Karen pondered over the situation she suddenly realized what kind of situation they where put in.
They didn't have any way of directing the friendly ships outside of the station.
"KAREN!" someone shouted from not so far away.
When Karen and Yoki turned to see who it was, they could see Jacques running towards them with a holo-pad on his left hand.
"This is bad news." He said as he handed her the Holo-pad.
Karen looked down at the holo-pad.
It was displaying the data about a type of boarding frigate, commonly used by pirates.
"There is about fifty of these heading at high speeds towards the platform. They will reach the platform in less then ten minutes." Jacques.
"Quai'sanja" Karen swore in her native language.
"T'za San?" Yoki asked with frustration.
"Un genta, ze zurax." Karen said after she had pondered over the situation for a few seconds.
Yoki and Jacques understood all this, but the Plorginar just looked at looked at each other in confusion.
"Err… can you repeat that." the Plorginar asked.
"I said that we need a ship." Karen said as she realized they had spoke in their native language in their frustration.
"What for?" the Plorginar asked.
"One of the reasons is that we need to have a way to communicate with the rest of our ships." Karen informed.
"And the other reason?" the Plorginar asked.
As if to answer his question, the command module rocked violently as two of the ray-eagles attacked the module with their beam weapons.
"WARNING! WARNING! COMMAND MODULE HULL INTEGRITY AT 71 PERCENT." The computer informed.
"There is the other reason." Yoki said.
"We must evacuate the command module." Karen said as she grabbed a microphone that lay on top of the communication terminal's console. "All crew of the command module is to proceed to the exit and move towards the platform hangars to be divided aboard command cruisers. All crew is to abandon the command module immediately."
The loudspeakers around the module amplified her voice so that all the crew aboard the module could hear her.
"Admiral, take this." One of the medics said as she handed her a small Injector "This serum will provide your system with a lysine mix that will allow you to run regardless of the state you're in right now."
Karen nodded and injected the serum into her left artery.
The ray-eagle's beam weapons shook the command module once more, but this time there where three ray-eagles attacking instead of two.
"WARNING! WARNING! COMMAND MODULE HULL INTEGRITY AT 48 PERCENT!" the computer informed.
"Karen, where are you going?" Yoki exclaimed as Karen suddenly took off and ran towards what was left of her workstation.
"To get something important." She replied as she reached her workstation (or what was left of it.).
She opened a small hatch on the floor and removed a small blue syn-tex (Synthetic textile) bag from the inside.
"What's that?" Yoki asked as she reached Karen.
"You know perfectly well what this is." Karen said as she opened the bag.
Inside, there were several small cylinders that glowed in various colors, something that looked like a blue high-tech handgun that was made of a sapphire like substance, two plasma grenades, five concussion grenades and a small Blue-laser disk.
"I was wondering where you put that after we got transferred here from the Dauntless." Yoki grinned as she saw what the bag contained.
Karen strapped the bag's strap around her left shoulder so that the bag was hanging down under her right arm.
"Lets get out of here." Karen said as she started to run towards the exit.
Yoki didn't see any reason to argue with this order so she followed Karen towards the exit.
Once again, the command module was rocked by an attack from the ray eagles.
But this time, the module couldn't resist the force of the attacking ray-eagles and the module started to break up.
"There is the exit." Karen pointed out as they rounded the last corner and had a free passage to the exit.
Suddenly an alarm broke out and a pair of large blast doors started to close and slowly start to block of their exit.
"We'll never make it." Yoki said as she realized their narrow chances.
"Oh yeah. Watch this." Karen said as she drew the gun from the bag and loaded a small cylinder that emitted an azure glow, into the gun.
She then fired what looked like an azure lightning ball towards the closing blast doors.
The bolt hit the closing blast doors.
Azure lighting bolts arched around the doors witch now had stopped closing.
"What was that?" Yoki asked as they passed the narrow gap between the blast doors.
"Temporal EMP. It freezes all types electronics for a given amount of time, five seconds in this case."
They hared the blast doors close behind them a second later.
They both skidded to a stop now that they where out of danger, at least for the moment.
Then to their confusion, they heard several strange sounds, vibrations traveling via the platforms hull.
Karen closed her eyes and diverted all her attention to the hearing-center of her brain. She searched her memory of something to connect to this sound so that she could better guess what it was. Then, in the corner of her memory she found what she was looking for. The sounds were the sounds of the boarding modules on frigates latching on to the hull of the platform and drilling through the hull plating with their Tritanium drills.
She opened her eyes and reverted a large part of her attention back to the visual cortex of her brain.
"It's the boarding frigates, they are latching on to the platform's hull." Karen said as she started to run again
"Are you sure?" Yoki asked as she followed.
"One hundred percent." She replied "If you've heard that sound as often as I have, you'll never forget it."
They soon came to a halt at some lockers that where built into the wall.
Karen pressed in a code at a small keypad one of the lockers and opened it.
She reached her hand into the locker and removed a laser-rifle with a long and sleek barrel and handed the weapon to Yoki.
"You're going to need this." Karen said as Yoki received the rifle.
"And these." Karen said as she handed her a small pouch filled with laser rifle-clips.
She then walked over to a smaller locker and unlocked it.
"And you should definitely hang on to these." Karen said as she removed ten demolition charges and bagged them inside a small backpack she took from the locker under the locker she took the demolition charges from.
"What do we need demolition charges for?" Yoki asked.
"We need them in case there's some debris blocking our way." Karen replied.
They then started to make they're way deeper into the platform.
Galactic federation HQ
Planet Turo
The Grand councilwoman were listening to a representative of the Chandrel republic talking about the various tax system's in the galaxy and how to improve the efficiency of the galaxy's politick system.
Of course, the other council members, including the Grand councilwoman herself where nearly bored to death.
She had just wished to do something more interesting then to listen to this when it happened.
Several alarms went off and many red lights started to flash around the room.
"Priority alert. Top priority hail from Chimera station." The Council A.I. announced.
Thank you wary much´ the councilwoman thought as she activated the huge holo-projector in the middle of the large room.
The large holographic projection flickered into life and projected the text: Receiving transmission.
Seconds later the text was swapped with a large scale projection Jacob Thaddeus.
"Ah, Jacob. I presume this involves good news." The councilwoman said as she hoped that Lex was finally brought to justice or at least blasted out of the sky.
"Unfortunately not. He got away." Jacob said.
"WHAT?" The Grand council nearly shouted, "How can that be possible? You have state-of-the-art interceptor crafts. There is no way he could have outrun those interceptors."
"State-of-the-art, yes. But he had something we didn't predict." Jacob countered.
"And what was that?" the councilwoman asked.
"Contacts. That Quai'sanja had contacts under our weary own noses on our very own home!" Jacob nearly Screamed in rage.
"Calm yourself captain Jacob." The councilwoman said, "Now. Tell us what those contacts provided him with that gave him the ability to escape."
Jacob pulled himself together and started to explain what had happened.
"He were using an illegal corvette modification including the illegal Xeno Blast shield."
"A Xeno blast shield?" the councilwoman asked in disbelief. The other council members started to whisper and talk to each other when they heard the word "Xeno"
The Xeno blast shield where outlawed in the entire galaxy because it used a energy source so powerful and so dangerous that it was a miracle that they even managed to contain it.
The power source where a type of power crystals found on almost every planet in the galaxy.
The crystals alone just emitted a slow stream of harmless energy and were mostly used to power small equipment.
But when fused with the rare Xeno molecule found only near the wake of worm-holes and black-holes, the crystals would emit a tremendous amount of energy that where so powerful that it could dissolve Tritaium in a matter of seconds.
The only material strong enough to contain it was a rare metal called Inobtainium.
"Exactly" Jacob replied, "It's a miracle the pilots or Pierce for that matter are still alive."
"But how did he get away?" The councilwoman demanded.
"He used a type of fast-firing EMP turret mounted on the back of his ship to disable the interceptors." Jacob said.
"Kyot." The councilwoman swore to herself.
"Unfortunately. Its not that simple." Jacob continued.
"What's that supposed to mean?" The councilwoman asked.
"You better listen to her´ yourself" Jacob said as he routed a transmission through the link.
The hologram changed into a 2D screen displaying the image of an injured Karen.
The first thing they noticed was that she was not in the command module.
"This is admiral Karen Soban of Marcadia platform. I'm sorry I couldn't use a direct link but I had no choice." Her face where illuminated in the dim light by the red lights on the console on her side.
"It has finally happened. The Black Hammer clan is attacking. We are now under heavy fire from several warships including the dreaded Ray-eagle class ships." The grand councilwoman paled as she heard the name: Ray-eagle.
"We have lost our long range communication tower and three of the ten power stations.
We are fighting a losing battle and need immediate reinforcements.
Soban out."
The message ended and the projections of Jacob were back.
"As you can see, things are more serious than we first thought." Jacob said.
"Thank you captain Thaddeus. We will take it from here." The councilwoman said before she terminated the link.
The councilwoman waited a few minutes before talking again.
"Before we take further action it is best that I inform you all about both Peirce and the Black hammer clan because some of you don't know about either of them." She said.
"First things first. Lex Peirce first appeared fifteen years ago when he assassinated the leader of a huge corporation that managed all matter conversion within sixty light-years of Lajes IV.
We can tell for sure that he was working under orders and not a personal agenda. After that he has been taking all sorts of assassination missions for great and infamous crime lords. Including the well-known Dr. Jacques von Hämsterwiel."
"I don't see how he can be right under Kioko on the top ten list of wanted criminals just for that." One of the members said.
"That's because all his missions have targeted important members of the federation that mostly were a part of managing galactic relations, economy, production, mining and more.
Simply set. Lex Peirce is a threat not only to the lives of people. But he is also a major threat to the stability of the entire galactic federation!" The councilwoman said.
"Next. There is little known about the Black hammer clan, other then the knowledge that they are not indigenous to this galaxy and that they have committed numerous acts of piracy in this galaxy. Also know that they invented the technology used in the Ray eagle's primary weapon." She continued.
"Now. I want one and all of the resident Generals, Admirals and officers to attend to the war room immediately. If it's a full scale war the black hammer clan wants, then it's a full scale war they'll get." She addressed to the council before she started to make her way to the war room with the other officers.
Yes. I'm splitting up the chapter again. But I honestly had no idea that I would actually be able to write this much. I really want to know if my style of writing is good enough for you or not since I'm still a newbie writer and I'm not sure how to do this right.