War Fleet: Resistance, стр. 27
He’d never been outmatched like this in any combat situation in his life. A whole fleet against one tiny mining ship seemed absolute overkill. How the hell did they stand a chance?
Still, he had to do something.
Meanwhile, Rob had been keeping a hairline feed on the ship’s FTL-warp engine. And it was his news that jolted Olsen back into action.
“Sir,” the cyborg said. “It would appear the FTL-warp engine has come back online.”
“What? How long will it take to fire back up?”
“The reserves are heavily depleted. We need five minutes.”
“Do it,” Olsen said. “Meanwhile, we need to take evasive measures against those enemy guns. Otherwise we’re toast.”
Soon after, that drone spun across the screen again, but this time it wasn’t glowing blue. Whatever it was, it seemed only to have a finite amount of power. But without ever having seen anything like it, there was no telling whether it could power on again.
He noticed a cluster of four shield modules slightly to the left and in front of the powering up weapons modules, ready to protect any targets the Tapper moved in to attack. Unfortunately, such formations weren’t static. If Olsen tried to use the shields as cover, they’d just move out of the way.
Come to think of it, it was strange that the weapons modules hadn’t unleashed their load yet. It seemed Aarsh didn’t plan to stagger fire, but to annihilate them in one shot.
“How long until they fire, Schmidt?” Olsen asked.
“They should be doing so by now, sir.” He sounded perplexed. “Everything’s powered up.”
Olsen unlocked his fingers and raised his hand to his chin. “Novak, why would they want to hold back fire? Do you think they want to taunt me?”
“Given his speech before, and the irrational enmity the Arstan seems to hold towards you, it would seem quite possible, sir. Although, in all honesty, I studied Aarsh, and he’s less hot-blooded in nature than most Arstans.”
Olsen chuckled. “Hot-blooded?”
It was almost as if half of a smile crept across the left side of Novak’s face. “Not physically, sir, of course.”
“Sir, if I may interrupt,” Rob said, “it would seem we have an opening.”
“Go on.”
“The foremost shield generators seem to be malfunctioning, sir. They’re emitting zero energy levels. We could damage them.”
Olsen shook his head. “What good will taking out four rogue shield generators do?”
“Unless,” Novak cut in, “we bounce them into the line of fire.”
“With what? Our weapons on this ship have little knockback effect.” Then he looked Novak straight in the eye and realized what she was getting at. Damn, she was smart. “The escape pods. Cadinouche, turn this ship starboard. Rob, I want you to calculate the exact angle that we need. We’re going to play a massive game of space billiards.”
“Yes, sir,” Cadinouche said, and the ship began to turn.
“Schmidt, any further data on how long we’ve got until they fire?”
“Negative, sir. They’re holding the charge, but they can’t do so indefinitely before their weapons overheat.”
“And how long would that take?”
“Could be a couple of minutes, sir.”
So even if they got the shield modules to take the brunt of the fire, they’d need to buy time before the weapons powered up again and unleashed their fury.
“How long, Rob?” Olsen asked.
“Fifteen seconds, sir.”
“Good. Chang, deactivate the side magnets in the shuttle bay, but keep the central one activated.” That would allow the escape pads to shoot out of the airlock doors when they opened them, but would keep the Extractor, which they couldn’t risk losing, in place.
“Aye, sir.” Chang rushed over to the control panel on the side of the room opposite the door.
“Santiago, program the pods to thrust straight ahead as soon as they get sucked into space.”
“Got it,” Santiago said.
“Wonderful,” Olsen said.
He waited that extra second or so, until Rob said, “Now, sir.”
Olsen nodded. “Open the airlock doors, and change to shuttle-bay view.”
The screen changed view to display the back of the shuttle bay, with the camera slightly raised. The escape pods lined each side of the room on the rails, now stuck there due to the artificial gravity, which Olsen couldn’t turn off. But as soon as the launch doors opened, they lifted from their perches and sped up towards the blackness of space, and the deactivated shield generators in the background.
Olsen tugged on his collar as he watched their thrusters flare. Protocol said that you shouldn’t launch an escape pod through a shuttle bay airlock door, but Novak didn’t seem to have any complaints.
The pods moved fast, and the Arstan ships couldn’t react in time before they bounced the shield-modules into the enemy’s sights.
Olsen tugged on his collar again as he waited for the modules to explode. But nothing hit them.
“Sir,” Schmidt said. “The enemy is powering down their weapons.”
“What? Why?”
But he only needed to blink to get his answer. Right from where the shield generators had been, an undetected cluster of Arstan modules charged towards them. Olsen spotted a radar jammer module, two 23,000-Celsius laser cannon modules, a plasma cannon module, a couple of Arstan fighter ships, and two Arstan boarding modules.
Olsen only just had time to gasp before the laser cannons fired. The ship bucked and threw Olsen a little to the side before someone upped the magnetism on the floor. The shields went down immediately, and the plasma cannon fired shortly afterwards, making the ship lurch even more violently.
“Rob, damage report,” Olsen said instinctively.
“There’s been a direct hit,” Rob replied. “Our capability to go to warp speed has been curtailed, sir.”
They’d been duped. The defective shield generators had been a decoy, and Olsen had fallen into Aarsh’s trap, just as he had at the battle of Makorest. He never learned.
The fighter ships attacked next. They fired two EMP-missiles at the shuttle-bay doors. These projectiles were lower powered than the laser cannons, and so they only sent a slight