War Fleet: Resistance, стр. 35
“Find the weapons module. We’ll find our way inside that and take it from there.” Redrock said, and he glanced back at Captain Olsen, who nodded his approval.
“No modules seem to have detached, other than the shield modules.”
“Then we’ll just fly around them. What’s the point?”
“Because,” Olsen said with a slight mirth in his voice, “Kraic can’t take us seriously as a threat, so he’s only sending out the shields as a deterrent. Maybe he worries that we’ll fire on something, but that isn’t our goal.”
Redrock was only half listening. He was watching the six incoming shield modules and the faint blue lines that indicated the edges of their shields.
It took quite some squinting through the window — and only the naked eye would be able to pick it up — but there was a slight gap in between two of the shields. If he thrust hard enough, then he’d push through.
“Here we go,” he said. He really didn’t have time to explain.
Redrock yawed the ship a sharp ninety degrees and pitched down a little, while ramping up the throttle. He added a little energy from the afterburner. Behind him, he saw heads bump and hands grapple on to whatever they could find for support.
There came the sound of sparks from above, and the ship jolted. Santiago swore, and her screen went black.
But they made it between the shields. On the other side, the Okranti awaited them, much larger than before. From here, the ship’s body looked like a mass of floating shipping containers, stacked out in all directions.
In front of them, two bay doors opened, and five Arstan fighters swarmed out of both carrier modules attached to the Okranti’s main body. They sped forward with full momentum, and fired off a few red shots of light from their twin-mounted blasters. But the Okranti had let them come too close, and so Redrock only had to perform a clumsy one-engined barrel-roll out of the way, and the enemy fighters streamed past him.
He had about twenty seconds before they corrected their course and came back at him. That was long enough.
Just as the fighters completed their arc and started to return, they were engulfed in a bright blast of energy that seemed to wash over the three furthest shield modules as well. All of them glowed white and looked as if they would soon explode.
Through the Extractor’s battered reinforced windows, Redrock and everyone else in the shuttle knew what they’d just seen.
The Tapper, their beloved ship, had just blown up.
There was no going back now.
Redrock turned the engine around to slow the Extractor down as much as possible without entering into a full spin. He veered right a little and kept the wings straight, so that he could squeeze through one of the closing airlock doors.
The landing was rough, and Redrock only just made it without crashing in to the far wall. But they’d made it, and his sensors told him that the carrier module had artificial gravity, clean air, and was stationary compared to the rest of the Okranti.
Redrock opened the shuttle doors, and Chang rushed outside to place a hacking device on the module’s console that would stop its airlock from opening, and also stop the whole module from detaching from the rest of the ship. Redrock leaned back against his headrest and took a deep breath.
He’d done his part to help Olsen’s crew live another day. Now, the gauntlet would pass to someone else.
40
Kota wouldn’t have thought she’d had a chance of taking an Arstan warship with a squad of five Marines. But now, given she’d lost Connery and Singh, she only had three at her disposal. Admittedly, she had the rest of the crew of the Tapper, but they were only lightly trained in combat situations, and their standard-issue pistols wouldn’t do much against Arstan heavy weaponry.
She’d always felt that the Tapper should have a much larger Marine force. They needed to protect not only against situations like these, but also against mutinies. And recent events had proven a squad could be reduced by half in minutes.
Olsen had given her permission to take care of all tactical orders, while he and Novak would only give strategic commands at crucial moments. They waited in front of the airlock doors leading away from the Arstan carrier module, as Chang fiddled with the controls. He’d already hacked the module’s system so it couldn’t detach from the rest of the ship. Where you learned to do such a thing, Kota had no idea. Chang was a dark horse.
The air here smelled different than on the Tapper — almost like fresh air. It didn’t have that oily, sickly smell to it and, strangely, it had the scent of pollen floating upon it. Kota could get used to this. If they survived on it, anyway.
But Kota had no time to think about that, because the doors opened right in front of her, leading into an empty module.
“Ready,” Chang shouted.
“How long we got?” Kota asked.
“Around a minute before it detaches, and I need to work on the next panel. There’s modules attached to the left, right and front of this one, and we’ll need to move straight on to the equivalent of a CIC module.”
“And you know where that is?”
“I think so.”
The components weren’t just modular structurally, but also electronically. Chang would have to work on each one in turn to ensure they didn’t break off from the main ship. These modules didn’t come with EVA suits, so if they detached, the crew would be left floating in space until Kraic launched the warhead and the star went supernova.
Kota