Pearl of the Stars | Far From Home
Stranded

The Razor and her unit cut a swathe through the Alliance Fleet, taking out the entirety of their central formation as Captain Jane Erstwhile insisted they push on.

“A small portion of the Fleet has just broken off, Ma’am,” a Lieutenant yelled out above the incredibly loud collision warning sirens. “They’re heading for the Nuuk!”

“Get me the Firestorm and the Jinx.”

“Aye Ma’am,” the same Lieutenant replied. “The Firestorm and the Jinx.”

Within seconds, real-time images of the Captains she had requested appeared on the screen in front of her and when Captain Erstwhile spoke, she did so with great urgency.

“The Nuuk must be protected, Captains, at all costs. She is our only Mobile Repair Vehicle. If we lose her, winning this battle means nothing.”

“Aye Ma’am.” The Captains replied in unison, each flicking informal salutes as they did so.

“Whatever you do, make it count!”

Accompanied by a group of five marines she had located who were still faithful to the Council, or so they claimed, Lieutenant Fiona Jones stormed onto the Nexus′ bridge. Inside, she was reeling at the loss of Captain Holding but her exterior was a picture of cool, collected calm.

“Who is responsible for this fickling mutiny?” she asked, calmly. “Out with it now and I might even let you live.”

Those who had already been on the bridge when Fiona arrived had not had a chance to react to her presence, therefore the only weapons armed belonged to Lieutenant Jones and her posse.

“Nothing? I’m disappointed. Is anyone here still loyal to the fickling council?”

Again there was no response and Fiona shook her head, slowly, doing as best she could to hold back the floods of tears she was so very close to releasing.

“Ma’am.” She turned at the rather quietly spoken word, mostly because it shocked her somewhat. It was technically the correct way to address her as she was now the most senior member of the crew, but she had not been expecting at all.

“Lieutenant Harrow,” she said, and despite the magnitude of the situation and the events that she had witnessed several minutes ago, Fiona could not help but feel a little pride, the sensation warming her from the inside.

“You’ll want to see this, Ma’am.”

Fiona turned to the marines and without saying a word, the accompanying look told them to stand their ground and to be on their guard.

“What is it, Lieutenant Harrow?” she asked as she approached the man’s console.

“CCTV footage, Ma’am,” he replied. “Someone attempted to wipe it from the Nexus′ memory banks but they missed the Delta backup.”

“On screen if you please, Lieutenant.”

“Aye Ma’am,” Harrow replied as he flicked a few switched and hit the button to send the CCTV feed directly to the large screen at the fore of the Nexus′ bridge.

On the screen in an incredibly high resolution, the image of a man entering the Nexus′ drive room could be seen. He did no appear to know quite what he was doing and judging by the way he was quickly scanning every piece of equipment he could see, he did not know what he was looking for, either.

“I’ll double the pace of the feed, Ma’am,” said Harrow. sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ FindNøvᴇl.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

“Yes, Lieutenant. Do that.”

There was something comical about a man stumbling around the drive room in double time and had circumstances been different, Fiona would have laughed.

Circumstances were not different though. Frank was dead and she was not in the mood for fickling around.

“There!”

Harrow paused the feed and skipped back at half-speed until the still image clearly showed the man’s hand grasping the core between his thumb and forefinger, and removing it from the console into which it was plugged.

“Find that man!” she yelled, turning to her marines. The group saluted as one and turned, running off in search of the offender.

“As for the rest of you,” she continued, turning back to address those on the bridge. “You will all, without exception, sit in the Chair. I shall go first and then personally monitor each and every sitting. Anyone whose memories betray them and indicate that they have betrayed the Council will be dealt with severely. Am I making myself clear?”

Muttering and mumblings of, “aye, Ma’am,” could be heard from all quarters of the bridge and she turned, heading for the Chair.

Captain Grace Ifhans watched the radar helplessly as several of the Pearl’s planes were destroyed on their first run at the Alliance Fleet.

The second run was not much better, in fact the only reason that a smaller number of fighters were obliterated when they went back for seconds was simply that there were less than half the amount of planes remaining.

Come the end of the second run only two planes remained, although they did have Calla Riley’s cruiser for company. How much damage could three tiny vessels do against an entire fleet though, even if that fleet was in the process of being crippled by the Razor and the rest of Captain Jane Erstwhile’s unit?

The issue was, of course, that the images and video feeds she was watching actually happened several seconds, sometimes over a minute, before they were portrayed on the Pearl’s radar. That was one of the many downsides of fighting battles in space. Even when distances were relatively short, and light-seconds and light-minutes most definitely fell into that category when talking about space travel, there was so little that anyone could do because by the time an event was witnessed it had already taken place.

“Get me the weapons room.”

“Aye Ma’am,” a Lieutenant barked in reply. “Weapons room.”

“Launch all the rocks we’ve got,” Grace ordered once the call was answered. “We need to cover those three remaining planes and do our best to limit the damage to Razor and her unit.”

“Aye Ma’am.”

“Throw some towards the MRV, too,” Grace added as an afterthought. She knew full well that from such a distance the chances of hitting anything were nominal, but at least a few projectiles would give the Alliance vessels something to think about”

“Aye Ma’am,” the Weapons Technician replied, before terminating the call.

“Ms Johnson,” she said, tilting her head in Emily’s direction. “Your assessment, if you please.”

“It’s going to be tricky, Ma’am, but that MRV requires protecting at all costs. I would suggest putting our two remaining planes, along with Ms Riley’s vessel, on an intercept course with the two ships from Captain Erstwhile’s unit that they might aid in the Nuuk’s protection.” She glanced from her screen to her Captain, before returning her gaze to the radar once again. “It might not sound like much, but that extra fire power might be enough to top the balance.”

“Give the order,” said Grace, waiting whilst her friend did just that. “Of course, the Pearl is now a sitting duck. Charge the main weapon and divert all available power to shields. If we’re going down, by fick we’re not going down alone!”

“The planet, Ma’am!”

“I see that, Mr Holden, and I have an idea that probably won’t work.”

“Going up against those forty-three ships is suicide, Ma’am.”

“I’m well aware, Mr Holden, but we have Nets, do we not?”

“You fancy a spot of fishing, Ma’am?”

“That I do, Ms Johnson,” Grace replied with a smile. “That I do.”

“We don’t have enough to take even five of those Alliance vessels, Ma’am.”

“Who said anything about the vessels, Mr Foster? We’re going to use them to take out anything those damn vessels fire at the planet!”

“Incoming message, Ma’am.”

“How the fick?” Captain Fiona Jones asked, quite shocked that despite the fact that the Nexus was stuck, stranded between star systems, a transmission was somehow getting through. “On screen please, Lieutenant.”

“We only have audio, Ma’am.”

“Just play the damn thing.” She sighed, heavily. It had been a trying few hours for her and the crew of the Nexus, the crew that remained at any rate. Having given the order that everyone, herself included, subject themselves to the Chair, her crew now numbered less than one hundred which was nowhere near enough hands to man a battlecruiser, not effectively.

“Captain Holding, this is Captain Rena Williams of the Snowblind. My apologies for the way we treated you and your crew during your brief stay in our home system. It was not our original intent although I will admit to a great deal of wrong-doing, particularly on my part.”

The audio message had been sent from many thousand light-years away in the form of a short data burst, meaning that there was no way to actually communicate with Captain Williams.

“I hope, however, to at least attempt to rectify my own error, and with luck go some way towards building the trust and working relationship that you quite clearly wanted from the beginning.

“Our systems detected your vessel dropping out of FTL in under extremely unusual circumstances and further investigation led us to believe that the Nexus has, in fact, been sabotaged. Knowing how desperately you must reach your friends and the what remains of your Fleet, we are here to aid you to that end.

“Stand fast. Prepare to enter FTL in five... four... three...”

“What the fick is she talking about?”

She need not have worried for less than a second later, Captain Fiona Jones found out for herself.

“Damage report if you please, Mr Foster!” Grace yelled over the impact alarm. When the Alliance Fleet realised that the Pearl was using her Nets to prevent the majority of their projectiles from getting through to the planet below, they had turned their attention to the Pearl herself and bombarded her with everything they had.

“I wouldn’t know where to begin, Ma’am,” Mr Foster replied. “Life support is running at seven percent. We’re down to rail guns only. Shields are, well... Put it this way, if we take another hit we won’t have to worry about life support running at seven percent.”

“Pilot! Evasive manoeuvres!”

“There’s no way, Ma’am!” the pilot yelled in reply. “There’s no way at all I can do a fickling thing to avoid everything that’s coming at us.”

A glance from Grace told Emily everything that she needed to know and she sprinted across the bridge to the helm.

“Consider yourself temporarily relieved of your station, Pilot,” she said, barging the man out of the way. “Make yourself useful and bring me a cigarette.”

“Aye Ma’am,” the former-pilot replied, seemingly relieved that he was no longer responsible for guiding the Pearl of the Stars through what was essentially a moving minefield.

“Do what you need to do, Ms Johnson,” said Captain Ifhans, quietly. “We only need seven minutes and then the Razor will be alongside us.”

“Seven minutes, Ma’am. Aye.”

“Five ships just jumped in-system, Ma’am,” Mr Holden barked. “They’re ours, at least two of them definitely are, and only two light-minutes to starboard.”

“Well I’ll be ficked,” Grace muttered. “The Nexus and the Rising Sun. Looks like Frank and Senna found us.”

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