Chapter 54

Deep Space

Divinium Mine

"Stand by point defence!" Yelled out Sarah as she gripped the armrest of her seat.

Technically, the missile volley was vastly smaller than the cruise missile one they'd withstood only a few hours ago.

But this time they didn't have an entire fleet of Dominion ships to serve as decoys and protectors. They were alone. And even for the Seeker, a thousand missiles was a lot, especially with a point defence gun out of commission.

The missiles crossed the engagement threshold, and the three remaining point defence guns spun to life. Had Sarah been able to see her ship with her naked eyes, she would have seen the flickers of light rising from her ship, as the slugs fired by her point defence guns hit the scattered gas around them, lighting it up. Then the flames that were the missiles, themselves forcing through the gas, arrived.

The ship shook for a solid second, and then...nothing.

"Status?" Asked the captain.

"We took fifteen hits. Shields at 50% and rising. They have ten megatons shaped warheads, which matches the raptor's specs."

"That few hits?"

Elteria chuckled.

"Our ECM is very good ma'am. And I think this mess is to our advantage, with only a single ship to lock onto we're a stars damned needle in a haystack. Except the haystack is on fire and actively shooting at you."

Sarah laughed out loud.

"An apt metaphor, I suppose. Alright, the battle laser?"

"One minute left. We're going to take another volley befo-"

The ship shook, and Sarah grabbed the armrests.

"What the hell was that?"

"Railgun round. Penetrated the shield, but it only was a grazing hit, thank the stars. We're going to need some new forward armor plating, but it was deflected. Fuck, they're getting closer to us, I think they're using the nukes as a glorified flare."

"What?"

"They probably can't see shit with our ECM and with this mess. But their nukes just cut through all of our jamming and the light bounced off of us, illuminating us like a flare, or a star shell. Then they used that to target us. The shots took a few seconds to get there of course, and we'd already dodged, but..."

"But it means they had a space where we could be and filled it with slugs. Fuck. Maybe these bastards aren't that incompetent after all."

"Yep. I'll be ready for it next time, but it's not going to be pleasant."

"Nothing about this is pleasant."

"I guess not."

"Enemy missiles approaching point defence zone!" Shouted Connie.

"Stand by point defence!"

The next missile was much like the first one. Shaking, then nothing.

"Status?"

"Another fifteen hits, but the railgun round had seriously fucked our shield. We're at 30% and climbing. And...managed to dodge the zeroed-in railgun volley." Elteria looked at her captain. "And the battle laser has recharged."

Sarah smiled.

"Fire. Let's make them regret that little trick."

The battle laser fired. And this time, it had better targeting solutions, and the enemy's shields were already partially depleted, endurance shields having a poor recharge rate.

The enemy ship erupted in a shower of debris, and for a split second its acceleration dropped to a handful of gs, before going back to maximum.

"Status?" Asked Sarah.

"Direct hit! I targeted right on the gash we did on the armor previously. Only one railguns is still firing, and I think a solid quarter of their missile launchers just failed to launch for the new volley! They're spinning, trying to switch broadsides!"

Sarah smiled fiercely.

"Excellent! Alright, prepare the hyper-missiles for launch! We'll hit them from both sides! Our battle laser on the intact broadside, and the hyperspace missiles on the damaged one!"

"Aye aye ma'am!"

It was a tense three minutes that followed. Four more times the enemy's missiles reached them, and four more times they emerged from it more or less unscathed, their shields ever lower, and glancing hits from the railgun rounds stripping their armor bit by bit, and even penetrating and knocking out some secondary systems.

"We're approaching shield failure ma'am. In a volley or two the missiles will start doing damage to our armor. And with it stripped like that by the railguns..." Said Elteria right after her status report.

Sara nodded.

"Alright, understood. Status on the battle laser?"

"Fully recharged...now."

"Fire!"

Once again the battle laser began firing, then-

"FUCK!" Yelled out Elteria as the ship shook. Except that this time it was like someone had physically stopped it, and Sarah almost flew out of her seat, kept in only by the small tractor beams built into the back of it. "We've been hit! Railgun round, directly on the battle laser! SHIT! The ignition chamber, we have to-"

The ship shook again, and all the lights went out.

*****

Sarah looked around as the lights flickered back to life. If there was one thing the Eternal Seeker had in abundance, it was redundancies. She fixed her gaze on her AI's avatar as soon as it appeared on the bridge again.

"Elteria? What the hell happened?"

"The...the containment field generators, they hit the battle laser's containment field generators. We had to manually trigger the emergency purge of the ignition chamber."

Sarah blinked. We? What did she-

Then it hit her. The only person that could manually trigger the ignition chamber purge was the engineer assigned to the weapon.

Because there was only one place that could purge the ignition's chamber fast enough to prevent detonation. The engineering spaces around it. Right where the engineer would be.

There was no way to survive the process. Not when the laser was firing anyway. It would be the equivalent of being bathed in plasma.

"Who...who did we lose?"

"Grace, we...we lost Grace."

Sarah closed her eyes, then opened them.

"Alright. Can we get the laser back online?"

"I don't think so. Not without a lot more time than we've got."

Sarah looked at the display, at the icon of the enemy ship as it continued firing at them. There was still gas escaping from its other side, the damaged broadside losing atmosphere still as the damage control crews no doubt rushed to try and desperately repair their ship.

"Fire the hyper-missiles! Then prepare to jump to hyperspace. If this fails...we'll have to retreat."

"Aye aye ma'am! Firing hyperspace missiles!"

Another six missiles spat out of the Eternal Seeker, except that this time they didn't light up a dimensional interference drive.

Instead they vanished in a flash of energy.

The crew of the Quetzalcoatl, the ship Sarah was facing, might have been able to react in time had they been properly trained. Hyperspace missiles were fast after all, but not instantaneous, and most navies had drilled into their spacers' heads the standard counter measures against them. But they had been chosen for their loyalty, not their competence or training standards.

Four missiles emerged from hyperspace, the other two simply lost to the foreign dimension, positioned directly behind the light cruiser from the Eternal Seeker's perspective. The drones were deployed in a forward screen between the gunship and the cruiser, they never even saw the missiles.

The Quetzalcoatl's crew never had enough time to react. But their computers did. As soon as the missiles emerged, automated protocols were triggered and anti-missile laser turrets swiveled to fire. They did their best to shoot down the missiles that had appeared less than a hundred kilometer from their ship.

Their best wasn't enough.

Miraculously, the hasty point defence laser barrage took out one of the missiles. But the other three finished scanning the enemy ship, and detonated.

Three beams of light, each carrying the energy of a hundred and sixty megatons of TNT stabbed into the Quetzalcoatl. One found the ship's forward missile magazine, and destroyed it, annihilating the ammo supply and the reloading systems of almost half of the ship's remaining missile launchers, before destroying the primary fire control center, vaporizing computers and gunners alike.

Meanwhile the second beam hit the drive square on, which immediately shut down, before moving into the engineering areas at the back of the ship, destroying damage control stations and all sorts of equipment.

But those didn't matter. For the third and last beam hit the primary reactor.

For a second, the Quetzalcoatl's systems fought desperately. Emergency plasma vents and cooling valves engaged, while the remaining containment field generators went into overdrive, trying to keep the miniature star within the reactor in check.

They failed. The laser had destroyed too many systems, and the Quetzalcoatl vanished in a flash of unbelievable energy, as an ephemeral star replaced it.

The drones that had protected the ship were simply annihilated as the outer edge of the new star enveloped them, and throughout the battlefield, crew members stopped and gawked.

For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then a TRF guard ship flipped around, and began trying to get away from the Dominion fleet. Then another. And another.

In less than a minute, every TRF ship left in the system was running, and-

"Ma'am?" Said Connie in the silence. "The divinium mine is hailing us. They wish to surrender."

Sarah blinked.

"Us? Not the Dominion?"

"Yes ma'am. It's a general transmission, but its addressed to, and I quote, the 'maniacs in the gunship that just vaporized a cruiser a thousand time their tonnage'."

Sarah chuckled. The cruiser hadn't actually been a thousand time their tonnage, but she got the point. She looked at the display quickly, but the remaining missiles from the Khopesh had either been knocked out by its destruction, or where completely clueless now, cut off from their mothership and effectively flying blind in the radioactive hash of the nebula. A few did manage to hit every volley, but the shield just shook them off, and was getting back to a hundred percent by the time the next volley came around now that the railguns were no longer in play.

"Alright, put them through."

Connie nodded, and the system display vanished, replaced by the image of a gaunt man, about as pale as they came, the clear sign of either some form of genetic condition, or someone who spent far too much time in dimly lit maintenance corridors.

He looked a bit taken aback by her lack of Dominion uniform, but carried on regardless. Which given how many shocks he must have had today was nothing to sneeze at.

"Greetings, Dominion ship. I am Voldan Von Arken. Governor of this installation in the name of the Thaumor Revolutionary Front. I wish to negotiate the surrender of my people."

Sarah nodded.

"Greetings mister Voldan. I am Sarah Ciel-étoilé, mercenary captain and under contract by the Dominion to secure this installation. What are your conditions?"

The man looked at her suspiciously for a second, before squaring his shoulders.

"Provided I am given guarantees that my people's lives will be spared, and that they will be given a fair trial, I am ready to surrender my installation without further conflict. I will, however, order the destruction of all computer and military systems within my installation, as well as give the option to anyone who wish to do so to end their own existence."

Sarah looked at the man, and he met her gaze with one of steel, and she slowly nodded. The demands were...reasonable. Some could argue they were mass murdering terrorists and shouldn't have their lives spared, but at the same time boarding this place would be a nightmare, and they would have the time to kill themselves and destroy any system they didn't want to fall into the Dominion's hands anyway, so it was a fair trade.

"Very well, on the condition that all divinium extraction and refining facilities are kept functionally intact with the exception of their computer systems, I accept."

The man relaxed slightly on the screen, and nodded. Then-

"YOU TRAITOROUS BASTARD!"

The gaunt man barely had the time to turn around before his head exploded, and the video feed devolved into screaming and weapons fire.

A few second later, nothing could be heard but barked orders and the sobbing of the wounded. Then a few shots rang out, and even the sobbing stopped.

Sarah steeled herself, and gave her hardest stare at the man that appeared on the monitor. He was covered in blood, and holding a perdition laser rifle.

"Ah, a member of the TRF's little secret suicide squad, I presume?"

She was entirely guessing, but if she were the TRF and she really didn't want this place to fall into Dominion hands, it would make sense to emplace some kind of secret unit lead by a political officer, to enforce self destruct or 'fight to the death' orders. After all, as long as they were kept out of the chain of command, they wouldn't feel responsible or a kinship to the people of the installation, and would have less hesitation to kill them all. It was cold blooded as hell, but....well, the TRF had murdered a million innocents for arguably a far less sensitive installation.

The soldier looked taken aback, before he barked out a laugh.

"I see that you are a clever one, captain. Yes, I am here to enforce the commands and protocols of our leaders. And do it without hesitation, unlike some traitorous dogs." He spat towards the ground, presumably on the gaunt man's corpse.

"I'm sure that will be of great reassurance to the millions of innocents you're about to murder. The children, especially, will be thrilled to know they've been killed for some high and mighty asshole they've never met, and who would have never put himself into danger for them, or anyone else for that matter."

That seemed to make the soldier hesitate, before he shook himself.

"You can continue talking you Dominion bitch, but I will not be swayed." He carefully removed a data stick from a compartment in his armor, and inserted it into the console in front of him. "I am a loyal fighter for the freedom of the galaxy, not a tyrant bootlicker like y-"

Either the TRF hadn't told their suicide squad there wasn't a timer, or the soldier hadn't paid attention, as the transmission cut off mid sentence...and the asteroid erupted in flames.