2.19.1

Desperate Measures

“They’re going to fire.” Anders, too, grew severe in rising anger. “More hellbent on destroying than saving themselves.”

The noise at Shaely’s desk rose both in volume, and intensity, while the Alfirk detailed their damage.

“Alfirk to Aldebaran, requesting assistance! Do we engage?”

“No. Get them out of there!” Captain London persisted.

Shaely relayed. “Aldebaran to Alfirk, abort! Repeat, do not engage! Abort.”

“The Alfirk seems to be slowing.” Anders directed his attention to the radar. “What the hell is going on?”

“The hit has compromised our systems! We’re going full speed!” The Alfirk insisted from their end.

“Aldebaran, fire again!” Captain London ordered.

Astrid closed her eyes and bore down.

The thrum through the ship once again set her nerves into nausea. Each wave passed quickly. But their repetition seemed to intensify the effects. Maybe it just felt like it.

“Non-critical hit!” Hammond announced. “Fore sensors!”

“That’ll make it harder for them to see at least,” Anders explained. “But they’re gaining! They’ll be right on top of them before we can get another shot. Then they won’t need to see.”

“If we blast them that close, we’ll risk the Alfirk!” Ricks called, though his eyes never left his instruments. “We need to slow them down!”

Anders turned to Astrid, his eyes full of hope. She knew immediately what he wanted.

“You’ve got to be kidding! There’s no way I can pull something that large!” Anders raised a brow and Astrid hastened to add, “Respectfully, Sir.”

“But you can try, right?”

The specialist’s eyes grew wide as saucers. “I couldn’t even stop the pod! And that didn’t have nearly as much power.”

“But you held it back!” Anders persisted. “We just need a small window! If you can stall them, even for a few seconds, we can end this!”

“I-” Astrid knew she couldn’t do what he asked. She knew it. He overestimated her.

Captain London ordered another shot.

Hammond again, sounded, “Shot didn’t land. Enemy closing in on the Alfirk.”

But now the enemy dogged too tight behind their prey to risk another.

At Shaely’s desk, the ally ship squawked for another confirmation as to their directive, increasingly dubious they would be saved.

“Aldebaran, please… we have children aboard.”

In abject terror, Astrid’s eyes welled. She found no choice left to be made.

The Alfirk would not survive another minute of firing and hoping for the best.

In her heart, what she carried of her former Keeper was the lesson of what she could live with. And what she couldn’t.

“I need eyes on them.”

Anders nodded immediately and barked his orders for the blast doors to rise. It left the Aldebaran Bridge vulnerable. And indeed, some of the crewmen donned their masks.

But the Aldebaran still didn’t warrant attention in the S.O.’s eyes. Not yet, anyway.

For when skylight returned to the Bridge Astrid took in a full and terrible visage.

Vapor vented from the Alfirk’s aft. The craft appeared a struggling sparrow while it adjusted for its lower speed by haphazardly zagging to complicate its hunter's aim.

It seemed to work, for in combination with the enemy’s damaged sensors, the S.O.’s shots continued to go wide. But that wouldn’t last forever.

A ship with bronze adornment chased after.

“Ricks, get a bead on the enemy ship and hold until I say,” Anders coordinated.

“Confirm, Pilot,” London pushed. “At the lieutenant-commander’s command.”

“Aye, aye,” the pilot responded.

Behind them, Tenya, Romo, and Dell, joined them on the forward deck. But Astrid instantly ordered them back.

“Back away, all of you! This is going to be hard to control. Ricks,” she turned to the pilot. “Can you warm up the guns and hold? I’m going to need something to channel to if this works.”

“You’ve got a thirty second window before they have to fire once the sequence starts,” the pilot warned her. “Then they risk overcharge.”

“Yeah, I know the feeling,” she muttered to herself.

She handedly pushed her lieutenant-commander further away, as he, too, seemed to underestimate her need for space.

Astrid tested her senses, and reached for, by far, the furthest target she ever sought to grasp.

She cursed under her breath when she could feel how the Aldebaran’s own pull overwhelmed her nerves instead.

“Get us closer!”

“I’m trying!” The pilot chased after the Static Opposition.

“Twenty-five seconds!” Hammond joined in the maneuver.

“Come on, Astrid…” Tenya goaded from well behind. But the specialist tuned her out.

She reached. Further, further. She found the dormant tranquility of space and vacuum. And once she adjusted to the sensation, she sought the source of a sharper energy out in the cool pool.

And she found two.

She hissed under momentary hesitation. “Shit!”

“Do it, Astrid!” Anders pushed.

“I could get the kids!” She shouted. They’d be more sensitive to her drain if she wasn't precise.

No one trained her for this task. No one could have thought to. So, she guided herself.

She followed the discomfort, the tingle of pain that came when she neared a roaring engine. She chased the sensation, head long, to find its source.

“Fifteen seconds.”

The Aldebaran plunged closer.

Astrid found the enemy’s drive, an assault that grated against her senses. And she tugged.

She cried out as even the tiniest siphon lit up her nerves. She knew not who came to her cry but she cast them all away in another scream, to keep them from interfering with her strained flow.

“Away!”

She tried to extend next for the Aldebaran’s guns, and their growing, restrained thrum, that in turn, sickened her.

Astrid felt she might burst out of her body. Spread too thin, across too far an expanse, her form, a mere vessel for her own energy, seared under the effort and the pain it invited.

She gritted her teeth.

She shut her eyes, now latched in, and waded through the invisible storm of energy. From the guns, to her, to the targeted ship, and back.

If anyone said anything else to her, her brain held no quarter for it.

Her consciousness, everything that made up her spirit, expanded beyond. And while the Alfirk flitted away, she imagined a great leash to yank back on the pursuing rabid dog.

But nothing changed. Almost nothing. Indeterminate nothing.

A whole ship engine held much, too much, to bear. She could imagine no way to hold it in the same way she did the pod.

But she tried. She pushed. Her knees hit the deck. Her arms extended into the air, but she felt nothing physical. Only strain and power. She lost herself beyond her body, untethered in her total effort to feel the beyond. Pale light flooded from her crystal while she cried out.

She ripped away at the ship like a child angrily trying to snare smoke.

She could almost feel her phantom nails scrape along the S.O.’s engine. She could sense the craft’s guns spool up for another shot at the Alfirk. It took everything in her to keep her bead on the engine instead. To ignore and block out everything else.

They’re going to get the kids. They’re going to get them!

Whether her own desperation, or that the Aldebaran she felt, every last fiber of her being screamed with it.

She ripped at the energy before her ferociously. To destroy anything, and everything in her path. To tear herself in two if it could save the Alfirk.

It was only a second. Maybe a few. Pathetic, beautiful, seconds, that the target’s engine wavered, and stalled. The ship drifted, unable to dodge or alter its trajectory.

The Alfirk, on Shaely’s call, dropped away and under its path.

“Now!”

With tears down her face from the immense pain, Astrid channeled the last tiny specks she gathered into the guns.

The Aldebaran fired on a vulnerable vessel.

The enemy’s ship ruptured in twain.

In only a moment. A perfectly executed moment.

But Astrid didn’t stay conscious long enough to see her work rewarded with cheers.