“-All hands, battle stations-” AVI orders through the ship-wide speakers. Scant seconds passed before the entirety of the ship rocks to one side, throwing all crew members to the floor as the ship’s shields flickered.

Within the docking bay, thirty Spacers reeled as the ship was thrown to the side. Stray objects not tied down were scattered, forcing the already disarrayed Spacers to duck and cover as flying tools came hurtling at them from all sides.

“(cough) Leon, what’s happening!” Dee spits out through clenched teeth as she opens the ships intranet with her neural implants. Shortly after, she is smacked to the side as a power tool slams into her, leaving a debuff effect conferring Winded1 and Lingering Pain2. Her implant at the nape of her neck flairs in sudden pain as another object hits it, leaving her dazed.

It didn’t take long before the captain’s assistant had reached her through a patchy comm as the energy was sucked out of various

“-(crackle) We’re… (crackle)… ambushed! -” was his response, the strain of stress echoing through her implants directly into her brain.

“Understood.” Dee curtly responds before closing the channel. Steeling herself, an aura of authority engulfs her as she makes her way to her ship all, simultaneously opening another channel to the ships A.I.

“AVI, orders!” she asks. Its response is a large data file and an immediate order.

“-Protect the shuttle Commander Belys-”

“Acknowledged.” She replies before barking, “Alright space junkies, I want you space-born yesterday!”

Her orders send the Spacers into a frenzy as each of the mercenary companies’ head to their respective groups. Jumping into her own black painted interceptor3, she jumpstarts the engine into gear with a flick from her cyberware implants. Snapping the EVA helmet into place, she hears the fighter purr as her cyberware connects with the ships internal circuitry. A moment later, she gets the all clear to disembark.

“-Skull Slider Leader standing by-”

“-Grease Ripper Leader standing by-”

“-Starhawk Leader standing by-”

The respective company captains link with hers as she begins the unclamping procedures to allow her ship into space. Running through the data image files sent directly to her optical implant, her confidence wanes as she begins rifling through the various probabilities of something happening.

Suddenly, as if on cue, a shower of asteroids buffets the ship, sending everyone not already in a fighter or strapped in a seat airborne as the artificial gravity fails for a moment.

“Skull Sliders I want you on defense maneuvers surrounding the ship. I want your squads split in pairs, allow no enemy fire to make it through.”

“-Aye!-” is Tai’s terse yet enthusiastic response.

“Rippers I want you on asteroid dispersion. Make sure that the enemy doesn’t get the chance to throw anything larger than an interceptor at the Eudora, otherwise the Sliders will have a hell of a hard time handling whatever is thrown at them.”

“-Acknowledged Commander-” Baybel states with hints of bitterness showing through her voice.

“Hawks, I want you on my ass to cover the shuttle. Provide covering fire and whenever possible protection of the shuttle should anything get close enough to get a clear shot. Understood?”

“-Oya, leave it to us!” Baybee replies.

Dee promptly switches to the squadron channel, making sure that every Spacer could hear her before she set off.

“Alright guys and gals, it’s Showtime! I want this wrapped neatly and in time for dinner.” She hears a couple terse grunts from the other fighters.

“Under no circumstances are there to be theatrics. And yes, I am explicitly talking to you two troublemakers, Baybel and Baybee.” She gets a couple of chuckles across the comm before continuing. “I don’t want to be drinking to a dead Space junkie at the end of our first mission. So, protect yourselves accordingly and don’t take too many risks. Squad leaders, you have your orders.”

Muted agreements split across the channel as the hums of over two dozen fighters begin their final flight checks.

“-Um… Commander?-” a tentative voice asks. A quirky voice. Timid, yet outspoken, Dee notes as she feels the purring of the squadron’s respective engines. She could feel the anticipation as they wait for weightless.

“Yes, Private?”

“-What are we up against? -”

“…Dromerian Imperial Knights.”

A myriad of voices exclaim and curse as they hear the answer to the point that the Captain’s had their hands full keeping the noise from breaking the comm channel. There even seemed to be factions growing within the groups. Those who were battle-hungry wondered how many they could kill while those panicking were wondering how they would survive.

Through the brief overview of the data file she had been sent, she had a feeling there would be slim chance of success given the state of the enemy. The Dromer Empire was renowned for two things on the galactic stage: exportation of raw adamantine, the very material used to protect ships in their forays into Wild Space, and Imperial Knights.

The Dromerian Imperial Knights were simply Knight Houses using battle suits. Although, to call them simple would be a vast understatement. To comprehend said understatement, one must first understand the difference between the three main armor classes: power suits, hard suits, and battle suits.

Power suits are designed for the augmentation of attributes, increased carrying capacity, and multifunctionality. In a way, they can be thought of as the tactical option when it comes to military hardware. Despite this augmentation of attributes, it has very little, if any, usable armor in combat. The suits themselves, usually being designed for maneuverability and versatility, are heavily seen among the scouting or exploration elements of the galactic races.

Hard suits on the other hand, are designed purely for stopping power and pure armor. At the cost of not boosting the user’s attributes, it incorporates heavy armor components, large energy capacities, and weapon linking, allowing increased accuracy and damage output. At least one of the races in Neos exclusively use these suits while shunning the others simply because of the pure ‘tank-like’ effect it has on the battlefield.

Battle suits, although massive in size, are thought to be the more superior option. In essence, battle suits are the best of both power suits and hard suits yet altogether staying in a class of their own. Battle suits are usually designed for a single user and are always the most expensive regarding the other two classes. Most often, they are packed with advanced weaponry, sensors, and technology that allow it to go head-to-head with anything from the largest of military vehicles to the smallest of military space ships. To say that battle suits can out compete anything the power suits and hard suits have would be a vast understatement.

Despite being overpriced pieces of hardware, battle suits have one common flaw. Their energy reserves don’t last long through prolonged exposure of combat. To combat this problem, the Imperial Knights were always known to operate in squads, thereby eliminating the need for lengthy combat. Each squad was led by a dragoon, a psionic veteran who had ventured into Wild Space and survived an encounter with a dragon.

Sighing, Dee contemplates whether her mercenary force could last against such opposition. The only thing she could hope for in the face of overwhelming head on power, was the terrain advantage and a superior speed and agility. With the extensive sensor array of the Eudora feeding them a constantly updating map of the asteroid field, there was surely a way that she could hold off the Knights. She just had to find it. Amongst the cacophony of voices growing ever louder, she could hear her officers struggling to contain their charges panic and anger.

“Enough! Captains you have your orders.” Dee barks, closing the channel, “AVI, lift the barrier.”

“-Acknowledged, Commander Belys-”

In the void, silence reigns supreme. A stillness perfected as the energies of the universe wrapped around the stars. At least, that was what Aun idly thought as she held the human shuttle in place with her powers.

“-Divines… the least they could do was give us a good chase. -” Mal disappointedly sighs.

Looking to the side, Aun could see the bright red battle suit of her second as the impatient Knight floated among the asteroids. The scales painted into her suit a tally of kills taken until she undergoes the Rite of the Dragoon.

“-If you have the time to complain, you have time to gut the ship. We spent enough time tracking them back through Wild Space and I don’t want to deal with the human escort while we are in the middle of recovering our Artefact. -” Tashas grumbles. The brown coated knight was one of Aun’s more recent additions to the team.

The rest of the team is silent as Tashas watches for movement and Dasir attaches miniature propulsion devices on various asteroids. It was a standard space tactic when it came to laying traps. It was easy and affordable when one needed immediate weapons of mass destruction.

“-Mara Aun, I’m registering movement from the human warship. -” Tashas states as she thumbs the lock on functions for her torpedoes. Aun slackens her Gravity Grip as she turns to where Tashas is scanning. She could see the system’s twin suns glinting off the human’s steel fighters. She could pick out eight of them racing toward the outer edges of the asteroid field.

“-Really? More playmates for me! -” Mal happily jets over.

“No.” Aun orders. “Get back to the recover—”

Just as she is about to state something, the shuttle breaks off and hurtles towards the human warship.

“Tsk.” Aun re-exerts her Gravity Grip on the human shuttle, letting the tendrils of her power slither along the universal energies to briefly attach themselves to the errant little thieves.

“-Incoming! -” Tashas yells, immediately opening an energy shield in front of her.

Aun didn’t have the time to check her sensors as she was immediately buffeted by a hail of plasma fire.

“Disperse! Deal with the targets!” Aun shouts as she struggles to hold the shuttle in place. Her tendrils were failing over the distance that was slowly growing between them. Looking down at her sensor readings, she finally finds what she is looking for.

“-Deploying first countermeasure. -” Dasir grunts as she fires off a round of asteroids at the encroaching fighters. The asteroids rocket towards the fighters as she prepares the following salvo. She becomes disappointed as the nine fighters dance around them, letting them pass towards the human warship.

“-That’s odd. -” Dasir, grumbles as she rotates her pulse cannon. “-Isn’t the normal protocol to destroy the asteroids from getting to the larger warships? -”

Her answer doesn’t come immediately and Aun doesn’t pay her any mind as she knows the Knight will rectify her own actions against the humans. Torpedoes and hard flechette rounds bounce off her carapace as she works on pulling the shuttle with her Gravity Grip.

Need to finish this quickly before the Admiral and the Princess gets here.

“-Damn humans are quick. -” Mal states over the comm as she dances between two human fighters, her sword out of its sheathe. As the long blade glints in the star light slices down, she cuts a fighter in two and watches with sadistic glee as it implodes on itself. “-But not quick enough. -”

“-These humans are—” Tashas starts before being hit with a round of torpedoes.

The game of cat and mouse continues for a few seconds before Dasir lets loose another salvo towards the fighters. The human fighters continue dancing the fine line between the three Knight attacks and the flying asteroids around them, a veritable maze of lethality at every corner. A fighter, seemingly being heroic, ploughs headfirst into an asteroid the size of a city bus, halting the movement of the asteroid and blocking it from colliding with two other fighters.

Focusing on her own part of the mission, the shuttle seems to give up as all power cuts out. The engines die and she thinks that the time for victory has finally come.

Finally, Aun thinks as she prepares to hoist the shuttle towards her in one giant heave.

“-Aun! -” the warning coming too late as a black painted fighter speeds past the Knights and lets loose a torpedo salvo of its own at her. With no time to throw up her shields, she releases the shuttle and throws up Gravity Dispersal. The torpedoes scatter and hit the surrounding asteroids.

But she was wrong. They weren’t torpedoes, they were EMPs. The electric shockwave knocks out her systems along with the rest of her Knights. As soon as this happens, she stares through the front shield pane in anger as the shuttle powers back up and races with the fighters back to the warship.

“Shak tanaris!!” she snarls as she watches helpless as her mission flies away. It doesn’t take long for her battle suit to power itself back up. Despite only seconds passing from the time the EMPs hit and the escape of the shuttle, there was too much distance between them and the humans to even think of recovering the Artefact safely.

She was outplayed. She had ordered her team to set up plenty of traps so something like this wouldn’t even happen. And yet she had been tricked. Played with. And that angered her. As her fellow Knights were about to follow, she orders,

“Do not follow.”

“-But—” Dasir begins.

“Do not question me youngling. We have no chance against that many forces.” Aun states bitterly as she does a broad star system sweep to see the amount of forces that would have been arrayed against the four of them. She knew they would be vastly outnumbered in open space. Out of the few that they had killed in the asteroid belt, there was still at least twenty more fighters in addition to whatever the warship could throw at them.

“-Then what are your orders, Aunthondar? -” Mal inquires, her excitement still showing even though she had been ordered to call off the hunt.

Aun takes a moment to calm herself. Like any great hunter, sometimes the prey is too big to be gutted by a small hunter. She remembers the time when she was part of her first hunt through Wild Space. A cluster of ships with hundreds taking part in the Rite of the Dragoon. The Hunt of the Dragon they had called it.

That is when she smiled, her maw filled with razor sharp teeth glinting in the star light. To bag a prize worthy enough for something of this magnitude, she had no choice but to issue one order.

“We wait for the cluster.”

1) Winded= Slowed movement for 10 seconds

2) Lingering Pain= Slowed movement for 5 seconds

3) Interceptor class fighter= approximately 40meters x 10meters