Several decks and dozens of metres straight down from the top of the extended superstructure the bridge was located on, First (Gunnery Specialist) Rating Jamie Schneider and the rest of Battery No.4 (as did indeed most of the ship upon hearing their captain’s announcement) launched in a cheer of “God Save the King, Long Live the Kingdom, and Heavens Protect the Union!”. A shouted statement that was perhaps somewhat trite, but no less heartfelt by those who uttered it, especially given the tension on board. Just as soon as he and the rest of his gunnery crew of five, manning the temperamental Battery No.4 12-inch railgun (predictably nicknamed “No.4 Failgun” by Gunnery Rating Kate Sears) finished cheering, Petty Officer Jarel Gutzmer stamped down the stairs to No.4 from the upper walkway which ran along the entire destroyer’s port broadside.

“Oi, you lot, man your gun, prime the charges, and stand to to stand to, the Lady might have us firing some shells yet!”

“Imagine us actually firing a gun in anger,” Rating Koby Wynter said with a snide smile on his face to Schneider as they winched a four-hundred pound shell from the underdeck magazine feed hauling system onto No.4 battery’s shell cart, ably helped by the intentionally-kept low gravity of the Euphoria’s gun deck. They were joined by Rating Kate Sears and Rating Justin LeClerk as they together pushed the cart to the breech of the massive railgun. The gun deck of the Euphoria was, by comparison to the cavernous internal battery decks of the ships of the line, pretty cramped. Down the deck to the right and left of them, other gunnery crews were doing the same, but shielded from each other through layers of technically blast proof titanium plating, but which had large viewports and old-fashioned wired phone lines hooked into them so they could communicate directly without having to rely on the internal comms network. Like all modern warships, the Euphoria had enclosed gunports for her battery guns, reinforced titanium boxes that housed the swivel-mounts the railguns slid unto once their human crews had reloaded them, protected against the vacuum of space. Inside their gunports, the gun’s computers aimed and fired them in accordance to orders from the Fire Director and AIC SAI systems. Once fired, they slid back to the gun deck, where human crews made sure the guns were still cool enough for action, reloaded them, updated firing matrices using their handheld computers, and ran down simple systems checks that computers simply didn’t think of running, like looking for build-up of firmed-up coolant in the guns’ feed systems, remnants of scattered shell casings blocking the roll-back rails, or coolant feed-lines being loose or leaking.

Railguns were vastly superior to the chemically powered weapons that had dominated naval warfare for centuries until Humanity left their cradle in the 23rd century. For one, railguns technically could not overheat in the conventional way; electromagnetic charging did not produce heat as much as it produced static energy. Static electricity was easily absorbed by the 29th century be-all plastacene layer that encased most equipment on-board warships. But while electromagnetic energy didn’t have heat as a waste product, it did need a vast amount of energy to be stored before being launched as intermittent “spurts” of extremely high intensity energy. That needed to be stored in massive on-site batteries (the storing kind, not the shooting kind), as having long feed lines was both extremely ineffective and prone to jams or loss of contact. Several levels of breakers were put in place to avoid overloading the batteries, cutting them out from the ship’s electric feed loop, so there was generally a low chance of a dangerous electric overcharge. But what railguns did produce in abundance was heat through friction. The ridiculous speeds attained by the munitions before exiting the charge rails and the barrel of the gun, meant that while the gun itself didn’t produce heat as a by-product, the immense acceleration of a round meant that even the milliseconds before the shell left the charge rails created a superhot localised atmosphere within the barrel. That was what the liquid coolant, mostly composed of helium, was there for; to shock-cool the titanium-manganese frames of the railgun barrels before the heat could spread. But since it shock-cooled, it also firmed up within seconds, and despite the guns’ internal flushing system, sometimes it pooled up in cracks and creases, and gunners with tools that looked eerily like old sponge loaders dipped in an absolvent liquid had to swab the breeches. Had the guns been muzzle-loaded instead of breech-loaded, it would have looked like a facsimile of the reloading process of a gunpowder cannon.

Unlike what military analysts had predicted in the 23rd and 24th centuries, space warfare had diverted pretty sharply away from missile-based combat once interstellar travel had become commonplace and especially with advancement in metallurgy and electronic warfare. Small craft for fighting purposes had also gone the way of the dodo, simply because they weren’t able to carry heavy enough ordnance to penetrate the dozens of inches of reinforced titanium battle armour that modern warships sported. Railguns were the perfect weapon for warfare in space, where Newton was the absolute master. Gunners were from the first moment they started training beaten over the head with the basic laws of motion, gravity, mass, and energy, and everyone of Schneider’s crew could recite all of them off the top of their heads. An object in motion will stay in motion unless affected by an opposing force, and in the case of the vacuum of space, the only possible opposing force would be the electromagnetic gravity of a celestial body, or a spaceship, meaning once in flight, a shell would retain the same high kinetic energy as it had the moment it exited the barrel of the railgun. Missiles were dependent on the acceleration created by their own thrusters, and while more manoeuvrable and could be coordinated by fire control computers, they were too easy to shoot down by even basic DAI-controlled point defence weapons like CQB laser clusters and gauss turrets. Torpedoes were the exception to this rule, since they were huge beasts with their own internal armouring that at least somewhat protected them from smaller calibre point defence systems, but due to their size and complicated loading and priming procedures, were only ever employed as first strike or ambush weapons. Railguns could be fired rapidly, and gunnery crews trained incessantly to put as many rounds into space as possible in as short a time as possible, which made large-scale naval battles completely insane displays of munitions crisscrossing between the opposite lines of battle, to the point where gravpulse had a tendency to simply lose track of the munitions in flight, and simple LIDAR and radar became the operations personnel’s best friends.

“Don’t say that,” Rating LeClerk responded as they slid the heavy shell into the breech-loader rails, and Gunnery Rating Aaron Miller twisted the activation on the priming charge he held and slotted into the rails behind the shell the rest had just loaded, “PO Gutzmer was in the Solus War eight years ago, and he fired more than a few shots against the Solusians from the main gundeck of the Alba.” None of them spared any thought of what they had just done, preparing a large, advanced weapons system capable of electromagnetically flinging shells that reached speeds of thousands of kps and energy measurement upon impact in the thousands of megajoules. All their training had made the motions innate and second nature. Energy and excitement was high, adrenaline was in their bloodstreams.

“That’s hardly ‘firing in anger’,” Rating Kate Sears commented as she shut the gun hatch and made sure that the battery was ready to commence firing from the handheld computer strapped to her inner left arm, “that’s more like to bullying using heavy shipboard weaponry.” Her accent was delightfully New Victorian, heavily stressing certain vowels and reducing others.

“The Solusians didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell during that engagement. I mean, a multi-national task force based around three Auroran and Dionysian heavy cruisers squadrons, with ample light cruiser and destroyer support to subdue a third-rate border system? Please.”

“You say that,” Schneider shot in, “but we did suffer casualties of our own during that trade war.”

“Barely,” Sears argued, “and they were all due to a stupidly lucky shot down the throat of the flagship’s defence, and managed to hit the flag bridge of the Exeter before the close-in defence destroyers could form a proper protective screen. More dumb luck than anything. Trust me, I’ve watched enough documentaries to know what I’m talking about.”

“I appreciate the effort made to divert attention from the present,” Wynter said, following typing in the battery’s firing solution into the forward fire director’s SAI offensive matrices, “but can we just take a moment to appreciate the fact that we might be firing at, or receive fire from, an Alliance Space Navy ship? I mean, I’m not a political science graduate, but I even I know that’s pretty fucked up.”

“Relax, Wynter,” Schneider said while waving a hand in a dismissive gesture, “this is all gonna blow over. The Skipper already explained that the Greens are clearly in the wrong, and that she has a plan how we’re going to get out of here without any diplomatic incident happening. And come on, if the Greens aren’t stupid enough to fire on a Royal Navy ship, you can sure as shit be confident that a Royal Navy officer won’t dumb enough to do vice versa. And while I can’t speak for all the bandies on board, Captain de la Lune is as smart as they come, I can tell you that.”

Sears snorted.

“You only say that because you think she’s hot, aren’t you?”

Schneider sort of shrugged, which became a pretty weird gesture in the low gravity of the gundeck since he had used too much force to move his shoulders, and he slowly ascended a bit before the magnetic soles of his C-suit boots kicked in.

“Hey, I have complete faith in Her Ladyship, she hasn’t given me any reason to doubt her these past four months, and that is completely irrelevant as to her physical appearance.”

“Right, and you probably believe that as well,” Sears countered, rolling her eyes inside her blast-padded gunnery helmet, the visor hiding the motion from her direct senior.

“Oi!” a familiar voice came over their internal comms net, “I thought I told you lot to stand to, not stand around fondling your various bloody genitalia in public? This is a King’s Ship, for fuck’s sake, act like you’re worthy of serving on one!”

“Yes, PO Gutzmer!” Ratings Schneider, Miller, Sears, LeClerk, and Wynter responded in unison, professionally abandoning their previous banter and stood to their actual action stations, Schneider and Sears sitting down in the gunner and bombardier computer-seat stations, LeClerk tending to the swabbing station, while Miller and Wynter stood by the winch-lift to ready the next shell and priming charge.

More than a few decks up above, Lieutenant Commander de la Lune was considering the idea of shutting down the health monitor system all Royal Navy C-suits were hooked into, mostly because it would betray her extreme stress levels.

“Mr Dunleavy,” she spoke into her helmet-mike, “what’s the status of the drones you’ve supposed to launch by now?”

“Begging Milady’s pardon,” the tall, dark junior officer who had since arriving on Euphoria become the chief bar officer of the wardroom, despite being only being twenty-one, panted into the pickup of his helmet. “But if Milady has had any experience priming, aiming, and launching close to two-hundred drones in a single watch, I would really appreciate some advice. If not, I’d appreciate if Milady left me and my crew alone to carry out our orders. Forward torpedo batteries out.”

“Cheeky bugger, ain’t he?” Amelia said, accompanied with a slight smirk that took the edge of her words.

“We’re coming up on five minutes to turnover, Ma’am,” Sailing Master Baker commented as the range between Euphoria and Royfort dropped to less than fourteen million kilometres. Both ships were now veritably painting each other with targeting lasers and washing the hulls of their opposite number with so many gravpulse waves that one might be forgiven thinking the grey paint of the Euphoria and the pristine white of the Royfort would peel off.

“Dunleavy will get the drones out in time, Ma’am,” Warrant Officer Korvel said, trying to reassure the roughly forty year old younger captain.

“It is not the question of if we get the drones out that troubles me, Mr Korvel,” she responded, desperately feeling the need to bite her nails, “but what Commander Vargas will do about it. So far he’s been acting like a lunatic on a mission, hell-bent on self-destruction, and I’m worried he might take this upcoming manoeuvre of ours as hostile intent. Still, it is the best shot we got of pulling him off of the tails of the civilians.”

Lowell, still seated down in AIC, started to say something but the tell-tale reverberations of several box launchers depositing its contents cut her off, and Ensign Shaun Dunleavy’s voice came over the internal channels.

“Done, Milady, we’ve successfully launched a hundred-and-eighty-two drones, absolutely every drone we could get our hands on without having to strip them of already pre-installed mission packages. We still have a few recce and comms drones, and a few pen-aids lying around, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to sign a pretty significant requisitions order once we reach Lucidia, Milady.”

Amelia, tension getting to her, actually laughed out loud before she managed to compose herself.

“Understood, Mr Dunleavy,” she replied, “and if this works, I’ll both sign that order and buy you a bottle of top shelf once we reach station, how does that sound?”

“I, uh, that would be lovely Milady,” the surprised ensign replied.

“Thank you, Mr Dunleavy, and give my thanks to your gunners as well, but don’t rest yet. If worse comes to worst, we might still need those pen-aid drones and torpedoes.”

“Aye aye, Ma’am,” the torpedo gunnery captain said before cutting the feed, and Amelia took a deep breath.

“Alright, Hannah, Dunleavy’s given you the drones, now I want you to slave their electromagnetic anchors to Euphoria, but also start stacking them in layers so that they extrude from the hull quite a ways, probably as far their anchors still hold tether. Have the final three or four layers on a quick-change anchor lock configuration so AIC can swiftly change the direction of their lock-in.”

“Aye aye, Ma’am,” Lowell said in a very serious tone, “we’ll get right on it.”

If anyone had looked outside in the following few moments, they would have seen a quite astonishing number of “Starling” drones start to form up into neat and ordered lines of about thirteen before another line slowly pushed about ten kilometres further out using concentrated bursts from their fissile-powered engines, and so on and so on until there were twelve of them stretched out almost one hundred and twenty-five kilometres away from the Euphoria. While one-two-five kilometres were an impressive distance on the ground, in space that was uncomfortably close, and very much well past the limits of violating personal intimacy. For warships of the same navy, this was the sort of range where collision warning klaxons would be blaring; for warships of different navies, this was the sort of range where boarding actions could be mounted, and railguns would have one-hundred per cent accuracy. Not to mention effective penetration, regardless of armour thickness. The gunnery techs in AIC were completely focused on the task of managing this immense drone screen, far larger than anything the E class was designed to realistically handle simultaneously. Sure, a more modern B or Daring class of destroyers could theoretically handle such large launchers using mostly their SAI systems, the E class was not primarily an electronic warfare ship; they were screeners and torpedo specialists, designed with brawns and not brains in mind. It took all ten of the Action Information Centre gunnery techs, plus two of the Ops techs, as well as Lowell herself to keep tabs on all the drones and micro-manage their patterns, with the Close Battlespace Awareness SAI running itself hot. They were all sweating profusely as they concentrated, and it might be considered a blessing that they wore their absorbent and water-reclaiming suits.

On the bridge, the tension was just as palpable, with Sub-lieutenant McMorrow reciting the Lord’s Prayer over and over again under his breath, and Aiden Fraser-Perry looked frequently in the direction of the heads, his face decidedly paler and greener than normal.

“Coming down to seven million kilometres, two minutes-fifty until turnover.”

Even wizened and experienced senior non-coms like Lionel Baker, with thirty-nine years in the Service behind him, sounded anxious, which made the fresh officers feel even worse.

“Mr Durzi,” Amelia said with as much authoritative iron in her tone as she could, “give me Royfort and Commander Vargas again.” She had almost said one last time. Trained fingers flew across the keyboard, and the young subaltern turned half-around and nodded to his captain, who reciprocated. Part of the mimicglass screen once again portrayed the inside of the Royfort’s bridge, but now zoomed out further and the officers and techs on Euphoria could see that their opposite numbers had finally suited all the way up, having secured their action station suit helmets.

“Royfort, this is His Majesty’s warship Euphoria.” Amelia spoke clearly and sternly in a voice that she actually had a hard time believing was her own, considering the whirlwind of emotions flying around inside her brain.

“We will be executing a fly-by of your ship in about two minutes. No challenge is intended, I repeat, no challenge is intended. We are simply… conveniently using your ship as a useful mark whereupon to fix our turnabout. Expect therefore that we will be approaching at extreme close range, but as I said, do not expect this as any sort of challenge. Take the fact that we have no active radiological sources on board, which your sensors should be able to pick up on in a few moments, as a sign of good faith. That being pointed out, we will act with complete impunity if our own safety or the safety of our charges is affected during the course of this turnaround. Lieutenant Commander Lady de la Lune out.”

Commander Vargas opened his mouth to no doubt protest, since his face had become increasingly scrunched up in frustration the longer Amelia had talked, but Durzi was quick on the uptake and without waiting for confirmation from his captain, he cut the feed before the Alliance officer could reply.

“Good lad, Joe,” Amelia smiled at the Communications Officer and for a moment she was sure she could see his cheeks redden a bit.

“Ah, begging your pardon, Milady,” Fraser-Perry commented as the timer on the holographic plot changed from having a one in front of it to zero, “but you said no active radiological sources…”

“Yes, which is completely true,” she said nonplussed and turned to face the Operations Officer, “since I ordered Mr Dunleavy to disarm the nukes we had prepared, and Mr Korvel confirmed the order had been carried out.”

“Aye, Milady,” Fraser-Perry, casting nervous glances at the almost run-out timer, “but I’m not talking about the nukes. I’m talking about the power plants of the drones. They’re fissile.”

“I am perfectly aware of that, I am up to date on Royal Navy hardware.”

“Engaging counter-thrusters, preparing to lay about and execute yaw-pitch correction,” Sailing Master Baker reported and the bridge crews (as well as the rest of the crew for that matter) felt the G’s shift as the inertial dampeners and artificial gravity struggled to maintain even pressure as the Euphoria started to bleed speed as she flipped around and fired her ion thrusters at full tilt, including a set of tertiary boosters that were there for the exact purpose of quickly affecting course or speed change. All across the ship, gear that had not been stowed correctly shifted, fell off tables, tumbled out of lockers, or in case of light items like cups or plates, went crashing to the deck floor.

“Milady,” Fraser-Perry’s eyes had become almost like black disks, “this many drones stacked so close together is going to produce a near continuous radiological output, despite the tiny amount of fissile material in each, but it could look awfully like a stealthed nuclear-tipped torpedo we’re pulling in our wake using gravity emitters!”

Colour drained rapidly from Lady Amelia de la Lune’s face.

“Oh shit, I didn’t think about that.”

Euphoria did exactly what her human masters told her to. The electromagnetic chain-link of drones did as well, obeying for the most part perfectly to the instructions coming from the well-armoured core of Euphoria’s AIC. The two warships barrelled straight into what was shaving distance for naval warfare, both ships’ helmsmen stubbornly refusing to yield ground. Had the helmsman on the Royfort lost this game of chicken, Amelia’s plan would have floundered. Yet they didn’t, because Commander Ali Vargas, from a small hamlet in the uplands of Adrestia, kept shouting to maintain their present course.

“Lieutenant Osterlund, if you even so much as think about abandoning the chase of those three battleships, I will exercise my right as this ship’s captain to place you in the brig for mutiny.”

Ali Patrick Vargas was grinding his teeth as he watched the green-blue holographic plot continue to display that irritating little imp of an Auroran destroyer come well within kill-shot range for the Royfort’s manned and ready railgun batteries. This was sheer idiocy, or more likely, typical Auroran noble arrogance. The Rangertown light cruiser could obliterate the older Auroran E class with a single broadside if she so wished, the number of railguns higher, the calibre of the broadside larger, and their own assisted fire direction much better. Yet here that little gnat was, trying desperately to divert their attention away from the fact that the Aurorans had illegally tried to smuggle a half-squadron of battleships through Alliance territory. If we could just get visual confirmation of the battleships and transmit it back to Lorelei Fleet using the buoy comms network, the Aurorans would be fucked diplomatically. This is just what Admiral ibn-Houdhri said would happen when he took over Lorelei Fleet. Fucking predictable war-mongering Aurorans.

“Sir, we got a radiological alert!” the Operations lieutenant shouted out, and Vargas felt something in his neck pop uncomfortably as he turned to look at the junior officer.

“Have the Aurorans launched nukes?”

“No sir, it isn’t as overt a trace as a confirmed recent launch,” the woman explained, running a number of sensor scans on the signal, “but it could be a pulled torpedo, or several even, in the wake of the exhaust of the Euphoria, although I can’t really tell despite the short range.”

“Sir,” Lieutenant Aleksander Ostlund, the helmsman, sang out, “the Euphoria is angling to sling around us!”

“How the hell do they intend to do that?” someone asked, though Vargas wasn’t sure which bridge officer or tech it was, his mind was too focused on the rapidly deteriorating situation going on. The last message from the blonde captain of the Euphoria was still rattling around in his brain, and while it seemed like the most idiotic thing in the world for a destroyer to challenge a light cruiser to a knife-fight and the repeated insistence that was not what this Lieutenant Commander de la Lune, why did the Aurorans have so complicated names, intended to do, every fibre and Mahan Naval Academy-trained muscle in his body screamed this was a sort of trick.

“Sir, the Euphoria is angling for a shave-by, requesting orders!”

“Gundeck captains are screaming for permission to fire, same as fire direction officers, Sir!”

“Sir, do we angle our approach to the Euphoria, or do we follow the three large targets?”

If I pull the trigger, I start an interstellar incident unlike ever seen since the dissolution of the United Earth Alignment. If I don’t, the Aurorans and their stealthed nuke might obliterate me and my entire command.

“I want a single starboard railgun battery to fire a warning shot as the Euphoria comes within five-hundred clicks, straight across their bow. Align the starboard broadside to accomplish this. Helm, abandon the presumed battleship targets, keep our heavily armoured broadside towards the Euphoria. Keep following her at all times as she makes her presumed turn, never show us the tee of our bow or stern. Confirm reception of orders!”

A chorus of “aye aye”-s answered the Alliance Space Navy commander, and each division head immediately started relaying the information down the chain of command. But since the dots of the two warships were practically on top of each other on the holographic plot of both bridges, stress levels were extreme, and the proximity sensor warnings had started playing their plaintive tunes as well. The two bridge crews had spent so many tense minutes looking at each other that when a complete change of circumstances was ordered, everyone floundered a bit. So much so that a crucial word was omitted by the Tactical Officer on Royfort’s bridge to the Sailor First Class in charge of Gun Battery S7. The word was “warning”.

“Alright, steady as she goes, Ms Lowell,” Amelia ordered, clutching the armrest of her chair with all of her might, eyes focused on the holographic plot and the myriad of numbers and timers next to the two almost conjoined dots that denoted the two warships.

“Oh, this might actually bloody work,” Lieutenant Hannah Lowell said to herself after killing the mike-uplink to the rest of the internal net.

“Holy shit, they’re actually pulling a slingshot around us,” Lieutenant Aleksander Ostlund of the Royfort said half-aloud as the Euphoria’s much smaller mass started to hurl itself around the Alliance light cruiser through something the experienced helmsman hadn’t seen before.

“Stand to, my lovely gunners!” Petty Officer Gutzmer shouted out over the gunnery deck intercom, “let’s just watch as we gracefully slide on by the Royfort, courtesy of what the Skipper told u-”

He didn’t get to fully complete his sentence before Starboard Battery Seven on the Royfort, having missed that crucial bit of contextual information opened fire. Had the range been higher, even by a few hundred kilometres, the railgun shell might not have hit. It might have been confused by the immense electronic countermeasures the Euphoria was putting out every millisecond, or the rangefinders might have misjudged the distance between the two warships. But since they were about two-hundred kilometres of each other, and the drones deployed by the Euphoria had already started to find purchase against the hull of the Royfort, there was no chance a railgun shot this close in could miss. The shell didn’t even need the aid of the forward fire director.

As the range dropped to below one-eighty kilometres, just as when the Auroran drones found purchase and started to sling the Euphoria around in an electromagnetic slingshot manoeuvre, S7 Battery on Royfort, commanded by Sailor First Class Enrico Cruz let loose their loaded shell, much like the batteries on the Euphoria had already done, but refrained from what their instincts told them. They were just following orders given from the bridge, which they fully believed were given in good faith. But unlike the Alliance light cruiser, the battery crews of the Auroran destroyer hadn’t been expecting their opposite number to do anything but follow their course change through, mostly due to their captain’s insurances.

And that was how First (Gunnery Specialist) Rating Jamie Schneider and his crew died.

The fourteen-inch shell left the barrel from the Starboard Seven battery gun silently, because unlike what films and web-series portrayed, there was no such thing as noise in space. Sound travels through airwaves, which doesn’t exist in vacuum. No matter, the six-hundred and ninety kg shell fired by this lone battery from the Royfort, travelled the less than two-hundred kilometres between the two dancing warships in about a half a second. There was no time for the Auroran crews to react. In fact, WO Korvel informed Lieutenant Commander de la Lune of the fact that the Royfort had fired seven seconds later, well after everyone on board the destroyer had already felt the impact.

The railgun round, made out of simple titanium without any more complex chemical or metal additives, penetrated straight through the outer gunport of No.4 Railgun Battery of the Euphoria. Above all else, it was an extremely lucky shot. It hit a target that was in the context of interstellar warfare of the age, a very finicky one, but it regardless found its mark. The shell’s heat as it exploded against the outer titanium layer of the gunport melted its way inside, and the kinetic energy produced a wave of insanely hot and sharp shrapnel. This shrapnel ripped through the 12-inch gun that No.4 battery still hadn’t run out yet, reducing it to a useless collection of metal and electric wiring. Worse, the shrapnel continued, blasting through the inner gunport protection. Koby Wynter and Aaron Miller died soundlessly as more than three-thousand pieces of scorching hot shrapnel that came from inside the gunport they were manning literally passed through them. Kate Sears, seated the closest to the layer and gunner positions managed to start to cry out, before the bombardier station she was manning blew out, and she was almost instantly transformed from human being to useless wads of meat, chewed apart by that same storm of shrapnel that had just gone through, despite “only” catching bits of it. Justin LeClerk somehow survived the first shrapnel storm, but the explosive decompression that followed saw him grabbing at everything and anything nailed down. Alas, he found nothing to hang onto, and screaming into his non-receptive helmet-mike, he was sucked out into the void as No.4 Gun Battery remained open to the uncaring vacuum. Last of all was First Rating Jamie Schneider. Not that he hadn’t been hit, his left arm had been severed neatly by a piece of shrapnel, and despite the fact that his C-suit had clamped down and tried to avoid pressure-loss on his arm, he knew he was fucked. Hell, he wanted to die, clawing his way to the upper gundeck as the magnetic effect of his one remaining arm and his boots kicked into action. He had just watched his crew that he’d spent the past four months sharing bunks with get absolutely torn to pieces. He managed to activate his helmet-mike with his right hand as he pulled up to the upper walk of the gundeck.

“Beg to report, Ma’am,” he said in a tone that belied his dire situation, “we’ve received hostile fire from an opposing warship.” Then the gunner’s computer station flamed out, and instead of dying a quick although horrifying death like parts of his gunnery crew had, James August Schneider died while electric flames ignited and licked up across his suit, inside the compromised integrity of his severed left arm, and as it travelled all up his supposed protective suit. The last thing to give out was his internal comms, meaning the bridge and the rest of the gun crews could only listen to his suffering for excruciatingly long seconds.

“Complete the electrogravitic manoeuvre, Mr Baker,” Amelia said through gritted teeth.

“Ms Lowell, go to into the gun decks and ascertain the level of damage inflicted. Do not hold back in your report, I want a strict, no-bullshit assessment. Mr Aiden-Perry, tell me if the Royfort are following our intended dance path.”

“Who the fuck opened fire?!” Commander Vargas was almost reaching for his service sidearm, and the bridge crew of the Royfort were busy looking in every direction but in his.

“It seems like it was Starboard Battery Seven, Sir,” Tactical Officer Ross Baumgartner reported, though really apprehensively, “they might have misunderstood the order that was sent from the bridge…”

“Misunderstood…” Vargas’ helmeted head was in his hands.

“Misunderstood is the most euphemistic term I’ve ever heard on board an Alliance warship. You mean to say, someone FUCKED UP! Call off, I repeat, call off!”

Whilst this was going on, the Euphoria, thanks to her expeditious usage of drones, had managed what Amelia had imagined, now holding her head in her hands much like her opposite commanding officer.

“Master Baker,” she managed, “assuming the Royfort aren’t following us directly, set a course for extreme crash into the Light Way. Euphoria can handle it. I assume the civilian ships are close to entering L-space?”

“Aye aye, Ma’am,” Fraser-Perry reported, now having taken off his helmet, “they’re six minutes away from transitioning as a squadron, and the Royfort, having chosen to follow us through our manoeuvre, is nowhere near close to resume pursuit.”

“Lady Amelia,” Lieutenant Lowell’s voice came over the comms, “do you want the accurate report, or the actual accurate report? Because I’m here with a section of Royal Marines who’re about as queasy as I am. I’m going to need several body bags.”

“Write it up, First Lieutenant,” Lady de la Lune responded, feeling like throwing up again, knowing she had lost crew, “but first we need to get out of here.”

She turned to Sailing Master Lionel Baker.

“I trust our little manoeuvre was successful?”

“Oh damn straight, Ma’am,” he responded in a very stereotypical lowlands Amaranthine accent. “The Royfort has been completely thrown off our tracks. Just say when and we’ll be outta here.”

“Well, I doubt it’ll be that easy,” the lieutenant commander responded, “but give it your all, Sailing Master. Put us as far away from this system as you possibly can.”

About five minutes after Lady Amelia de la Lune said that, the Selenagrad Prize, Antiochene Heldin and Astral Pearl managed to slip into the Light Way. The Euphoria was about ninety minutes late, but she too entered the Light Way nominally unharassed. By then she had already carried out a military funeral. And a report to Admiralty had been sent.