Worldbuilding Prompt #578 - Hunting Down Just One Star - Alex's Saga #15

Welcome to the next episode in the Space Opera saga of Alex Deroma.

I'm carrying on with the idea of using the brilliant writing prompts in the Worldbuilding Community to determine which direction the story goes in. The one I'm using for this episode is; Worldbuilding Prompt #578 - The Hunter.

I'm allowing myself a little leeway by picking and choosing between the more recent prompts rather than following them in strict order, just so the story can go in new directions but without it going completely off-track !

"Tuck her in behind that asteroid there. Let's see what that convoy does next."

Acting Admiral Trass Yalandri indicated a nearby asteroid shown on the holotac display.

The helmsman tucked the Type 19-S battleship Oh-No-You-Don't deftly behind it, a manoeuvre that would have been challenging for a space fighter and should have been impossible for a warship several thousand feet long. Lieutenant Charmit was good, very good. He tended to keep quiet about how he'd been recruited into the Imperial Fleet. A single error after a long career smuggling had meant that using his skills in the Fleet seemed a far better option than the alternative of spending two decades on a prison planet.

"Captain Jerin, play back that message from Infomancer Dranton again. I'm still having trouble getting my head around it."

Trass tried to put her worries to the side and focus on the message, hoping she'd get what he meant this time.

The ship's captain waved a hand over a couple of controls and a hologram appeared in the centre of the command deck, showing the robed Imperial Infomancer as he started to speak.

"Destroying a Nexus gate is a serious business, Admiral Yalandri. If you want my advice, I'd say don't do it. A Nexus is a hole in reality, and shouldn't exist. Certainly not in normal space as a portal of any kind. Back when Portal X-633 was destroyed, we were able to take some readings. The destruction caused significant problems with reality, and the closer you were, the worse it got."

The hologram hesitated as if in thought before continuing.

"Probably the most notable was what it did to sensor readings. For nearby ships, whole star systems wouldn't be where the co-ordinates said they should be."

"There would be nothing wrong with the co-ordinates, and they'd agree with more distant ships. The absolute co-ordinates would be what they always were, but somehow the ships wouldn't be able to make sense of what they had onboard. It's as if the co-ordinates had always been wrong and the star had always been where it should be, but at the same time the system wouldn't be where the correct co-ordinates said it should be."

"We determined that only solution was to follow someone who had come in from a long way away, which would somehow re-link co-ordinates and reality."

So that was what Trass was doing now. She'd disregarded the order to disengage and pull back to Imperial Space. There would be trouble for that, but she didn't care. As she saw it, her duty was to find and rescue Alex, her commander and friend.

She'd sent the rest of the Battle Corps off to hide a couple of dimensions up and was using this one ship to try to find a Slaver ship that could lead them back to Margal VI.

What she had actually found wasn't what she'd expected. It wasn't a solitary supply ship. It was a whole convoy. Ten battlecruisers escorting fifty transports. These weren't cargo vessels; they appeared to be military-grade troop transports.

Odds like that called for stealth and subtlety. If they were spotted before reinforcements could arrive, the hunter would become the hunted. So the Oh-No-You-Don't ducked and dived expertly behind asteroids and the debris remaining from their battle.

Image generated by AI in Nightcafe Studio

She didn't have to wait for long to see what the enemy were up to. The convoy arrived at their destination. Nothing showed up on her instruments, but when she looked through the viewscreens she could see them pulling into orbit around a planet shrouded in a blanket of featureless grey cloud. It could only be Margal VI, and the slaver transports were moving into position to start dropping assault shuttles. Trass had found what she was looking for !

Turning to Captain Jerin, she gave the order. "Battlespeed. Ignore the battlecruisers and smash up the transports, as many of them as you can kill in a single pass. And call up the rest of the Avengers."

The Slavers didn't know what hit them. The Oh-No-You-Don't appeared out of nowhere, hurting through their formation at breakneck speed, ignoring the risk of collision. Missiles and beam weapons flashed out, wrecking half a dozen of the soft, vulnerable and totally unprepared transport ships.

As the battlecruisers raised shields and turned to accelerate in pursuit, the rest of Alexandra's Avengers dropped in out of trans-dimensional space. This was no battle of tight, disciplined formations. Instead, it was exactly the kind of chaotic mess they'd been trained for. It was also the exact opposite of the way both Slaver and other Imperial squadrons fought.

It wasn't a long battle. The Slavers were caught by surprise, outnumbered and out-fought. Within five minutes, every one of their ships was a molten hulk drifting in space, or a meteor shower of wreckage burning up in Margal's atmosphere. No Imperial ships were destroyed, and only a few suffered minor damage.

Trass looked over the scene with grim satisfaction, her blue skin flushed almost indigo with triumph.

"Get me a shuttle and a dozen of your best marines, Captain. I'm going down to find Alex... err, I mean Admiral Deroma."

Image generated by AI in Nightcafe Studio