Welcome to the next part of the saga I seem to have ended up writing ! It's all based on (and thanks to, and entirely the fault of) the writing prompts in the Worldbuilding community.
The prompt this episode is based on is Worldbuilding Prompt #498 - AI It worked out a bit longer than I expected, but I hope you all enjoy it !
Image created by AI in Wombo.art
"We've got company, Captain."
Gatta was manning the secondary station, in charge of sensors and (if need be) fire control. Her normally impassive expression bore a hint of concern, a slightly furrowed brow.
"What have we got, Gatta ?" Captain Greville was calm, professional, and collected. She knew it was what was expected of her, and she didn't want to give any other impression to the two ASPsmen standing at the back of the command deck, their eagle eyes watching everything.
"Three blips at extreme range, directly behind us. Close formation, coming up fast." Then Gatta hesitated. "Crap, we've got two more at 65 degrees high on a direct intercept. I don't think this is just other traffic departing from Debris."
"Okay Gatta, let's not get excited. Passive scan, see if you can work out who they are. Danna, hold course and velocity, let's see what these guys do."
"Aye aye, Captain," came the response, as Gatta regained her composure.
Image created by AI in Wombo.art
It only took five minutes.
"Ummm, Captain" Gatta's tone showed deep concern. "Scope has identified them. They'll all Einheriar. Walkure class fast pursuit units. What do we do ?"
Greville thought for a second. The cargo they had was just one man, and a primitive one at that, but he was too valuable to let the Einheriar take him back.
From the back of the command deck, ASP-Auditor spoke in a cold, calm voice. "Tell me the odds, captain. What factors feed into this ?"
"Well, said Greville, picturing the data in her mind's eye, "We're fast and so are they. They have the edge in a sprint, but we can keep it up all day, and our drives are bigger so we've got more absolute acceleration. Unless we can build up enough of an initial lead, they'll catch us. They're lightly armoured, but so are we; both classes are built for speed. The big difference is that they pack one hell of a punch, and all our armament is point defence or defensive. The Phoenix is a demilitarised surplus cruiser, no longer a warship. I've added a few bits of my own, but we don't have primary batteries any more. If they catch us, they'll probably kill us."
Then, with a more concerned tone, she added. "Oh, and those Walkure's are built around probably the most single-minded AI's in existence. They're like uzaks, once they start after a target, they won't give up until they catch it or are destroyed."
She gave the order.
"Okay Danna, hit the jets. Maximum velocity and then some. Don't think about the repair bill. I would rather pay for repairs than get caught by those monsters and have nothing left to fix."
"Yes, Captain !" Dannak was young, but starting to show his potential. If they survived this, he had the makings of an excellent pilot. Greville felt quite maternal toward him, but tried not to let it show, at least not too much.
The tone of the engines changed, grew louder, and a steady vibration started to build up as the Tarnished Phoenix accelerated rapidly.
Her designers had broken all the rules, making a ship which was just engines, guns and bomb bays. The fleet command hated them, they weren't tough enough to survive the kind of stand-up slugging matches they liked, so after the strike which had knocked the Rim out of the war, most of them had been picked up by Special Forces or sold off as surplus.
Greville pressed the button which would activate the holotac display. It lit up the centre of the command deck, showing the Phoenix as a cyan diamond and the five pursuing ships as small magenta ovoids. Fine white lines adorned with numbers showed velocities, distances and closing times.
Then the display changed; racing ahead of each ovoid a trio of small magenta darts appeared, accelerating fast. Missile alarms started to sound on the command deck.
Image created by AI in Wombo.art
"Gatta, activate tertiary batteries in point defence mode. Danna, start rapid plane hopping. No other evasives, we can't afford to bleed speed. Yafmi, join Gatta on weapons and spam them at five light seconds."
Greville's rapid sequence of commands was decisive, and the crew moved rapidly to get ready to act on them.
Space started twisting in the viewscreens as the Phoenix started hopping between the planes, dipping from one reality to another and back again. The missiles followed, gaining rapidly, only a few of them losing tracking by the rapid shifting. Behind them, the five AI-piloted pursuit ships kept dogged pace, readying their next move.
Each missile was surrounded by a halo in the holotac, deep red fading to black indicating the effect of their detonation radius. As the first red shadow crept over the cyan diamond representing the Phoenix, Yafmi hit the button in front of her.
The ship lurched slightly as a hatch somewhere in the belly opened and dozens of SPAM's were kicked out in a could behind the Phoenix. They were a dangeous weapon - the acronym stood for "Spacial-Planar Antimatter Mine" - with autonomous seeking and plane-hopping abilities. Not full AI's (the Imperium avoided those, for fear of infiltration), but still deadly.
Another image from Wombo.art - the AI gave me a good impression of what a SPAM should look like, although I'm definitely seeing R2D2 influences in it....
It didn't take long for the missiles to close with the minefield. Space lit up with multiple detonations. Some were the mines, cancelling their anti-matter out with the missiles in bursts of mutual annihilation. Others were missiles getting confused, thinking the mines were the target and setting off their TC warheads with hugely destructive flashes of pure energy.
But thirty seconds later, there was a bonus. One of the pursuing AI's hopped into their current plane and instantly shredded itself into a glowing ring of dissipating radiation. There was a cheer from the crew on the Phoenix, as they realised it must have materialised with the mine inside itself, but it dimmed as the four remaining pursuers appeared and continued to relentlessly close the gap.
"Ummm, Captain...." Dannak spoke up. "We're.. umm.... The Wall !!!"
Right in front of them was The Wall, the fused wreckage of thousands of ships, a monument to the mutual slaughter of Imperial and Slaver fleets at the Battle of Damnation Gulf. Hitting it at this velocity would release as much energy as a Nova bomb.
Without even waiting for an order Dannak threw the ship into a plane-shifting crash turn, flipping the whole vessel around to get emergency deceleration, then flipping it again to catapult around a protruding cylinder of wrecks. The Phoenix's antigrav whined in protest, but no-one was pancaked.
The pursuing ships AI's were good, but they lacked the human spark. They manoeuvred desperately, trying to bleed velocity and change course, but two of them smashed into the derelict, long-dead warfleet, adding their mass to the wreckage in a massive flash of destruction.
Gatta whistled in admiration, although her face was white. "Fuck me Danna, who the hell taught you how to do a bootlegger turn in a space cruiser ? That was awesome !"
But they'd lost a lot of velocity with the manoeuvre. The two remaining Einheriar ships were too close now, closing in to kill them. The holotac showed the Phoenix was well within the red shadows surrounding their icons.
Flashes in the display showed them firing their primary batteries, followed shortly after by the jolt of impacts. These were just initial shots, intended to rapidly wear down the defence screens to the point where hits would start getting through to the hull. Then it would all be over.
That was the point where a clipped voice came unexpectedly through the communication terminal.
"This is Commodore Alexandra Deroma, commanding Battleship Servalan with a squadron from 3275-A Battle Corps. Welcome back to friendly space, Tarnished Phoenix. You seem to have attracted some flies, would you like us to swat them for you ?"
Ten huge Imperial battleships phased in on the holotac display, their primary batteries already firing as the two Einheriar changed vector and threw themselves at the formation. It would all be over in seconds.
To be continued.......
Previous posts in the series:
Part 1 - Worldbuilding Prompt #490 - Storing the taxes safely
Part 2 - Worldbuilding Prompt #491 - Avoiding trouble
Part 3 - Worldbuilding Prompts #493 and #496 - Hiding on Debris
Part 4 - Worldbuilding Prompt #497 - Hiding in a Closed Ecosystem Is Dumb
There are also a few related posts from this setting which introduce some of the characters;
Captain Holmen was introduced in Worldbuilding Prompt #471 - A Question of Jurisdiction
Imperial Infomancer Dranton turned up in Worldbuilding Prompt #467 - The Imperial Halls of Information
Greville and the Tarnished Phoenix first appeared in Worldbuilding Prompt #432 - Debris