FTL-30…Faster Than Life.

*Before…

“What!? That’s going to turn us to point right at them!”

“Yes sir, I think we have a grav-sheer wave coming at us and we best turn into that oncoming wave!”

“Gotcha right!”

I send alerts for the grav-sheer out on all channels as much as I can to everyone that I can…please, please listen, get up shields and turn into the wave.

He turns us into the invisible thing and I’m trying to readjust our grav sensors to get a reading and it’s seconds away and we’re not turning in time as it’s coming up on my screens and I hang on for dear life as we’re hit and we’re suddenly tossed and fuses blow and there’s puffs of smoke and things go dark.

*And Now…

I’m coughing and the first thing that I do is that I get out the emergency face mask breather out and then I get the ones for the flight crew and yell back to the passengers.

“We have smoke, get your breathers on and check for breaches!”

In space even tiny cracks are bad news.

I look at what’s damaged as the pilot and co-pilot are trying to get us going and we’ve blown lots of circuits and it looks like the anti-grav is shorted and the inertial dampeners and we took what looks like minor EMP damage. I scan it mentally focusing on the damage and lock it all down with my OBC and then I start to pull the good power breakers from the things that we don’t need like the life support in the cargo section and some of the spares from there for the anti-grav in there and I start putting them into the blown out ones we need working like propulsion and weapons and sensors.

I get a few shocks from the power still dancing around in the system as I really don’t have the time to shut down the relays for each thing that I’m trying to patch fix or have the time to shut it all down to be safe.

When I get sensors up it’s bad.

The whole area is in chaos as the grav wave hit things and knocked things out all over the orbital region and there’s the enemy ships firing large scale ship weapons at our ships and at the lunar base and at the surface and ours are engaging back and from what little I can see it looks like fighters have been scrambled and that there might be enemy fighters out as well.

But without sensor data sent to us from a bigger ship with much better and more accurate combat sensors we’re a little limited in what we or rather that I can see.

The pilot gets us moving and I sigh a breath of relief at that and he looks at me as does the co-pilot as they both nod.

This is shuttle duty and while they’re good pilots they’re usually not rated for serious combat like fighter pilots are and have none of the enhancements.

It’s touch and go, thrust and stop.

Apparently we don’t have full power, nothing that we can put to full burn before there’s too much strain on the power systems. Too much power will blow relays we really don’t have backups for from what I can tell.

Burn and go, burn and go and move around other ships.

I’m worried for some of those ships because as basic as our shuttle is it’s still military grade and there’s civilian ships that are in far worse straits than us and as much as I would like to stop and render aid we can’t. we’re simply not capable of doing that and I do tag them with the sensors and take in speed, roll, pitch, their numbers if I can get them and download them directly to my On-body-computer in case we lose power again.

I will try and do everything that I can do once we get back on board our ship.

Boost and go and turn and jink or slip out of a path of a small freighter and we still just ghost by it by close to a meter.

That’s too close and my heart as they say is in my throat and I’m paying hard attention to the sensors just in case something on it blows or vents or something shifts inside. Anything that might make it move or roll and I’m scared, scared as it gets because like in the ancient, ancient days of the early navies it takes so much less than you think to have an impact breach you.

Space is like that too.

And it’s like being in a ground vehicle as well because there’s always been a margin for error that borders on being actually dangerous especially with pilot driven ones. Well space is like that in you actually sort of tune out the dangers involved until you’re right in the danger zone like getting into a wreck or in this case a mid-space collision.

And then one of the sensor alarms starts to scream at me and I do mean scream at me as we just picked up on us getting targeted by targeting lasers and I track it back as fast as I can and I see three tekker beetles coming in at us fast. The black things actually look to be grinning from the almost skeletal face casings that are between the mandibles.

I see as the close up scam engages the mouth region on it open and there’s what looks like three linked barrels together and they are spinning fast and I’m picking up a large electromagnetic surge. It’s a linear surge too instead of a cyclic gather that you should see on an EMP weapon this is like the magnetic streams are corkscrewing up to…

I yell at the others. “Three scarab tekkers bearing thirty-twenty-two and zero, they’re cycling up railguns!”

Railguns are deadly and very efficient technology where you can push magnetic reactive ammunition at a target with opposing polarity streams. They can hook to most power supplies too and the actual ammunition can be very, very small really since it’s the sheer force and speed that does most of the damage.

Shields help a lot, they’re mostly shaped and tuned energy field of electromagnetic force that actually is layered to make resistance. In the case of rail runs it’s resistance and it’s also property negating so other weapons are very often used.

But we don’t have shields right now and likely none of the civilian targets do either.

We’re in trouble.

We’re a tub compared to these things and our pilot rolls us like a barrel side over side as we barely escape the first burst of these things firing at us. I look to the small freighter we just cleared.

“Back! Get us back the only way we’re going to make it out of this is if we have cover!”

I have an idea but it’s a crazy one.

Roll and roll again and there’s nothing keeping us in place but hands and belts. I call back to the other passengers. “Hang on to whatever you can this is going to be rough!”

I’m trying the coms and praying to a god that I never really had much faith in.

And it’s likely just as well that I’m not really a believer considering that I’m praying for the crew of the little freighter to be dead.

Or a remote, oh please let it be a remote.

Scan, scan… look for life signs…

The tekker scarabs getting closer moving fast and trying to block us in.

Our co-pilot on the guns firing the lasers.

Combat lasers are possible they’re just very high tech and usually limited to vehicles that can handle the power charge required to actually do damage to anything of any size. A personal beam weapon is possible but there’s the fact that you have energy output versus material strengths involved.

It’s like a laser pistol will mess you up and it’ll barely scratch the paint really on anything actually armored. And it takes a lot of power to generate a pistol sized laser beam so an e-clip has few charges somewhere between six to twelve and they’re expensive. Ballistic weapons however these days are cheap and made of polymers and ceramics and have rounds that are caseless and propelled with shaped explosive concentrate tabs. That’s why we still use ballistic weapons, we’ve just made cheaper and better ones.

But unless ballistic weapons are very powerful they don’t rank that well against military heavy armor.

And the scarabs have heavy carapace like armor that is at least as good as ours.

We’re getting hits in and it is damaging them decently but we’re still a tug and part of shooting in space is maneuvering and they’re at a better advantage.

I’m still scanning and I’m trying everything that I can so to help. I take control of the search beams and flash them at them and use the scan lasers as much as I can to try and to throw off their sensors by distracting them and firing off the distress beacon sphere and the plasma signal flares at them too.

Our co-pilot gets one squarely in the head and face with the lasers as I very much by fluke bounced a plasma flare off it’s armor and it moved itself just right, just right that he scored a perfect shot and the lasers cut right through that part and penetrated the insides of the thing and it blew in a blue-green burst of exploding fuel and explosives.

The explosion damages the one closest to us and it gets a few more shots from us before it recovers enough to outmaneuver us and it opens fire.

And the other one opens fire too flanking us from another side using the same freighter for cover to.

The shuttle’s plating literally screams with metal fatigue and stress as the rounds hit and there’s all these ten credit coin sized dents forming in the walls so fast it looks like it’s bubbling and our pilot’s trying to roll us again out of the way and then we’re taking rounds from the other one that we damaged too and this time it’s more metal sounds being made as the armor is being taken right to its limits.

It’s like this horrible staccato keening sound.

Then it happens and it happen so fast it like slow motion as there’s rounds hitting the claristeel window and it’s crack, crack, crack, crack, crack as rounds hit the space glass and then there’s this almost crystalline changing as they’re spider webbing and I’m lunging for the blast shield manual switch and an electric blue railgun round goes past my face and takes some hair and the co-pilot gets hit and his head and neck literally explode liquefied by the velocity and shockwave of the round and his blood starts to fountain as I pull the lever shutting the glass with the telescoping armor plates.

I hear screams out in back too and I…No, no, no!

Erin you freak out now we all die!

You everyone on board and all of the civilians out there in trouble!

I unbuckle and move and do the same for the co-pilot dumping him out to float and actually out and back from us and I’m getting coated in his spray. I swallow vomit because I have to especially since it would just float anyways.

I patch into the sensors and link to the guns and I start firing back.

I’m missing but I’m really firing for cover and I think through the piloting like to the pilot.

[Roll us but roll us under the scarab that’s under the ship.]

[Take us closer to the thing, are you crazy?]

[Likely, it’s not going to expect it and I have a plan.]

[A plan, you want to let me in on the plan?]

[That freighter is a remote.]

[And?]

[Remotes are used for hazardous goods, usually fuel and I’m pretty sure that logo is for a fuel company.]

[…..Oh shit you want to blow the freighter.]

[It’s our best bet, we really have zero chance at getting out of this they’re faster than us and we can’t take may more hits than we have.]

He actually looks at me and then he takes this long and hard look at my sword pin and he nods and he swallows and then we’re dropping and rolling backwards towards the scarab tekker that just shot the heck out of our sides and it’s doing it again too as we’re getting closer and the plates are screaming and the other passengers are screaming and then the rounds stop as we drop under the line of fire and I open fire as much and as fast as I can and I’m not shooting at the tekker scarab but into the freighter above us and hitting the area that looks actually like where the hoses couple to the tanks.

My brain gets a mass feedback flare as the ship goes up not even fast but instantly and the pilot is good enough he put the scarab between us as much as he could and dropped us away as fast as we could manage to the point where the cooling systems cut out our power and the engines.

And we’re drifting with the blood and people in back are crying and there’s still the damaged scarab tekker out there and I’m trying to get what power that I can to see what I can and it’s scary frustrating flickers.

And then it’s us getting shot some more and it’s ten twenty rounds before it stops and we rock again as we are hit by a force wave?

Then there’s a voice over personal coms.

“Shuttle 1408 respond, bogies are cleared, bogies are cleared what’s you situation.”

I sigh with relief and there’s tears starting to flow.

I look to the back and it’s the co-pilot and another person down a hole blow through her chest.

“We’re here, power and propulsion is at minimum we’re somehow not venting atmosphere but we’ve two down, repeat we’ve tow down.”

The com voice comes over again. “Hand tight we’ve a recovery ship coming, the battle’s over we pushed the tekkers back.”

It’s good news but hard to cheer for is with the way things are in here right now.

I do smile a little though as I say back. “We’ll be waiting, that’s good news sir, that’s good news.”

I try to not think about it as us being clear for now.