Witch Head Sector JH-V c2-6 - 3305-07-25 10:49, Galactic Standard Time
Jennifer Ng sat at the fighter control station of the Anaconda named Dreadnought. She liked the ship's name: it meant fear nothing and while the last four days were hectic she was starting to feel her old confidence again, putting the battle in Tewanta behind her. She and her crew mates were about to complete their final escort run to the Witch Head Sector, the last of twenty. They had been escorting three Lakon Type-9 transports stuffed full of construction supplies for a new space station there, Sherrill Orbital. One more jump and they would complete their final delivery. It amazed her to see the station take shape over the past few days. Millions of tons of supplies had been hauled from The Bubble, all to set up this enclave near a new source of the mysterious meta alloys. In the twenty round trips that they had made, they had been attacked by pirates three times. They had successfully destroyed the pirates on all three occasions. Jennifer had impressed Captain DeBottain with her flying skills in the Taipan SLF and her tactical knowledge and ability. On the last run the pirate had been flying a Fer De Lance heavy fighter, and was maneuvering skillfully around the Anaconda pounding on its shields. She had focused fire on the canopy blinding the pirate with shield flare long enough for the captain and gunner, Paul Ngoya, to land some plasma blasts from the Anaconda's huge plasma accelerator, taking down its shields. She then concentrated on the FDL's drives, reducing its speed and maneuverability. Her crew mates made short work of it after that. They worked well together an Jennifer was very glad that the captain had asked her to be a full member of the crew. Guillaume, Paul, and Tatiana, the ships engineer, were good people. She fit in with them, had fun, laughed, and they got the job done. Should couldn't have asked for a better start to her new life.
"Co-ordinates laid in for Witch Head Sector HW-W c1-9.", Guillaume announced to the wing, "Jump on my mark! Mark!"
The ships accelerated. Jennifer was pushed into her chair and heard the ship COVAS announce, "Frameshift drive charging. 4, 3, 2, 1. Engage." The ship was hurled into Witch Space. They were making the last jump of this job, the last of about six hundred.
"Warning! Hyperspace conduit unstable."
The view outside took on an angry yellow tint, as if Witch Space itself had caught fire. They were thrown out of Witch Space, and started spinning. The captain got things under control quickly, though. The three Type-9s were also getting their trajectories under control. Jennifer checked the tactical display, there were two other large contacts, showing up as circles on her display: unknown vessel. She targeted them, one after the other, and got garbage up on her display for both.
"Captain! We have two large unknown vessels closing in from the rear! Orders?"
The captain was just about to speak when the COVAS intoned, "Energy surge detected!"
Jennifer felt a wave a energy pass through her. It was an unpleasant and unsettling experience: it felt like all her muscles tensed slightly at exactly the same time and if her thoughts had paused for a fraction of a second. All the control panels and lights aboard ship went dark. They were without power. She could see through the canopy that the Type-9s were suffering similar power outages. Motion in the corner of her eye caught her attention. She turned to see a huge craft drift past the bridge. It was shaped vaguely like a flower with eight huge petals. It had to be at least 150m across. It glided over to one of the Type-9s. Its petals flashed green and it fixed the immobilized craft in a yellow greenish beam off light. It didn't look to be causing any damage, so she assumed this was some form of detailed scan. The glare of a second yellow green beam told her that the second alien vessel was doing the same thing to one of the other Type-9s. The petals on the alien ships glowed red and they started to deploy a swarm of smaller craft. The power came back on in Dreadnought just as the alien vessels started opening fire.
"Jennifer, get a fighter out there and distract them! Paul deploy hardpoints and switch to the 'Experimental' fire group. The dumbfire missile it controls will get their attention and give the transports a chance to jump out."
The SLF telepresence kicked in and Jennifer's consciousness was transported to the Taipan fighter. She aimed the fighter directly at the nearest alien ship and fired a salvo of plasma repeater rounds into it. It continued pummeling the Type-9, but the swarm of smaller ships turned to face her. They took on a spiral pattern, eight curved arms with each one containing four ships. The pattern tightened forming into a cone pointing directly at the Taipan. Then the little ships started firing. The Taipan was reduced to a cloud of debris in seconds by a stream of green plasma bolts.
Her consciousness was back on the bridge. It would be thirty seconds before another fighter would be ready so she focused on analyzing the tactical data she could gather. She saw the swarm continue their path to Dreadnought, their plasma bolts doing significant damage to the shields. One of the larger alien ships, with one of its petals glowing a bright orange, was also firing plasma bolts at the ship. Worse than that, some was bleeding through to hull and much of it was hitting the canopy. She could have sworn she heard the sound of hairline cracks propagating through the glass. Then the COVAS announced, "Incoming missile detected". A portion of the swarm had accelerated and was dive-bombing the bridge. The slammed into the canopy shattering it and decapitating the captain in the process. Her remlok deployed. She glanced across and saw Paul's had too.
She quickly took stock of the situation. One of the Type-9s was destroyed, one looked crippled, but the third had managed to make its jump. This battle was lost, and if they didn't get out of here soon, they would be destroyed. She took control of the helm.
"Paul, stow weapons. we are getting out of here. There's nothing we can do for the ship still here. We're completely outmatched. Staying would be suicide."
Reluctantly he did. Jennifer engaged the FSD, launched a heat sink and used every evasive maneuver that she knew. The shields failed just as the ship jumped. She held her breath for the ten seconds that they were in Witch Space. They had survived. Jennifer steered the ship towards Sherrill Orbital. The ship was badly damaged, with less than 40% hull integrity, multiple internal modules had taken damage, and life support had less than seven minutes of oxygen left. Fighting panic she dropped the ship out of supercruise ten kilometers from the station on the rear side. She took the ship on a path around the station, lined up with the mail slot and requested docking permission. Flight operations had just granted her permission when four circles appeared on her tactical display. Jennifer gunned the throttle forward and sped through the mailslot. She had just pointed the ships nose towards its assigned landing pad when the shutdown pulse hit the station. The ship lost all power and it drifted at ninety meters per second towards the landing pad. It hit nose first with a groan of tortured metal and the ship cartwheeled off the pad, hitting the buildings just beyond it.
"Hull integrity critical. Eject! Eject! Eject!"
Sherrill Orbital Rescue Ship, Witch Head Sector HW-W c1-9 - 3305-08-01 08:05, Galactic Standard Time
Jennifer woke up in a bright room smelling of disinfectant. She tried to sit up.
"Relax. It's okay. You are safe. You are in the medical bay of a rescue ship. You have been out cold for a few days, but you are going to make a full recovery. You and two of your crew mates were rescued from Sherrill Orbital by CMDR Swoop Dogg of The Buur Pit squadron. I heard that this is the second escape pod you have been in in the past two weeks. You are one hell of a survivor, lady."