Betancourt Base, Musca Dark Region PJ-P b6-1 - 3307-05-13 06:53 GST
Jennifer Ng awoke in a large bed, beneath a duvet. A gentle quarter g of gravity kept her on the bed and the duvet on top of her. The room was dimly illuminated by night-lights beside the suite's main door and the door the toilet and shower area. Beside her in the bed lay John Patrick Rogers, JP to friends, snoring. He was a long haul cargo pilot that she had met the previous evening. She gazed at his broad back and smiled remembering the previous night's conversations and exertions. In the dim light she could almost make out the greying hairs on his back and shoulders. Despite being nearly twenty years older than her, he was able to keep up with her. She was impressed. Neither of them were under any illusion that this was a long term relationship, but she hoped that there paths would cross again in the not too distant future. That wasn't entirely unlikely under normal circumstances: he ran long range cargo runs to remote outposts of humanity away from The Bubble, which is what brought him to the Coalsack Nebula. He regularly made deliveries to the Pleiades and California Nebula. He even took occasion runs out to the Eagle Nebula, but was getting uncomfortable with that now that the Prisoners at the penal colonies there had freed themselves and were engaged in hit and run warfare with the private incarceration corporations. Jennifer and her companions harvested meta alloys in the Witch Head Nebula and California Nebula, normally. However, these weren't normal circumstances, and it wasn't meta alloys that brought them to the Coalsack Nebula. They were searching for an old friend of theirs, called Jerrod Berg. Giselle and Jerrod had flown with the Old Man before they went their separate ways. However, they kept in touch, met up regularly, and exchanged stories. Jennifer had met him twice at these meetings, and had come to like him, despite thinking that he was a bit cocky. He hadn't shown up for the last three meetings, though. After the first meeting Gisele called in some favours to start a search for him. After the second missed meeting, the crew started looking around his known haunts, in between delivery contracts in the Witch head Nebula, asking if anyone had seen him. That spooked a few people, who thought they were bounty hunters. That became a self fulfilling prophesy. A few more people thought they were criminals hunting for bounty hunters. That led to some tense negotiations with local security services and a few days handling and pirate massacre mission to convince the authorities of their true intentions. After the third missed meeting, and no news from any of their contacts, the four of them dropped everything to search for him. They had traced his last movements around Alliance space, and the trail ran cold in LHS 351, where his last contact had died in mysterious circumstances about six months previously. They had hung around there for a while, bounty hunting, but learning very little, when Gisele received a tip off that someone that looked like Jerrod had been seen here six months ago. They arrived about three days ago and had been asking around since. She'd met JP the evening before in one of the station bars and after a long exchange of stories she had decided she liked him. Evidently, he thought the same. They left the others to their bar hopping and returned to her room.
Jennifer rolled over on her side and propped her head up on her hand. She considered waking JP up for some early morning sex, but decided not too, content to watch him sleep. Besides, neither of them had much planned for the morning, so there would be time enough later. She was lost in pleasant daydreams when she imagined she saw a dim blue flash and all her muscles tensed slightly. The night-lights at the door went out.
"No, no, no, no, no", she muttered to herself. She slapped JP on the shoulder, hard, and then turned and launched herself out of bed.
"Ha? What was that for? Had I taken all the duvet?", he said as he rolled on to his back and rubbed his eyes. "Are getting up already? It's a bit early, isn't it?"
"Get up! The station is under attack!", she replied, wriggling into her flight suit.
"Surely not, Pumpkin. It's just a brown out. Power is always a little flaky in low priority systems in newer stations for a few months. Nothing to worry about. Come back to bed! Besides, what could damage a Coriolis station like this?"
"Thargoids!", she replied.
He was about to protest when they heard distant rumblings, accompanied by the station shaking slightly. JP sprang out of bed and walked around to get his own flight suit from the wardrobe. She finished donning her flight suit, picked up her hand terminal and tried to contact the others. Her terminal worked, but station comms were down. She switched her terminal to use a peer to peer mesh and boosted the power output. It'd drain the battery in under an hour, but by then she would be recharging it on the ship, hopefully. There was enough plastic in the walls that the signal should get through. Hopefully the others would do the same. In the worst case she could go to their rooms and bang on the door. She pulled on her magboots.
"What's your plan?", JP asked.
"I am going to head to my ship. I am not sure after that, but I expect Gisele will decide to get out of here straight away. I'd advise you to do the same."
"What about the station inhabitants? I have lots of space on board my Type 7: I could get few hundred out in the cargo holds."
"Not unless you want to disembark them with a hose. You'd be under fire on the way out and survival would require evasive maneuvers and pulling a few g's. Anybody not in a crash couch wouldn't make it."
JP continued to to pull on his flight suit in silence, looking down.
"Listen,", Jennifer continued, putting he hand on his shoulder, "I know it feels callous to leave people here, but the best thing to do is get out safely. You can come back after fitting passenger cabins and help with the evacuation then. The Alliance will probably subsidize your costs."
"You are right! I still feels bad leaving people behind."
"I hear you. Lets get to the docks before the panic sets in and people demand that we kill them in high g maneuvers.."
Jennifer's terminal lit up.
"Terminal, answer call!", she said.
"Jennifer, did you feel it?" It was Gisele.
"Yeah! Thargoid shutdown pulse. Already up and almost ready to go."
"Blake is at the docks already. He was up and running diagnostics on Firehawk. Alia and I will be heading down to Krait Expectations, shortly."
"I'll be there in ten."
"How about your friend?"
"I'll be taking my own ship out.", replied JP.
"Good! See you two at the docks."
Jennifer helped JP get his boots on and turned towards the door.
"Are you not going to pack the rest of your stuff.", JP asked.
"Nothing here that I cannot replace"
"Good point!", JP said pulling on an old leather flight jacket.
"Are you any good at running in low g?", Jennifer asked.
"I've done it.", was the reply
Jennifer opened the door to their room, deactivated her magboots and started off in a loping run down the corridor, with JP following as best he could. Emergency lighting had come on and some people were discussing the situation in dressing gowns and pyjamas from the doors of their rooms. Jennifer and JP ran between them, ignoring their questions and complaints. The station shuddered from distant rumbling explosions. They climbed two levels to get to the docks level. The door out of the stairwell was shut, powered off, and had no manual release.
"Frak!", exclaimed Jennifer, "We're going to lose so much time backtracking to find another route."
"Maybe not.", said JP. He pulled a power transfer tool from a pocket in his jacket, opened a panel beside the door and transferred power into the socket that was revealed. The door opened. JP gave her a wink.
They stepped through the door and into a corridor leading to landing bays. Warning lights were flashing and emergency lighting was brighter here. Alarmingly, there were wisps of smoke visible. The air felt warmer and there were sparks from electrical conduits. They bounded along the corridor and reached JP's hangar bay entrance first.
"I guess this is it.", he said.
"It is. Plot a high wake jump and then lift off as soon as you are able. Speed trumps shields against these guys so put all your power there. If you can try to avoid any Thargoid ship. If you can't then its safer to fly nearer the big ones than the swarms of little ones."
"Thanks", he replied, nodding to himself.
Jennifer grabbed him as he started to turn and kissed him hard on the lips. "Stay alive, and I will find you", she said.
"You too, Pumpkin! Now go!"
They separated and Jennifer ran another few hundred meters along the corridor. It gently curved upwards ahead of her, so visibility was limited. As she approached the bay where Krait Expectations was docked, she saw Gisele and Alia coming from the other direction. The three women ran into the bay and round to the lift on the front landing gear of their Krait Mk II. An agonizing few seconds passed as the lift rose up to the entrance airlock, and more time passed as the airlock cycled. The three women quickly moved to the cockpit, strapped themselves in and prepared for take off. Blake opened a communications channel to their ship.
"I am ready to go. Hanging on for a few seconds, though, as my ship detected a frameshift anomaly a few seconds ago." That meant some more Thargoids had arrived and they normally discharged some sort of pulse weapon when they did so. Being out in the open when that happened normally wasn't good.
Fifteen seconds passed. They triggered their launch. Their landing pad moved forward onto the elevator frame and the bay door slid open above them, revealing an inferno. The elevator raised them up into the main docking area. It was bathed in a redish orange light, partly from emergency lighting but mostly from the fires, explosions, and reddish glow coming from the failing thermal management conduits. Finally the docking clamps released. Gisele was piloting and launched a heatsink as she lifted the ship off the landing pad. Jennifer assumed a gunner role and took control over the turret AX flak launcher in case they needed to deal with a thargon swarm before they could jump clear. Alia took control of their two multi-cannon turrets to ward of Thargoid scout ships. Ahead of them, Blake was piloting his Vulture through the station entrance passageway. Gisele lined them up, avoiding floating debris as she did so, and too them out at about two hundred meters per second. That would be worthy of a fine if station flight control were paying attention. As soon a they were in open space she boosted and Jennifer felt herself slammed back into her seat as the Krait accelerated.
Outside the station was chaos. A thargoid missile slammed into the station below the entrance and Jennifer could see the green caustic cloud, that it released, expand beneath her feet. The Medusa Interceptor that launched it followed up the attack by racking the station with plasma cannon fire, ignoring them, fortunately. Ahead, two vipers from system security forces gallantly engaged in a dog fight with a Thargoid scout. Beyond them Jennifer saw Blake's Vulture make the jump to witch space. Above them, a swarm of thirty two thargon drones swirled and set an intercept course for the system security vipers. They formed into a cone formation and the two Vipers were obliterated in a hail of green plasma fire before Jennifer could bring her turret to bear. Gisele swung the ship around hard to take their course away from that swarm. To her right, she spotted a Cyclops interceptor in pursuit of another ship. Her heart sank: it was a Type 7. It was JP's ship. She watched in horror as the alien vessel raked plasma fire across the Type 7's shields, once, then twice, then a third time. The Type 7's shields failed. However, before the next volley, its hyperspace jump engaged. She let out the breath that she hadn't realized she'd been holding. He'd made it.
"We're clear of the station gravity well", said Gisele over ship comms, "Stowing weapons and we'll make our jump out of here."
With the whine of the Frameshift drive in her ears, Jennifer looked back over her right shoulder to catch a glimpse of the station. It was ablaze with big chunks damaged. Randomius knows how many people had been killed or injured. The Interceptors, seemingly satisfied with the destruction they had caused, broke off their attack and started their own hyperspace jumps. As the Krait entered Witch Space, Jennifer renewed her vow for revenge.