Shadowswarm

Despite knocking out the largest of the Fractal vessels, the battle was far from over. The remaining enemy craft began to turn, and Sola’s shields crackled as multiple energy blasts tried to rip her hull asunder. “All fighters’k, attention on our portside’k, incoming’k.” Yril’k issued the update without looking away from her targeting grid, Sola’s tiny complement of starfighters swirling around her hull to intercept the approaching Fractal craft.

“Husband, I’m picking up odd energy readings coming from one of the Fractal vessels…” Meli began, before a pulse of light swept through the battlefield. The Fractal ship appeared to have self-destructed; there was nothing but tiny debris still glowing with the heat of the explosion as it drifted towards the defenders.

“Statement. Alert the fleet, avoid the debris!” Defia’s voice was agitated, the rogue Fractal’s hands gripping the edges of her terminal so hard the casing bent. “Likelihood of…” she was interrupted by the communicator squealing as alarmed alien voices began to call for aid. In front of Sola, multiple defensive ships suddenly began to spin out of control, their weapons still firing as they spun into the remainder of the fleet.

Dustin stared in horror, before more immediate problems demanded his attention as the lights flickered. “Rye, what’s going on?” he asked, unable to tear his eyes away from the way the fleet seemed to be suddenly attacking itself.

The answer came back distorted, the internal communications network seemingly under stress. “Cogging… too small… got past… shields… latched… main power relay… need Defia’s help… engineering.” As the call broke up into static, Dustin turned to give the order - but the void-black woman was already moving, her hands forcing a crack in the door to the bridge when it didn’t open automatically before flowing through the tiny gap she had made.

Turning back from watching his mechanical lover depart, Dustin glanced at Yril’k. “Can we get a lock on one of the remaining Fractal ships without hitting the fleet…” he began, the Vex’ess opening her mouth to reply when every system on the bridge died all at once, the power failing completely. “Sola?” Dustin called out, a sinking feeling in his gut at the sudden system shutdown.

With no reply forthcoming, he grimaced. “Emergency vacsuits on everyone, now. What the fuck is going on?”

Pulling on his own vacsuit, Dustin clipped his communicator into place - and Rye’s voice half-deafened him. “Switch to suit comms ya cogging idiots, main comms is down. Yes, I know it’s open channel, so keep your mouths shut unless it’s fucking important! You, stop drooling and help me hook up this hardline from reactor three to the shields before we take a mass driver round up the backside.”

From the sound of things, the engineer was doing her best to get things back online. As soon as there was a lull in the rapid fire stream of orders, Dustin interjected as quickly as he could. “Rye? Has Defia got there yet? What’s going on?”

“Dusty? Thank fuck, means they haven’t tried to punch out the bridge yet. Fractals managed to get something through the shield - think it was too small for the way I’ve got it calibrated. Either way, it’s clamped onto the hull and is playing merry havoc with every damn computer we have. Fi-oh’s not here ye… hang on, I think that’s her unless it’s the fuckers we’ve been shooting at that are trying to manually force open the engineering blast doors… Ya, that’s her. Fi-oh! Need ya to help kick your cousins out of my damn AI core…” The bunny girl’s voice grew fainter as she rapidly went over what she knew with the rogue Fractal, before clearly turning her suit mic back to continue talking with Dustin. “Fi-oh’s gonna try and get reactor one and the core clear so we can at least get comms back on. Sammie, I know you’re listening ‘cos every fucker has to right now. You’re not to use anything beyond manoeuvring thrust until I say, and I don’t care how much of a sitting duck that makes us!”

Dustin wanted to rush to the nursery, to make sure his children were alright. He also knew that without power, there was nothing he could do. Meli and Trea’k had drawn straws to see who would be on the bridge and who would be with their offspring when they re-entered Olanse space, so he was at least confident that his mate along with Naera would be able to keep them safe. The nursery did have it’s own separate emergency power and life support, courtesy of the number of species Rye had designed it to handle; he’d thought it excessive at the time, but now…

In any case, it was floors down and behind multiple closed doors. It’d take hours to get there from the bridge without power, and in the meantime they were still technically in a battle. As soon as Rye got even emergency power online, he would be needed here to direct whatever resistance Sola would be capable of until her systems were restored.

Time ticked away. Without full communications and with the AI core offline, Dustin couldn’t even tell if Sola had been hit. Looking around the bridge, he could see equal worry in the face of his lovers, friends and crew; were they just waiting for the inevitable? Or were they going to be lucky and last until Rye and Defia managed to break whatever the Fractals had done to them.

When the lights flickered on - only the emergency lighting, dim but present - it was to a mass sigh of relief. The chatter in Dustin’s ear from engineering cut out, only to be followed by Rye’s tired sounding voice. “We’ve got reactor one and three online, but power’s not flowing cleanly. The cogging things have infected the computers and tripped most of the breakers - Fi-oh’s doing her best to clear them, but right now I’m having to manually reroute power to get individual systems online. Good news, we’ve enough oxygen to not need life support to be reinitialized for a couple of hours as long as people aren’t breathing too heavily without a suit. Better news, that means I’ve gotten the shields up and should be able to get the external view running about… OWW cogging shorting cunty wires! Now.”

As the Rabyth woman swore, the main vidscreen flickered back to life. Dustin leaned forward, straining his eyes to make out the state of the battle as Sola struggled to even see beyond her hull.

Debris from a dozen ships littered the area. Around Sola, a tiny swarm danced - her fighters, still running despite the loss of direction from their mothership. Dustin guessed that whatever had knocked Sola and the other starships out had considered the tiny craft too weak to pose a threat, given that the human fighters were not alone. Alien single-seater craft wove around the broken and drifting hulks of the fleet, sniping at the remaining Fractal craft before darting away to hide behind the fallen.

The Fractals hadn’t gotten things all their own way either, Dustin saw with a grim satisfaction. Most of the void ships were equally drifting, their hulls peppered with impacts from mass drivers or from those captains who’d lost everything but thrusters and opted to make their ships into weapons before they could be turned on their allies.

Yril’k’s console suddenly illuminated, the glow bright against the dim lighting. “Got reactor two online. Putting full power to the main gun.” Rye’s voice was cold and out of breath as she presumably was running the length of the engine bay to finish restoring power to the remaining systems. “Just go easy on it - let it cool for half a minute or so between shots.”

With that permission granted, Sammie grimaced and tapped a thumbstick. “We are turning on gas only, Yril’k. You get the targets that are dumb enough to stay still until I get actual flight controls back,” the pilot muttered.

The Vex’ess woman’s answering insectoid grin was so predatory that Dustin worried he’d have nightmares about it, despite how much he trusted his security chief. “Target’k locked.” Yril’k said - and Sola spat death once more.