Tocc kept her eyes firmly fixed on the small aperture on Hope’s hull. She could see the remains of the connecting tunnel from the destroyed shuttle, but luckily it wasn’t blocking her entrance.
Even though the suit jets were at maximum, it still seemed interminably slow going across to the ship and as she gradually got closer, it still amazed her how absolutely enormous the ship was. She made herself as small as possible as she arrived and zipped inside, checking she didn’t snag her suit on the jagged edges of the hull plates.
The small cabin was exactly as Ed had described it and even though the area was completely open to space, she still checked both ways up and down the corridor before leaving the cabin. Turning left, she jetted down the passageway towards the open bridge door and went straight to the pilot’s post. Hope had not only made sure the bridge door was open, but she’d also ensured the console Tocc found herself at was powered up.
She quickly went through the menu, selected the manual manoeuvring suite and set all the jets on the underside of the vessel on maximum thrust.
‘Well done, Tocc,’ she heard Ed say. ‘Now get out of there.’
She turned to exit the bridge, but as she did so, the helm automatically shut off the jets. She realised to her horror that the system had a failsafe which ensured a pilot was always present for the system to operate.
‘I have to stay to keep it working,’ she said, turning back to the controls and reigniting the jets.
She almost jumped out of her skin as an arm reached over her shoulders and touched the icons for her.
‘You go, Tocc,’ said Hope, her holographic form smiling warmly. ‘I’ve got this.’
Tocc stared at the young Callametan in amazement.
‘I thought you were downloading onto the Cartella?’ she managed to say.
‘Go,’ shouted Hope, pointing at the bridge door with one of her spare arms.
Tocc looked up out of the front screen. Panemorfi was becoming very large and almost filling the windows. She squeezed one of Hope’s shoulders.
‘Thank you,’ she said, quickly jetting her way out of the bridge and back to the cabin and peering out into open space. The Cartella’s airlock glowed like a portal to another dimension around sixty metres away and as she made her way towards it, she glanced down under the Hope and could see vapour blasting from the manoeuvring ports as Hope kept her fingers on the controls.
‘It’s not enough,’ called Rayl. ‘We were too late.’
‘Shit,’ said Andy. ‘Can’t we use our tractors on the ship?’
‘Pointless,’ said Ed. ‘Like trying to drag an excavator with a moped.’
‘I’ve informed Bache we failed to stop the ship,’ said Linda. ‘He’s let them know on the planet and they’re organising an emergency evacuation of the council.’
‘Where’s it going to impact?’ Ed asked.
‘In the western ocean,’ she said. ‘The resulting tsunami will most likely swamp over eighty percent of the planet.’
‘Shit,’ said Andy, again. ‘That short-arsed little bastard tricked us. Can I go and play with his flagship?’
‘Absolutely not,’ said Ed. ‘You’re just as likely to be hit by friendly fire if you go near them at the moment. I want to try something first. Follow me and put your shields on maximum.’
Andy followed Ed underneath the Hope and with their powerful shields as a buffer they both slowly pushed upwards, increasing the drive until they were at maximum thrust.
Ed heard some serious creaking from the small ship even through his helmet as the stresses pushed down on him from above.
‘We could rupture the hulls if we keep this up,’ said Andy.
‘Is it making any difference, Rayl?’ asked Ed.
‘Barely,’ she said. ‘Point one of a degree.’
Ed jumped as all the Hope’s solar panels suddenly deployed all around him like ailerons on an aircraft.
‘Bloody hell, Hope,’ exclaimed Andy. ‘What are you doing?’
‘It might help when we hit the upper atmosphere and give the ship some slight lift,’ she said. ‘You two get out of there, you’ve done all you can.’
‘Tuck yourself away in a database somewhere central, Hope,’ said Ed. ‘If that part of the ship survives the impact, we’ll come and find you.’
Ed followed Andy this time as the front edges of the Hope began glowing and they quickly scuttled out from under the huge vessel and killed their speed.
‘That was getting a bit warm,’ said Andy, as they watched the Hope continue its increasingly fiery descent. The solar panels, although made from an extremely tough alloy, burned off before they could have any real effect and debris from them left a thousand dissipating black smoke trails in the ship’s wake.
‘Thirty seconds,’ said Rayl.
‘Goodbye, Hope,’ said Tocc softly, the emotion in her voice clear to everyone.
‘If only we’d known the target was this plane––’
Ed and Andy both ducked in their cockpits as everything went black around them.
Ed heard Andy swearing, but couldn’t hear what he was saying because of the sudden interference and static in his ears.
A massive black spherical asteroid had materialised directly over the Hope. It was the size of a small planet and as Ed watched, open-mouthed, a sparkling translucent bubble of energy stretched out from underneath it and enveloped the Hope.
‘What the actual fuck is that?’ Ed heard Andy say, clearly this time.
‘I have no idea,’ Ed replied. As they watched, it begin dragging the colony ship slowly up out of the atmosphere. ‘But it’s doing a bloody good job.’
‘It’s the Arena,’ said Linda. ‘Conor’s in contact with it.’
‘They could’ve got here ten minutes ago,’ said Andy.
‘Conor says they don’t like to get involved in local disputes,’ said Linda. ‘But when it became obvious a whole planet was in danger of being destroyed, they made the decision to step in and help.’
Ed and Andy followed the Arena as it arrested any forward motion and began lifting the rapidly cooling back into space.
One and a half million kilometres away, Bache Loftt had been keeping the approaching Mogul fleet busy. The two cloaked Katadromiko cruisers were having a field day against the many suddenly de-cloaking enemy vessels. He adopted the same tactic as in Andromeda and targeted the enemy ships with their Astrapi lamps to quickly dissipate their shields and leave them wide open. A handful of them, including one of the heavy cruisers, had bypassed the melee and were now heading at best speed towards the Arena and the Hope.
‘Linda,’ called Ed. ‘Can you intercept anything fired at the Hope? And we’ll engage them direct.’
‘Will do.’
She positioned the Gabriel between the Hope and the incoming ships, increasing the shields’ depth on the enemy side. Meanwhile, Ed and Andy engaged their favourite tactic of jumping behind the shields of the two leading destroyers and taking out their propulsion and arrays, leaving them spinning harmlessly away into empty space.
The remainder of the Mogul and Blend ships approaching adopted their usual trick of firing their lasers blindly in random directions. As one they all fired a blizzard of missiles towards the Hope.
‘Go and have some fun with that cruiser,’ said Ed. ‘I’ll show the remainder the error of their ways.’
‘Happy days,’ said Andy, as he jumped over to and then inside one of the huge vessels’ hangars. He sprayed laser bolts down the line of transport shuttles he found neatly parked along the back wall. The resulting huge explosion took him completely by surprise and blew his tiny ship back out the hangar door.
‘Andrew,’ shouted Ed, as he witnessed the colossal explosion mushroom from the side of the vessel. It continued to ripple across the cruiser with a gradual wave of airlocks blowing outwards. He raced across as he noticed Andy’s ship, uncloaked and spinning wildly away, but heaved a sigh of relief and grinned as he heard a familiar whingeing voice.
‘Fucking, fuckity fuck, what shitting well did that?’
‘What the bloody hell did you do?’ Ed asked. ‘I thought we were just disabling.’
‘There must have been a weapon stockpile somewhere in that hangar,’ replied Andy, checking the condition of his shields and reactivating his cloak. ‘Bastards have scratched my ship.’
‘Judging by the firestorm ripping that ship apart, a Genok weapon was in there,’ said Ed.
The massive cruiser was adrift now and began tumbling as explosions came from deep within, each blast altering the ship’s trajectory and spin. Gasses, liquids and shrapnel spewed out of the shattered airlocks, along with dozens of corpses.
‘Shit,’ mumbled Andy. ‘I think we need to reassess our tactics.’
‘I agree,’ said Ed. ‘No more hangar jumping. If there’d been a nuclear warhead in there, none of us would be around now.’