Linda’s eyes widened as she saw the dozens of red icons racing toward them from the approaching Mogul ships.
‘They’re trying to overwhelm us and the Hope with missiles,’ she said. ‘Phil, turn the ship head on so we can target them with all our weapons. Rayl, you take the port laser, I’ll take the starboard and Phil, you take the rail gun.’
It went very quiet on the bridge from that moment. They couldn’t hear the Gabriel’s lasers firing, but they could certainly hear the rail gun thudding away and see the results on the holomap as the leading edge of the swarm of incoming ordnance began exploding. The spectators sitting around the outside of the room collectively held their breath as the menacing wall of death came at them with alarming ferocity.
Everyone winced as the ship juddered. A stray missile hit and exploded against the front shields, then a second and a third.
‘We can’t get them all,’ called Rayl. ‘If just one of those gets through to the Hope—’
‘Shields at thirty-four percent,’ said Phil, looking up at Linda momentarily. ‘Another couple of hits and we’re in trouble.’
The Gabriel shook violently, knocking the Callametans off their seats and sprawling across the floor.
‘Shields and cloak are down,’ shouted Phil, the alarm in his voice evident to everyone.
‘Missiles incoming,’ screeched Rayl.
‘Get us out of here,’ said Linda, reluctantly admitting defeat.
‘Shit,’ said Phil, his eyes wide with fear. ‘Drive’s down too.’
‘Emergency jump, Cleo,’ called Linda, looking up, but getting silence in return.
‘Oh no,’ said Rayl.
The Gabriel juddered, then everything went black.
‘That’s it,’ said Andy. ‘Run away.’
The last two attacking ships jumped away to safety as Ed and Andy approached them.
‘Why did they jump away?’ asked Ed. ‘They can’t see us.’
As he banked to return to the Gabriel and the Hope he got his answer. The Hope had been hit by at least one of the missiles and had broken its back. It was now in two sections and the Arena was struggling to keep control of the wreckage, as well as drag it free of the planet’s gravity. Several of the huge boulders had broken free of the ship and were proceeding downwards towards the surface.
‘Linda, are you able to target those rocks with the Asteri beam?’ Ed asked.
He received no answer.
‘Where the hell’s the Gabriel?’ Andy asked, searching around with his array.
‘We’ll find it later,’ said Ed. ‘We need to destroy those rocks and quickly. Activate your heat shield and follow me.’
They both dropped towards the shining blue planet as fast as the little ships’ conventional drives allowed. Their heat shields were basically the armament defence shields, only concentrated around the underside.
They dropped at many times the speed of sound into the upper atmosphere, overtaking the dozen or so rocks.
‘Use the Astrapi lamp on a wide beam to melt them,’ said Ed. ‘The lasers will just break them up and make things worse.’
They both targeted the biggest boulders first and worked their way down in size.
‘It’s like making Swiss cheese with a light sabre,’ called Andy.
‘Concentrate,’ said Ed. ‘We can’t let any of these impact the ocean.’
Quick as they were, it soon became apparent they wouldn’t get them all and two of the smaller ones impacted the western ocean, causing mountainous eruptions of water and super-heated steam over a thousand metres high. The resulting tsunamis circled out and began looking for trouble.
‘Shit,’ said Andy. ‘Look at that. Can you imagine what hundreds of those would have done?’
‘And a ship kilometres long,’ said Ed. ‘The planet would’ve been wiped clean and rendered uninhabitable for centuries.’
‘I hope those waves dissipate before they hit any land,’ said Andy. ‘There’s nothing on this planet more than a few metres above sea level.’
‘There’s nothing we can do to stop it now,’ said Ed, sounding disappointed. ‘I’ll transmit a warning on all frequencies but quite who will respond to it, I’ve no idea. All the islands are privately owned, there’s no centralised government here.’
‘Shall we get back up and see how Linda’s doing?’ asked Andy.
The tiny craft both blasted upwards, with the two sonic booms going unheard over the unpopulated region of the planet.
‘Linda, where are you?’ Ed asked as they emerged back into space.
Again the call went unanswered.
‘That’s a worry,’ said Andy. ‘That’s twice now.
They both scoured the region for any sign of the Gabriel. There was plenty of activity one and a half million kilometres out where the now fully uncloaked Mogul fleet was being picked apart by the invisible Katadromikos. Over a third of the enemy fleet were now out of the game and drifting, the damaged vessels and ensuing debris causing huge navigation headaches for the fleet’s pilots.
Ed called Bache and asked if the Gabriel had joined him.
‘Negative,’ said Bache, a little curtly. ‘Last time I looked they were defending the Hope from a missile attack. Now if you don’t mind, I’m a little busy.’
The Arena, meanwhile, had managed to wrestle the two sections of the Hope back into space and was dragging it away in the opposite direction to all the action. Ed and Andy scooted across to the Hope, the two sections being held tightly together around a hundred kilometres away from the Arena’s surface.
‘Hope, can you hear us?’ Ed asked, again getting no response.
‘Where is everyone?’ said Andy. ‘There’s only the missile debris around here, so where the hell is the Gabriel?’