Fifty marks. Not even a full bell.
Perhaps less, if the merchant vessel’s batteries failed faster than its crew hoped.
Nalyra felt the weight of that number settle over the bridge, tension thickening in the air.
“Halt burn!” Nalyra ordered, starting to pace back and forth on the command dais. “Keep the point defense running, but bring us to a stop. We no longer have the luxury of stumbling around blindly. Navigator, track all asteroids large enough to cause us issues nearby, and call out any on intercept course.” She turned, looking at Nivi. “Master Engineer, we need to locate that ship immediately. Do a full scan, and clean up the data.”
“Ri-right away, Highness.” The woman replied, leaning closer to her station.
The seconds ticked by, and the Crown Daughter continued to pace. It was as though she could feel the chances of a safe rescue slipping through her fingers. Her hand went to the dagger at her side, her thumb sliding over the engravings once again. After a few moments, she noticed the Ydani looking at her, his eye obviously tracking her belt.
She caught his gaze and held it, glaring back, daring him to say something about it. Instead, he merely turned back to the viewports once more, saying nothing. Nalyra resumed her pacing.
“Nivi, where are those readings? Have you found them yet?” She snapped, glancing at the woman.
“I-I can’t, Highness,” she stuttered. “There’s just too much mass out there. Even with the Aegis’s computers trying to clean it up, there’s just too much extra data.”
Nivi slid a holographic window up from her workstation to demonstrate. The entire area around the ship was a colorful mess of reds, yellows, and oranges, as the gravimetric sensor arrays were overwhelmed by the sheer number of massive objects surrounding them. Every asteroid had its own mass, and all but the very smallest created distortions in gravity, giving the Aegis thousands upon thousands of data points to try to compare and filter through.
“The computers are estimating at least three hours to try and isolate the disabled ship’s gravitational displacement.” Nivi continued.
“And that’s time that those civilians don’t have.” Vessa muttered grimly.
Nalyra just stood there, her mouth pressed tight, her mind racing. There had to be something she could do.
A surge of inspiration and concern poured off of their Ydani guest. It was large enough that even Vessa picked it up, the Admiral turning to glance at him.
“What is it, Ydani?” Nalyra asked, looking at him.
A flicker of surprise crossed his face, then he must have realized what had happened. He straightened up.
“I had an idea. One that might be able to help.” He said shortly.
Nivi opened her mouth to say something, but Vessa held up a hand, silencing her.
“Speak, Ydani.” The Admiral ordered.
“Does this ship have active light ranging?”
Nalyra exchanged a confused glance with her Admiral, then both looked to Nivi. The engineer simply shrugged.
“Just what is that?” Nalyra asked.
“I think…I think you must term it differently in Zakkili. It is…” He paused for a moment, a look of frustration on his face as he clearly struggled for the right words. “A large wave of…of lasers. Infrared? They bounce off things and return.”
“Optical pulse mapping. Yeah, of course.” Nivi answered immediately. “Every Zakkili warship has them, but…”
“They are archaic.” Vessa finished. “They light up your position for the entire empyrean to see. No ship uses them these days.”
“I don’t think you have many enemies lurking in this asteroid belt.” The Ydani returned wryly.
Vessa glanced at Nalyra and, after a moment, the Crown Daughter gave her a slight nod.
“Do it, Nivi.” The Admiral ordered.
“Okay, but I don’t think you’re gonna like what you get back…” The engineer muttered. Every officer and ensign who was not busy had their eyes fixed on what was unfolding on the command dais.
“Done.” Nivi said, a few seconds later. “Bringing it up on screen.”
A series of holographic screens popped up, showing an absolute chaotic mess of data points. Nalyra looked over to the Ydani and raised an eyebrow.
“Back during the war, the Cal’raz used to love staging ambushes from the asteroid belt that divides our system.” He mused quietly, walking forward to look closer at the screens. “They would shut down their reactors, disperse all the heat from their vessels. Their people were much more suited than ours to low-temperature conditions. Filter the results by material differentiation. Look for hotspots – anything returning higher than average reflections.”
Nivi glanced at Nalyra, and the Crown Daughter nodded. She turned back to her console and tapped a few commands. Several dozen clusters in the data points were highlighted. Places that had stronger returns from the sweep of lasers. Still far too many to check in time.
“So myself and several other captains came up with a way to locate them, even if they were putting out zero heat or emissions.” The Ydani continued. “No matter how much you try to hide the signs that your ship is there, a warship is still shaped like a warship. Run a geometric filter over those clusters. Look for right angles, straight lines.”
That caught Nivi’s attention, her fingers suddenly flying across the screens of her station. Within half a mark, the computer had eliminated over ninety percent of the clusters. After a full mark, only one was left.
“...and then you could locate your enemy, and engage them before they even had time to power up their reactor.” He concluded with a satisfied smile.
Vessa caught Nalyra’s gaze for a moment. Her eyes flicked to the Ydani, for a split-second, then back to Nalyra. The Crown Daughter resisted the urge to glare at the woman. Yes, yes. Her Admiral had been correct. How marvelous for them all.
“Take us back to half burn.” Nalyra ordered, turning back to the bridge. “Get us to those coordinates as fast as possible while maintaining due caution.”
The Ydani had returned to his original post, once again standing calmly. Nalyra caught a strange mix of nostalgia and sadness seeping out of him. He noticed her staring and caught her gaze. There was no smugness there, no superiority that she could see. His gaze simply seemed to say I’m glad we found them.
Nalyra stalked back to her seat, settling into its comfortable padding. The Ydani remained in the corner of her vision.
Within a dozen marks, the merchant vessel was within range of their optical arrays. A few windows sprang up on the main viewport, focused on the damaged ship. Its thrusters were completely destroyed, clearly crushed by a collision with one of the massive rocks floating nearby. The small vessel drifted dangerously close to another cluster of asteroids, like a wounded animal on its last legs.
“Clear those asteroids out, manual aim and minimal power.” Nalyra ordered, gesturing to the cluster of tumbling rocks. “I don’t want a stray fragment destroying the lives we worked so hard to find.”
Slowly, with precision born of hundreds of hours of training, her gunners used the point defense cannons to push back the cluster of asteroids. Small, controlled bursts that sent the hunks of carbon spinning further into the asteroid belt, away from the damaged vessel.
With a flick of her wrist, Nalyra brought up a comm channel.
“Mikka, launch your shuttles. They have less than half a bell of oxygen left, and Maker knows how their scrubbers and heating are holding up.”
She received a simple double mic click in return. Mikka was already in soldier mode, it seemed.
An alert popped up on the viewport, and three windows expanded, each tracking a different shuttle as they departed from the Aegis. Their thrusters lit up, and the small craft plunged into the asteroid belt.
“Get me overlapping point defense coverage! I don’t want so much as a pebble touching those shuttles!” Vessa barked, leaning over the edge of the command dais.
Tracer fire sliced through the viewports, lighting up the darkness of the empyrean. The ship’s rotary cannons blasted apart any asteroids that strayed near the rescue shuttles. The small craft slowed as they drew close to the merchant vessel.
“Get us on the fore of that vessel, pilot. Right behind the bridge. No chance those docking ports have power – it will be faster just to cut our way in.” Mikka’s voice filled the room, her comm channel still open. “Shuttle Faith, shuttle Deaconess, latch on behind this craft. We’ll cut three separate access points – I want these civvies out as fast as possible.”
The shuttles eased into place, their auxiliary thrusters giving small puffs as they settled on the topside of the vessel. A loud clang echoed throughout the bridge, transmitted through Mikka’s helmet, as her shuttle attached to the merchant ship. Its now-magnetized skids clung firmly to the metal.
One of the ensigns opened a new set of windows across the viewports, each displaying the point of view of one of the squad leaders. The bridge crew watched from multiple perspectives as Armswomen exited the shuttles, magnetized boots holding them fast to the merchant vessel’s topside. Several soldiers started cutting through the thick plating, as others pulled large tubes of what looked like clear plastic out from the entrances of the shuttles, sealing it over the locations being cut.
It wasn’t plastic, though. Nalyra had seen it used before. It was an immensely strong polymer of some kind, that would keep the vacuum from sucking all the oxygen out of the vessel. A bridge between the ships’ internal pressurized atmospheres. Marks passed as the tools the Armswomen wielded struggled to cut through the thick plating of the vessel.
Finally, the metal yielded, and they watched as Mikka kicked the round chunk of armor into the vessel.
“AG is out.” Her voice transmitted to the bridge once more, as she floated down through the round hole. “By the Maker, it’s fucking colder than a chapel crypt in here.” She muttered, the light built into her helmet illuminating the somewhat cramped interior of the ship. “Get the thermal sleeves heating up in advance. I can’t imagine the crew is holding up well in this.”
More Armswomen were floating down into the crippled vessel, boots magnetizing to the deck.
“Sergeant, take a woman and sweep the rear of the ship. I don’t want anyone left behind. The rest of you, follow me to the bridge.”
The Aegis’s bridge crew watched as the Armswomen moved towards the front of the vessel. Half the doors hung open, the others requiring manual overrides to force open with the lack of power. Mikka paused, waiting as one of her women cranked open the final door to the bridge.
Nalyra leaned forward, peering at the viewport. She was vaguely aware of the rest of her officers and ensigns doing so as well.
The bridge was as dark as the rest of the damaged vessel, spirals of frost visible on the inactive screens and viewports. A few abandoned tablets and other small personal effects floated through the air, drifting in the absence of any artificial gravity.
Mikka’s camera showed a cluster of Zakkili, huddled together in the corner of the merchant vessel’s bridge, all wearing emergency survival suits. Nalyra grip tightened painfully on the armrest of her chair, as she noticed the unmistakable silhouettes of men and children among the crew.
Mikka drew close, gently pulling one of the women away from the cluster. Her face was visible through the frosted polymer of her face plate, her eyes open but unfocused. The camera panned down as Mikka looked to the suit's chestplate, clearly displaying her vitals. They were low, but stable. For the moment.
“Let’s get these civvies into the shuttle! Move, ladies!”
The bridge crew watched silently as the evacuation proceeded rapidly, the Armswomen quickly bearing the civilians back to the shuttles. Once safely in the small craft, the half-conscious citizens were slipped into already warmed thermal sleeves, the cloth-covered devices quickly raising their body temperatures.
Over the next few marks, every civilian was safely removed from the damaged vessel, secured inside the shuttles.
“That’s the last of them,” Mikka barked, sealing the exit of the shuttle. “Pilots, get us back to the Aegis, double time!”
The shuttles jettisoned the polymer tubing and detached from the merchant vessel. Their thrusters flared to life, and the small craft started their burn back to the Aegis.
Nalyra’s eyes didn’t leave the viewport until the shuttles touched down in the hangars once again. The entire bridge seemed to release a relieved breath.
“Get medical personnel to the hangar bay immediately.” Nalyra ordered, standing up once more. “I want those civilians in the infirmary before next bell.” She ran a single finger over the hilt of the dagger on her belt. “And let us continue to Orphila. I want the ship diving out of here as soon as possible. No need to linger and risk damage to the Aegis.”
A flicker of movement caught her eye, and Nalyra watched on the viewport as the battered ship finally gave in. No longer shielded by the Aegis’s point defense, it broke apart as a solitary asteroid struck it midship, the two halves of the vessel tumbling off deeper into the belt. As if the ship had only been holding on for its one last duty of keeping its crew safe.
Nalyra turned towards the back of the command dais, heading for the stairs that would take her back to her cabin. She trusted her crew to handle the rest of duties. They would be back in subspace within half a bell, she was certain.
As she passed by the Ydani, she paused, looking up at him. She held his gaze for a moment, before nodding, once. Nalyra let a flicker of gratitude brush his mind, and he blinked at the sudden psychic contact. She watched, expecting him to perhaps flinch or recoil, but the Ydani simply nodded in return.
As much as it needled her, he was the reason those civilians still drew breath.
She strode past the Ydani, leaving him standing there, his eye still taking in everything around the bridge.