“Commander… If that’s the Anguish over there… then how is it that the signal is distorted here?”
Realization dawned in the back of the transport. Salazar had come to see his little girl.
“Alright, we continue with the plan, though on a different ship, I’d say we’re parked right alongside the Immortal Hunter.”
Constable Walden paled even further, “I’ve heard stories about this guy and that ship.”
“Haven’t we all Walden,” Sykes grunted as he strapped a thruster pack to the trolley holding the explosives, “Now let’s go and blow both of them up!”
Walden’s hand hovered over a switch, “Ready?”
The affirmative was given and the hull doors opened; three BPA Officers and a thrust assisted trolley jetted out towards the cloaked ship.
The closer they got the more form the vessel had, far below them the Battleship patrol moved to position itself over the Anguish and then began to bombard the atmosphere with Mortars and Razors as the Destroyer began to ascend. The Hunter de-cloaked quite suddenly in front of them and began to rake the patrol with plasma from above.
Everything with guns in the New London area turned as one to the large vessel, a figurehead of hatred and fear, and opened fire. Salazar’s Battleship couldn’t hold out forever but it was achieving what it wanted too, as the Anguish began the slow journey back out of the atmosphere complete with her missing Captain and most of the men who attacked the convoy, the Battleship patrol was coming about to face the larger threat.
Silsbury scanned around the engine area for the customary heat dissipating chambers.
“Through there!” she pointed at a large tunnel like vent in the aft of the ship.
“Eyes peeled Wyatt, sometimes these things have Laser mesh over them, not a very fun thing to walk through.” Sykes informed the Constable busy manhandling the trolley.
In the tunnel they were eventually presented with the vast fin-work of the starboard heat-sink. The Hunter hadn’t had its engines cycling so the alloy was mercifully cool but impenetrable.
“Wyatt, give me the sticky.” The Constable dug around in the trolley until he produced a large tube with a nozzle on the end. Silsbury squeezed the glue like liquid onto the heat-sink in a large circle. Pushing back off the alloy to a safe distance she observed as a portion of fin-work dissolved leaving a moveable plug.
Sykes kicked it in allowing entry into the ships engine bay, it was an old ship so servicing was done by airtight capillaries to major sections rather than having gravity and oxygen in the area. This suited them fine as the passive heat-sinks only ever were brought to the crew’s attention if the heat alarm went off in the Bridge and there was to oxygen to be lost through the gaping hole.
Lucy was slightly awed, she wanted to study the cloaking core that glowed in its cage housing and to take the massive jump engines apart and put them back together just to see how they worked. She hadn’t seen anything like it before, the snaking coils and huge conduits framed perhaps the most beautiful pair of engines the Commander had encountered, it would be a travesty to destroy them.
But destroy them she would.
She directed Wyatt towards the merge point of the jump engines, the spot where the sheer energy produced would rend a hole in space/time… she assumed, this kind of technology had not been seen before.
“Ok, now rig these to blow remotely.” She instructed then joined Sykes to provide over-watch.
The Hunter was taking a pounding, every few seconds the vessel would shake violently, far more severe damage was being inflicted on the other side however; a destroyer and a Gunboat were already critically hit.
Wyatt had put the charges in position and was just about to link the detonators to a remote when a shudder ran the length of the shielded flooring he was crouched on. He disengaged his gravity boots and turned around to see what had appeared to be a solid metal housing case for the engine bay began to open letting light and the vista of a surreal, silent space battle, like a movie on mute except for the sub which only worked when the Hunter took a hit.
“Wyatt, they’re activating the jump engines! Forget it, we need to move now!” Silsbury ordered. The two behemoth creations began to cycle up, increasing the vibration in the bay tenfold.
The three BPA Officers sped for the opening hatch as energy sparked and coiled within the jump engines. With their propulsion packs on full throttle they reached the now fully open aperture just as the Elegant Anguish swooped past and around the larger ship, moving at a speed that allowed it to avoid most of the fiery volleys from the regrouping Bretonian forces.
Walden swung the armoured transport around in front of them at near full speed with the cargo bay door open.
“GO, GO, GO!” he yelled.
Behind them the Immortal Hunter began to hum with energy and the weapons shut down, the Anguish sheltered alongside it.
They almost made it to the transport under their own steam but something assisted them.
With an almighty shockwave the energy from the jump engines discharged along their lines to merge and then follow the conduit to the prow of the ship… there was something in the way…
Although Wyatt hadn’t had time to set up a remote detonator, a billion kilowatts of energy did the trick just fine.
Some of the energy still managed to find its way to the front of the ship and create the rip needed, the Elegant Anguish sped through without a moment’s hesitation and the Hunter made to follow, but with a rapidly disintegrating aft end it didn’t stand much of a chance.
Against the odds, all three BPA Officers were blown straight into the waiting cargo bay of the transport which was then shunted over a klick away, rolling over and over until Walden could right the craft
Silsbury, rather battered from colliding with the interior hull plates brought herself to a position where she could see the spectacle.
The Bretonian ships had not left off the battering and the vaporizing engine section sparked and glowed as oxygen streamed out of the rents caused by the catastrophic explosion, yet still the vessel moved forwards.
The front of the Hunter passed into the distortion which had been ripped in the space ahead of it but there was not enough energy left to keep it open. The jaws of the tear in the universe closed mercilessly on the ship, ripping the front half along with it and leaving a sparking and spinning aft which soon exploded quite spectacularly.
When the brightness decreased Lucy unshielded her eyes to see shards of ship still burning as the last pockets of oxygen escaped, with disappointment she noted that none of the engines themselves were complete enough to be worth studying.
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