Remnants and Fallout

[arvg]

The surge of Marines, under Rhade's leadership had secured the Hispania, but the looming threat of the onrushing Coalition strike force was something none of them could ignore...

XiaoBei had crossed to the Hispania, and was pouring over the navigation logs, a cigarette clenched between his lips, and a stale cup of tea in his hand.

"It's a damn mess," he exclaimed, looking pensive. Rhade and others had gathered in the control room to listen to the Doctor as he analysed the data.

"Before we interfered the Hispania was on course for Gran Canaria, almost smack on course..." he puffed the cigarette, "you know that would have put the Hispanians on a rich, furtile world... and considering the proximity of Omega-52... with the furtile world of JiangXi... well simply put, the Hispanians would have become one of the most dominant forces in Sirius... arguably planetwise, a match for Liberty, given Omega-7, and Dublin... definately richer than Bretonia and Rhienland." He shook his head, "amazing really, the potential that was robbed from them..."

Rhade leaned back in the Hispania's command chair. "Well what do we do, can we get the engines restarted and get it on course for Omega-52 as planned?"

"It would take too long to figure out an override to the navigation system," XiaoBei responded. By then the Sol Coalitioners will be on top of us... I could try sabotaging the navigation systems, and sort of... well... try a ballistic shot at Omega-52, but we're talking the equivalent of trying to shoot out the eyes of a Raquel Welch poster at 10 kilometers... and not all of us are Dimitriov with a rifle."

"And so we have a choice," Rhade mused. "Either we allow the Hispania to restart, and hit Gran Canaria... and become the Uber Corsair nation... or we take the long shot and pray?"

"If we wait, the Sol Coalition will undoubtedly destroy the Hispania, and us along with it." XiaoBei looked grim. "I'd recommend, if we try the sabotage, that we take the Hispania's DNA-ARK with us on the Resurgency... damaging the Hispania's systems will require a lot of power, and well... the DNA-ARK is considered expendable when compared to the Cryo-pods... we might be able to save the DNA-database if we put it on the Resurgency..."

"We'll get on it," Rhade reassured.

"Then we don't have much time," XiaoBei concluded. "Let's secure everything we can, copy databases, the DNA-ARK... everything that's not nailed down, and get it across to our ship. At least we should be able to preserve some of the things that could be lost, should the Hispania wind up in a star somewhere..."

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