Tagrale

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

“What?” asked Jenna. “Wait… it’s out of range for my sensors still. Patch it through.”

“I’m not sure… hang on… let me… ah, there you go. I’ve never had to do that before.”

Jenna’s display updated to show the incoming blips. She turned her ship toward them and boosted her speed. The lack of IDs made it seem likely the ships weren’t there for any good reason, but she needed to find out for sure before they got near to the station.

“Wait… they’re sending something,” sent Slav. “It’s a message. Text only. I’ll patch that through too.”

The message started scrolling across Jenna’s screen.

The Tagrale is sacred. It should be left alone. Evacuate your station and leave now. We will destroy your station when we arrive. The Tagrale will be returned to purity.

Short and to the point, and making it very clear their aims weren’t peaceful. But who were they?

“That doesn’t sound like the Coalition,” Jenna said. “Or like any group I’ve heard of. Why aren’t they identifying themselves?”

“I’d guess that they don’t care whether we know who they are. Quite possibly because they don’t intend for any of us to survive this. There’s no way we could evacuate even a fraction of the people on the station before they arrive. Can you… damn, I can’t believe I’m asking you this when they have so many ships, but can you deal with them?”

“I’ll certainly try, though I don’t know what we’re facing yet. My sensors should start picking them up in a minute or so, and they’re going to be able to pick out a lot more details.”

“Good. Ours weren’t exactly designed for combat!”

He was right. Jenna remembered the details of the station from her briefing. The sensors were designed to detect and guide ships coming in, not to pick out the number of weapons on an enemy. The station did have some decent shields and some point defence weapons which could make a fighter think twice. Though only if…

“Please tell me your shields are powered up,” she said.

“Not fully. We run them at sixty percent. Anything higher than that really puts a strain on our generators.”

“Well put a strain on them! Get those shields building. You should be able to get them close to full power in the time that’s left.”

“Wait… yes. Sorry, I didn’t think of it. I’ve done it now. Energy building. I’ll… I’ll activate the weapons too. I just need to look up how to do that.”

Jenna bit back a sharp reply, reminding herself that Slav was a scientist, not a member of the navy. This would all be new to him, new and unexpected. She should be grateful he was holding up as well as he was.

“You’re doing fine,” she said. “If there’s anyone outside the station you need to warn them to either get back within five minutes or stay clear. I don’t think our new friends are going to be fussy in choosing their targets.”

“But we have children here! They must not realise. Surely they wouldn’t attack a station with children on it, would they?”

Could he be that naive? The Coalition had certainly attacked targets knowing there were children there. Much as it hurt her to admit it, the League had occasionally as well. The League had never chosen targets because there were children there, but sometimes they were chosen despite knowing children would be killed.

Before Jenna could say anything her attention was drawn to her displays. The incoming ships were now within range of her own military grade sensors and she knew what she was up against.

Damn. Sixteen fighters and something much bigger. Was it military too? No, it was a large freighter but it didn’t seem to have more than a smattering of weapons.

She turned her attention back to the fighters. All of them were Sabre Mark Fours. Older models, but capable fighters if they’d been well maintained. She’d flown a Mark Nine herself when on the front line so she had a healthy respect for even the older version.

She didn’t have a Sabre now. She was flying a Serpent, a ship that was larger than a fighter while still maintaining the ability to dogfight if needed. That was something to be glad about… she had a feeling it would definitely be needed soon.

“Any idea what’s out there?” asked Slav. “Our sensors are showing sixteen small ships and one that’s much larger, but that’s about it.”

Of course… her information wouldn’t automatically link back to the station. She’d assumed they’d see what she would — every ship in a military fleet would share information automatically. She entered the necessary commands.

“There you go,” she replied. “The Sabres will be dangerous to any shuttles or small ships but you’ve got time for them to dock or get clear. You should be fine. The Sabres won’t even dent your shields and the freighter has less firepower than they do so it’s not a threat.”

“Then what do they hope to achieve? Are they just going to come in close and try to blockade us? Are they going to sit out there and send more messages telling us we shouldn’t be here?”

What were they trying to achieve? Slav was right, the only option seemed to be trying a blockade. She couldn’t directly stop that, but she should be able to harass them and pick ships off over time. If they were stupid enough to get within range of the station’s weaponry then it would make sure they couldn’t hang around very long.

So they must be planning to pull up short of the station and wait things out. Hardly a genius move. The station had enough supplies to last for a year at least and the League would figure out something was wrong well before that.

Hell, the station could send a distress signal if it came to it. Unless it was jammed. Maybe that was what the freighter was for, that and to provide supplies to the fighters. Jenna knew from experience that it was possible to spend nine or ten days crammed into the cockpit of a fighter. She also knew just how damn unpleasant things got if you did.

The ships were coming in at a fair speed. That was fine for the fighters, but if the freighter was as heavily laden as she thought then it would need to start slowing soon or end up pouring energy into the engines for a much harsher crash stop.

She checked the speed of the freighter and how it had been changing, information her ship had automatically been logging, and her heart froze. The freighter wasn’t slowing. It was speeding up. In fact it seemed to be pushing its engines hard to get as much speed as possible.

She had a sinking feeling in her stomach that told her why it was doing that, but she still had to check to be sure. She cursed loudly as her instinct was proved correct.

“Slav,” she said over the comm. “We’ve got a problem. The freighter is accelerating hard… and it’s on a collision course with the station!”