章 72: Death Swarm
"Hold on, I'm picking something up." Mei said. "New contacts lifting off of Ceres' surface."
"Kirnis Base is launching fighters?" I asked.
"No, those aren't..." Mei stopped. "What are they? The identification system doesn't work. They show up as unknown contacts."
"Keep boosting away." I said.
"Sir, orbital defense fleets are getting out of their predetermined orbits. Tachibana's fleet carrier is launching it's drones." Mei said. "They are preparing for combat, but I can't see what enemy they are facing."
"Contact Kirnis Base and ask for a situation report." I said.
"May I take one of your shuttles to transfer to my ship?" asked Tachibana.
"Not with all the bullets flying around, you can't." I said. "That sounds like suicide."
A short klaxon activated.
"We are getting fired upon!" said Mei. "Again!"
"It is a swarm! A fleet is swarming us!" said Tachibana.
"My goodness!" said Frans. He was scared, and to be honest, I was scared too; it was the correct type of response to the situation.
"Evasive manuevers!" I said.
"Won't work." said Mei. "I'm trying, but those... whatever they are, their acceleration rates surpass ours by a large margin. I think they might be unmanned."
"Flak missiles!" I said.
"They are closing in too much, we might hurt ourselves if we are not careful." said Tachibana.
"Then let Mei be careful!" I said. "Flak!"
"Flaks away!" said Mei. "Point defense lasers are having a hard time keeping on target. Actuators and servos aren't fast enough to catch the targets."
We heard an explosion behind the cockpit. The walls vibrated.
"What was that just now?" Nuan asked.
"Great." said Mei. "We have one less water tank, and some coolant piping is damaged. The main propulsion hydraulic gimbaling subsystem has lost it's -x axis."
"What does that even mean!?" asked Frans. "Are we dead?"
"We can't rotate the main engines along their horizontal axis, towards left." I said. "Nothing to worry about."
"I'm pulling back on the throttle, or with the damaged coolants, we will fry ourselves." Mei said.
"Flak missiles aren't doing as well as we would expect." said Tachibana.
"Wish we had railguns..." said Mei.
"They were scheduled to be installed. Only if we had more time..." I said.
"Mei, watch it!" shouted Tachibana.
"I see!" said Mei, but couldn't avoid the threat. We were hit from our top side again, as one of those unknown spacecraft made a close flyby. This time, Lodos' inner hull was pierced, causing a sudden decompression in some crew segments. In order to prevent all the air from leaking off into space, the undamaged segments automatically shut their doors closed.
"Damn!" I said.
"Did you see that!?" asked Mei. "Did you just see that? What was it!?"
"I have no idea." said Tachibana. "But I have a recording."
I went over to sensors console to see what Tachibana had. He opened it up for me - and there was a partial 3D view of the unknown vessel. It had a 3-way radially symmetric design, with spiky ends. A lot of thin antenna-like structures were all over it, suggesting it to be a drone. The overall size of the vessel itself was a bit smaller than a general use Republic Navy shuttle.
"What the hell is this?" I asked. "Reminds me of the old orbital mines we saw in the academy."
"They don't look like exploding to me." said Tachibana. "But I see what you mean."
"They are turning around, incoming!" shouted Mei. "Seven o'clock, +30 degrees! 4 kilometers!"
"Rotate braodside!" I ordered.
"You will get us killed!" said Tachibana.
"If we can't evade them, we will have to shoot back as hard as possible." I said.
"Aye, sir." said Mei, and rotated the ship's widest side towards the enemy. In this position, we presented the enemy with a big target to shoot at; but on the other hand, one that could shoot back the hardest.
"Lasers firing!"
"We are taking them out pretty quickly." said Mei. "Oh no!"
On the attack run, one of those spacecraft could not break away and collided with Lodos. The impact caused the ship to suddenly pitch down. Since the bridge was located behind the ship's center of mass, I got smashed into the ground. Everyone else was seated, so they were mostly fine.
"My arm!" I moaned. "That hurt!"
"They are coming back for yet another attack run!" Mei said.
"Full on ECM!" I said. "Forget lasers, all power to electronic warfare this time! Rotate bow!"
"Yes, sir!" said Mei.
"Do you think it is going to work on something that heavily relies on electronics?" said Tachibana. "They must be hardened against those sort of interference."
"We have no choice." I said. "Nothing we can throw at those will stop them. Throw a few more flak missiles!"
"Flaks away!"
The missiles exploded ahead of us and created a high-velocity fragment cloud flying towards the drone swarm. We could destroy a few of them, but a large portion still made it past the cloud.
"Incoming!"
This time, instead of making a flyby, the drones moved to encircle (more precisely, ensphere) us.
"We are taking fire from all sides!" said Mei. "We won't last long."
I looked back at Nuan and Frans. Both were silent, but scared to death. They could understand very well what was going on.
"Wait." I said. "I have an idea. We are still not done yet. Mei, give me the ship."
She instantly got the helmet off and jumped out of her seat. I sat down on the commander's chair and put the helmet on. Turning the ship's bow directly towards the ground, I carefully zeroed our vertical speed relative to Ceres, and began waiting for the right moment.
As the drones were pushing themselves towards Lodos from below, (despite Mei's warnings) I engaged the main engines to full power, towards the drone swarm. We started losing altitude rapidly. Because of the combined acceleration of both Lodos and the swarm itself in the opposite directions, they zipped past us at high speed, in a matter of milliseconds, which gave them little opportunity to shoot at us. However, after that point, I kept accelerating towards the ground. The drone swarm, no matter how good it's acceleration rate was, needed some time to accelerate back towards the ground and catch up with us.
"I hope you know what you are doing." said Mei.
"You are going to get us killed!" yelled Nuan.
"Don't worry, I think I know what he has in mind." said Tachibana.
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