“Missiles away, Captain.”

  “Is everything locked down and everyone suited up?”

  “Yes, Captain, the crew are all green except the bridge.”

  He o the man. “Helmets on people.”

  Once he sealed his helmet and the crew gave him a thumbs up, he vehe bridge and the rest of the partments that hadn’t beeed already. He hated being stu a vac-suit but it was better than dying from asphyxiation.

  The ship went eerily quiet as all the air umped out. His only sehat things were w was the slight vibration he felt through his chair. Vitor still wasn’t sure this was the best decision, but it was better thaing the pirates take out the orbital defenses and assault the facility. Even with the Marines on board, there was no way he was risking a ground assault with only two shuttles and no armored drop ships aboard the Dawn. And he only had so many missiles, not nearly enough to take out that eructure on the ground. That left a space battle as his only option. Hopefully, the STO’s stealth tech would give them the advahey needed.

  “Missiles have fired off their drives, ta three, two, one.”

  “Three targets crippled. The rest of the missiles were shot down, sed volley away.”

  “ons, target sers on the crippled ships, I want them out of the fight.”

  “Lasers firing, third volley away. Only two missiles made it through this time, Captain. They are turning to engage, but they don’t have an accurate lo us yet.”

  “At least the stealth armor was good for something,” he muttered without transmitting. He would take any advantage he could get, maybe they would get lucky and e out of this e without any damage. “Evasive maneuvers, let's keep our advantage as long as we . Has the station started firing at them?”

  “It has, Sir. Although the autoons are having little effe the bigger ships' armor… Scratch that, Sir. Someofitted that wreck with a very powerful ser, it just cut into one of the light destroyers. That ship has lost power.”

  Vithed. Whoever was in charge down there still had some tricks up their sleeves. Maybe they would survive after all.

  Theched as the big ship fired all of her guns at the station. The two smaller ships that were strapped to the frigate took the brunt of the impacts, but a gunship was not desigo survive a full volley from a capital ship. The rge kiic rounds tore through the ships and into the frigate, but not before the ship fired again. The invisible beam tore through spad left a massive glowi on the heavy cruiser’s side.

  The plucky little frigate didn’t get a third shot as another volley of darts tore through the ship. With nothing to blunt their impact, the damage must have knocked out the ons.

  While the big ship was occupied, Epsilon’s Dawn tio whittle away at the fleet of pirates. But they hadn’t done so without takiurn fire. The pirates, uo get a direct lo them had simply saturated the area of space his ship was in and hoped to get lucky.

  The ship shook under him as the armor shrugged off impact after impact from the enemy's autoons and the Gauss ons from the big ship. He hadn’t really believed the engineers wheold him the Dawn’s armor would be much more durable than normal armor, but here roof of that.

  “Sir, We ’t take much more, the armor is starting to fracture uhe repeated impacts.” And there was the disadvantage of this type of armor. It was tough but brittle by design. He wasn’t sure why aliens had preferred it over tempered steel or posite ceramic, but they did. He supposed he couldn’t pin. Normal armor wouldn’t have held up this long.

  “See if you shake them off. If we do enough damage, they might leave on their own.”

  ***

  “Alex, the STO ship is firing on the pirates!”

  Stunned by the ge of circumstances, he quickly reevaluated his pn of attack. “Fire the ship guns, and power up the ser. Aim for the biggest ship you .”

  “On it!” Lucas replied as he hastily sent ands to the frigate’s ons. “The guns aren’t doing much, and the targeting puter is off on the ser. I did hit one of the other ships, but I o quickly recalcute the drift.”

  Alexander prayed Lucas made the ge in time. Now that the enemy khey had a ser, they weren’t going to just leave it out there to tear them apart.

  “I hit it!” Lucas cheered. A moment ter, his tune ged. “The ser lost power, Alex!”

  “Is the reactor still online?” If it was, there was still a ce the gun could get off one more shot.

  “Yeah, reactor and uplink are still good, why?”

  He thahe stars. As long as the enemy missed the power shunt, they had a ce. “Switch to the bypass. And don’t wait for it to charge, just shoot the thing as fast as you .”

  ***

  Katelynn had expected some form of trap, but she hadn’t expected the ship that was tearing her fleet apart from the rear. Of course, that was wherap sprung and one of her frigates was taken offline by a single ser shot. Who the hell puts a ser that powerful on a frigate? They must be using the entire reactor just to power it.

  Then her ship was hit as that deadly beam carved a rge gash into her armor. Her crew had sile after that, and now they were turning to take on this ghost ship.

  “We have them on ser now, Lagertha!” the sensor operator crowed.

  “Pull it up on the s, I wan!”

  The video showed a bck hole in space, highlighted by the occasional fsh as a round struck their armor a sparks flickering into the vacuum.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “It looks to be about the size of a cruiser, Lagertha,” the sensor tei replied quickly.

  How the hell had a ship that rge gotten so close without being spotted? She could find out after disabling it.

  “I want every ship to fire missiles at that bastard. Take it down!” As she gave the order, the Valkyrie shook violently. “What the hell was that!?”

  “The ser on that frigate is firing again, Lagertha. It must have hit the missile ste on one of the light destroyers, it exploded and the debris hit us.”

  She wao scream in rage, but she swallowed that emotion. “Full speed ahead, take down that ship a us to a jump point.”

  As her fleet and the unknown ship closed on each other, it started fshing out sers, but they were not quite as powerful as the ser mounted on the frigate defending the small station. Katelynn knew when a battle was lost and she would not throw the lives of her people away for nothing.

  Damage began to mount up on both sides. She even tried firing the Valkyrie's ser. The on actually worked, but other than causing a se of the mystery ship to glow white hot, the beam did no noticeable damage to the ghost ship’s armor. It did make the ship a much easier target though, which allowed her people to focus fire more accurately on the rge ship. Her kiics were doing damage, but every missile that was fired its way was cut down. That ship had the best point-defense systems she had ever seen. There was one final violent exge as the ships crossed paths. The ghost ship fell silent after that. She would have smiled in triumph if that damn ser on that frigate wasn’t still hitting her ships, even at this distance.

  Soon they reached a safe enough jump point and she ordered a mip to clear the bat zone. When they exited, only sixteen of her twenty-two ships remained. She didn’t knoas responsible for her people’s deaths, but she k wasn’t Arkonis Anazi. She had fought that man a few times, and he was a coward by nature. Whoever was running this operation knew what they were doing.

  “I’ll be in my quarters, I expect a damage report within the hour. Then I want us out of this system, I don’t care if you have to burn out the FTL to do it, just get it done.” She got out of her chair aed the bridge, her fury barely restrained.

  ***

  Vitor awoke with a start. He wasn’t sure how long he had been unscious, but the ship was lit by fshing emergency lighting and it seemed like the power to the gravity pting was offline. He wasn’t even sure if they had been successful. The pirates might still be out there, waiting to return and finish him off or capture the Epsilon’s Dawn for themselves.

  He looked around the bridge, but everyone was still strapped in their chairs and unmoving. They were all either dead or unscious. It robably for the best. He unbuckled himself and floated over to a panel on the wall. Holding himself in pce, he reached into his vac-suit pocket and pulled out his ID badge. When he slid it along the panel, it popped open, revealing a keyhole outlined in red with the words ‘Self-Destruct’ on it.

  The nuke would ehe ship's teology didn’t fall into the wrong hands. He pced the key into the lod tur. But nothing happened. He tried it again. The on should have detonated instantly. Nothing. He puhe panel i, slowly floating away from the force.

  If he could make it to the room where the on was stored, he could manually deto. Then he looked at the crew, still strapped in their chairs. With a sigh, he pushed off the ceiling and floated over to the closest bridge crew. The man was dead. Something sharp had carved through his suit, venting the remainder of his oxygen. The was dead as well, but the third crewman was alive. When he checked her oxygen, he found it nearly out. Shocked by that revetion, he quickly checked his own oxygen. It was even lower than hers.

  The suits had five hours of stored oxygen, if he was this low, he must have been unscious for at least four hours. He was about to move on to the crewman when he felt the ship shake slightly. Vitor paused and held his hand to the deck. There was another slight shudder. It could be someorying to fix the power systems, but it could also be boarders.

  Vitor drew his sidearm and quickly checked the remaining crew. There were three more alive, but he didn’t know what he could do about it. He could already feel himself getting lightheaded as his low oxygen started to blink yellow in his HUD.

  Something fshed in the er of his eye and he shot toward the bridge door. Now he knew he was halluating because there was a-foot-tall robot standing in the door covered in armor that looked remarkably like the ships. He couldn’t help ughing at the absurdity of his situation before his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he fell unscious again.

  ***

  Alexander was really thankful for the defense field. It stopped both bullets the man fired. They had taken the shuttle out here as fast as possible ohe surviving pirates left, but the ship was quite a ways from the p.

  He hurried over to the man and clipped a device called a R.A.S.P. to the man’s auxiliary oxygen tube. The rescue and stasis pod could gee two hours of oxygen, but it also pumped ihetics to keep the persoed. Which could extend the oxygen supply to four hours if needed. Alexander ehe ahetic feature because he didn’t want a whole bunch of jumpy STO people on the shuttle.

  He quickly checked the rest of the crew on the bridge and provided the survivors with the same device. He tethered them all together and moved toward the airlock where the shuttle was docked.

  Alexander wasn’t the only one sc the ship. Eva and Gabriel had e along, and even Branston had left the shuttle to help out. When he arrived at the airlock, he fouhere, she pointed down the hall and held up four fingers. Alexander nodded and made his way down the corridor after handing off the people he rescued from the bridge.

  It took a little over half an hour to round up the survivors. Fifteen minutes of that was trying to subdue a Marine in augment gear without hurting him. In the end, Alexander had to crush the arm and leg servos to get the man to stop fighting back. He was sure the man was screaming obsities his way until the R.A.S.P. was attached to his suit’s emergency O2 supply, but that was fi least he would be alive.

  With the survivors secured and the angry Marirapped down to the deck so his armor wouldn’t slide around or hurt ahey left the ship.

  Once oxygen was restored to the shuttle, Alexander spoke quietly to Branston. “Once we drop them off at the med ter, I need you to take me to the station to check the damage.”

  That wasn’t the only reason he wao go there. He he six bots to haul that stealth ship back. There was no way he was going to let a ce to i an STO covert ops ship go to waste.