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V2 Chapter 16: Escape
🕑 Added 2023-01-28 15:00:05 +0000 UTCWith the rest of the team doing their best to do the jobs of a dozen different positions that they had no experience in, Sevs didn't have many options. It wasn't always a good idea for the captain to leave the ship, but he had no delusions that he could be a captain as he was now. There were really no orders to give and nothing that he couldn't trust Soshal to handle.
Slipping through the pillars blocking the elevator off from the command pedestal, he ran to Robert's side. The doors had started to crack open on one of the lifts, and Robert was doing his best to fire in the crack. Sevs went to the side instead of joining him. He hooked his fingers on the elevator door and, with all he might, threw them open. This exposed a couple Tarlaki who were clinging to the far wall trying to brace the doors open. They were not ready for the cover to disappear, and with a couple quick pivots, Roberts dropped many of them down the shaft.
Doing his best to assist, Sevs cleared the rest of the shaft with him. All in all, there was a full squad trying to claim up. But with warning and having done the same trick themselves, the climbers were basically fish in a barrel to Robert and Sevs. After that was cleared, they listened for sounds on the other two doors. These still had their lift cars in them, so they provided a slightly different danger. The hope was that they would still have the alert sounds on them, so it would make it more difficult to climb up them, but they would have to do a similar thing that Sevs and crew had to do when coming up and cutting the car.
Crisis averted, Sevs went back to check on their progress. The ships had started to rock slightly, but somehow they had managed to position themselves such that their engines weren't taking too much damage. Other ships were slow to respond, but they were turning their weapons toward them. With minimal defenses, he was not enthused about taking shots from so many.
Their quick action and strategic targeting of ships they were in a position to follow had paid off, and it gave him a bit more time to get up to speed. It looks like they had bought themselves a couple minutes. But that was all. It all came down to how the humans would react.
Bexy was at the console, continuously trying to work away around signal jamming. It looked like she had managed to establish some communication channels though it seemed to be a very manually intensive task to avoid suppression.
Sevs let out a small cheer as he saw a few of the human ships peel away from the retreating fleet. There were four ships. Two heavy destroyers and two lighter fast ships were closer to where Sevs had first spawned. Along with the rear weapons, they let a full barrage on the few ships blocking the captured Tarlaki ship's escape.
Jason and Carl were so wrapped up in keeping their pursuers off their rear that they didn't have the spare attention to assist in clearing a path for them to escape. Bexy, however, had hopped off coms in order to send a few commands to the front weapons of the ship. The weapons were not very effective, not even a quarter as powerful as the light ships coming to the rescue, but they at least did something. Without a human controlling the weapons, all they could really do was fire in front of them, but every little bit helped.
The human ships approached as the volleys from the fleet and their more close-range weapons engaged the carriers right in front. The attack ships the Tarlaki mainly relied on were mostly engaged with the retreating human fleet or had already docked again. They spewed out of the ships around them, but it was taking a while. And this brief moment allowed two of the three carriers to be completely destroyed in front of them and the other to be crippled and start limping off to the side.
They continue to head at full power, shooting for the gap in the formation. The ship was rocking crazily now, but they were making progress. Now in a range of the ships, the destroyers moved behind them to shield them as they exited the formation. Some of the heavy destroyers took significant hits to save the captured enemy carrier.
In close range, they received some direct transmissions. It wasn't a clear signal, but the voice of another Captain came through. "We're sending you coordination to a rendezvous point. Lightspeed there as soon as possible."
Bexy read out a string of numbers and then turned to Sevs. "Third console on the right. I need you to enter these."
He ran quickly over to the console she indicated. Looking at the screen, he made very little sense of it but could see a numpad even if you didn't recognize the characters. Seeing the only field there blinking, he typed in the numbers as she read them out. She did something over on her screen, and then Soshal called out. "Are we ready?"
Sevs and Bexy both confirmed that they were ready. Soshal made a few changes on her console, and they felt the light drive kick in. Before they even made it to the new location, Bexy was reading off another string. Sevs ended it, and they jumped again the second they stabilized. It seemed that they were not taking any risks of being followed. They stabilized, and alarms started to flash. Their engines cut out and sputtered.
Sevs looked at Soshal. "Did we take too much damage?"
"No, it looks like sabotage."
Bexy flicked a few things on her screen, and a video appeared on the screen, replacing the image of the deep space in front of them. It was a captain that they were not familiar with. "What's the situation?"
Sevs stood. His first instinct was to give a quick rundown of the events, but he squashed that down. "We have six in control of the bridge. The rest of the ship is hostile, and they just cut the engines. I'm sure they felt the jump and suspect they know we have left. I request assistance."
The captain nodded. "I'm sending over some boarding parties. Some of my staff will talk to your comms operator to get what you can do to make the ship the most welcoming."
Sevs noted the complete lack of formality from the captain. It wasn't something he was used to from the training he had had so far. He did know that each player was different. It was important to match your level of professionalism to your superiors. Or at least not have less. So he continued the conversation in the same casual tone. "She will do what she can. She doesn't have official training on coms or this tech, but we have pretty much figured it out. The language is quite bizarre."
The man nodded. "I know some people who managed to decipher it, but it's pretty rare. Oh. I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Captain Walters, commander of the Avalon."
"Private Sevs," Sevs said with a salute.
"So what is your story Sevs?"
Sevs was kind of wondering if there's anything more productive they could be doing, but it seems like the captain just wanted to chat a little bit. Becky was messing with their console and had elicited Jason and Carl's help. Soshal seemed to be running some sort of flight checks, and Robert held the door. It didn't seem like there was anything that he needed to do immediately, so he just heard the captain.
Launching into a brief explanation of their ship being destroyed, their rush to the escape pods, failure to find one, and the retreat into one of the attack shuttles. The captain listened with wrap attention. And when he heard about the retrieval system of the attack ships, he nodded slowly. "We've never actually managed to get someone inside of those, from my knowledge. But it was always assumed that those were automatically controlled. I wonder why it works like that. Probably some system nonsense. Anyways we should be boarding any second now. Hold tight, and we'll come and get you."
Without the transmission abruptly cut off. Sevs looked to Bexy. "What's going on?"
"I shut off the anti-ship defenses along with alarms. I did my best to remove any of the locks and barriers to the boarding. In the next few minutes, they should be landing. Oh, I'm also blocking as many comms as I can. It's pretty hard to do much more than that, though. If this was a human ship, there might be more we can do."
"Sounds like there's not much more we can do right now, so I'd sit and wait to be rescued. Carl and Jason, go help Robert."
