Sunken Spaceship by Anthony J. Melchiorri

Author:Anthony J. Melchiorri [Melchiorri, Anthony J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2024-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

-29-

Welp. That was it. We were too late.

The poacher’s ship Slade and friends were flying didn’t have any weapons, and we had only our shoddy PDCs which conveniently were still low on ammunition. Audrey claimed she wasn’t in pain, and maybe as a bio-mech plant-AI thing she wasn’t lying. But she didn’t look like she was in tip-top shape to help guide and maintain the ship.

I didn’t need Renata or Audrey to tell me we weren’t going to outrace the enemy. Maybe, just maybe, the enemy didn’t have the capability to spot us through our lousy cloaking system. But they sure as hell were going to see Slade’s ship.

We clearly needed a better plan than just booking it toward the Bender. I fully intended on making it out of this system. I mean, I had literally just decided to join the Protected Species Division, and this was my first official mission. I had been so determined to prove everyone wrong. I wanted them to know that humans—even a Terran—could earn their spot in the Rangers. But like an alligator after an elephant, I had truly tried to bite off more than I could chew.

Then I let out a laugh.

“What’s funny, Terran?” Renata asked.

“Irony,” I said.

“It’s overrated. You know what’s not funny? Three ships headed down our way.”

“I suggest we stay right where we are and wait for them to land and disembark,” the Thraaxan said. “Then we take off. At least then we would have a head start.”

Audrey glimmered a faint blue. “I am afraid the probability of success presented by your plan may not be optimal.”

“Why is that?”

“They already have a lock on this ship. Unfortunately, the technology of the Gate Transporter is rather primitive compared to modern spacefaring craft. That’s why the poachers were able to use a rudimentary EMP to disable my communications and infiltrated the⁠—”

“The point, Audrey?” I asked.

“The poachers already synced up comms between the ship Dr. Slade is currently piloting and our own. This has integrated us automatically into the poachers’ spatial positioning system, meaning that as soon as they made it through the bend, Calgren knew exactly where we are despite our cloaking systems.”

“Oh, crap.”

“Yes, I too assess that this is a situation best described as feces.”

“Then that settles it.” Renata took the pilot controls. “We’re going to have fly past them.”

I raised my hand to stop her from accelerating out of atmo. “Hold up on that. I’ve got another idea. Let them come to us.”

Renata looked at me as if I had two heads. Although, come to think of it, that may not have been that strange in her experience.

The Thraaxan merely scoffed. “I knew it would be a bumbling primate that eventually got me killed.”

“Don’t make me regret releasing you from that cage.”

Before they all came to the same conclusion that the Thraaxan did, I explained my plan. My idea was to draw the enemy closer, right into the reach of the IMP we’d hijacked earlier. Then we’d turn their own weapons against them.

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