Green lights flashed. Sirens howled discordantly. Renjo flailed impotently for several heartbeats as he floated aimlessly, nowhere close to a holdfast. A bit of junk, smoking, drifted by and he dazedly shoved at it; the reaction pushed him toward a bulkhead.
"Someone turn off the alarms!" An answering groan didn't acknowledge the order, but the silence a moment later did. "What in the gods' eyes happened?"
Turnnanan, a new rating on its first voyage and a treaty-mandated exchange just to complicate matters, scanned its readouts. "We've been holed! Venting on two decks, drive is offline, Navigation is completely scrambled...more reports coming in."
"Condense it!"
"We won't blow up just yet, Commander, but it's not out of the question!"
Renjo, Commander of the Flagship of the Second Fleet of The Dero Trading Partners Territory, growled. Their path had diverged from that of the Ollan Consortium fleet with whom they had been trading blows, years ago. They were much too distantly separated to be exchanging fire now and neither side had opened negotiations on when to resume hostilities yet. What had hit them?
He relayed this to the bridge crew in general. "So where did this come from?"
Turnnanan had gotten a bit more function restored to its displays and was clearly scrolling back through the hull monitors when its display flared white and it recoiled. "Screee! It was an energy bolt coming up from astern!"
Astern? Behind them? What could possibly be chasing them? What would dare?
Dero Trading Partners were one of the, if not the largest commercial enterprises in civilized space. To protect its business territory, the Partners Delivery Fleet consisted of heavy cargo vessels that, in addition to consisting of cargo stacks that could envelop entire asteroids if necessary, also bristled with sufficient firepower to reduce those same asteroids to gravel. Few entities, commercial or military, even considered engaging Dero on any level but trade. It was virtually unthinkable; Dero's reputation was such that the reputation alone was almost enough to fend off any blatant, frontal engagement.
For their own part, the Consortium's fleet was neither as powerful nor as capacious - but their ships were faster, nimbler and shielded to a degree that Dero weapons were not a sure thing. And the Ollans had been sending sales forces into Dero territory for a couple of lifetimes now, and the wretched creatures were proving difficult to rout out. Worse, their prices were good so their customers weren't keen to help Dero in their efforts.
"What is behind us, Nanan?"
"Nothing! Nothing for light-years, Commander. I mean - there is, but it's just that undeveloped world. Got hit in some crossfire a while back but there's nothing important there."
That sounded like it might have more meaning, if he picked at the statement, so he did. "How unimportant is it, Nanan?"
"Well..." Turnnanan read quickly, three eyes on the displays. It was able to assimilate a tremendous amount of information quickly since it could read separate passages simultaneously and compile them on the go. "It says here the dominant sentient species was only marginally space capable. Really primitive, interplanetary only. No significant weapons to speak of. They called themselves 'humans' but when their planet got grazed in our passage it looked like we had upset their climate so much that their evolution was doomed. They didn't communicate meaningfully and no envoys were dispatched. I don't think Corporate intended any kind of compensation since they're so unadvanced."
"So what is behind us? Is it them?"
"I can't see how. Ee?"
Ee had clambered to her pedestal and gotten Navigation back on line. Navs had better 'scopes than the Science station but the two could be interconnected. She had taken control of the telescopes again, however, because no one could disagree that her vision would surpass anyone else's on the bridge; her entire head was a light-gathering organ, lidless and beautiful. "Commander," she hummed, "I see a vessel gaining from astern."
"Ollan?"
"Nnnooo." She moved her head side to side, fixated on the display. "It is an unknown craft. It is vvvvvvverrrryyyy small. Ssssssoooo small. It is beeaauuuutiful." She hummed and wove, moving the image from the scopes around on her tremendous receiving surface, an optical caress. "It is firing. Oooooohhhh, it is firing. Firing. Ffffiiirrrriiinggg. Mmm. Firing. Firing. Mmm. Firing."
Ee could be like this. When she looked hard at something, she could become introspective and dreamy. Now wasn't the time for it, though. "Can you describe the ship any better than 'small and beautiful?'"
"It appearsssss to be constructed around the barrel of a damaged Director-class cannonononon. Oh, the cannononon is their primary drive. It is a reaction drrrrriiiivvvvvve look at it go. It is beautiful. Such colors. The drive plume is redredredredredshifted so far, so far. But the ship itself, it is blue. Blue. Blue unto blue.
"It is firing. Firing. Mmm, mmm. Firing."
"Turnnanan! Does that ship look like a human craft?"
Ee blew up the image and sent it to Turnnanan's display, where it compared the image rapidly to several others. "Can't say for sure, Commander. There are many elements in common. The scale is right. But..."
wham
Ee reported, "New damage reports, mmm. New. New. Mmm. We are holed again. Close to the first strike. One crewmate is dead. They are holed. Holed, like the ship."
"Ee! Focus!"
"...but nothing in any of the analyses indicated any human capability like this, Commander," Turnnanan finished.
"How the hell do you think they got hold of a Director?"
"Wreckage? We lost five ships on the way through that system. Maybe they found one with the generator still in order?"
"So what are they hitting us with?"
"I have no idea, Commander but it is hitting way harder than anything the Ollans ever shot at us. It even beats our own weapons, it's going through our own armor like,"
wham
A hole, not much wider than Renjo's own foot, appeared in the deck near his foot. At the same moment, Turnnanan's head disappeared in a cloud of gray mist, as another hole appeared in the same moment in a bulkhead beyond it. Air rumbled out through the punctures even as compact patch bots surged out of their cabinets, bearing meteor patches to stem the ship bleeding away all its air.
"...like thaaaaat," Ee said.
"Ee! When you say 'firing, firing' over and over like that, are you being emphatic?"
"Oooh, noooooo," she breathed. "Firing and firing. Mmm. Oooh, more. Firing. They are accurate. Their aim is good." She observed her display, entranced. "It is suuuuuch a good pattern. We are trapped. We cannot evaaaaaaaaade even at this distance maybe if we had seen them coming sooner. They are fast. Goooooood aiming. Firing."
Renjo fumed. Even Ollan would never dare such ferocious attacks, not on Dero.
These humans must be really mad. Maybe it would be a good idea to advise Dero - and other Ollan ships, for that matter - to be more careful where their stray shots went, when passing through occupied systems. Even primitive ones.
"Firing. Firing. So blue. They are coming fast. Firing."
Clearly these humans had never heard of Dero Trading Partners...and neither did they seem inclined to listen, nor that Renjo would get the chance to tell them.
"Mmm. Firing."
