[b]Mountbatten Sector, Battlefront Charlie, Albion[/b]
[i]Imperial Standard Date: 21st December 3160[/i]

Space. Once a vast expanse of silent stillness, a cold, lightless sky that stretched further than any mind could truly comprehend, and played home to wonders scarcely imaginable. A quiet place. A peaceful place. Alas, such a tranquil state of being was seldom experienced any more, particularly along Albion’s frontier – it had not been for some centuries now. Instead, the fires of distant battles flashed and glared through the rent and riven steel of long-abandoned hulks, infested with scavengers, pirates, and a myriad other degenerates and miscreants. Space. An unceasing, uncaring battlefield. A place where human lives in their millions were dashed against the guns of the Zhi, and the relentless Zhi tide in their millions similarly met their end by the guns of Albion. Few survived for long out here. Fewer still returned with their sanity intact, unbroken by the horrors of endless war.

From amidst the shattered wreck of an ancient dreadnought, a small ship cautiously emerged. It was a distincly alien construct; built, in typical Zhi fashion, with scant regard for form or elegance and every accommodation given to ease of mass production. Little more than a steel pyramid, with an exposed thruster at the rear, a brace of lasers crudely riveted onto its hull nearer to its pointed tip, and a mass of pipes and radiator arrays snaking along its sloped sides, betraying the existence of more complex systems within the vessel. Corvettes like this were churned out in their thousands from Zhi industrial worlds, and they were utterly interminable in their raids on Albionic space. Cheap and largely ineffective, perhaps, but their virtue lay in their numbers - the Royal Navy could not be everywhere at once, and it only took a single ship to sneak past and wreak havoc. This ship, however, was not sneaking anywhere today. Cautious though it had been, it was not enough. As its thrusters burned and it shot out into open space, a second ship took note. It could not have been more different to the first. Sleek and streamlined, the long, dark vessel had the air of a predator about it, a bird of prey waiting to dive upon its hapless target. It turned, slowly, to point its slender bow in the direction of the Zhi corvette. In the light of a distant star, the White Ensign glinted upon its wings. An orange glow shone from its engines, accompanied with a low rumble that erupted into a roar as the HMS [i]Bodkin[/i] leapt forth into the chase.

“We’re gaining, Cap’n!" A shout cut through the hectic noise of the warship's bridge as officers scrambled into action, manning their respective stations and making last-minute adjustments on their holographic displays, lights blinking all around them.

“Good. Keep us at full thrust and don’t let him out of our sight. Harris, can we get a torpedo lock?”

“Negative, Cap’n, the fucker’s all over the place. With all those wrecks in the way, we’d be lucky to get a laser on him.”

Luther Carrington grimaced, leaning forward at the bridge for a closer look. Hunting Zhi was never the easiest of tasks – they were slippery bastards at the best of times. Still, as a Knight of the Realm, a privateer ordained by His Majesty King Richard himself, it was his duty. He was not a man who shied away from duty. Luther stood straight. “Alright, bring us in closer and put a shot across his bow, as close as you can manage. How much time do we have before we’re into the Hengest Belt?”

“At full speed, maybe thirty seconds, Cap’n. Ready to fire on your command.”

The Captain nodded. “Do it.”

There was a thunderous crack and a blinding flash of light as one of the [i]Bodkin[/i]’s cannons fired, sending a four-inch high-explosive shell hurtling in the direction of the enemy corvette. Passing a good distance ahead of the frantically weaving ship and slamming into the side of a rotting hulk, it detonated, the blast sending a spray of shrapnel streaking outwards in all directions. Sparks flew as the steel debris glanced off the Zhi vessel, sending it veering off course and buying its pursuer a valuable chance to gain ground. On the bridge of the [i]Bodkin[/i], Carrington’s grimace twitched ever so slightly towards a smile as his foe drew closer, the alien pilot struggling to stabilise his craft. Another shot rang out, but without warning the spinning corvette gained a burst of speed, rocketing towards the first of the giant asteroids that made up the Hengest Belt and leaving the second shell to explode far behind it. The hunter gave chase, always edging ever closer, but its prey slipped out of sight for a split-second behind a stony outcrop. That momentary lapse in line of sight was enough for the Zhi corvette to find a hiding place amongst the rock-strewn sea. The Albionic warship slowed as it too glided past the first asteroids, crew watching intently for a sign of their quarry. Scanners beeping furiously, it edged further in.

“Reckon we’ve passed him, Sir?” Came the voice of the ship’s Navigator, a balding, bespectacled man with beads of perspiration crawling down his glossy forehead.

“I wouldn’t count on it, Mr. Seward,” Luther replied. “He’s out there somewhere, keeping pace with us. These damned Zhi don’t give up easily.” He glared out into the black sky, twitching at every shifting shadow the cloud of rocks conjured up. A faint light flashed for a split second in the distance; the glow of a rocket. The alien pilot had put some considerable distance between himself and the [i]Bodkin[/i]. Clearly, he thought he stood a decent chance of escaping this time. Carrington focused in on his foe like a hawk, eyes narrowed and unblinking. “Thrusters full and man the guns! We’ll sink this bastard yet!”

“Aye aye, Sir!” The response came back near-instantaneously from all corners of the bridge as the warship’s officers hurried to carry out their duties, asteroids shooting past as the vessel dodged and weaved after its foe, missing certain destruction by a hair’s breadth in its relentless pursuit. Shots rang out from the [i]Bodkin[/i]’s smaller guns, probing for the possibility of a good hit. In return, a laser streaked past, slicing off a slab of rock that would certainly have torn a great gash through the chasing ship’s hull had it not rolled out of the way at the last millisecond. On the bridge, the single red blip on the scanner array was joined by a pair more, converging from behind. The first corvette had been bait. It was an ambush.

“Fuck!” The single, ugly word, spat from the Captain’s mouth, summed up the situation rather neatly. As the [i]Bodkin[/i] continued to swerve wildly through the asteroid field, laser pulses from the two more Zhi corvettes that had joined the chase cut through space and bit into rock all around it, a seemingly never-ending barrage of light from the tips of their ghastly pyramid constructs. The distant ship had slowed, and now fired its own weapons backward. It would not be long before one of them scored a lucky hit, no matter how erratically Carrington’s vessel flew. The privateer swore again, glancing around with rapid urgency. “Give me the helm, now!” The flight console slid swiftly over to him on its ceiling track, and he grabbed it with both hands, furiously slamming buttons and levers. The main thrusters’ bright, fiery roar faded to a whisper as he cut power to them, diverting it instead to the smaller engines on the starboard side and throwing the ship into a wide lateral spin, muttering a frantic prayer that no obstacles lay in its path. “Harris, fire both torpedo tubes on my mark!” He yelled, straining against the controls as his vessel continued to spin. A second more, and it had come to face directly backwards, reverse thrusters now engaging to send it flying directly rearwards. “Fire!” Two blinding streaks of light burst forth from beneath the [i]Bodkin[/i], taking a winding path across the short distance to their target. But they did not strike the pursuing aliens. Instead, each torpedo lodged itself into the centre of the closest asteroid and erupted in an explosion of fire and stone blanketing the sky. The corvettes desperately threw their engines into reverse, hoping to avoid the wall of debris, but it was too late. Steel tore and screamed in a tortured cacophony of destruction as they were ripped apart, victims of their own momentum.

The [i]Bodkin[/i] span deftly back around, powering up its great motors once more to resume its pursuit of the final foe. This time, the xeno wretch would not be so lucky. As the rocky labyrinth of the Hengest Belt gave way to open space, cannon and laser blazed at once, a torrential barrage of shot fired now with deadly precision. Something ignited within the Zhi ship. A spark became a fireball. A fireball became a surge of scorching energy. Victory, for now, wore the White Ensign.