=EXECUTE=
DESTINY ASCENDANT
MAIN HANGAR“Sierra Mike One Zero Three you are clear for departure. Come right and proceed out of hangar at relative bearing zero eight zero.”
Flight control cleared the transports as they vacated the hangar. Muriel bid them good riddance as she worked over her plans.
“Shuttlecraft B-1 clear for departure. Come around left and proceed out of hangar.”
The fleetmaster was slow on his departure. His ship sat landed in the hangar for an extended amount of time. “Flight control, get me a targeting solution on covenant envoy craft. Tactical, track this targeting solution with the number 3 main turret.”
“Commander if I may beg par-” the XO’s protests were cut short by Tactical.
“Copy, tracking target. Fire condition?”
“Hold. Wait for my call,” she answered.
She wasn’t sure she could get away with this, nor did she want to end him so impersonally. However she recognized the value that eliminating him posed and the risk that such an easy opportunity would not present itself again.
“
If I may beg pardon ...,” Dyykes forcefully interjected, “if we take that shot, we are starting a war. A war that will go very badly for us in the immediate short term.”
“I’m aware Lieutenant. I have a way that somewhat mitigates that risk. Right now I need everyone to trust the strategy. This is what we do best: plan and execute.”
Flight control interrupted the conversation. “Covenant transport is clear of the hangar.”
“Call torpedoes!” Muriel ordered, “We’ve made the plan. Execute.”
The CO started running for the bridge. Everything was going to go down at breakneck speed. Every second counted. “Torpedoes five hundred clicks out, covenant shuttle at three clicks.”
Her headset kept her virtually in the room as the plan unfolded. The ship shuddered as the rear guns fired towards nothingness. All part of the biggest bluff she dared to make today. The jolt broke her stride and she nearly fell face first into the metal floor grating. “Torpedoes at four hundred and closing; Covenant transport seven clicks. Thirty seconds to impact.”
The CO made it to the bridge shortly after. Nobody bothered with the formalities of her arrival, nor would she have wanted them to. They stayed focused on the operation exactly how she would have wanted. “Torpedoes at two-fifty, fifteen seconds to impact; Covenant transport at ten clicks, running fast.”
Ten clicks was still basically point blank. The number 3 railgun was loaded with its lighter 55mm shells for the tiny target. Ten kilometers was a flight time of under four milliseconds: instant impact for all intents and purposes. The ship was creating distance very fast though. “Ten seconds, check jump coords and shield integrity.”
Tactical had effectively assumed command. Muriel remained silent and let them do their job. The flash-jump was a risky maneuver that only black ops ever even attempted. “Five seconds, target at twenty five clicks.”
That was starting to get farther downrange. It was still an easy shot no doubt, but the increasing distances pressed on her mind. The tension in the air slowed down the seconds. “Three... tw-”
“Fire, fire now!” she preempted the countdown.
Tactical was still tracking. The fleetmaster’s fate was sealed with one trigger pull.
The thud of the number 3 gun was indistinguishable from the feigned fire towards a pursuing enemy that would throw the Covenant off. Fifty five millimeters of precision-engineered devastation crossed the thirty kilometer distance faster than anyone could blink. At the speed it flew, the metal of the Phantom didn’t react like metal. The slug tore through the center of the ship, pulverizing nearly half of the craft into a hail of debris and shrapnel. The three large chunks left were thrown hard away from the previous flightpath, cast off into the vast blackness at incredible speed from the sheer impulse of the slug. “Confirmed hit!”
The CO smirked visibly at the notion the fleetmaster was most certainly dead. A weapon meant to take down far larger ships would have left no survivors on such a tiny target. “Brace for torpedos!” the tac officers both yelled.
The ship shuddered hard as all six fusion torpedoes detonated in close proximity. Warning alarms blared as the shields nearly overloaded from the energy surge. In the blinding nova engulfing the ship, the
Destiny jolted into frameshift, disappearing from the battlespace behind the spectacle of the fusion blast.
“AURORA” STAR SYSTEM
INTERPLANETARY SPACEDestiny jolted back into the static fabric of space, leaving behind the high-speed subspace rift that carried it here. The jump brought the ship into close proximity with with the Asari forces. The inner rails on the rearward guns glowed a dull red. Parts of the ship’s composite armor plating also glowed, the shield emitters having dumped their excess heat into the secondary subsurface cooling manifold.
“Compile all the data & records from our time in this system and push it to subspace relay, stat. Our first priority is getting everything on record and in the database,” Muriel ordered.
Her XO got to work on it immediately. She turned her attention back to the holotable, where Natka had already pushed a projection of the immediate space. Muriel was confident that whatever
this entity wanted, it could not be more irrational than the Covenant she’d just dealt with.
