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'Captain, the jamming's stopped!' Rojam announced.

'I have full visual of the theatre, Boss!' K'narlas said, her fingers racing across her console's interface, as she set to work trying to straighten everything out and make sense of the sudden influx of data.

'Message from the Ra'thinas, Sir. They're setting up their own jamming signals to blind the Lishni. They estimate they'll be up and running within ten minutes.' Consal added to the excited chatter of voices.

'I think one of the Lishni corvettes are under Tanoovi control, Sir.' K'narlas said, her brow furrowing as she watched an enemy frigate peel away from the dreadnought's escort, leaving a salvo of missiles in its wake.

Relief washed through JD, scrubbing away a small fraction of his stress. That was one less ship to worry about. He looked back at his tactical monitors and checked his sensor readouts on their current quarry. Weakened shields or not, the Lishni destroyer they had encountered on overwatch duty was still far more better off than the Jinx. All her guns were intact for a start and she had a full load-out meaning that she presented as much of a problem to JD and his crew as dreadnought would have had the Jinx been running at optimum efficiency. In comparison to what the Jinx had left, JD was amazed that they were still alive, with their shields at forty percent and yet another tear in their aft hull plating. Thankfully, there were only reports of serious injury and no deaths.

So far.

'Can you confirm the hijacking?' He asked the Jes'wan tactical officer.

She murmered into her headset, talking with her backroom. Then she looked up, a smile playing her pale lips. 'Confirmed. The Tanoovi destroyer, Admonn Deciari, launched a boarding party under the cover of Iceclaw Squadron. Iceclaw Squadron are remaining in place as the Tanoovi's fighter screen whilst they get a handle on things.'

'Sir, I've got a positive reading on that new ship.' Rojam said. 'It's a Lishni-built heavy cruiser. No escort that we know of. We'll keep looking.'

JD swore bitterly. The Lishni, people had discovered in recent months, had taken to building their heavy cruisers as others would build a standard dreadnought; big, heavily armoured, riddled with guns and with shields to match. Every non-Lishni allied race had started calling war crimes against their ship building practices as the more resources they seized, the more they had to spend on experimenting and adding tonnage to an already universally established ship type, thus breaking all kinds of rules and laws that had been put in place across the three galaxies for a series of very good reasons.

JD worried his bottom lip with his sharp teeth. The heavy cruiser was heading to the spot where the broadcasting corvette was positioned. The layers of stress that had been washed away just a few seconds prior came rushing back into place as the behemoth inched closer and closer to Tyrant Squad and their prize. He rubbed at his temples, trying to ease the tension headache he could feel building up and his mind churned through his ever dwindling options as he waited for any futher communications from the Eclipse.

'Get me a fix on that Lishni corvette we just acquired and an estimation as to how long until that cruiser has until it intercepts her.' He said. He knew exactly where that heavy cruiser was going and why, and he didn't like it one bit. We need a bigger, better coordinated task force to deal with all this.

'The heavy cruiser is an hour out at her present speed. Any further acceleration will decrease the intercept time.' Rojam said. 'Our new corvette's brought its drives online and has reversed course. Looks like they're heading for the system border.'

'If they stick to the debris field, then they'll be able to get out. Last check, Lishni corvettes had a sharper power curve than their cruisers. Higher maximum speed and superior manoeuvrability, too. At their present distance and course, that heavy cruiser may as well be chasing phantoms.'

A small smile broke through then and tugged at JD's grim expression. 'Consal, message for our newly acquired corvette. Tell Tristan he has a new name for his ship. It's to be called the Phantom.'

A ripple of amusement went about the bridge, relieving the stress by a fraction. On his tac monitor, the tiny dot that represented the recently captured Lishni corvette switched from red to green, it's tag shifting from LSN-CVTE/B to SSMA Phantom. He watched intently as the newly named Phantom disappeared further into the debris field, winking from what was left of the Jinx's long range sensors as it travelled deeper into safety.

'We're now at optimal missile range!' K'narlas called out.

'Target that destroyer and send them our parting gift.' JD announced cooly. 'A single missile to their midships. Let's measure how much damage we can do.'

The point-defense cannons continued to hammer into the other destroyer's shields, finally breaking them. The Lishni destroyer rolled sharply, trying to show its tougher belly armour now it was without shields to protect it. A missile puffed free from the flank of the Jinx, its overwatch a hail of railgun fire and point-defence lasers, seeing the lone missile home, to its target. The antimatter armed missile curved upwards one minute out from its target, it's ECMs screaming and baffling the Lishni's targeting systems as best it could, then dropped back down, its onboard guidance systems directing it to adjust to the Lishni destroyer's defensive roll. The missile punched through the weakened hull plating ten metres below its original target area. The ship ballooned from the roiling chaos that had been unleashed inside it. The violence of the explosion rocked the Jinx, smouldering debris beating against the shields as the Stalker ship veered hard, running its remaining sublights up to maximum as it fought to escape the high velocity debris, rolling to show her own belly plates to bolster her protection against the shrapnel.

'Target destroyed! Lishni destroyer is now no longer a problem.'

'One problem is rectified, another ten show up in its place.' JD muttered irritably as another ten targets appeared on the long-range sensors display, the Jinx's floundering TacNet struggling with the wash of data.

'Minus the fluke, Captain, we have enough left for one more ship.' Goldfeather announced. 'I'd say we could even take on a destroyer and her frigate friend if we play careful.'

'Excellent.' He said with false satisfaction, glancing at his weapons status board as he fought to keep his apprehension from showing. He had fewer missiles ready than he would have liked, but antimatter was a fickle thing and any spacer and engineer worth their salt would always avoid playing with it unless absolutely neccessary. He had fewer guns and missile tubes, too.

Goldfeather, as usual, was right: They had the antimatter warheads ready for one destroyer and maybe a frigate, too, but he would have to wait on the weapon crews to switch the warheads on more missile before they could be re-loaded and take on another target. Their railgun reserves were looking pathetic, too.

'Ra'thinas has started broadcasting. Lishni ships are now blind. I don't see any more signs of fleet-wide countermeasures on their part, either.' Rojam said with some satisfaction.

JD watched his tac monitors carefully and noted with some vicious glee that the Lishni ships were drifting out of formation. One frigate got far enough away from the Lishni dreadnought that the Purturbator Des seized the opportunity to destroy it, relieving the pressure on the Eclipse by another ship. The Eclipse, however, was still locked in combat with the Lishni dreadnought, both ships venting atmosphere, fluids, hard debris and people into space.

A sudden, terrible thought occured to him.

'Mr. Consal, ping the Eclipse and tell them about that heavy cruiser.' He ordered. 'Ms. Rojam, have we made progress with identifying the new ships?'

The Ocelot was still busily working, chatting to her backroom and the War Witches, who were still hard at work. She shook her head, ears flat in annoyed worry.

She licked her whiskers with a dry tongue, 'Not a lot, Boss. What we currently know is that there are eleven of them, four of which look to be cruiser, maybe dreadnought size. The biggest could possibly be a carrier or a superdreadnought. The others seem to be destroyers and smaller. I can't get a snifter of their registry, either. I'm really sorry, Captain, but our sensors are still struggling. And they're so tightly packed, that we can't get a decent reading on their mass. I'll ping the Ra'thinas, see if they know anything yet.'

'Bring us about. Let's see if we can do anything to help ease Commodore Blacktip's burden.' JD said. It would do him no good to grind his teeth over a problem that was three hours away.

'Aye, Captain, bringing us about and heading for the Eclipse.' Ari intoned.

'Incoming call from the Ra'thinas, Sir.' Consal announced a few minutes later.

'On-screen.'

'Captain D'armeus, we thank you for that delightful jaunt into forbidden territory,' Captain Vic'karnas said, a wry smile tugging at his lips. 'But we must leave you now. Going into that particular mess is just pushing our luck. And yours, too, if I may be so bold. We're to join up with the Jes'wan task force that you've no doubt just noticed has just entered the theatre. I ask for one small favour, however: Protection until we are far enough away from you to safely micro-jump.'

JD nodded, hiding his surprise, quietly glad to have the Ra'thinas part company. It had been all kinds of hell having the corvette attached to his broken hull during combat manoeuvres. However, learning that the new task force was Jes'wan and not Lishni was a load off his mind. He enquired about the task force as he watched his sensors monitor, watching as the Ra'thinas peeled away from the Jinx, it's impeller ring starting up again. The slipdrive nacelles pulled apart and locked into their flying position as the corvette drifted away from the destroyer. A data packet appeared on his main monitor and he immediately opened it, finding his tactical and sensors displays updated in a flood of information as the Jinx's computer recognised the ships listed within the file.

He stared in disbelief and fought the urge to grin hugely as he looked at the fresh squadron of ships on the newly updated tactical map.

There were three heavy cruisers flanking a dreadnought. Four multi-role destroyers flanked those with two gun corvettes watching the flanks of the formation. Trailing behind was a carrier with a full wing of Jes'wan H'rathrid starfighters, six Ul'barr bombers and a company of Imperial Marines with four assault shuttles between them. JD ran the calculations in his mind. Between the Shadow Stalkers, Tanoovi, Impart and the newly arrived Jes'wan task force, the Lishni that were present were outgunned. The Jes'wans did not pack lightly and generally built their warships along the guidelines of 'how many guns can we fit on a ship before the structural integrity is at its breaking point and we get arrested for war crimes?'. The ships themselves were sleek, arrow-like and trailed their slipdrive nacelles like heavily armoured comet tails, their armoured impeller rings girdling them just fore of the aft section. Missile tubes and railgun emplacements bristled in staggered lines down their flanks and spines, covered by a carefully placed grid of point-defence laser cannons. Each Jes'wan ship sported the same, bristly antenna clump hanging at a backward-swept angle from their heavily armoured bulbous bows, giving him the impression of a neatly trimmed goatee.

They were a beautiful and imposing sight to behold, glistening harshly in the light of the local star, and JD wondered just how battle-ready they were or if they were fresh from re-fit or re-supply.

'Ghost Cat Squadron will provide you with an escort to your task force,' JD said. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Spirit pass on the order to the ship's Starfighter Control.

'Meanwhile, we will continue on our current course to aid the Eclipse. Good luck Captain, and thank you for the help.'

Vic'karnas dipped his chin, a small smile on his thin lips before the line went dead. JD turned back to his monitors, watching the dot that represented the Ra'thinas peel away on a hard curve as twelve Vortex starfighters swept in to form up on the corvette.

'Jes'wan squadron is micro-jumping towards us, Sir.' Rojam announced. 'They're now an estimated thirty minutes away.'

'We're twenty-eight minutes from optimal missile engagement range on the trailing Lishni corvette.' K'narlas stated, her fingers flying across her keyboard.

JD checked his main tactical feed. There was a corvette drifting free of the group they were bearing down on and K'narlas had already laid in firing solutions that were best suited to the Jinx's current frugal fighting condition. It was still firing its missile batteries, two salvos of three at a time and the Tanoovi corvette, Purturbator Des was moving in to take it on.

'Scan that trailing corvette for life signs.' He ordered.

'Aye, Sir, scanning now.' Rojam replied, her fingers dancing nimbly as she set to work. 'I count five, Boss. All centered on the point where I assume the bridge to be. The neighbouring frigate is automated. There's not much left of that one, Boss. It's almost been split in half by what looks to be a beam weapon.'

'Confirmed as a beam weapon strike.' K'narlas said. 'Do you want a firing solution on the frigate, too, Sir?'

'Do it. The Des can handle the corvette. Weapons, fire forward-most coreward railguns at will. Three round burst from each gun. I don't want that ship left alive, automated or not. It's a liability, regardless of its brain capacity.'

Goldfeather dipped his head as K'narlas set to work. As they drifted closer to their target, JD watched as the Purturbator Des closed with the Lishni corvette, the two tearing into each other with furious tenacity. JD stifled an innapropriate laugh. Born of legitimate humour or stress, watching two corvettes going at each other's throats like they were dreadnoughts was almost like watching a pair of school children fighting in the playground; they were small and harmless looking, but serious damage was being done regardless of how entertaining it was to watch. JD swallowed his ill humour and hoped that the Tanoovi would come out on top. He was starting to like their tenacity, even if it was mostly for the entertainment value of watching them take on bigger, more advanced ships than themselves, just to see the technologically superior vessels fail to effectively defend themselves against something so primitive in the scope of modern space travel. Of course, the Lishni had their A.I driven shields like most other up-to-date space faring races, but the Tanoovi lacked the electronic output and the computerized targeting systems for the Lishni to deploy their ECMs against, rendering their shield systems' reaction times poor, the TacNet fed A.I shifting its power to the threatened section slower than usual. It must have been incredibly frustrating for the Lishni, being faced with ankle biters that barely had a profile to see. Anklebiters that could do some serious damage.

'Railguns free!' Goldfeather announced abruptly.

JD chastised himself. He'd been so engrossed in watching the Tanoovi tear apart the stunned Lishni corvette that he hadn't realised they were on top of the wildly firing frigate.

'Lishni frigate is destroyed. It didn't even see us coming, Sir.' K'narlas said.

'Good. Let's hope that the Ra'thinas and her crew can keep it that way for the rest of the Lishni ships.' JD said, his gaze sliding from his read-outs to the fresh mug of steaming hot s'ryn that had appeared by his left hand.

He gripped the mug and sipped it as he studied the two dreadnoughts locked in combat up ahead. Both ships had done a significant amount of damage to one another, the Lishni dreadnought adding more holes and rents to the Eclipse's body as the large Shadow Stalkers ship fought back hard, cutting off the Lishni's advance on Impart Station. A starfighter squadron belonging to the Eclipse nipped in and out of the fray, taking on the remaining escort and acting as a point-defence system for the Eclipse, shooting down the Lishni missiles that the Eclipse couldn't deal with. With the starfighter squadron's attention divided and spread across such a vast space - especially now the threat was veering off course - more and more missiles were slipping past them, to penetrate the Eclipse's weakened shields.

JD checked his inbox again for any waiting messages and found none. No new orders had come in from anyone, so he commanded Ari to hold course until K'narlas had given him as many firing solutions on the Lishni dreadnought as possible with the scanning data that Rojam was collecting of the immediate kill zone they were charging in to.

'Lishni 'nought's aft shields are weak. Looks like the Tanoovi nearly succeeded in biting a chunk from their asses before the escorting ships intervened.' K'narlas said.

'I believe they're fully focussed on the Eclipse right now, Sir. I'm not detecting any signs of ECMs being directed at us or the Tanoovi.' Rojam added.

Both Ocelot and Jes'wan looked up, sparing him the briefest of questioning glances as they waited on his next decision. Goldfeather was waiting silently at his station, fingers poised over the firing sequence interface.

'Bring us up behind the Lishni 'nought, Ari. Settle us at the extremes of our point-defences and be prepared to run like hell on my mark.' He had finally made his choice as to how he was going to have them act in their role as support for their own dreadnought. 'Use our PDCs to reduce their aft shielding to nothing. Mr. Consal, notify the Eclipse of our current missile loadout and inform them that we intend on launching a couple straight up the Lishni's backside.Let's finish what the Tanoovi started.'

Consal managed to look both frightened and excited at the same time, the two moods warring briefly with each other on the Engarren's face before settling back into professional determination. 'Aye, Sir. Passing message on to the Eclipse.'

The Jinx shifted in space, dipping and curving away from her straight-line vector as she made for the rear of the Lishni dreadnought. The Lishni made no move to defend themselves, instead concentrating their fire on the Eclipse. A corvette and a frigate - both manned - caught enough of the destroyer's profile in their struggling near-scans to move cautiously in, situating themselves defensively, denying the Jinx a clean shot. The destroyer's point-defences hammered furiously into the corvette's shields, whittling away at them until they were weak enough for a salvo of railgun rounds to tear the corvette to pieces. The frigate got the same treatment, but not before it could score a hit on one of the Jinx's remaining missile batteries, sending a groaning shudder through the destroyer's tortured superstructure as a magazine became the latest victim to add to the list of casualties.

'Re-calculating firing soloution.' K'narlas announced, irritation underscoring her professional tone. The carcasses of the dead ships had written-off all of her prior solutions.

The Jinx shifted again, positioning herself directly behind the dreadnought as the Jes'wan fired off multiple solutions around the bridge crew.

'Heat up the foreward beam weapon.' JD said and felt the tension on the bridge rise considerably in an instant.

Though the beam weapon may have been re-mounted and plugged back in, it had yet to be tested properly. The weapon's telltales were lit up green, but that meant very little for energy weapons; it just meant that they were currently stable and ready to fire. It didn't mean that they would fire well, if at all. And a damaged beam weapon was an incredibly dangerous beam weapon. Without the proper live-fire testing - typically carried out with a skeleton crew onboard the ship and without any other ships within a 20,000 kilometre radius. A backfiring beam weapon would tear them all apart, not just what they were shooting at. It was raw energy, drawn from the powerplant of the ship and the recoil was continuous throughout firing and so powerful it could bend a ship's frame out of shape. Ships of the Jinx's size were regulated to three beam weapon uses, per unit. Four would weaken the mount to the point of needing replacing and five would see your ship sitting in the repair yard, stripped down to its bones.

However, a beam weapon was a valuable piece of kit and few large fighting ships went without one. The concentrated energy it put out in each of its ten-second bursts ate through the heaviest armour like a hot knife cutting through soft butter. And without a clear shot for missiles and few shells left for the remaining railguns, JD was left with an un-tested, recently repaired beam weapon to use.

His blood ran cold as K'narlas and Goldfeather both agreed on the firing sequence, their expressions saying everything he had just thought about un-tested beam weapons. His order to fire was met with a tense affirmation and a dead silence.

The ship groaned pitifully as the weapon fired. A green telltale on his status board went orange. Then klaxons and alarms started screaming as debris hurtled towards them, the remainder of their point-defences going mad, trying to target every little thing the targeting systems saw as a threat to try and save what was left of the shields. The beam weapon, though becoming un-usable within the space of eight seconds had done its job with horrible efficiency; it had eaten through the debris of the corvette and the frigate, and sliced neatly through the Lishni dreadnought, spearing aft to fore, lancing its centre to leave a tunnel of molten metals, ceramics and steaming fluids. Every organic thing in its direct path had been obliterated and everything just outside had either melted to slag or was on fire. The beam weapon hadn't been running at full power - it couldn't without all four sublight drives operating - but it had done enough to neatly spear the big ship right up to its flat nose. The dreadnought kept firing in defiance of the lucky strike as its systems shut down, one by one. The rate of fire slowed, then stopped completely. Life pods and shuttles launched in all directions away from the stricken ship as it drifted onwards, towards the station without power, its innards half melted.

'Engineering to the bridge.' Kieron's voice sputtered in JD's earpiece.

'Go ahead, Engineering.' JD answered, studying his telltales with suspicion as Spirit fielded the call from the Eclipse.

'We have one sublight left.'

'That explains why the beam didn't go all the way through.' JD mused, smoothly covering up his anxiety as he realised the Jinx was now out of the fight. He let out a steady sigh. 'Hit me with it.'

'Look, JD, if you're going to do anymore fancy footwork, I suggest using a Seer or setting up a scrying bowl up there before you do, yeah? We got the pulling power and manouvreability of a dead snail right now. We're incapable of engaging our slipdrive simply because we can't build up the speed to engage it properly. We're trying to fix all that right now,' Kieron's voice dropped to a near-murmer, 'but we've had a bit of an incident down here. The beam weapon may have been ready to fire, but our drives were lying about their readiness to supply the power. One of the coolant lines blew. Two of my crew are dead, another is being hauled up to the medibay to have his stump sealed up by a pro and his frost burns seen to. I got myself plus my six remaining boys, girls and Things working frantically down here. Please don't fire the beam weapon again today.'

JD sucked in a breath. It was inevitable that the weapon would fail in some way. He was fully expecting that to happen with a broken ship. However, losing two more of his people, maybe even a third, was not on his To-Do List.

'No more beam weapon today, Kaz. It did its job. Keep me informed-' He glanced at Spirit who was making subtle hand gestures at him. He frowned, then gave a slight nod of understanding. He had guessed right. Their fight was over. 'We've been ordered back to Impart Station for picket duty with their corvettes and the Reaper.'

'I hate to say it, but good. We need some serious repairs and medical assistance. Again.' Kieron paused. JD could imagine the Snow Leopard's expression turning from curiosity to sour as he studied his system read-outs down in engineering. 'I think the computer's not telling you the whole story.'

JD gave Ari the order to withdraw back to Impart Station and then checked the ship's status. 'So, which telltales should I black out this time?'

'Everything on our coreward flank, save for PDC-one though six and our shield generators. They need to be orange. Sublights one and two are scrap, and three should be in the red. Slipdrive is green. Foreward and aft beam weapons need to be dark, too. Rimward, we need our shield generators in the orange, two missile batteries orange, one green. All PDCs need to be orange. Life support's green, artificial gravity is orange, ECMs, green. Uh. Yeah, I think that about covers the life-saving stuff.' Kieron said.

JD glared furiously at his status boards and the read-outs on his nest of monitors. The bulk of what he was getting from his ship was wrong. He had been flying half-blind and he didn't know how long for.

'This is all wrong.' He muttered softly, aghast.

'Pardon, Sir?' Spirit asked softly as she watched the navigation monitor at her station. They were peeling away from the drifting wreckage at the speed of a loaded superfreighter.

'The ship's been so badly damaged that it's been feeding us all the wrong information about its damned health!' He hissed. 'We've probably been half-blind about our own status since Hadras-6. I'm amazed I haven't gotten us all killed.'

'Captain! That heavy cruiser's just micro-jumped.' Rojam announced harshly.

JD checked his sensors read-out. At least that, he thought sourly, could be double-checked with his War Witches or the Ra'thinas. The heavy cruiser was out of range of the Jes'wan task force that was bearing down on them all. The Jes'wan were now sixteen minutes out thanks to micro-jumping, and the Lishni heavy cruiser was forty with another micro-jump pending if possible.

'Looks like the Lishni are trying for the other side of the station.' Spirit said, watching the new predicted route for that ship.

'We can't take it on. Even at full power, we'd be swatted.' JD said. With a sigh he added 'There's nothing to be done now. We're out of the fight. Continue on at best speed for Impart Station. Go to stealth, if we can manage it.'

'Aye Sir, making best speed for Impart Station.' Ari confirmed.

'The Jinx is refusing to stealth, Boss.' K'narlas said. Her fingers danced across her console's interface and she shook her head, looking to Rojam and Goldfeather for some form of clarification.

'Looks like our shields are drawing what power they can from our stealth systems.' Goldfeather said after a couple of minutes of frantic tapping. 'To get our stealth systems back online, we have to divert all the power from our shields.'

'Would doing that guarantee full-cloaking?' JD asked.

'Negative. From what I'm seeing, the Jinx can barely tell which way is up right now, so-to-speak. My best guess is that our shields are just as effective as our stealth at the moment. ' The Ishinn looked back at his read-outs and clucked softly. 'That's all I can give you, Boss. Sorry.'

'No need to apologise, Si'ronn. Belay the order for stealth. Keep our shields up. And,' He added after a pause, 'if that heavy cruiser gets within extreme striking distance to us, I want everyone to put their helmets on.'

Everyone on the bridge exchanged surreptitious nervous glances as they worked. Spirit passed on the message, making sure all the department heads understood.

'All departments have been updated.' She informed him.

JD dipped his chin in acknowledgement and sipped at his s'ryn. It had gone cold. He shifted a mote of his magic, feeling his palms warm up. The shatter-proof mug soon heated up and the bitter-sweet scent of hot s'ryn filled his nostrils. He gave the liquid a swirl and took a sip. Re-heated s'ryn was awful but it would do in a pinch. He checked all his read-outs, the ships' status and the TacNet relays, wondering how much of it was true and how much false.

We are quite literally fumbling in the dark. He thought sourly as he watched Impart Station's icon creep closer and closer.