Ezra's First

Part 7

A chime pinged in his ear and the onboard computer announced to both Daniel and Ezra:

"Point One in t-minus ten minutes"

Thankfully Daniel had finished his bit fifteen minutes ago and was now just sitting in the cargo bay with the gangplank down legs hanging in the void. Ezra double checked the video feed just to make sure he was fastened to something.

"Are you tethered in Daniel? I can't see what you're connected to."

"Yup, see" Daniel looked up at the cameras location and held up his tether for Ezra to see. Ezra had an irrational fear of drifting off into space, they had run multiple exercises in space during his time at the academy but it still made him uneasy. Even their advisor admitted that for some, the fear of floating off into space was unshakable.

The funny thing about space, was its size. Despite being under ten minutes away from their first target, the incoming fleet still wasn't visible to the naked eye.

Due to everyone's relative acceleration, the missiles will have to be tossed early in a manner that sheds some of their velocity but not too much, so that they are in the right spot when needed. The onboard computers would help a little bit, but if Daniel is off by ten seconds, that can cost us kilometres of space by the end and the chance of them shooting them down increases exponentially.

To account for all of this, the onboard systems will emit a chime at the exact moment Daniel needs to let go as well as perform a turn using the ships passive sensors, this will put the missiles exactly where they need them.

"Hey Daniel, I'm sorry about my behaviour and what I said about you."

"Ez, I get it, and I'm glad you see now that this isn't a demotion, you do see that right?"

"Yes, I'm a fool for not seeing that myself." Ezra admitted sheepishly.

"I know where you come from, I was just as driven as you out of the academy, but the reality of war took so much from me and then I spent the next ten years letting it take more, I wallowed in what I lost and in return lost more. Promise me that when you finally taste the real reality of this conflict, whether it be right here, or at some point in the future, you don't do what I did and cower from it. Accept it, accept all the support on offer and move forward, you'll be much happier. You are clearly going to be a great leader someday, don't squander it like I did."

Tears welled in Ezras eyes, he felt believed in and he really felt for Daniels clearly rough past.

"Thanks Dan, that meant a lot to me."

"No worries Ez."

"Sixty Seconds" The computer announced.

Ezra made sure he wasn't holding the controls, lest he interfere with the preprogrammed manoeuvres.

Sure enough about fifty seconds later the ship began to slowly pivot and then they both heard the chime.

Daniel let the first payload of missiles float off into the void.

They repeated the exercise once more and Ezra was relieved when Daniel had closed the cargo bay doors and had returned to the cockpit.

"Right well I think I can safely say I am the only person to manually drop nuclear warheads out the back of a ship"

They both chuckled.

"You'll get a bronze statue at the academy. I can imagine the exaggerated pose it will be in." Remarked Ezra.

"I'll get to teach classes on warhead tossing."

"It'll become an Olympic event!"

The conversation naturally died as out of their cockpit they could start to visually see the enemy fleet.

Preshk ships were visually distinctive from human ships.

Human fleet ships were extremely functional in their design, and reflective of human industrial building techniques. Long rectangular designs, with guns, sensors, missile tubes on every side, the bridge located at the core of the ship allowing the ship to fight in any and all scenarios.

Preshk ships resembled in both design and aesthetic liquid metal.

Their massive ships were smooth and featureless, the exception being their thrusters. Their sensors, guns, and missiles all seemed to morph out of the surface of the ship as needed.

It gave the illusion that their hull was in fact a free form liquid, but all scans and visual data seem to sit contrary to that belief. From what has been salvaged from previous ships, the common theory is that it is a solid metal but then liquifies and morphs after something triggers it.

Their shapes are also inconsistent, mass is what human combat systems use to classify the ships, however two ships of the same mass can look entirely different. Some resemble egg like shapes, some look like long chains of shapes, while some resemble large abstract art sculptures.

The current accepted belief behind this design is theorised to be down to how their technology formed. It wasn't until the battle of Neptune that scientists actually got to see what a Preshk actually looked like, none could be found after the previous battles, primarily because we were looking for the wrong thing.

Preshk are sentient beings that look like moving fire. Their home world is theorised to be an extremely hot planet or even a red dwarf of sorts, which would give important context as to why every ship resembles melted metal, potentially because that is all they know.

The Preshk themselves are interesting as they require a containment suit to operate outside of their environment, it presumably gives them a form that can operate in a starship it also keeps them at the temperature they need. It would appear that if Preshk are exposed to anything but the temperature they need to remain at, they begin to evaporate.

This is why it took so long to identify what a Preshk looked like, the debris left over from early battles contained no organic material, and their containment suits would have been mistaken for normal computer parts and no actual Preshk remained. It was pure luck that during the wreckage of the last battle they came across three Preshk still in working conditions.

They sadly died shortly after being brought into custody, we were unable to communicate with them and they seemed to get dimmer and dimmer until they actually vanished within their suits. Obviously something else was needed to keep them alive, or they committed suicide, the jury was still out on that one.

As they passed under the flagship of the fleet, the onboard computer used their passive thrusters to slightly alter their heading and avoid a collision.

Ezra held his breath, passive thrusters were simply small controlled bursts of gas and were considered undetectable in space, but being directly below an enemy fleet did make him still worry about what if.

Ezra reviewed their tactical layout and everything was still going well, about the time they were planning to go hot and accelerate to the jump point those missiles would be in the right position.

It would take them nearly 40 minutes to get to the jump point but due to their existing acceleration being in the absolute opposite direction of the fleet, there was only a 5 minute window where they were actually in the range of the fleets aft weaponry and so all they needed to do was avoid that fire and they would be away singing.

The cockpit grew tense as they both started at the tactical map which was inching them closer and closer to go time, the window to abort was rapidly closing and Ezra felt like he could hardly breath, his chest was heavy and he felt like he was suffocating.