Dubious Honour

4. Dishonourable Intentions

Elya continued to fly the Supernought as the three astronauts fled back to the bridge, which was not an easy journey given that the thrusters on his suit were broken - along with several of Delton's bones. Neidia was the only one functioning at full capacity, so most of the awkward task of steering them along the craft's empty corridors was left to him. The ship was accelerating at full power now, away from the nucleus-forsaken rock behind them. Without the ship's inertial muffling, they would have been no more than red stains on the rear walls; even with it, they were struggling to move against the acceleration.

Inertial muffling uses a reactive antigravity field, relying on negative false mass, which acts on every atom within a ship at once to repel it in the necessary direction and negate the inertial 'forces' of acceleration. In extreme circumstances, to conserve energy it only generates enough force to prevent serious injury to the crew; this was an extreme circumstance, so the g-forces were only being partially mitigated.

"Exodus is gaining on us! I don't have any power to weapons, I can't fight back!"

"Just keep moving away. We can fix the weapons situation when we get there, right, Delton?"

"Yes, most certainly, ma'am." The effects of Delton's suit-administered painkillers were still strong.

"What about coms? Is it safe to keep talking like this?"

"Should be, unless they get really close! I've got destructive interference fields running around the ship."

They arrived in the bridge once again as the initial fuzziness of the painkillers wore off. Delton guided herself gingerly to the Core inducer, ignoring the shocked looks from the rest of the crew.

"Well? Do you wanna get out of here alive or not?"

They continued to stare.

She sighed. "Elya, tell these knobheads to turn their coms back on."

Holographic words appeared around the room: Turn your coms on, you knobheads.

Norlyss was quickest to respond. "Elya, I need to see what's going on outside."

The pilot nodded, and projected an unnerving spherical view onto the walls, floor and ceiling, as though the whole ship was transparent. 

"Uh... Ok, that'll work. Delton, can you get power to weapons?"

"Yesirree," she said, still a touch lightheaded, and tapped some instructions to the inducer. She transferred ten percent, half of what was available, to the ship's automated turrets. It lost thrust as a result, but they were already moving at a belting pace. The guns emerged from their alcoves and selected their targets, firing precise pulses at the pursuing hostiles.

"Any sign of Dubious Honour?"

"No, lieutenant. No readings. Either it's in the shadow of the asteroid, or it ditched."

"Stars blast those damn stealth engines. If we just knew where it was..."

"Omega will send backup, won't it?" Delton piped in. "It won't take an Exodus swarm crawling over an FN ship lying down."

"Well... No, not exactly. Omega won't have received any information from those Defenders."
Delton grunted at this confirmation of her own theory, but Neidia was stunned. 

"What!? How? They have their own communication wormholes built in! The only way to jam them would be some kind of hyperspatial interference..."

He arrived at the conclusion that Delton had settled into some time ago. 

"It's the Coordinator, isn't it? It has to be! But then it'll send reinforcements."

Norlyss had her helmeted head in her hands.