09:12 (New Dawn Time)
Tuesday, January 5, 2332
Office of the Admiral of the Fleet, Navy Headquarters
City of New Dawn, Providence (Alpha Centauri Bd)
Alpha Centauri B System
‘’Again, I believe that we should execute this plan right now, when the enemy still had little time to react to the battle in the 55 Cancri A System, or even to become aware about it, Admiral.’’
Admiral John Fenton, Commander of the Navy and Defense Minister of the Spacers’ League, had another look at the outline of the plan presented to him by Vice Admiral George Ramsay, the commander of the Battle Fleet, before looking at him with some misgiving.
‘’Why didn’t you include the NOSTROMO in your battle force, Ramsay? It is our most powerful ship and also our most battle-hardened one.’’
‘’The NOSTROMO is presently on a cargo run to the Trappist-1 System, where it went to collect an important load of metal ingots and liquid hydrocarbons, both of which are urgently needed by our shipyards. It is not due back for another few days, at the least. If we wait for the NOSTROMO, then we risk losing the element of surprise, Admiral. Besides, with twelve battlecruisers ready to go, I won’t be lacking in firepower. We can and must go now!’’
Fenton hesitated for another few seconds before taking a decision and nodding his head.
‘’Alright, you have my benediction for this operation. When are you planning to leave for TOI 1231?’’
‘’I can leave this evening, if you agree to it, Admiral.’’
‘’Very well! You may leave when ready.’’
‘’Thank you, Admiral! We will give one hell of a shock to those monstrous Space Predators, that I promise you.’’
Karl Langemann
George Ramsay then saluted Fenton before walking out of his office, leaving behind the copy of his attack plan meant for the Navy Commander and Minister of Defense. Ramsay had a satisfied smile on his lips as he entered a lift cabin in order to go up to the roof landing pad, where his runabout was waiting for him. He was finally going to be able to prove that Rear Admiral Forster was not the only navy commander who knew how to fight and win a Space battle.
20:18 (New Dawn Time)
Private residence of the Chairman of the Spacers’ League
City of New Dawn, Providence
‘’So, what was so secretive and important for you to need to come in person to my residence at night, Admiral?’’ asked Karl Langemann after opening his door to Fenton. The latter saluted Langemann before answering him.
‘’I came to bring to you in person some very sensitive military information, so as not to run any risk of leak or interception, Mister Chairman.’’
‘’Very well! Follow me to my private study: we will be completely safe from any indiscreet ears there.’’
With a valet cum bodyguard closing and locking the door behind them, the two men went up to the upper floor of the luxurious residence, situated in an exclusive district of New Dawn, where Langemann introduced Fenton into a large business-like office. He then invited the admiral to sit with him around a small coffee table set in a corner of the office.
‘’Alright, tell me about this sensitive military information, Admiral.’’
‘’Yes sir!’’ said Fenton, who then extracted a printed file folder marked ‘Top Secret’ from his attaché case and handed it to Langemann while starting to speak.
‘’This is a copy of our plan for ‘Operation Thunder’, an attack against the presumed home world of the Space Predators. The location of that home world, TOI 1231, situated some 94 light years from Alpha Centauri B, was gained from the intelligence gathered by the NOSTROMO in the 55 Cancri A System, after Rear Admiral Forster boarded and then destroyed three Predator support ships busy exploiting the metal ore found in the local asteroid belt. Vice Admiral Ramsay, the commander of our battle fleet, then devised a plan to effectuate a surprise attack on TOI 1231 as quickly as possible, before the Predators could realize that we had found and destroyed their ships in the 55 Cancri A System. I came to inform you that our battle fleet left for TOI 1231 a bit over one hour ago and should now be operating inside the enemy system.’’
Langemann felt at once some misgivings about this as he opened the classified folder to read the information in it. This felt somewhat rushed to him and the fact that he had not heard a thing previously about such an important operation made him more than a bit suspicious. Fenton, who watched him as he read the file, became nervous when he saw Langemann starting to look displeased by what he was reading. After some four minutes, and having finished a first quick reading through the attack plan, Langemann looked at Fenton, irritation visible on his face.
‘’Why is the NOSTROMO not part of this attack force? Rear Admiral Forster has the most experience by far about fighting those monsters.’’
‘’The NOSTROMO is presently in the Trappist-1 System, Mister Chairman, on an important cargo run meant to bring metal ingots and liquid hydrocarbons to our shipyards around Providence. It was not due back for many days and Vice Admiral Ramsay was afraid that waiting for its return would have ruined the element of surprise for us.’’
Apparently only half convinced, Langemann returned to a section of the file he held and pointed it to Fenton.
‘’Admiral, I have been following carefully for months our refit and construction programs for our Navy’s warships. I see here in that list of twelve battlecruisers assigned to Operation Thunder at least five ships that I know were due for important modifications meant to improve their combat capabilities against the Space Predators. As far as I know, those ships have not yet received those refits. Am I correct?’’
‘’Huh, yes, Mister Chairman.’’ answered Fenton, now definitely getting nervous. ‘’Those five battlecruisers were still waiting to be retrofitted and modified but our shipyards were simply being swamped with work.’’
‘’So, Vice Admiral Ramsay left to go attack the home world of the Space Predators, and this with five of his twelve battlecruisers being unfit to fight those Predators?’’
‘’Sir, I wouldn’t characterize those battlecruisers as unfit to fight! They are…’’
‘’They are in the same state as the VLADIMIR KOMAROV was in before it got cut to ribbons by a Space Predator asteroid ship in the Ross 128 System, that’s what they are, Admiral!’’ nearly shouted Langemann, now clearly angry. ‘’What were the modifications that had been planned for those five battlecruisers?’’
‘’Uh, I would have to review the files about this in my office before I could give you an accurate answer, Mister Chairman, but one item they all lacked was the anti-teleportation scrambling system invented by Doctor Koomak. I also believe that their disintegrator cannons are of the older, shorter-range model.’’
Fenton then could have sworn that Langemann was about to have an attack of apoplexy.
‘’You let Vice Admiral Ramsay leave for combat with ships possessing such grave deficiencies? What were you thinking, Admiral?’’
‘’Sir, I have full confidence in the competence of Vice Admiral Ramsay and…’’
‘’BUT I DON’T, ESPECIALLY AFTER READING THIS! I WANT YOU TO RECALL OUR BATTLE FLEET IMMEDIATELY!’’
Fenton then became more combative while facing his political superior, his navy pride making him push back.
‘’Sir, recalling our battle fleet now, when it is already inside enemy territory, could alert the Predators to its presence in their system and thus result in a tactical disaster. We should let our ships fight according to their attack plan and not dully interfere with it.’’
Langemann, understanding that Fenton was at least partly right about a recall order possibly alerting the enemy, calmed down somewhat but was still angry as he pointed an index at him.
‘’Then, at least recall the NOSTROMO to Providence, on the double! I want it here, to watch our back while our battle fleet is away.’’
‘’I will have a courier drone sent at once to the Trappist-1 System, sir. Permission to leave, sir.’’
‘’Yes! Go!’’
Mortified by this cavalier dismissal by Langemann, Fenton then got up from his chair and left the office at a quick pace, leaving behind a fuming Chairman of the High Council.
20:45 (Universal Time)
Bridge of the battlecruiser VLADIMIR KOMAROV
Task Force 54, inside the TOI 1231 System
‘’Alright, Mister Kwang, tell me what you see in this system.’’
The sensors officer on duty on the bridge of the flagship of Task Force 54 answered Vice Admiral George Ramsay at once, having had plenty of time to study the data from his passive sensors.
‘’Well, astronomy-wise, the system is composed of one M3V variable red dwarf star with a mass approximately half that of our Sun. Our telescopes have detected to date a single large planet orbiting inside the habitability zone of that red dwarf. That planet is akin to a warm Neptune-type gas giant and is thus probably unsuited for life. However, it has a large moon showing liquid water oceans and continents that could definitely sustain life. There is also an asteroid belt that is quite dense, at about 1.5 AU distance from the star. Our telescopes are seeing multiple dots of light on the darkened surface of the moon, consistent with the presence of cities. Also, we have lots of radio and video signals spillage from the moon. That moon is definitely harboring intelligent life, sir.’’
‘’Any ships or orbital stations around that moon, Mister Kwang?’’
‘’We are still too far to be able to ascertain that, sir. We are presently flying by and a bit over the asteroid belt.’’
‘’What about those radio signals you are intercepting? Can you correlate them to any known language?’’
‘’Yes sir! They are in the same language extracted from the databanks of the asteroid ships boarded by the NOSTROMO in the 55 Cancri A System.’’
‘’So, we have found the homeworld of those monsters. Good! Start pinpointing those cities visible on the surface of that moon, so that we can program a strike pattern for our missiles. This moon needs to be thoroughly sterilized, so that these monsters stop being a menace to the rest of the galaxy.’’
‘’Aye, sir!’’
Ramsay was then mostly silent for the next forty minutes, letting his bridge staff and operators continue to map in detail this star system, using only passive sensors. The job would have been much easier and quicker if they would have used the active sensors of the ship, like their radars, but that would have probably alerted those monsters about the presence of his fleet and would have ruined the effect of surprise he wanted to achieve. His fleet of twelve battlecruisers had by then passed the asteroid belt and was inside the inner part of the system when the sensors officer spoke up, some worry evident in his voice.
‘’Sir, we have just been painted by a powerful, very low frequency radar wave. The Predators will now know within seconds that we are here.’’
‘’It was to be expected. Weapons Officer, prepare to launch our missiles at the cities visible on that moon. Set their anti-matter warheads to their highest yield.’’
‘’Aye, sir!’’
‘Over 600 missiles, each with a yield of ninety megatons: that should truly hurt those monsters.’ thought to himself Ramsay. He was about to give the order to fire away the missiles from his fleet when the sensors officer spoke up in alarm.
‘’SIR, WE HAVE MULTIPLE LARGE OBJECTS NOW UNMASKING FROM BEHIND THE MOON AND ACCELERATING TOWARDS US! I COUNT FIVE…NO, SEVEN OF THEM. CORRECTION: WE NOW HAVE NINE LARGE ASTEROID-LIKE OBJECTS COMING AT US.’’
Ramsay tightened his jaws together at that announcement: nine Predator asteroid-ships were going to represent a very serious threat to his battle fleet and he was probably going to need all his firepower to deal with them.
‘’CANCEL THE MOON STRIKE! REPROGRAM OUR MISSILES TO THE ANTI-SHIP MODE, WITH TERMINAL MICRO-JUMPS TO GO THROUGH THOSE PREDATORS’ FORCE SHIELDS!’’
‘’REPROGRAMMING OUR MISSILES FOR ANTI-SHIP COMBAT, AYE, SIR!’’
Then, the sensors officer piled on more bad news for Ramsay.
‘’SIR, WE HAVE MULTIPLE RADAR SIGNALS BOUNCING ON US FROM OUR AFT SECTOR: THEY ARE COMING FROM THE ASTEROID BELT.’’
‘’Shit! Do you see enemy ships in that sector?’’
‘’Affirmative, sir! I have multiple moving targets now coming out of the asteroid belt.’’
‘’How many? Go to active mode and give me a precise figure, Mister Kwang.’’
Ramsay didn’t like how his sensors officer needed many seconds before answering him, apparently having to count a large number of targets. When he did answer him, he looked at Ramsay with a pale face.
‘’Sir, we now have a total of 27 asteroid-ships heading towards us at high speed and coming from the asteroid belt. To that we have to add the nine asteroid-ships coming from the moon.’’
That left Ramsay speechless for a couple of seconds: from hoping for a surprise strike on the enemy’s home world, his battle fleet was now finding itself in a pincer trap and facing an enemy that had a three to one advantage over his ships.
‘’IT’S A TRAP! NAVIGATOR, TURN US AROUND! PASS TO THE OTHER SHIPS: WITHDRAW AT ONCE BACK TO PROVIDENCE!’’
The captain of the VLADIMIR KOMAROV, Captain Erika Shenken, stiffened on hearing his last order and threw him a warning look.
‘’Admiral, we can’t jump back to the Alpha Centauri B system like this, in plain sight of the enemy: they could then follow us to providence.’’
‘’That’s far from an assured thing, Captain Shenken. Navigator, plot a group jump to Providence, quickly! Weapons officer, open fire as soon as the enemy will be within range!’’
Shenken was about to protest further when an alarm suddenly sounded around the bridge, followed by the voice of the damage control officer.
‘’MULTIPLE HIGH-POWER LASER BEAMS ARE HITTING THE STERN SECTOR OF OUR SHIP. THE OTHER CRUISERS ARE ALSO REPORTING HITS AGAINST THEM.’’
‘’FIRE BACK, DAMMIT!’’
From then on, there was little that Ramsay could do other than to watch his bridge personnel do its best to fight back the enemy while trying to withdraw with the rest of the fleet. While the heavy disintegrator cannons that constituted the main armament of the twelve battlecruisers soon found their mark on the enemy ships, they needed many precious seconds to pierce through the very thick crust of nickel-iron of their hulls. In comparison, the much less heavily armored hulls of the battlecruisers, especially in their stern sections, proved to be quite vulnerable to the gigawatt-class lasers of the Space Predators. The first loss to the battle fleet occurred when the BORIS EGOROV, which was part of the Third Division that initially was holding the rear of the formation, was literally cut in half by a concentrated salvo of purple laser beams, with the stern detaching itself from the rest of the battlecruiser. That in turn created catastrophic explosive decompression throughout the ship, dooming it and sucking out hundreds of crewmembers to their deaths in the cold void of Space. The three other battlecruisers of the Third Division, all ships which had not had a chance to be retrofitted before this operation, all fared badly under the enemy onslaught, their disintegrator cannons being outranged by Predator lasers. The VLADISLAV VOLKOV, hit in a missile magazine by a laser beam, then exploded, blown to pieces in a gigantic explosion. However, that was only the start of an avalanche of bad news for the Human fleet.
21:43 (Universal Time)
Bridge of the battlecruiser VALENTINA TERECHKOVA
Third Battlecruiser Division
‘’CAPTAIN, WE HAVE MULTIPLE HULL BREACHES FROM LASER FIRE AND ARE LOSING SYSTEMS AFTER SYSTEMS.’’
‘’WITHDRAW OUR CREW TO THE INNER SECTIONS THAT ARE STILL PRESSURIZED! KEEP FIRING AT THAT ASTEROID-SHIP TO OUR AFT PORT SIDE!’’
Captain Kimi Yamaguchi then had one reason to feel some hope: the asteroid-ship that had been dueling with her cruiser exploded, a missile from the VALENTINA TERECHKOVA having succeeded in going through its force shield and then penetrating inside through the hole burned through by the disintegrator cannons of the cruiser before its anti-matter warhead exploded. The three-kilometer-long and one-kilometer-wide Predator ship then disappeared in a titanic blast of pure energy, vaporized by the ninety-megaton warhead. However, the cheers on the bridge which greeted that victory were short-lived, with the sensors officer giving out a terrifying warning.
‘’ALERT! WE HAVE MULTIPLE SMALL CRAFT APPEARING NEAR OUR HULL AND THEN GLUING THEMSELVES TO OUR SHIP.’’
Captain Yamaguchi froze for a moment in horror on hearing that: this could only mean one thing. Punching the button of the ship-wide intercom, she spoke urgently in her spacesuit’s helmet microphone.
‘’TO ALL THE CREWMEMBERS: ARM YOURSELVES AND BE READY TO REPEL BOARDERS!’’
Thankfully, some of the lessons from the Ross 128 Predator attack had been well assimilated and all the crewmembers of the cruiser already had a disintegrator pistol on them, including Kimi Yamaguchi herself. One female bridge sensors operator gave a desperate look at the operator next to her, who happened to be a good friend and occasional lover, as she took out her own pistol.
‘’Please, Ken: don’t let those monsters take me alive.’’
‘’You can count on me, Francine.’’ replied the young man, who gripped firmly his disintegrator pistol. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, five nightmarish creatures standing over two meters in height and with four arms ending in hands sporting long claws appeared on the bridge, right next to Francine. The young woman had time to fire once, killing the nearest Space Predator, before the Predator behind the first one pointed a sort of gun at her and pressed its trigger. The female sensors operator’s spacesuit was sprayed with a sort of transparent liquid whose true nature quickly revealed itself when Francine’s spacesuit started smoking and melting.
‘’THEIR GUNS SPRAY ACID! MY SPACESUIT IS…AAAH!’’
With the poor Francine screaming and thrashing around as the acid, having gone through her spacesuit, was now burning through her body, an enraged Ken fired repeatedly his disintegrator pistol, killing two of the Predators.
‘’YOU FUCKING MURDERERS! YOU WILL PAY FOR THAT!’’
With more and more Space Predators teleporting inside the bridge, the crew finally succumbed to the attackers despite a heroic resistance that cost the Predators fourteen of their number. Similar desperate battles happened all over the ship, as more than a hundred Predators teleported inside the VALENTINA TERECHKOVA. The central AI computer of the ship, directing the fire of the few internal defensive weapons pods, helped kill over forty of the attackers before three Predators penetrated its armored vault and started spraying concentrated acid over its circuits, making it fail and shut down after half a minute of fighting. Soon, all resistance stopped, leaving the surviving Predators free to start feasting on the corpses of their victims.
21:52 (Universal Time)
Bridge of the VLADIMIR KOMAROV
A second Predator ship had just been destroyed by missiles from the flagship when the sensors officer shouted towards Vice Admiral Ramsay, who was still sitting in his command chair.
‘’SIR, THE VLADIMIR CHATALOV, VALENTINA TERECHKOVA AND ADRIAN NIKOLAIEV HAVE ALL BEEN BOARDED BY THE ENEMY AND ARE NOT RESPONDING ANYMORE. BOTH THE GERMAN TITOV AND THE VALERI BIKOVSKI HAVE JUST LOST THEIR FORCE SHIELDS BUT ARE STILL FIRING AWAY WITH THEIR GUNS THAT ARE STILL OPERATIONAL.’’
George Ramsay felt both anger and frustration at that announcement: despite his battle fleet having already caused heavy losses to the enemy, his ships were clearly on the losing side in this exchange, with all of his remaining battlecruisers, including his own flagship, being already seriously damaged by laser fire. Something new then struck his unfortunate fleet. An asteroid much smaller than the asteroid ships firing at the Human cruisers rammed at top acceleration the OLEG MAKAROV. The force shields of the cruiser, already down to thirty percent of strength due to battle damage to its generators, failed under the devastating kinetic energy of that impact, letting the 500-meter-diameter nickel-iron asteroid hit broadside the OLEG MAKAROV. The asteroid smashed through the cruiser and emerged on the other side, what was left of the battlecruiser flying in all directions through the vacuum of Space. Just after that, with Vice Admiral Ramsay about to issue new orders to his surviving cruisers, a sixty-centimeter-diameter Predator laser beam burned through the hull of the VLADIMIR KOMAROV, penetrating all the way to the bridge complex and causing an explosion of sparks as it pierced the outer shell of the bridge holographic viewing sphere. That purple laser beam then rapidly swept across the bridge platforms, killing one third of the bridge crew, including Vice Admiral Ramsay and Captain Erika Shenken. As a hurricane-like explosive decompression sucked debris and bodies out of the bridge sphere, the navigation officer, utterly terrorized and struck with panic, then punched a command on his control station, and this without waiting for an order or an authorization. With a jump back to Providence already calculated in advance and entered in the navigation computer, the VLADIMIR KOMAROV’s Koomak Drive Generator powered up and made the battlecruiser jump out of the TOI 1231 System. The two other remaining surviving battlecruisers, the YURI GAGARIN and the GEORGUI BEREGOVOI, having just seen the ALEXEI LEONOV being destroyed by the impact of a kamikaze Predator asteroid, assumed that Ramsay had given the order to withdraw, so also jumped back towards Providence. The commander of the Predator fleet that had laid a trap for the Human battlecruisers, not believing her luck, immediately exploited that major Human blunder by ordering four of her surviving nine ships to follow her flagship down the interstellar funnels created by the Human battlecruisers’ jump wakes.
On the devastated and depressurized bridge of the VLADIMIR KOMAROV, the surviving bridge crewmembers couldn’t help sigh in relief at the sight of Alpha Centauri B and of Providence now visible on the external viewing screen. However, one officer, the weapons officer, glared at the navigator, sitting two work stations away.
‘’YOU FOOL! WHO AUTHORIZED YOU TO JUMP BACK LIKE THIS TO PROVIDENCE?’’
‘’But…but it was our only chance to survive. Since both the Admiral and the Captain were killed, I decided that it was our only course of action remaining.’’
‘’AND YOU MAY HAVE JUST SHOWN THE WAY TO PROVIDENCE TO THE ENEMY, YOU COWARDLY ASSHOLE!’’
‘’Now, wait a minute, Mister Kurgan! What tells you that those monsters could even be able to follow us to here?’’
The answer to that came only a few seconds later, when more purple laser beams struck the poor battlecruiser, causing more damage yet.
21:31 (Universal Time)
The Forster’s suite, Executive Deck
A.M.S. NOSTROMO, docked at the Klondike Ore Terminal
Asteroid belt of the Trappist-1 System, 39.6 light-years from Earth
‘’Time to sleep, sweetie. Have some good dreams.’’
Tina then gently kissed her nineteen-month-old daughter Janet on the forehead and pulled up a bit more the blanket covering her child before tiptoeing out of the bedroom, leaving one small electric candle on. She had just closed the door of Janet’s bedroom when her wrist communicator buzzed, making her flip up its cover revealing the tiny video display screen inside it and activating the link. She then saw the face of Renée d’Argenteuil, who was in charge of the bridge’s evening shift and whose face reflected concern.
‘’Yes, Renée?’’
‘’Tina, we just got an urgent message from Providence via courier drone: we are ordered to return to Providence as quickly as possible in order to protect the planet while our battle fleet is out of the system.’’
‘’And where the hell is our battle fleet right now? There were a dozen battlecruisers parked around Providence when we left the system.’’
‘’The message did not specify, Tina.’’
Tina then took a couple of seconds to process that information, with Renée patiently waiting for her orders. The conclusion Tina arrived at did not please her one bit.
‘’Those idiots probably decided to go strike at the Space Predators. With a strength of twelve battlecruisers, I can see only one objective that would warrant such a large force: the TOI 1231 System. The problem I see here is that half of our battlecruisers have still not been fully retrofitted with all our new anti-Predator equipment and weapons. Alright, I’m going to run up to the bridge now. Plot at once a jump for Providence and order the ship to battle stations: I want us to arrive in the Alpha Centauri B System at full cock and on hair trigger, ready to fight if we find something bad on arrival.’’
‘’Understood, Tina!’’
Tina was in the process of grabbing the large hard-shell case containing her personal spacesuit and buckling her pistol belt around her waist when a loud and sinister alarm blare started resonating around the ship, making her swear.
‘’Shit! Janet: I just woke her up!’’
22:04 (Universal Time)
Bridge of the A.M.S. NOSTROMO
Just emerging in the Alpha Centauri B System
Some 1.6 AU (Astronomical Unit) from the planet Providence
‘’We are now in the Alpha Centauri B System, Tina. Providence is ahead of us at some 1.6 AU.’’ announced Dana Durning, who occupied the navigator’s station for this jump.
‘’Very well! Mister Jamilian, advise Navy Headquarters that we have returned to the Alpha Centauri B System and that we will be in Providence’s orbit in about forty minutes.’’
‘’Aye, Tina!’’
With her ship still at battle stations and ready to fight, Tina stayed alert and kept checking regularly the data from the NOSTROMO’s sensors. One minute later, the voice of Spirit came in on the overhead speakers of the bridge sphere.
‘’Alert! I am detecting multiple flashes of exploding missiles and laser beams in the eastern quadrant of the system, 1.2 AU away. There is a battle on in that sector.’’
‘’Damn! This can only be our battlecruisers being engaged by Predator ships.’’
Her words made Dana Durning look at her with shock.
‘’The Predators would now know how to get to Providence? That is about the worst scenario possible for us.’’
‘’Agreed! Let’s try to rewrite that scenario, quickly! Spirit, take control of our helm and of our weapons and go to automated battle mode. Effect a micro-jump in order to get close to that battle, but emerge on one side of it: I want us to be able to take any Predator ship we will see in the flank.’’
Tina barely had time to finish her sentence before her ship effected a brief jump, changing position by 1.2 AU with no warning: nobody could ever accuse Spirit of being a laggard. Tina then had only a fraction of a second to see the scene of an intense Space battle dead ahead, with three Human battlecruisers being engaged by five huge, elongated Predator warships, before the four super-heavy disintegrator cannons constituting the main armament of the NOSTROMO opened fire in unison, concentrating their beams on the same point on the port flank of the lead Predator ship. At the same time, Tina saw a salvo of missiles flying away from the NOSTROMO’s missile launchers, then splitting up in five groups of six missiles each which targeted the Predator asteroid ships. As for the NOSTROMO itself, it started at once to gyrate and zig-zag crazily in an unpredictable pattern that would make the targeting of laser beams against it very difficult. Two seconds into the firing, the disintegrator cannons of the NOSTROMO pierced through the port side of the hull of the leading Predator ship and started to ravage its inside. Then, three seconds after that, all five Predator ships disappeared in an orgy of anti-matter warhead detonations exploding directly against their hulls, having been able to circumvent the force shields of the enemy ships by effecting micro-jumps. Having had to cover her eyes for a moment because of the blinding flashes of the explosions, Tina was then able to see that all five Predator ships had now been reduced to clouds of half-melted nickel-iron chunks.
‘’MAIN BATTERIES, CEASE FIRE! SECONDARY BATTERIES, TARGET AND VAPORIZE ANY PIECE OF ASTEROID-SHIP DEBRIS THAT COULD STILL SHELTER SPACE PREDATORS!’’
Tina couldn’t help then call Spirit via her intercom to congratulate her on her shooting.
‘’Spirit, in the old Far West, you would have been the queen of gunslingers. The likes of Bat Masterson{3} would have been proud of you.’’
‘’Thank you, Tina! However, I am afraid that I am now going to have to send my avatar to our medical center, to play a Florence Nightingale{4},