Chapter 3: The Encounter

The explosion rocked through the vessel, throwing everyone onto the deck. Chaos quickly ensued with multiple alarms blaring. The comm lines became saturated immediately with people asking for assistance and barking orders.

“Trigger the particle shields. Increase power output to energy barriers. Assault team, prepare for return fire. Let’s give these aliens a taste of our cannons. Wing Fleet, engage, assault pattern Foxtrot Kilo. Defend the Lady”

“Roger that Captain. Defensive combat pattern Foxtrot confirmed. Wing Squad Alpha, protect the Lady. The rest open engage and cut them down to size”

“Engage evasive maneuvers.  Let them follow us; I want them hot on our tail. Divert energy to the aft shields while our battery cannons reduce their projectiles as best as we can. The Magdalene is an iron lady, she can take the hits.”

“Master Gunnery, arm the main cannons and standby. We will show these bloody aliens what we can do.” “Slowly reduce power support to the aft shields after each hit. Let them think we are weakening. We’ll roast them soon enough”

The ship shuddered again and again being pummeled from behind. The alarms becoming increasingly shrill despite the slowly pervading air of calm after the initial direct hit. The crews are growing more focused with the intent of delivering their own blow.

“Lead those into the asteroid field ahead, once we gain some traction, turn the ship around and fire all our cannons. Main cannons on the ready.”

“There, right off the cluster ahead, turn and fire through the rocks. Our cannons will punch through it and hit them as they approach. Now”

The Magdalene groaned under the stress of turning on a dime. The gravitational gyro-controls spiraled keeping the ship level.  

“Open Fire! Let them have it!” The Lady Magdalene directed all of her forward cannons and released a barrage blasting through the asteroid field towards their assailant. There was surely no chance that their antagonist could avoid being hit.

“Contact in 2 seconds, 1 and hit”

There was blinding explosion and the entire horizon filled with light. Aftershocks reverberated through the open space, pushing away space debris.

A moment later it dawned on the Captain that their assault did not have the desired effect. Their antagonist was still there, apparently unscathed and moving in closer.

“Re-arm the cannons. Energy shields at maximum. Wing Fleet retreat beyond safe-zone”

From their vantage point in Lady Magdalene’s bridge, they could see several pinpricks of light growing in intensity ahead of the approaching ship.

“Captain, the enemy is charging some kind of energy device, everything is off the scales. We are having trouble identifying what it is.”

“Move her away, use the asteroid field as cover, and bring us as far as we can away from this beast.”

“Captain, we detect two points of energy coalescing in front of us. Engineering says it is some kind of Negative-space orb. Another two is appearing behind us as well. It seems to be boxing us in”

“Evasive maneuvers. Avoid the kill box”

                “We can’t Captain. It seems to match every action we take. We’re                          trapped!”

“Like hell we will. Return fire”

As soon as her energy cannons released their payload, it dissipated and the four pinpricks of Negative energy burst alight and formed a square. Not a blink later, a sudden flash of light appeared across the ship from bow to aft, cleanly sectioning her.

The Magdalene groaned to halt, cataclysmic damage dealt to her as she split right across spilling her contents and crew into deep space. All energy and support systems shot. All the Captain could do was gape in disbelief as his pride was violently torn away. He was about to sound abandon ship when another flash sliced through the bridge. There was no pain, no sound, just the screaming silence of his crew in the void of space.

The antagonist merely watched as their prize shuddered and died, biding their time, before harvesting the dead crew and contents of their sectioned victim.