text: “Are those their fighters?” A young ensign questioned as he pointed to a hazy blob on the holo console. “Drones,” a Lieutenant Commander barked while brushing him aside, ignoring his ill-timed curiosity. “Battlestations!” He yelled into his collar. His voice mixed with a whaling siren as they both resonated down the steel halls. The Cordiovasquez was a prestigious ship; however, she was well past her days of making history. She was now a museum piece floating in orbit, focussing her resources on life support. Conquest was for the young, and she had slain many only to stave off decommissioning. Her sister ships were all mothballed, and she had the backwater duty of protecting the spaceport housing her antiquated comrades. It was a slap in the face for the captain and his uncharacteristically loyal crew. “How much Gauss?” Captain Faraday asked “Eleven, 14 without detonators.” A weapons officer answered “So eleven Igor, we have eleven Gauss.” Capt. Faraday “Yes sir.” the officer conceited. “Low-Velocity charges?” Capt. Faraday asked as he turned an old-world wheel given to him as a ceremonious antique, never intended for use on an Orbital Gallion. The giant sperm whale of a vessel lumbered to the left of a moon and the right of a twirling sphere devoid of activity but clearly, manufactured. “How many marines are on ARG-12?” “We have 467 LVC’s, and we can convert another 42 in an hour.” A charged officer responded “There are 14 Marines, sir, none of which are responding.” A senior officer responded in defeated intonation “So we have 467 LVC’s and Zero Marines!” The commander threw at his tired crew while tossing the wheel to the right again, corralling his lumbering space tube into the wake of their moon’s orbit. “Tell Cortez I want 3 LVCs cut in half and loaded with firing solutions on their Cruiser.” “Ummm, yes, sir.” The lieutenant verified her auto scripter and sent the copy, knowing full well Cortez could hear a recording of Faraday in engineering. At that moment, Cortez quickly grabbed a drawing pad and rep box and ran down the main batteries bay, yelling for help. “I know I heard!” A man in an Exo Suit hailed while waving as Cortez rounded a corner opening up to a massive bay full of reinforced bulkheads. “I’ll admit we have a lot of these, but unless he wants us to blow ourselves up with them, I have no idea what he is thinking this time.” The man had a giant steel wedge in his hand with the markings EGR-6(Egress Ramp 6) sloppily painted and worn by mass use. “What the fuck are you doing with that!!!” Cortez screamed. “How much do you like old-world history, say... revolution of the Francs?” The Exo pilot proudly proclaimed like he’d been waiting his whole life to flex his obtuse knowledge. “By then, they were French, the French revolution!” Cortez rebutted in a panic “Awww, so you get my point. We sure as hell can’t torch it.” Exo pilot “No...” Cortez At this point, the bridge was invigorated by numerous sirens. “Shut that shit off!” Farraday yelled as he wiped dribbled beer foam off his pant leg. “That’s another group of sleuths, four squadrons, bearing....” An officer said while observing his iridescent monitors “Dammit, two of those could wipe the lot of us. BEARING?!?” Captain Farraday demanded “Sorry sir, my monitors are only on 13% since we re-routed to life-support.” Officer “Reroute everything to targeting, I want those solutions, and I want them NOW!” Farraday yelled as an officer hit four keys on a screen and slid into a seat beside a console erupting with life. “Sir, we’re in Chester’s gravity! With our current fuel levels, I don’t....” The pilot officer divulged while poorly hiding his concern “Never mind that, reroute all that to targeting,” the Captain ordered while thinking: *Come on, Chester, don’t swallow us yet.* The ship groaned as the large geologically active moon Chester bent and pulled the craft around it like a tiny belt bucket. “Give me more shields!” “At the expense of???” A Officers questioned “Do we have the Cephalopod sighted?” The captain asked as the weapons officer cut him off. “Yes! I was able to find the bastard back-tracing his fourth squadron! Targeting verified..... Now!” Weapons officer “Cortez!” Faraday yelled into his collar. “One more sir,” Cortez said while watching his colleague bash the back of a giant ramp with more mechanical energy than he’d ever seen. The exo-suits servos whined and screeched as the pilot swung with all his mech-assisted might, cleaving the charge in two. The exo-pilot grabbed the piece dripping with anti combustible gel and waddled it over to the breach. Cortex watched and sprayed the remaining charges with the gel. As the exo-pilot egressed the breach area, Cortez radioed the bridge, “Ready sir!” “FIIIIORE!!!!!” Faraday yelled. The crew, utterly perplexed as to why cleaving a charge would ever be advantageous, remained hopeless but driven. “Load every gauss that won’t burst!” The captain said in a desperate but commanding tone “Sir, the fighters are about to intercept the hospital ship!” Radar officer “Cowards!” Faraday barked. The crew watched without directing their eyes away from their duties. They all had a peripheral blur of the slaughter. Large columns of orange flicked on every reflective surface in the bridge. They watched, certain their ship would share a similar fate. “Sir!” An officer yelled! “The Cephalopod is moving; it’s heading toward ARG and turning broadside to us!” The Cephalopod was a *Drone Carrier* capable of delivering payloads from safe distances. It sat eerily still on the dark side of Chester: the lava-spewing sphere of chaos, chock-full of rare earth materials. This whole microcosm of violence was hosted by Ethos, the hydrogen rich planet Chester orbited. Ethos was why Chester had such growing pains; its massive gravity squeezed the satellite in constant flux. Thus, Cephalopod and Cordiovasquez had giant columns of magma to avoid along with each other’s monstrous weaponry. Farraday looks at his monitor and yells, “give me a solution across the bastard’s nose!” “Done,” Officer. “Fire all gauss!” The captain yelled triumphantly as the massive maternal vessel belched energy and bulk out of its broadside batteries. The Cordiovasquez looked like a freshly tossed oil pipe angulating through space with a fiery gash erupting from its side. The weapons forced the vessel into a clumsy spin. The crew, now whirling, grabbed hold of whatever they could as the gravity computers stressed to compensate. “Power down!” the captain said as officers quickly shut down everything but life support. They now all sat tranquil in their seats, helplessly watching stars streak across the bridge windows as they twirled in their orbit. Meanwhile, on the Cephalopod, things were starkly different. A calm admiral watched as drone fighters encircled his easy prey. “The Enemy vessel fired one salvo, but they’ll miss, sir.” A lieutenant said with confidence. “We detected small explosions in their hull earlier but too small for gauss cannons.” “Their ships falling apart before we’ve fired a shot.” The Enemy admiral admired. He then looked at the defense matrix and traced the main salvo. “They’ll bounce off our bow deflectors. A good admiral conserves everything he can, bring her back to the initial launch point, our drones will perforate their hulk of a ship.” “Yes sir!” A lieutenant said while punching a solution into his holoscreen. Back at Faraday’s ship, the captain unbuckled himself and conveniently waited for the ship to twist via gravity, allowing the radar console to slowly link up with his hands in an elegant display of competence. He peered at the screen with a smirk on his face. “There,” he said as his worried crew’s faces transformed to glee. Just then, three large lumbering objects carried by the moon’s stubborn weight streaked toward the enemy blip. Onboard the Cephalopod, everything short of champagne was ready for victory when a strange shadow quickly blotted out the stars and was gone. Silence ensued as perplexed crew members looked at each other first, then the admiral. As the admiral stepped toward his radar screen he was thrown to the wall as an explosion of glass and sparks spared from all around him. The ship took one gauss round near the bow and another, seconds after--dead center. It looked like a stressed girder as it first buckled inward, then detonated and was enveloped in its fiery outcry. Its mindless fighter drones carried on their stubborn trajectories, unable to receive any new commands, destined to travel the cold space forever. “Call the marines, tell them to bring me some beer and all the engineers they got.” Captain Faraday said proudly in his comlink from the spinning dark bridge of his tired vessel.