Ezra's First

Part 8

Exactly two minutes and nineteen seconds later it all happened.

First, the computer sent the go command to the missiles and they activated, hopefully slamming megaton nuclear warheads into the Preshks engines.

At the same time, the scout ships engines went hot and they rocketed away from the fleet at a hundred and twenty five percent of their maximum throttle, Ezra hadn't told Daniel he had removed the thruster's safeties to keep him out of the investigation, but his face told him he had figured it out.

It appeared like the missiles had all hit their targets, however they would need a few more minutes to understand the exact damage they had enacted.

The first volley of fire came their way and unlucky for them, a few shots found their target, however it didn't piece the hull and Ezra began to program in alternate evasive manoeuvres for the computer to enact. They only had to avoid the fleets fire for another four minutes.

"The fleet is slowing down, preliminary scans indicate that the flagship is crippled, all of their engines are out of commission and the support ships are repositioning to protect it."

"So our ploy worked then, they think we're some part of some guerrilla warfare fleet, lets hope we can beat them back."

"Contact!" Daniel announced.

"Details?" Ezra responded, he wanted to respond with WHAT but that was useless discourse.

"The fleet has deployed three smaller craft that are in pursuit. They won't overtake us, but they have matched velocity."

Ezra swore internally, he didn't expect this, they had never seen smaller light attack craft from the Preshk. Their ability to match velocity meant he would be in their weapons range for a lot longer than he had planned. At least they would make it to the jump point, their engines were staying within the safe limits but he dared not push them further.

They continued to evade the oncoming fire for the remaining four minutes, which put them out of the range of the fleet, but their new pursuers kept steady on their tail.

"Do you think they will follow us through the jump?" Daniel asked.

Ezra began to talk but his mouth failed him, his jaw was clenched and his mouth parched. He made himself take a drink and a breath, they had thirty more minutes until the jump zone, he couldn't stay tense like this for that long, his teeth would fall out.

"Hopefully not, of course if they do, I'll stick to my pre-planned course and hope we can continue to stay outside of their effective range."

"Missile separation." Daniel barked.

"How many?"

"Just one, probably a hopeful shot, computer doesn't recommend any additional counter measures."

To be honest Ezra would have done the same if his goal was to catch them. However while they were in range of their weapons, they weren't in their effective range, all attempts to launch missiles would have low chances to hit and so you would just have to shoot and hope.

As the computer predicted the missile was so off course by the time it got in their general area it exploded without presenting any threat at all.

The next thirty minutes followed the same pattern, they continued to launched hopeful missiles that exploded in dead space.

"Spooling jump drive" Ezra announced and double checked the correct coordinates were locked in.

The navigation computer flashed green to indicate that they were no longer mass locked by anything in the system and were clear to jump.

He noticed that the Preshk had fired off two more hopeful missiles, but they were so unlikely to hit Daniel hadn't even bothered to announce them.

The moment the jump drive announced it's readiness, Ezra jumped their ship eight light years to the next star system.

Jumping between systems is not something you see. One moment you are in one system, then you appear in the next. There's no wormholes swirling around you, you don't travel for minutes or hours, the stars don't blur into one. It's more like a poor transition between scenes in a tv show.

The ship appeared in the new system and the two got back to work. Ezra took control of the ship and began ramping up the engines, jumping between systems kills your velocity, Daniel on the other hand, recalibrated the ships sensors to the new system and laid in their plot to the next jump point.

This system was simple, and was still part of the corridor, they just needed to fly in a straight line nothing fancy. From there they could get to the next system In the corridor, use that to junction off to a side system and begin turning around and heading for earth space. While they were seven weeks into their mission, it wouldn't take them seven weeks to return, their goal had been to survey specific systems and that always took a lot of time. If they bee-lined it back home, they could be in human space in about four days of constant flying, but potentially needed to add another day before they could get their message to the right commander.

They made it twenty minutes in system before they were no longer alone.

"Three contacts, it's them." Daniel announced.

"Overtake?" Ezra demanded.

"No... hang on, maybe."

"What do you mean maybe?"

"They jumped into the system the same as us, but their arrived with more acceleration, which we haven't seen before, if they can jump into a system with more acceleration, they will either overtake us in this system or the next."

It made sense when you think about it, human jump drive technology was inspired by salvaged Preshk tech, they seemed to be the pioneers of this tech, so it would check out that they would be able to make it perform better. Ezra could feel himself panic a bit, he hadn't planned for any of this.

"We still did the right thing." Daniel announced, almost as if he was reading Ezra's mind.