The Fringe Wars

3.5

The Coastal Run

The Space Coast

"Bring shields up to thirty percent," Captain Gabriela Heid ordered.

She felt the crew's nervous glances being directed at her as they looked away from the screen filled with dots—each one representing a CUF drone—growing bigger every second.

When the distance hit three thousand, Heid said, "Enter stealth mode. Then, jettison the flak."

"Aye, aye, Captain," Sylvian replied.

A red border encircled the screen, the only on-ship visual sign that the Arcadia was in stealth mode. The warship was now effectively invisible to visual and radar systems alike.

Moments later, lights flickered against the blackness of space as chunks of garbage—each piece of flak repurposed with a small power generator—were ejected from the warship.

Heid had been in the CUF since she was fourteen, but her father had begun her teachings even earlier. She knew how the armada operated and knew how to exploit their dependency on unmanned defense systems. Drones were powerful tools with one critical weakness—they had no AI, therefore, no reasoning capability. Drones responded to threats exactly how they were programmed to. Heid had studied their programming, and knew things, like how drone sensors wouldn't pick up any traffic beyond a 2,800-click radius.

She also knew drones weren't equipped to scan for ships in stealth. Even so, Heid disliked using stealth. It burned juice at an exponential rate, and juice was at the top of their limited resources list. But even she acknowledged that stealth had its value, especially when she was planning to run a massive CUF blockade.

Her entire plan hinged on the assumption that drone programming hadn't been changed in over a year. It was a big assumption, since one of the armada's newest warships and a supply vessel now sat under torrent control.

Like clockwork, when the flak reached 2,800 clicks, the drones stationed at equal intervals across the entry to the Space Coast whirred to life and flashed red and white warning lights.

Heid continued to watch the distance close between them. At two thousand clicks, the drones fired at the flak. When no shots came at the Arcadia, Heid let out a breath. "Take us in, Will," she commanded.

"Taking us in," Will, the ship's pilot, said.

Before this moment, nothing larger than a Myrad cargo hauler had never entered the Coast before. The Arcadia, a massive warship, was easily ten times the size of the Collective's largest hauler. Heid would've preferred to have taken a smaller ship in the specter fleet with stealth capability, but she needed the space for the refugees. At least, she hoped there were still refugees alive to rescue.

A rock hit the hull, sending a ripple through the ship.

"We're too big," Will said, a frantic tone to his words.

"You can do this, Will," she countered.

"I—I'll try," he stammered.

The Space Coast was an asteroid belt that sat outside the Collective's control. Up until a year ago, the CUF had ignored the Coast. Citizens avoided the Coast. Only the most adventurous colonists braved the asteroid belt to journey to the unauthorized colony situated in the middle of the Space Coast. Nova Colony sat inside a hollow asteroid that had been colonized by outlaws and smugglers as a sanctuary for those who needed to avoid the CUF. It had become the center of all less-than-legal business activities, and one of the few places offering colonists the opportunity to earn a decent living—or die trying.