Fate of Terra - Rise of Empires

Chapter 3.1 - Rewrite

Author Note: Welcome to the begining of a brand new adventure. Characters may change, plot lines may be redrawn and the whole idea of the story will be shifting into a different arc. 
ENJOY!

* * * * *

'Where are they, where are they?' Tika muttered through her mind. A worrisome sense of desperation was starting to creep into her otherwise relaxed demeanour. 

The gunship she'd requisitioned, with the hefty payment to its previous owner, was clearly designed for one thing and one thing only. Speed. While the gun batteries were impressive, with a Neutron Cannon along with an Armour Piercing Rapid Repeater, the sleek design and oversized engine revealed the true purpose.

Normally manned by a crew of six, Tika enjoyed the space the emptiness afforded. She'd told the auto-pilot to go at top cruising speed along the route the mystery race had taken. With nothing else to do, Tika spent her time in the gym. Lifting weights, running on the treadmills and utilising the adaptable gravity to stretch her wings. The glossy black sheen had almost rubbed away with so many hours confined to her suit. The first rotation was a day dedicated to fixing the numerous bent feathers and oiling the follicles back to pristine shine.

That night's sleep was the most luxurious she'd had in a long time. The rich oils soaking down her naked flanks as the tiny hairs soaked in the nourishment. However, rising on the second day she spent the morning going through her kit and by lunch she'd gotten herself into peak readiness. All that was left was to get her body back into shape. Even if she wouldn't get much use from her wings off ship, she luxuriated in using them while she could. Propelling herself around the interior with powerful, measured, flaps. She did clip her head once or twice, and a bruised forearm told her not to try sweeping from the main corridor into the ships galley again, but she enjoyed her mobility non-the-less.

Her days of relaxing came to an abrupt halt when the irradiated particles of SLM she was following broke sharply away from Alliance space and into uncharted territory. Her orders were clear, to follow and observe, to report her findings and... then what? It didn't specify what she should do if discovered,

'Did they know they were being tracked?' She wondered. An icicle of fear punched into her stomach.

Floating in space wasn't going to get her anywhere, and she'd be torn wingless before she failed on the first chance she'd been given to prove her worth. On one hand, it was reckless and needlessly dangerous to push the craft to full speed following this unknown race. She didn't know the crafts history and knew little about how reliable the engines were. Despite the high quality and appearance to be in good working order, it was a civilian craft. Civilians didn't take nearly as much care of their equipment as a military branch would. That being said, she had time to make up. The armada f had left almost two rotations before her. If their technology could cut through her firewalls with punitive ease, it wasn't unreasonable to assume that their SLM capacities would be equally impressive.

Then she thought back to her dead-end assignments on the space-station she'd just left. Could she go back to that? If she failed, that's where she'd end up, or worse returned to backwater stations and far flung locations to 'observe and monitor.' She shuddered, going back over the cycles of boredom and frustration.

With that thought, she slammed the throttle to full, pressing the engines for everything they had. The TBC, or 'Tiny Battle Craft' as she'd come to call it, trembled and wobbled precariously at its limits, the horizontal stabilisers and vertical thrusters struggling to keep the craft stable. Tika didn't care, eyes scanning the space lanes and her tactical array. Dilapidated systems and astral debris remained the only things visible on the limited long-range Beacon.