The sheer number of commercial objects in the area they'd be arriving in was unbelievable and Laura hoped that Panloo and her navigation team would be able to manage the work of piloting them safely into position. She couldn't help but glance at Captain Alice Valent. By any measure the woman had transformed herself, taking control of the bridge, the ship, and carrying herself with so much confidence and visible sureness of self that no one doubted her abilities. After the news of Frost quietly stepping down from the Chief Gunnery position after a conversation with her got around the ship that respect and almost awe only intensified. Everyone knew he had a reputation as being difficult and chauvinistic, to see him brought down so low impressed many and frightened more.
On the bridge Alice was the picture of a professional Captain. The questions she posed the various departments were specific, could have only been posed by someone who had a firm knowledge of the ship and the crew. The month their Acting Captain had spent training the crew with Jake had taught the woman well, it was obvious to everyone.
There was no room for error and Alice demanded the best from the entire crew. The three pilots who had left the Mission Theatre weren't restricted to quarters, they weren't sent to the Habitation Section, they were put on the lowest quality escape shuttle they had and jettisoned towards the nearest spaceport. It would take them at least a week to make the journey.
Laura was familiar with that kind of paranoid reaction to crew members withdrawing from service after knowing operational details, Jason, her Husband was intelligence after all. There were things he couldn't even tell her about missions that he'd been on. She was the only person in the entire universe that he trusted completely, and she'd seen his suspicious, hyper vigilant side. Trust was something that he granted few, even in the slightest measure and as she grew to know the crew of the Triton she had come to trust them. Well, not all of them. To her dismay part of the plan that Alice had put in motion involved a number of the original Samson crew to man the ship they were most familiar with. That included Ashley, Finn, Frost and several of the more tried and true support staff including the lead navigator for the ship, Larry, who was always partnered with Ashley regardless of what she was flying. She had come to trust everyone from the Samson except for Frost and Leland March. Sadly the only Samson crew member that had remained behind was Agameg Price, who was a point of curiosity and fascination for her.
She had never met one of his kind that she was aware, and had especially never seen one who was confident or proud enough to actually remain in their native form. His big, expressive eyes and fine collector tendrils with which they gathered moisture and smelled as well as created intricate forms on their faces with to aid with shape shifting were so strange, so unlike anything she'd ever seen. At the same time his mild demeanour made him possibly the most friendly person she'd met in recent years.
Jason was always on her mind, and no matter how much she liked the crew of the Triton or Samson she always missed him. The topic of Triton going to Pandem had come up, and after very little prodding Laura discovered that getting the hypertransmitter was key to them getting there in much less time than they would if they started out using hyperdrive systems. Laura's suspicions were confirmed; the hypertransmitter would be used to rebuild the main array required to generate high compression wormholes for the Triton. Ease and speed of communications preoccupied Alice as well, there was something important she wanted to tell the galaxy as a whole and Laura suspected it had little to do with their rebellious cause.
If they managed to complete their mission, if they pulled this off, if they stole the piece of technology they were after, worth over three hundred billion credits they would not only silence one of the most major outlying military and resource rich Regent Galactic solar systems they would fully be connecting Triton to the rest of the Galaxy in a real, meaningful way. They could have real time conversations with anyone in the sector and send messages to Freeground in a matter of minutes using the highest wormhole compression capabilities of that hypertransmitter if it were integrated properly.
As Laura looked over the bridge, watched Alice and Price going about their final preparations as they neared their target and everyone else handling their near frayed nerves in their own ways she started to believe that they might just pull it off. As the arrival counter hit five seconds Panloo jerked at the helm.
“Our exit point is blocked!” Announced one of her navigators.
“Adjusting!” announced the other.
Panloo manoeuvred the ship the very second before they emerged from hyperspace to avoid a nine kilometre wide asteroid that had been placed exactly where the Triton was to arrive. As the Triton finished decelerating and emerged from hyperspace the tactical display flickered for a moment as it adjusted the entire field of view to account for the unexpected change in course. They were coming around the outer edge, one navigator keeping the silent nafalli helmswoman aware of objects in her path and the best routes through the space ahead.
Laura's terminal noted that they had collided with three small satellites as Panloo accelerated through an unplanned route well beneath the hypertransmitter. The collisions didn't affect the shields noticeably even though they practically ran through them at over one hundred twelve thousand kilometres per second.
The ship rotated and they were moving backwards, ingeniously manoeuvring to decelerate enough to compensate for their chaotic arrival and to close the distance between the ship and the hypertransmitter. The transmitter satellite looked like a silver spike on the tactical display, drifting above the dark side of the moon and the vast metropolis below.
“They knew we were coming,” Alice said under her breath as she highlighted several destroyers and small carrier fleet led by a long command carrier in the distance. There were already over a hundred starfighters moving in for the attack. “Set to contingency one, start moving us out of position,” Alice said calmly.
“Aye!” Panloo chirped from the controls, increasing the throttle and turning the ship towards the asteroid belly first.
The shields started taking hits from the planetary defence cannons and the incoming fighters but thanks to new power feeds and the fusion reactors running hotter than ever they started recharging as quickly as they took damage, not dipping below ninety seven percent. Laura hoped that they could maintain that charge but she knew better. Things were about to get interesting. “Tactical, is there a read on what those destroyers are doing?”
“Opening fire now! They're not using beam weaponry but going straight to high charge gauss shells.” Price told Laura and Alice.
“What? Did someone tell them we use refractive shielding too?” Laura said as she diverted power from the refractive shielding and shored up the other systems. “Is anything using beam weaponry?”
“Nothing, not even the Gemeelan, that command carrier, and they have the long range capability,” Agameg replied.
“How do they know how to exclude weaponry that's easiest for us to overcome? They haven't even seen us use our shielding effectively yet,” Laura said as the first volley of explosive shells came into contact with the gravitational shield. The shells were slowed down suddenly enough to set them off, causing strain on the outer gravity shielding but not touching the hardened energy barrier underneath or the ship. “Outer grav shield strength is down to eighty one percent and decreasing. Those explosions are taxing them just enough so they can't regenerate.”