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Selene listened in to the conversation, amazed at the moxie of what the Riders were trying to pull.
‘Mirage, you will also make sure you can get around between those two ships?’ Kainan asked.
‘Shouldn’t be a problem,khosi. I can manoeuvre and change directions to make my way around.’
‘Fokk yeah!’ Kainan grunted.
At that moment, Riv and Kage jogged onto the bridge and slid into their chairs, strapping in.
‘What have we missed?’ Kage demanded, his commitment to the mission as fervent as Kainan’s. And indeed, each of the Riders.
Mirage filled the Riders in while Selene watched from her station.
She smiled privately at herself. She’d not had to work hard to secure The Sable Group’s support. Yes, they had their agenda to accomplish. But in the light of everything, it was a cause she could get behind. However, they could have refused to help. They could have decided to go about their revenge on The Technocracy in an entirely different way. Yet they’d come on board and were now all in. They were undoubtedly the most ballsy, assertive operators she’d met. Yet also the most privately generous and kind vigilantes in all of Pegasi. She felt a pang of profound gratefulness because she couldn’t envision anyone else volunteering to face the crat army to rescue one woman. Agenda or no agenda.
‘Strap in, people,’ Cilia said, cutting through Selene’s thoughts. ‘We’re about to decelerate out of hyperspace.’
The screen before them started a countdown to the exit.
60 standard seconds.
Selene braced herself.
‘Cannons ready?’ Kainan asked.
‘Ready,khosi,’ Riv replied.
‘Shields?’
‘On it,’ Kage said.
‘Mirage, gunship ready to exit the cargo bay the second we’re in normal space?’
‘Absolutely.’
Kainan nodded, satisfied. ‘Here we go, Riders.’
They all closely watched the countdown until it clicked over to zero. On cue, the Phantasm trembled slightly as it thrust from the clutch of their hyperspace tunnel into an inky black universe shining with nebulas, gas giants and stars.
They’d almost landed on top of the Technocracy’s ship. They roared towards their quarry that loomed larger than Selene had ever imagined. It was enormous, covered in silver armour and bristling with massive big electromagnetic rail guns.
‘Paint it!’ Kainan barked as the Edenite warship bore down on the capital ship.
Riv complied, his fingers dancing over his touchpad.
The Phantasm’s guns roared, releasing its metanoid missiles. They screeched out of the cruiser’s state-of-the-art hypersonic missile tubes and mounted torpedo tubes at supersonic speeds.
Seconds later, Phantasm’s bridge crew watched the displays in awe. The missiles exploded into a roiling combustion of white-hot heat. The metanoids exploded from the cannons and formed a cloud that quickly coalesced onto the surface of the enemy ship.
‘Looks like we have ourselves a metanoid storm!’ Riv said with a grin.
The Phantasm thundered over the enemy’s dreadnought and away from it for a few thousand klicks. Cilia expertly guided the battle cruiser into a semicircle formation, turning so that its bridge faced the enemy once more.
They saw the capital ship’s dock area gape open to deploy rattlers.
They winged through the air in search of their attackers. Instead, Mirage greeted them with a shower of rail gun missiles and painted them with metanoid-laced bullets.
‘Payload!’ Kage reported. ‘Now let’s give these little suckers time to work their way into each ship. Their encoders are probably downloading my files as we speak. It’ll take a few more seconds for the file to spread and cause the mutations, leading to eventual failure or self-termination. So watch out for the fireworks.’
