The Confederation Starship Illustrious spiralled slowly and silently in the cold vacuum of space. Shimmering columns of gas spouted from the shattered hull. Occasional short-lived gouts of flame erupted when live wires ignited the flammable gas. Half-frozen bodies floated from huge rents in the sides of the once great ship.

  Lieutenant Elizabeth Fletcher watched from the cockpit of her Talon fighter at the husk of the ship. She felt a momentary pang of remorse as she realised that her home for the past six years was now nothing more than a twisted heap of scrap metal.

  An alarm jolted her from her memories, and she yanked hard left on her control stick by reflex alone and watched as twin bolts of green energy blasted past her fighter. She berated herself for the lack of concentration and focused on the action around her.

  The remaining Confed Starship, The Fearless, was under attack from a group of ships that had appeared from nowhere only a few minutes ago. The ID Computer couldn’t identify them and they were a configuration that Beth certainly hadn’t seen before, narrow Silver ships shaped like a slightly flattened egg, with the narrower end pointing forward. They were extremely manoeuvrable and the much larger Talon fighters were totally unable to keep up with the tight turns and twists that the silver ships were performing.

  As Beth watched, another Talon exploded in a silent momentary ball of flame, before fading into shining chunks of metal, and she realised that there were less than a quarter of the compliment of the two carriers left now. The Fearless was taking hit after hit from the alien ships, and it was trying to manoeuvre to allow a Hyperspace jump. Just then, Beth’s comms crackled into life as her commanding officer ordered a retreat.

  “Commander Davies to Talon pilots. The CFD Fearless is preparing for Hyperspace. Power up and follow to these coded co-ordinates where she will be waiting.”

  The Talon’s instantly disengaged from the alien fighters and Beth punched up the NavCom. Luckily, the Talons were big enough to carry limited-range Hyperspace engines to get them out of any situation where their carrier was compromised.

  Working quickly, Beth typed in the co-ordinates for the jump and turned to watch for the Fearless’ exit. The Silver Ships were converging on the big carrier, and Beth began to turn her fighter back towards the action.

  The Fearless was turning to manoeuvre away from the huge alien ship in its path. It was definitely not a Confed ship. Almost four times the size of any carrier Beth had seen before, it dwarfed the relatively small Confed carrier before it, huge and rectangular, with irregular shapes placed all over, it too was silver like the smaller ships.

  Green energy fired from irregular bumps on the surface of the huge alien ship, slamming into the Fearless as it turned, tearing great holes in the side of the Confed vessel. Beth couldn’t believe how the alien energy weapon was getting through the shields so easily.

  Spinning her craft through ninety degrees, Beth aimed her Talon towards the main group of alien fighters. Firing her lasers seemed to have no effect on the alien ships; the blasts hitting some sort of shield that they couldn’t penetrate.

  The two sets of fighters were performing a deadly dance, twisting and turning around each other. Approaching the group, Beth targeted one of the oval shaped ships and locked one of her quantum missiles onto it.

  The Confed force had found early on that the alien ships were far too manoeuvrable to enable successful locks, but Beth was hoping that it wouldn’t see her coming. Unfortunately, the silver fighter skipped to the side as Beth pressed the firing stud, and the missile missed by some margin, somehow unable to follow the alien ship after launching.

  Beth pulled sharply on the controls and spun her Talon up and away from the group. Suddenly she felt the fighter buck beneath her and alarms sounded from all around. Watching the readouts, she soon realised that she had been hit a glancing blow from one of the green energy blasts. Looking around, she attempted to spot the enemy ship. The radar showed empty, as it had since the attack began. Another thing to chalk up to these bastards, they had some seriously good radar jammers.

  Unable to locate the alien ship, she continued to twist and turn, in the hope that she was able to keep it off her back long enough to ascertain what had been damaged.

  The first quick look had shown that there didn’t appear to be much damage done, although she didn’t have the time to study the reports in any depth.

  “Commander Davies to Talon pilots. The Fearless is finished. They’re crippled and unable to escape. All Talon pilots to proceed to prearranged co-ordinates and await pickup by Confed ships. Message has been sent to command informing them of our situation. Good luck pilots.”

  As the comms unit went silent, Beth slammed her Talon round to face the Fearless. As she turned, she watched the back end of the carrier explode in a ball of flame, which engulfed the rest of the ship in seconds.

  Realising that she had moments before the huge alien carrier started targeting the fighters, Beth wrenched her Talon round to face open space and punched the Hyperspace ignition button. Nothing happened. Beth swore and pressed it again. Nothing. Something was stopping access to hyperspace. Just then the Comms unit crackled again.

  “Commander Davies to Talons. Something’s jamming hyperspace access. Scatter and get away as best you can. There’s nothing we can do here now.”

  Still twisting her Talon to avoid the green energy fire, Beth looked around for some way to escape. All around her the Talons were disappearing in explosions. There were fewer than a dozen blips on her radar now as the fighters were slowly destroyed.

  Suddenly an idea occurred to her and she spun the Talon round on its axis in a tight one-eighty that had the inertial stabilisers screaming in protest.

  The silver ship behind spiralled down to avoid the Talon, and Beth grinned, “Didn’t expect that did you, you bastard.”

  The hulk of the Illustrious appeared in the front view-screen and she gunned the engines to max and raced towards it. Still full throttle, Beth banked her Talon over the top of the carrier and slammed the engines to full reverse, dropping two missiles as she did.

  The Talon shuddered to a stop and she wrenched the ship around and thrusting forward aimed for one of the holes in the side of the carrier. Spinning her ship on its axis, she faced the two missiles sitting in space, backing towards the carrier.

  Just at that moment, one of the alien ships followed Beth’s route and as it reached the missiles, she blasted them with her lasers. The resulting explosion blew the Talon backward into the hole in the hull of the carrier and into one of the inner walls.

  Beth slammed back into her seat and awaited the whistling that announced air loss, but there wasn’t any sound. She breathed a sigh of relief that she had got away lightly, and looked out of the hole in the hull. All she saw was spinning debris from the vaporised alien ship.

  Hurriedly Beth shut down the engines and all systems apart from life support, sat in the cockpit of her battered Talon, and waited for either the aliens to find her, or the Confeds to arrive.

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