Exiles

  * * * *

  “Report.” snapped Jasper as the impact rumbled through the Fury’s hull like thunder.

  Alice checked her read outs. “It looks like we jumped into the middle of a full scale evacuation, caught two, possibly three ships, in our wake. No damage to the Fury.”

  “Never mind them, collateral damage, what the hell is going on here?” he barked back. Spinning the holographic display above them around, to focus on the massive ship closing on the Nova-7 and the two ships moving to intercept.

  Wilkes skin glowed and hummed as energy rippled through his sub-dermal implants. “It’s confusing, lots of background chatter, panic, it chaos out there. It’s the Anterian’s, a swam ship is moving to attack Nova-7, Themis and Sultan are moving to intercept.”

  Jasper smiled. “Looks like the Anterian’s are going to do the job for us, hail them.”

  Wilkes shook his head. “No response, they’re ignoring our hail.”

  “They’re targeting all vessels, including us do we fight?” added Alice.

  Jasper held his hands up indicating to them to wait. Then closed his eyes, placing his hands on his temples, and let the locks and inhibitors on his implants drop away. Ignoring everything, other than the swarm ship, he reached out across the vacuum of space and into its bridge. Initially recoiling at the innate savagery of the Anterian’s commander’s mind, he forced himself to probe deeper, looking for something, a weakness or insecurity he could use, but found nothing. He did learn something however, they couldn’t be reasoned with. They regarded the Amastra incident as a betrayal and were intent on destroying everyone involved and anyone who got in their way.

  He probed the junior officers and found what he was looking for. Their hierarchy was based on clan allegiance, power and prestige. At the first sign of weakness a junior officer could seek advancement by slaying an inferior superior. It would be a simple matter to incite crew munity along clan lines to buy them some time. Smiling he planted the seeds and withdrew.

  He opened his eyes and turned to Alice. “How long before we can execute a jump?”

  Alice scanned her read outs. “Spooling up the wormhole generator now. We should be fully recharged and ready to jump back to hyperspace in less than three minutes. All we need is some clear space and a destination.”

  Wilkes cut in. “There're launching strikers, hundreds of them. We’ve got incoming and the comms are going crazy. There attacking each other, as well as us.”

  Jasper turned to Jackson. “Deploy your package, just in case these savages fail to do the job for us.”

  Jackson nodded and a small squat, matt black, beetle like object, barely big enough for the three life pods crammed into it, slid out of one of the Fury’s rear missile tubes. Stealthily making its way towards the Nova-7. Its low profile and passive shielding, rendering it almost invisible to sensors, in the ensuing confusion erupting all around them.

  “Package away.”

  “Good.” he tapped something into touch screen built into his arm rest. “Alice prepare to jump to these co-ordinates, frag anything that gets in the way. Now if those flesh eating savages won’t talk to us let’s see if Ford is a free to chat. Wilkes hail the Themis. Jackson stand by to deploy the virus on my mark.”

  “Any particular target?”

  “All of them.”