The Attack
The following is an account by Kaden Storm, Captain of the human destroyer ship Kusanagi. Selected from Annex B-6540U.
Looking for the audio version? It’s at the bottom!
It’s been six days since we departed Earth in pursuit of the attacker, and the wounded vessel has finally shown up on our ship’s long-range scanners. Barely a blip, but it’s most certainly there, hanging just out of reach – for now at least. The Europan Garrison are reporting its appearance on their screens as well. It appears to be doing exactly what I would do were I the pilot of a damaged ship fleeing a pack of angry hornets whose nest I had just beat to shit with a bat. But it’s too late for it, even if it does manage to evade us long enough to slingshot around Jupiter and accelerate towards the outer rim. Half of the Europan garrison is already en route to intercept the attacker along its predicted trajectory, with the other half intent on bringing them hell served hot from ahead while we pummel them from behind, just as they begin to make their pass around the great orange giant. This craven, green, gray, metallic, or otherwise alien son of a bitch is done for no matter how you cut it – whether they know it yet or not.
I sip my fifth cup of sludgy synth coffee as I tap my finger on the Kusanagi’s command dash and review the intel reports for the hundredth time. The ship is approximately 10 yards from tip to tail (no bigger than our own fighters), shaped like a lightbulb, and is outfitted with technology approximately 50 to 100 years ahead of our own. Just enough advancement to give it a serious leg up on Earth’s defenders, but not so much as to render it entirely invincible. According to the intel reports, the thing seemed impregnable until the very end of the battle when a desperate groundside EMP turret commander thought to try hitting it with a “neutral energy pulse in a wave form that matched the inverse oscillation frequency of the craft’s shield power output”. I don’t really know what the hell any of that means, but according to my weapons tech, pulling a trick like that on one of OUR ships wouldn’t have done a damn thing, hence why no one had thought to do it sooner. Not the case for the bastard bulb though - apparently that fancy maneuver caused the attacking ship’s power systems to short and its shields and engines to stutter for a brief moment – just long enough to allow a couple of hotshot fighter pilots to ring the bulb’s bell with a few perfectly timed fission shells.
Its shielding fell completely after those precious few bullseyes, and the thing turned its smoking tail and ran; clearing the atmosphere before the fighters could get a final word in. We showed up shortly after, and have been chasing it ever since. Despite being critically damaged, the thing is still damn fast. Not fast enough though. Not fast enough.