MidReal Story
Stellar Ambush: Orion's Last Stand
Scenario: Space ships attack each other, huge planet-sized weapons sail through space
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The Orion shuddered as another enemy ship fired on our position, and I flinched as a fresh wave of alarms went off all around me.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Sera called out, her voice tight with fear and frustration as she tried to divert power from one system to another.
“I’m trying, but it’s not enough!
“Dammit,” I muttered as I forced myself to focus on the task at hand.
The Orion was ambushed.
Our shields were still down, and it was only a matter of time before the enemy ships started targeting the ship itself instead of just our shields.
We were outnumbered, outgunned, and out of time.
The shields are failing, and I can’t get them back online!”
Our only hope was to run.
“Just keep trying,” Marcus said, his expression grim as he stared at his console in front of him.“We can still make it out of this.”
We were already taking fire from every direction—there were at least a dozen enemy ships surrounding us now—and I knew that it wouldn’t be long before one of them landed a hit that would destroy the ship for good.
If that happened, it would mean the end for all of us; there was no way we’d be able to survive out here in the middle of nowhere with no shields and no weapons, cut off from the rest of the fleet with no hope of rescue if the Orion went down in a ball of fire.
“No, we can’t,” Sera said, shaking her head as she tried to divert power from another system to the failing shields and failed yet again.“The shields are gone!There’s nothing left to divert!”
But the enemy fleet had us surrounded.
We were dead in space.
The Orion lurched again as another wave of enemy fire hit our hull, and I winced as I watched it disappear from the main viewscreen for several seconds before it reappeared again.
I could feel the fear and despair building inside me as I thought about how close we were to being completely wiped out by the Dominion, but I forced myself not to dwell on it for too long; I didn’t have time for that now.
No one did.
“Elara, we need a way out of this,” Marcus said.
We only had so many layers of ablative armor protecting our hull, and if those shields didn’t come back online soon, it wouldn’t matter how many enemy ships we took out—we were going down no matter what.
The enemy ships kept firing on us with deadly precision, their weapons striking us in all the right places to take out our systems one by one before we even had a chance to respond.
I could hear the desperation in his voice.
“Elara, I’ve got something!”
I could see it in his eyes.
Marcus’s voice broke through my thoughts like a ray of sunshine, and I turned to look at him with wide eyes as he nodded at me.
“Elara, the shields are down,” Marcus said, panic rising in his voice as he turned to look at me, his eyes wide and wild as he tried to make sense of what was happening all around us.
He was looking at me like I was our last hope.
“We’ve got an incoming transmission from the Republic destroyer Retribution,” he said.
“What do we do?”
“I don’t know,” I said, my voice tight with fear and frustration as I tried to think of something, anything, that might help us get out of this mess alive.
I was the best pilot he’d ever met, and he knew it.
“She’s under the command of Admiral Kaelu.”
“Elara, the shields are down,” Marcus said, his voice rising as he turned to look at me, his eyes wide and wild as he tried to make sense of what was happening all around us.
I stared at him for a moment, unable to believe what he was telling me.
But even I couldn’t get us out of this one.
There were too many of them, and they had us completely surrounded.
“Are you sure?”
“What do we do?”
I didn’t know what to do, but I had to do something.
“I’m sure,” he said with a nod as he turned back to look at his console.
“There’s nothing left to do,” Sera said, her eyes wide and wild as she stared at me in disbelief, knowing that I didn’t have a plan and that we were all going to die if I couldn’t think of something fast.“We’re all dead.”
I stared at her for a moment, unable to believe what she was saying, before I turned to look at Marcus on the other side of the bridge.
The message is coming in now… Oh shit.” He looked back at me with wide eyes.
I couldn’t just sit here and wait for them to blow us out of the sky.
He knew that I was our last hope, just like everyone else on the bridge did, and he was looking at me like he expected me to come up with a miracle solution to save us all from certain death.
I had to try something, anything, to get us out of this mess alive.
“Elara, it’s a trap.”
I blinked at him in disbelief as he turned back to his console and adjusted the viewscreen so that I could see the incoming transmission for myself.
The Orion shook again as another wave of enemy fire hit our hull, and I could see it disappearing from the main viewscreen for several seconds before it reappeared again.
“Give me a minute,” I said, my hands flying over the controls as I tried to come up with a plan.
“We don’t have a minute,” Marcus said.
The viewscreen crackled with static for a moment before settling down into a clear image of the bridge of the Republic destroyer Retribution.
There was only one thing left to do, but it wasn’t going to be easy.
The Orion shook as the first wave of enemy fire hit our shields.
The officer on duty—a young lieutenant with sandy brown hair—was staring at me with wide eyes as he adjusted his headset and tried to make contact.
Or fun, for that matter.
“I know that,” I said, my voice tight with fear and frustration.
“This is the Republic destroyer Retribution calling any surviving Republic ships,” he said.
“Marcus, I need you to—”
“We are here to provide assistance if you require it—”
He didn’t have time to finish his message before the enemy ship behind him suddenly exploded in a ball of fire, its hull glowing white hot as the ship disintegrated in a cloud of debris and shrapnel.
“Elara, they have us surrounded!”
Marcus said, the panic in his voice rising by the second.
The viewscreen cut out for a moment as the transmission was lost, but it flickered back into focus a moment later as the enemy flagship came into view, emerging from hyperspace directly in front of us as it slowly turned to face us, its weapons locked and charging as it prepared to open fire.
There were so many enemy ships converging on our position that they were practically on top of us.
“The Retribution was a decoy,” Marcus said grimly as he turned to look at me, his eyes dark with fear as he stared at the main viewscreen, where the massive dreadnought was slowly moving into position directly in front of us, blocking our path as the Dominion fleet closed in on us from behind.
And that wasn’t even the worst part.
“There was never any help coming.”
“The shields are holding for now,” Marcus said.
“But I don’t know how long they’re going to last.”
I stared at him, unable to believe what he was saying.
There’s no way we’re taking on fifteen enemy ships,” I said.
“There’s just no way.”
“Correction,” Marcus said.
“It’s over fifty ships, and more are incoming.”
I stared at him in disbelief.
That couldn’t be right.
There was no way we were taking on an entire fleet by ourselves.
We were outnumbered and outgunned, and there was no way we were getting out of this alive.
“What do you want me to do?”
I asked him, knowing that it was a stupid question before the words even left my lips.
“I want you to get us out of here,” Marcus said.
“We need to move now and—”
“We’re surrounded,” I said, cutting him off before he could finish his sentence.
He nodded, his expression grim.
I turned my attention back to the main viewscreen, where the enemy ships were closing in fast on our position.
There were so many of them that I couldn’t even count them all, and more were arriving by the second.
Some of them were so big that they could take down our ship with a single shot.
And there were so many of them that they had us completely surrounded.
We didn’t stand a chance.
I knew that, but I couldn’t just give up without a fight.
I had to try something, anything, to get us out of this mess alive.
The Orion shook again as another wave of enemy fire hit our shields, and I jumped in my seat as an alarm started blaring beside me.
“They’re closing in fast,” Sera called out over the comm system.
“I’m doing what I can, but these things are faster than me.”
I turned my attention back to the main viewscreen, where the enemy ships were closing in fast on our position.
And that wasn’t even the worst part.
“They’re matching our movements,” Marcus said, his voice tight with fear and frustration.
“No matter which way we go, they’re right behind us.”
“I have a plan,” I said, my hands flying over the controls as I tried to come up with a way out of this mess.
“But we need to take out some of these ships to—”
The Orion lurched again as another wave of enemy fire hit our shields, and I could see them flickering and fading on the main viewscreen as I waited for Sera to respond.
But she didn’t say anything, and my heart sank at the thought that she might not be able to fix them in time to save us from this mess.
The Dominion had caught us by surprise, and we were completely unprepared for this attack.
I knew that, and so did the rest of my crew.
