“Captain?”

How big is that thing? he wondered briefly and shook his head. “Hold course, Helm. Right now they’re aiming around us. I don’t think I want to bumble into one of their beams by accident.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

“They are tough, aren’t they?” Tianne mused as she watched the Drasin vessel continue to close despite the immense amount of energy they had pelted it with.

“Pardon me, Captain?”

“Nothing, Ithan,” she said mildly. “How many beams struck?”

“Two, Captain. We’re adjusting the others now.”

“Good. Fire again when—”

The Cerekus reeled under their feet, sending one young woman into her console and another colliding with the wall.

“Report!”

“Incoming laser attacks. There are more of—”

Then another three beams stabbed into the energy shields of the big ship, overloading power relays all over the ship and blowing out half their defense grid.

“Return fire!” Tianne ordered.

“Yes, Captain! Returning fire!”

“Thermal bloom!” Waters announced again. “They took a strike, Captain.”

“How bad?”

“Just guessing, but from the intensity of the bloom, it looks like they reflected most of the energy away,” the young man said. “Too much energy reflected to be a deep strike.”

“That’s something anyw—”

“They’re firing back!”

Weston flinched as the radiation and weapons warnings went off again, throwing the bridge into chaos.

“Why do I feel like I’m caught between two giants fighting with clubs made of oak trees?” Weston growled, shaking his head in annoyance.

“Umm…sir?”

“Nothing, Lieutenant. Hold us steady.”

“Aye, sir.”

Lasers crisscrossed the emptiness of space, passing one another through the vacuum, not caring for what the other was doing.

On one side of the raging battle, a trio of beams found their target, unleashing their energy against the hull of an alien vessel. The armor flashed incandescent as it struggled to reflect back the power as best it could. Its best, in fact, was quite good, but there was so very much power to be dealt with, so the heat and radiation inevitably began to pour into the interior of the ship as well.

The Drasin faltered in its flight path, its engines failing for a moment as parts of its hull began to melt.

On the other side of the line, another two beams intersected the Cerekus, stabbing through its shields this time and cutting through the armor of the big ship like a pick through soft dirt.

“We’re venting atmosphere, Captain!”

“Seal those decks,” Tianne replied. “And continue firing!”

“Aye, Captain.”

Unlike the previous encounters with the Drasin, Tianne knew that her ship was something that its predecessors had not been. It was a ship built for war rather than a converted freighter. It had armor to withstand lasers and was built so that the ship could be compartmentalized in the case of massive damage.