“Missiles away! Tubes reloading,” Adler said, grunting as the RDS reversed fields and the ship was being rapidly hauled to a stop in space. Celesta had to lean back and plant her feet in the carpet to keep from sliding out of her seat as the helmsman expertly ran the power up and back to keep a steady decel without creating a dangerous situation for the crew. The ship had almost come to a complete stop relative to New Sierra when the thing Celesta had been half-expecting happened.

“RDS offline!” the helmsman called, eliciting groans of disgust from the rest of the bridge crew. “MPDs coming up now.”

“Two targets destroyed, one disabled, one undamaged,” Adler reported after ten tense minutes of watching the helmsman get the plasma engines configured for flight. “Lead ship has stopped and the outermost ship to the right is turning in. I think we have their attention, ma’am.”

“Helm, bring her to starboard forty degrees.” Celesta’s eyes never left the tactical display. They were all close enough now that the radar data was real-time. “Ahead full.”

“Ahead full, aye,” the helmsman reported.

“We saved the Ushin ship but we may be screwed.” Commander Barrett pointed to the accelerating Darshik ships. “Our plasma engines can’t match that rate of acceleration. They’ll catch us.”

“Yes, but the Ushin and New Sierra were saved,” Celesta said. “We can’t—”

“Flanking ship has just been destroyed!” Adler called. “Missile hit from one of ours.”

“Coms channel request coming in for us—”

“Put it through, Lieutenant Ellison,” Celesta interrupted.

“Captain Wright, this is Captain Lee aboard the New York,” the familiar voice said. “We have your last target in sight and are closing the range now. Your aft will be cleared momentarily.”

“Captain Lee, I owe you a drink when this is over,” Celesta said with relief. She would do her duty, but it didn’t mean she was necessarily happy with having to be the sacrificial lamb to accomplish a mission objective. “Happy hunting.”

****

“One ship escaped, sir,” Pike said as his own instruments corroborated what he was being told over the Link. “The New York took out the lead Darshik ship in the formation, but the last flanker the Icarus missed was able to skirt around and disappeared off radar.”