Professional eyes swept the battle. Su Lynn forced down the revulsion she felt as she surveyed the damage. Death was reigning on this field, as it did on every other one she had seen in her career, but the scale here was horrifying. Even forgetting the enemy dead, the Song-Jiang’s computers were reporting dozens, if not hundreds, of bodies drifting around the Hood and the Heroics.

Men and women had been pulled into the void through hull breaches. Some of them had their suits intact with transponders that still showed life signs. But most either hadn’t had on protective gear or saw their gear’s life-saving properties destroyed in the event that blew them out into space.

The Odysseus had taken frightful levels of damage, but was still fighting, as had the Bellerophon. It was only then that she noticed that the Boudicca had gotten mixed up with a small element of enemy cruisers and didn’t seem to be faring too well.

“Commander,” she said, “look to the Boudicca.”

“Damn,” her first officer, Commander Kiran Hiro, swore. “They’re going to need some help.”

“New priority target,” Su Lynn announced.

“New target, aye!”

“Let’s try to give the Boudicca some cover,” she said to Kiran. “I think we have enough left in our magazines for that.”

“Aye aye, ma’am. We have firing solutions at the ready, but they’re not going to be as clean as taking on parasites.”

“Clean or not, we’re going in.”

►►►

AEV Odysseus

► Steph turned and jerked the Odysseus through the debris field left by the transition-cannon assault from the Rogues while Milla burned anything too fast to dodge and too large to ignore.

Eric tried to focus on the battle as a whole, noting that while the weight of metal turned scrap was certainly on their side of the fight, they were still outmassed and outnumbered by the Imperial ships. The momentum of battle was turning against them.

We need to end this, and end it now, or we’re going to lose this fight.

Damage reports were pouring in. The Odysseus had been hit by so many lasers that he honestly figured that if he were still commanding the Odyssey, they’d have been turned to plasma a dozen times over. Of course, if he were commanding the Odyssey, he’d have been able to sneak up on the enemy and likely get away clean.

“Lieutenant Chans,” he said, “bring our transition cannons back into the game, fire the magazines dry. I’ll take a lucky hit right about now.”

“Aye Capitaine,” Milla murmured, hastily calling up firing solutions for the ships around them. “Firing t-cannons and lasers.”

Eric turned to Miram. “Have the Kid try to clear out the edges of the fight with torpedoes. Just do not let them fire anywhere near us or the other Heroics.”

“Understood, Capitaine.” Miram smirked at him as he glanced sharply at her pronunciation of his title.