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Queen of Shadows

#1
Queen of Shadows glided through the dense asteroid field of Arkon Delta. Dozens of smaller freighters flew next to it, carrying the minerals mined from Arkon Gamma to be selled in Arkon Alpha.

The ship was humongous. It was a kilometer long and half wide, and shaped as a octagonal cylinder. Every square meter of its surface was used for weaponry that ranged from Riptide-class anti-fighter guns to the anti-capital mass driver running along its spine. Inside the ship, there was a cargo bay full of Alloy. Six small production units were able to produce ammunition as fast as her guns could shoot them out, and two industrial class ones were able to produce and disassemble hundreds of small drone fighters.
Her shield pushed the asteroids away from the ship. Next to it was the power plant and the photon computer, that directed this power, calculated the complex math of the H-drive, analysed the sensor data and housed her mind.
She was her ship. It was her body. Some people, mostly from the old colonies, thought it as herecy, others as the next step in human evolution. Here, in the borderland Arkon systems, it was common, and no one really cared.

She woke up from her thoughts, when the sensors picked up a weak wake field. Few chirps from the active sensor told, that it was coming straight towards Queen. She routed power to the weapons. The signature grew, and the computer did a few calculations. It was not that fast, but it was too big to be a pirate ship. Way too big. It was either a capital, or a heavy cruise distruptor with full throttle on. The latter was quite improbable.
She ignited a few more fusion reactors. The freighters kept going without noticing anything. The computer locked on to the suprisingly strong signature, and estimated it coming to shooting range in three hundred seconds. After a hundred, she send a message to the freighters: Flee. Within the same second, she precharged all of her weapons, and powered the shield. Queen woke up. She hailed the signature once. It didn't respond.

She launched a scout drone. It got nearer the signature. When it passed two kilometers from the signature, it was immediately destroyed. She blasted the beam lasers towards the signature. The signature's photon emissions strenghtened slightly, and the returned to the normal level.
20 seconds until contact.

Her visual scanners catched the ship. It was bright white, in contrast with the black and blood red of her ship. Suddenly a little bright spots of blue emerged from the ship. She charged up the shields and braced for impact. She loaded few of the missile bays and shooted towards the ship. One of the missiles going towards her was different. A Heisengberg scrambler. She blew it up with a laser almost effortlessly. The missiles hit the exactly same place eight times, barely scratching it. She had made the same mistake. Her missiles hit in quick succession, and she shooted with the high speed plasma streams to the weakened part of the shields.
The ship came to the shooting range of the burst lasers, and she let them shoot on autopilot. It did the same. She could see the giant letters written in blue on the side of the ship. They spelled Sword of the Angels.
She started producing fighters. Two steady streams of them bursted out of the production units. The ship's anti-fighter guns blazed, ripping through the drones like a hot knife through butter. The drones still made some damage to the shields. Some missiles managed to get through them, making craters on the thick white hull. She blasted out few nanobombs to the asteroids, which were quickly eaten by them. Then she ordered the swarms to attack. Black clouds glowing in infrared slammed onto the shields with all of their combined momentum, and she launched a rod traveling 2000 meters per second from one of her railguns straight to the weakened harmonic. The rod passed, and pierced a hole to the ship's hull. It was almost too easy.

The ship reloaded missiles and railguns. Within the same moment, her shields turned offline. The ship launched every weapon it had, and a few microseconds later the bombardment hit, with the shockwaves ripping her hull apart. Tiny fragments of carbon nanotube-reinforced steel flew of while her inertia dampener worked hard to slow down the ship. She relayed the power from the destroyed guns to the H-Drive, and started turning around. The wake field dragged the ship with it, as its guns kept shooting at the unprotected hull, still ripping it apart. She ordered the drones to defend her. The drones tried to intercept as much as they could. Behind the curtain of the drones, she changed her mind, and started charging the mass driver. She pointed the ship's nose towards Sword of the Angels. When the charge was ready, she ordered the drones to move out of the way, and shot. The bullet, made out of 2000 kilograms worth of uranium, reached nearly an eight of the speed of light. The bullet pierced straight through the shield, into the hull, and out of the hull in the other side way faster than a human can blink.

She had only used it once before. The unstoppable power scared her still.
She woke up. It felt... different. She opened her eyes, and realised, that they had never been closed. She felt numb. She looked around. Scanner input, weapons array, current state. She finally understood, what had happened to her. She tried to scream, but heard nothing. She opened the communications, and screamed. She didn't hear it. They heard. "Why!?", she screamed at the station. It answered: "Your parents.". She turned herself towards the station, feeling greater rage than ever before in her life. She searched for the most powerful weapon in the ship, and shot. The recoil was horrifying, but the effects were even worse. After understanding what she had done, she ran. She ran from the Hydra region, hundreds of jumps away, where no one knew her. Somewhere far away.

Sword's hull had a few meter diameter hole going straight through it. The edges had boiled and molten. The ship was cut in half by the shockwave. It was dead. She called the freighters back.
Suddenly the ship heated up. After a few seconds, the smaller part vanished, with the bigger part following. Where the ship had been was a giant swarm of nanobots. She charged the anti-nano gun, and moved with cruise speeds to escape from the whole sector. She shot at the swarm, and the lightning jumped in between the nanobots. She moved as fast as she could, using all the computational power she had to move faster towards the exit. There was a reason why the nanoblooms were prohibited in all civilisations within a billion jumps. They destroyed the enemy, but also the system, and the whole sector, sometimes the whole region before lockdown could be initiated. Ianos, Ferej, Croex... the list was long, and Arkon was right about to join the list.

She moved through the jumphole without slowing down at all. She wouldn't stop before she would be out of the whole sector. She ran the second time.

But this time it wasn't her fault.

EDIT: Feedback, please!
In space, no one will hear you scream. #262626
I've never played a space sim. Ever.
Vos estis tan limes.

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