War Fleet: Resistance

All you could do was sit paralyzed in your seat as you watched bright light streak across the viewscreen, and take some time to reflect.
Unfortunately, the experience of it often sent humans into a refractory emotional state where their minds entered downward spirals of negativity triggered by the fight or flight response. And right now, Olsen was worried.
He had ordered a whole crew to their potential doom, much as they’d accused him of during the Grashorn incident. Chang might have been right — perhaps they should have waited longer. They had no time, dammit, and they were facing off an Arstan warship in a damaged state. Only a madman would give such orders, surely. How could he have done such a terrible thing to his ship and his crew?
When Olsen had gotten demoted, Brownstone had written ‘volatile’ on his career report. More recently, he’d felt he’d been riding his luck with each dangerous situation he encountered.
The anxiety abated somewhat as the Tapper slowed to sub-light-speed. Olsen grounded himself and waited for the light on the viewscreen to fade to a lower level of orange light coming from the Ripley sector’s sun, but it faded much more quickly than he’d expected. Almost as if they’d found themselves in the middle of nowhere, thousands of light-years from any burning star.
No, that was impossible. Once the coordinates were set, they were set, and the only thing that could stop them was a physical object of equivalent or larger size to their ship. But a collision at such speed would have annihilated both objects into fine specks of dust.
He waited until he had the strength to speak, then said, “Santiago, what the hell is going on? I thought I ordered you to plot us into the star.”
She didn’t respond, probably still recovering from the warp. On the screen, the white light had thinned even more, revealing ghostly shapes in the background, ever so tiny but approaching fast. On closer inspection, he saw these objects were a whole fleet of Arstan modules approaching.
“Santiago, dammit. What the hell happened? I thought you plotted the course?”
The navigator swiveled round slowly in her chair, clearly still battling the crippling effects of FLT-warp. She looked at Olsen with wide eyes, the upper whites showing. “I did, sir, but something appears to have blocked us. It’s orbiting us — some kind of spherical object with appendages, almost like a drone.”
Olsen gritted his teeth. “Schmidt, did something happen to the engines?”
“I’m still working it out, sir.”
“Sir, someone’s hailing us,” Cadinouche said from his seat at the front of the room. “The signal’s coming from a ship known as the Kinlysta.”
Olsen could see them now. The Arstan modules stretched out like a grin from one edge of visible space to the other. They produced their own light, glowing in hues of red and blue against the backdrop of distant stars. “Santiago, find out where we are,” he said. “And answer the hail, Cadinouche.”
A familiar-looking Arstan came on screen, the scales of his face colored a blend of lime green and mustard yellow. Two sharp teeth curved from his upper lips over the bottom of his snout. He displayed a malicious reptile grin.
The sight of him caused Olsen’s heart to jump within his chest.
“Rear Admiral Aarsh,” he said. “I had hoped we wouldn’t have to meet again.”
“Captain Olsen,” he replied. “So this time I have the pleasure of seeing the horror on your face before I impale it on a stake and deliver it to our Lord Empire. Please keep that expression when I do — his highness will be most pleased.”
“You’re getting nothing,” Olsen replied. He punched his armrest display to cut off the channel. “Santiago, any news on our location?”
“I only have a wide read on the Ripley sector, sir. Exactly where, I have no idea, but obviously it’s a long way from the sun.”
“I can see that,” Olsen said, and placed his hand on his chin. He turned to Novak. “Any advice based on protocol, Commander? Perhaps you’ve been trained for situations like this.”
She turned slowly toward him. “Surprisingly enough, being pulled out of warp to face an overwhelming force didn’t come up.”
“Pity,” Olsen said. “Maybe we should check with Admiralty AI?”
He’d meant it as a bit of gallows humor, but Novak missed it. “This is one of those time-sensitive issues we talked about. Our training also acknowledged that sometimes you need to shoot first and ask questions later.”
Olsen couldn’t help but chuckle as he opened the hatch on his armrest and punched the red button inset there. As the light lowered to a pulsing red and battle stations were announced throughout the ship, Olsen squinted his eyes and turned his attention back to the screen. “That’s the spirit.”

29
Red lights and klaxons pulsed around Olsen as he observed the green and blue glows growing on the weapons module on the viewscreen. Sweat pooled on his brow. Unlike the previous battle, the Arstans hadn’t this time placed the weapons modules behind the shield generators for protection. But then, there were so many laser cannons, ion-cannons, plasma torpedo launchers, sonic disruptors, and long spear-headed types of weapons that Olsen didn’t even know the names of that the Tapper no doubt didn’t prove a threat.
Meanwhile, that massive spherical drone kept circling the Tapper, whizzing across the viewscreen every so often like a passing comet, leaving a glowing blue trail in its wake. It was so fast that Santiago couldn’t even keep track of its position. But Olsen had had Rob analyze the ship’s vital signs, and the FTL-warp engine had been drained of energy. Somehow, this mechanical nightmare was blocking their escape.
Protocol would be to send out a smaller craft against a fast-moving target like this. But Redrock still lay unconscious in the sickbay, and the Extractor wasn’t exactly a top-of-the-line fighter ship. Plus, given they’d seen nothing like this drone before, they had no idea how heavily it was armed.
The whole crew now seemed unsure of what to do. They had