War Fleet: Resistance

incident, although it wasn’t as if they’d always been chums.
The bridge fell silent a moment.
“No response, Captain,” Santiago said.
“Surprise, surprise,” growled Schmidt.
“Battle stations,” Olsen said.
Once again, the klaxons sounded, and once again, the whole of the Tapper went on red alert.

9
While the human and Foorint races could spend a year building one ship in drydock on a planet or a space-side shipyard, the Arstans’ ships made themselves on the fly. Each one started with a core CIC module, with anything up to forty-four ports. Further modules could latch onto and detach themselves from these ports, with functions ranging from weaponry and shield-generators to everyday necessities, such as a galley or living quarters.
A module, when attached, was part of the main ship. When detached it was a ship in its own right, perhaps four times larger than the Extractor, although sizes varied.
As soon as the Okranti came out of warp speed, it deployed its shield-generator modules. A good hundred of these moved outwards towards the Tapper and started to reconfigure themselves.
With everything happening so fast, Olsen had forgotten to dismiss Ensign Chang from the bridge. “Chang, you should have requested permission to leave the CIC. Get down to the defense bay and start working on that first shield generator, and get the coilguns back to even power. We’ll need everything possible if we’re going to have any chance of getting out of here alive.”
Then he turned to Rob, and remembered. “In fact, scratch that. Chang, I want you to work on the warp engine. Rob, go down and fix everything in the defense bay.” Escape indeed seemed the better option here.
“But sir,” Rob said, “Admiralty explicitly stated that you shouldn’t leave this system without the weapon. The command came from Fleet Admiral Brownstone herself.”
Brownstone? What did she know about this? Olsen made a mental note to ask her a few questions — if they made it out of this situation. “Just do it, Rob. I am still your commanding officer. You reserve to stop me going into warp speed if Admiralty commands, but you can’t stop me repairing my engines.”
The cyborg nodded. “Very well, sir.”
“Good. Dismissed.”
Both Rob and Chang saluted, and they left the bridge.
On-screen, the Arstan shield-modules had now reconfigured themselves in a latticework arrangement, making them look like a metallic space waffle and creating a massive barrier that the Tapper would have to fire through or execute an incredibly tricky maneuver around before it could get to the rest of the ship. The better bet was to try and weaken the shields at one point and then fire through the structure, yet that was still incredibly difficult to do.
“Schmidt, once the laser turrets are charged, focus fire on a central point, and don’t ease off it. I want them thinking we’re aiming to take down their ship when we’re actually going to scarper.”
Lieutenant Santiago spun around in her seat, looking alarmed. Olsen nodded at her, their conversation unspoken. He couldn’t go against a direct order from the Admiralty. But he could bend his way around what Rob had told him, especially if he wasn’t sitting right next to him relaying everything to Admiralty AI.
He flicked a switch on his touchscreen to mute all comms from the bridge. “Focus on the scanners, Santiago. I want to see on my screen where every single module is, and up-to-date recommendations on further courses of action.”
Santiago swallowed down whatever she was going to say and swiveled back around to her screen. “Yes, sir.”
Olsen restored comms. He’d ordered Ensign Chang to install that little hack so he could keep information from the Admiralty if he needed. And so far, Admiralty AI didn’t seem to know about this little feature.
The lasers soon fired, and a red spot erupted against the transparent blue shield wall in front of the latticework. “Rob, get as much power into those lasers as possible. We’re going to burn a hole using brute force.”
“Aye, captain,” Rob replied. And what he did down there was useful, because the laser beam held for a few seconds more than usual before cutting out.
“En-scan on shields, Schmidt.”
“Done already, sir. Most of the wall is at one hundred percent, but there’s a weaker section now at seventy-five.”
Dammit, this was going to take a while. “Chang, status on the warp?”
“Almost done, sir, but we’re still going to need five minutes to power it up.”
“Let me know as soon as it’s ready.”
“Yes, sir.”
Another burst came out from the second laser and hit the shield barrier in precisely the same place. Olsen would commend Schmidt for being a good shot, but all the calculations were done by computers. The weapons officer only needed to enter a few equations and check everything was in working order. Though Olsen couldn’t see what the Okranti was doing behind the shield barrier, it did seem odd that they weren’t returning fire.
“Santiago, any sign of any energy readouts behind the barrier?”
“Negative, sir. They don’t seem to be arming their weapons, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Olsen tugged at his collar. Kraic was well inside human territory, so he couldn’t be surprised that Olsen had fired on him. “Yes, but I wonder why.”
He opened the navigation reports on his screen. The officers of the bridge, working behind their computers, would collect the information they thought the captain would find most useful. Olsen could then flick through information on each of the ship’s vital systems and make decisions based on what he had onscreen. Of course, protocols existed — a complex set of rules that each officer had to adhere to, or otherwise risk court-martial. These differed, depending on each officer’s specialization.
This time, a wire-frame blueprint cross-section came up of the Okranti — and much to Olsen’s surprise, the device hadn’t changed its configuration since leaving warp speed. Arstan battle tactics were malleable and often unpredictable. They continuously moved the modules around in combat to make it challenging to work out what form the next calibration would take, and therefore what to focus on.
But what could