Last flight out of Sol
09 Dec 2024Claude Lecardunoie
... Continued from Evac
I took off from Daedalus station in Sol, as I was helping in the gigantic evacuation operation that was going, there, in the beginning of december 3310, now that it was obvious the titan Cocijo would strike Sol within a few days.
I plotted the 4 jumps necessary for my T-7, the Marco Polo Liner, to reach V886 Centuri and the Cornwallis rescue ship.
The Marco Polo was crowded with refugees. The passenger cabins were full. On flight seats taken from abandonned ships back in Daedalu, I even accomodated two persons in the small T-7 cockpit, a young couple from Olympus Village on Mars. All they said was that were bankers, but they didn't talk much because although they made it in an evacuation ship, they still were not sure to be safe.
And they were right to be.
I engaged the FSD to make the first jump, and very soon I knew it was unstable, even before the first COVAS warning. After some Thargoid hyperdictions, an experienced pilot feels that.
The ship dropped from hyperspace and I was trying to comfort the young couple, strapped in their tinkered flight seats, not being to sure myself on what I was going to do, when we heard the terrifying screams of Thargoids interceptor approaching.
I had already escaped Thargoid fighters before, but that was on a Krait MkII, much faster than the T-7 I was flying in and some seconds later we received the first shots.
No matter how slow the ship was, I couldn't see any alternative but to run off them as fast but as silently as possible, so I quickly engaged my booster, deactivated the flight assist and dropped a heatsink. As soon as my FSD was restored, I engaged it to jump to the next system, but it would take seconds that would feel like hours...
I also tried some escape manoeuvre to dodge some of the shots, but I couldn't avoid most of them. I gave a look to the overall ship status. Unfortunately some of the cabins had been hit, resulting in five victims among my passengers.
But finally, the FSD finished its loading cycle, another second to target the next system on the route, and we entered hyperspace.
The hyperspace conduit was stable this time, and the next one too. Jump after jump, I could see the young couple, first sighing of relief, then sketching a smile to each other as we were about to reach the safety of the Cornwallis rescue ship.
We finally exited hyperspace in V886 Centuri, and were only a hundreds of light seconds of the rescue ship, when out of nowhere I got interdicted, not by a Thargoid vessel, but by a human ship. I couldn't believe it. And didn't succeed in escaping.
It didn't take long to feel two impacts of missiles in the core modules and ten more seconds to realise I was in an escape pod, my ship destroyed, not by Thargoids, but by a human and not even for money or the cargo as pirates would do.
There in my escape pod, I thought about that young couple who was in the cockpit: no escape pod for them, and for most of the passengers I was supposed to bring to safety.
I thought about Karine Coté, (read Evac) who was probably still helping the evacuation operations on Daedalus, with no hope of surviving the next three days: "You may well not make it either, you know that?", she said. I didn't think that was the ending she meant.
But my final thought was: a refugee ship, fleeing a Titan attack, shot down by the deed of human pirate. May be mankind got what it deserved.
To be continued in Duamta