The drones were now chasing us from above, accelerating towards Ceres to catch up with Lodos. I waited until the right moment, and just when it came, I turned the ship around for it's nose to point directly away from the planet. Now, if I kept all engines running at the right throttle, we would come to a stop just before hitting Ceres' surface.
The idea was to trick the drones to accelerate towards the surface in order to catch us. I was going to make them hit the surface.
This tactic was extremely dangerous for sure, any fluctuation in engine performance or imprecision in ship orientation could mean the difference between life and death (or a crash landing if we happened to be in that 'sweet spot'). Although I could foresee the circumstances, this was a risk I was willing to take, because fighting the drone swarm in any other means would mean certain death.
The other danger of the plan was that it assumed the drones to be old technology, 'dumb' zero-g drones which only kept track of their target and not the environment.
"I hate this, I hate this idea!" said Mei. "Even if you don't crash, you will burn something important and I will kick you in your guts!"
"Even if he doesn't WHAT!?" asked Frans. Obviously, he had no idea what kind of maneuvers we were doing.
"Calm down, I know how to fly!" I said. Little did they know, I was more anxious than any of them.
My calculations were just about right, the ship came to a stop just above 100 meters over the surface. I then slowly descended to only 10 meters and started hovering the ship in that position, throttling the main engines to the right power setting.
The drone swarm was still accelerating towards us, towards the ground.
"I think it is working." I said.
"Yes, I think so as well." said Tachibana.
When the drone fleet started decelerating, it was too late. Their cheap but primitive zero-g avionics had not accounted for the weak gravity of Ceres (very weak - only 0.029g on surface!), but that would cost them a lot. The whole swarm crashed to Ceres' surface, and although their impact velocity wasn't high, it was enough to put them out of service.
Everyone took a deep breath, except for Frans, who wasn't really tracking all the scary space warfare events around him.
"How did this even work?" asked Mei. I started explaining after increasing the throttle once again to rise up into space.
I had opted to rely on that unorthodox technique because of the 3D image of the drones Tachibana had shown me - they had the shape of old space mines. I thought that someone had took those mines, and converted them into drones, and it turned out I was right.
Those space mines would usually be placed in debris clouds or dense asteroid regions. When an enemy ship approached those areas, the mines would suddenly accelerate towards their target using single use solid rocket motors, and explode in close proximity, dealing significant damage or even knocking a whole ship out. Now thinking of it, one could take those mines, attach liquid-propellant motors and weapons on them to turn them into cheap, yet almost fully functioning probes. The only major problem would be reprogramming their primitive built-in avionics hardware; which was exploited just now.
"You should write detective stories." said Mei.
"Maybe you should stop telling me what to do." I said.
"Just because you saved her life doesn't mean you can take her ship and-"
"Shut up, Nuan." I said.
"Yeah, shut up Nuan." Mei joined me. Tachibana facepalmed.
"Are we safe?" asked Frans. "What now?"
"Hey, that's my line!" said Nuan.
"Maybe go get MY ship repaired, Mr. President?" asked Mei.
"Go get your ship repaired." I said as I left the command chair to Mei. "It was you who had it damaged in the first place."
"You were in command." she argued.
"You were flying." I said. "I didn't tell you to ram a cursed drone!"
"Well, I was just doing my job." she said. "You are the oldest vessel CO here, Tachibana... Who do you agree with?"
"Don't get me into this." he said, avoiding the question. "Can I fly back to my ship now?"
"Forget it." I said. "Mei will fly you to your ship."
"I refuse to fly half a ship anywhere other than a shipyard." Mei said.
"Luckily for you, Tachibana's ship is in a shipyard." I said.
"No, they undocked to face a-"
We all paused for a second.
"Oh my!" I said. "If we were facing the drone swarm by ourselves, then who did the orbital defense fleets chase down!?"
"We were too busy saving our own lives." said Mei.
"Just contact them." suggested Tachibana. "Let's learn the situation in the orbit."
"Right." said Mei. "Contacting Ceres defense fleets..."
"Put it to bridge speakers." I said.
"This is the XO of Fleet Carrier Dawn. We are receiving you, XS Lodos II."
"Commander, status report. I can tell you are busy, just a summary please." Tachibana said.
"We are facing a few motherships in high orbit. We have lost a few medium-"
"You are facing a WHAT!?" I interrupted, despite hearing him very well. 'Mothership' was not an official classification, it has never been. The closest thing I could think of was a fleet carrier.
"I don't know." he replied. "Those things are just spitting out smaller things, swarming us one by one and utterly destroying our ships until nothing but their structural skeletons remain. Our drones are no match to theirs, and we can't even get close to those motherships. They will target the fleet carriers soon enough, and we won't last long. We need reinforcements, immediately and in great amount!"
"There are anti-spacecraft weapon installations near Kirnis Base." I said. "If you could arrange-"
"It is no use!" the XO said. "Our missiles are destroyed before they even reach their targets. The enemy has a very effective close-in defense system. Those swarmers don't let anything pass through! You try flying towards them, and you are dead in seconds!"
"Understood." I said. "Carry on, comm-"
We heard an explosion from the other end of the channel.
"Damn it, the CO has been injured! I'm assuming command!"
And it went silent.