[Warp drive. Active]
This was it. These three words touched something deep within Waltr. A bizarre unshakeable feeling. What was it?
Resonance?
Nostalgia?
Relief?
It was all three and more. A indescribable feeling.
The whole ship begun creaking alive. Its engines, Power core, Capacitor engine, and its FTL drives all waking up from a millennia long slumber.
Soon, the ship broke the light barrier. The onboard quantum computer churning awake, displaying a large fluctuating string of numbers before settling at 8 Astronomical Units(AU) per second. (A/N: 1 AU is about 150 million km. the rough measurement of earth to the sun)
"Hey Aroura, why are we going twice our usual warp speed? I remember that this ship should only fly at about 4AU/s, 4.5 if we add stabilizers." Waltr asked as he started putting on maintenance equipment with the intention on checking out the warp drive.
[Excess energy has been offloaded to the warp drives. Otherwise if we kept the overcharged fuel cells, they would probably explode during warp]
"Makes sense, but I'm still going to go and check on it myself." Waltr replied as he moved out.
[I wouldn't make that decision if I were you, the warp room if currently full of anomalous space. If you were to go in, you would be crushed in a blink of an eye]
Stopping in his tracks, Waltr felt a shiver go down his spine.
"You know what? I'll just go check on our weapons systems." With cold sweat pouring down his back, He turned around and headed to the nearest weapons bay.
[Self repair should have finished by now. You can go check them out yourself. You have another minute before we land at the Point of Interest]
"Speaking of P.O.I's, how many are within warp range for us?" Waltr asked as he took to a brisk jog to the weapons bay.
[There are a total of four. Including the one we are about to arrive at.]
"Sweet, hopefully one of them is a wormhole. Maybe we'll be able to reach a recognizable sector for us to orient ourselves."
[Or we find ourselves in the middle of an hibernating ancient Alien Hive fleet, accidently awaken them. And cause the 149th humankind extinction event]
"Yeah... Haha... That's not going to happen is it?" Chuckling with more cold sweat pouring out, Waltr finished his brief weapons check before jogging back to the cockpit.
[It's happened before Waltr. With this ship and you as it's captain. Perusing the ships logs. It was the 66th humankind extinction event. Do you not remember?]
"Uhhh... Yes?" Waltr paused for a bit to process what he heard and the memories that were triggered by it.
[1007 years ago according to the galactic net. A fierce and long siege on a Imperial Gate Watcher class space station. A space station designed to mark borders between Alien-Human space. Capable of acting as a forward staging port for up to 5 million cruiser size space craft.]
"Ah, yes, that incident. Its the one where I got my Intergalactic Protector Title right?"
[You received that one for rescuing a diplomatic envoy sent to forge relations between an alien race. If you hadn't crashed that pirate raiding force, relations would've deteriorated and total war and mutually assured destruction.]
"Then what did I get during the siege?"
[You were labeled as a Class 0 Intergalactic fugitive]
"Wut..."
[You immediately fled from that wormhole space and lead hostile scouts to civilized space]
Shocked silent. Waltr took off the maintenance suit and sat down onto the pilot seat.
[It was impressive you managed to elude bounty hunters and intergalactic police for so long. One of your given nicknames was the 'Blue Wraith']
"I remember that name now. I still don't know if I should call that a dark spot or a bright spot in my books." Waltr shook his head. Turning on the external cameras, his field of view was instantly engulfed in what could only be called...
"A graveyard... huh..."
[No human origin spacecraft detected after preliminary scans.]
"Huh, Activate AB. I have the helm."
[AB active. Acknowledged.]
"Just focus on the scans Aroura. Hopefully something resembling a black box can be found." Waltr ordered as he flew through the debris field. "If we still had access to a industrial station, we could've gotten rich off this. How much storage space do we still have?"
[Without sacrificing ship capability. 30m^3 of space remaining. 70m^3 of space available until maximum capacity]
"Heh, lets look for this black box thing first before doing anything else." Waltr shook his head to dispel any thoughts of going on a looting spree for the moment.
30 minutes pass by without a single hit on any debris being a black box related device. Looking at the regional map created by the constant scanning, only 30% of the total area has been explored. And that number quickly falls as the map updates from more scan data.
*whistles* "What kind of battle was this? There's enough debris here to build several planetary class ships..."
[Detecting several pockets of fading energy signals detected. Uploading guidance to terminal]
"Received... Damn 200km away? That's the closest one? and the furthest one is... 400km? Wow." Uttering beneath his breath, Waltr continued to fly.
As the ship continued on its way, passing an especially dense debris field. Several drifting wreaks activated with an inaudible beep. Not long after, they locked onto the distant ship and activated their engines, blazing forward with their weapons at they ready.
[Detected several signatures. Gaining distance on us. Time to contact, 50 seconds]
"Oh something fun?" Waltr perked his ears as he waited for further information.
[Analysis complete, High Burst energy systems predicted. Type Drone. Number: 7]
Cracking his neck and fingers, Waltr changed course and closed the distance on the drones.
"Time for some fun. Begin engagement, locking targets. Switching ammo types."
[Adjustment. Time to contact, 15 seconds]
"Sabot rounds loaded. Entering optimal range. Fire!"
A series of turrets open up across the ship but only a couple of the forward placed turrets managed to fire.
[5 confirmed hits. 3 penetrated, 2 glanced off]
Realizing that their target can fight back, and at farther ranges. The drone swarm begun flying evasive maneuvers as they attempted to close the distance so that they could return fire.
[Drones are within stasis range. However, stasis engine is only capable of holding one target down at a time. Drones are within engine scram range. Likewise, only capable of targeting one ship at a time]
"That's all I need. Activate adaptive hardeners on the shields! We can analyze their weapon type." Waltr shouted as he begun dog fighting the drones. "While you're at it. Activate both stasis and scram on the unharmed drones. Launch the missile pods!"
In such a close engagement, a big weakness of turret based weapons glowed like the death of a star. Their tracking speed couldn't keep up with the speed of their targets in addition to the ships speed as well.
As soon as Waltr begun dogfighting, he switched the railgun ammo type to stabilized antimatter rounds, Devastating if they hit, but once fired they disperse extremely quickly severely reducing their effective range relegating these rounds to close quarter brawling.
[Hit confirmed. Destruction confirmed. Analysis indicates that stasis works extremely well against these targets. Scram showed no signs of affect. Speed seems to be relative to Afterburners]
"Hmm, I would've assumed they would be using something like a miniwarpdrive. Guess you don't know everything."
[Alert, Large energy spike detected. Energy spike detected. Taking control of helm. Engaging Evasive manu-]