Chapter 3

Waitstate and the rest of the bridge crew entered the bridge.

“What’s the situation?” Waitstate asked Cirrus.

Cirrus shrugged. “Seems the Doom Gaze is operational again. I don’t know how they caught up to us in their condition, but they did. Who knows what any of this could mean?”

“I’m putting all weapon systems online. They won’t even put a scratch in us” Lightning proclaimed.

“We’ve got an incoming transmission boss,” Roadkill announced.

Waitstate shrugged. “Eh, why not? We could stand to kill a little time.”

Roadkill nodded. “I’m putting them on screen.”

The view screen lit up with Cyron’s larger-than-life image. “You think you have beaten us, but you are sadly mistaken. I have single handedly re-united our scattered members, and now we’re prepared to scatter yours.”

“Heh, are those the best lines you could come up with?” Waitstate asked. “Look, I still don’t know what you’re after, but whatever it is, I can assure you we don’t have it.”

“The only thing I’m after is vengeance!” Cyron shouted. “You sit there so smug on your clean little ship thinking-”

Waitstate put his hand up. “Look, I’m getting tired of this.”

Roadkill ended the transmission.

Admiral Lilwall chuckled. “Can we fire on them now?”

“Waitstate, weapon systems are fully charged,” Lightning announced.

“Fire at will” Waitstate ordered.

The charges hit the hull of the Doom Gaze with tremendous force. Large pieces of the ship fell off. It was obvious the Doom Gaze had not been fully repaired since the last time they had battled LONAC with it.

Admiral Lilwall threw his arms in the air. “This is just plain ridiculous!”

“Looks like they’re about to fire their main charge” Lightning reported.

“Shields at maximum. They most likely diverted all their power into a central weapon system,” Waitstate suggested.

The LSS Freedom shook as the blast from the Doom Gaze hit the shields.

“Shields are down to 90 percent, but no structural damage,” Lightning reported.

Waitstate pointed at the view screen. “Identify those objects!”

Lightning pushed a few buttons on his console. “They’re shuttles of some sort. No life signs aboard, but they seem to be filled heavily with explosive material.”

“Fire boats” Sunspot replied.

“They’re scraping the bottom of the barrel for weapons” Admiral Lilwall commented.

Blasts were fired at the oncoming onslaught. A chain reaction was started that took out half of the small fleet. The back blast however took out the Freedom’s shields and knocked out the primary guidance systems.

Waitstate turned to Lightning. “Not a scratch?”

“Waitstate, we won’t be able to move the Freedom away in time. Do you want to risk another blast?” Cirrus asked.

“Get us out of the way, we’ll worry about damage later” Waitstate told him.

Cirrus tried to maneuver the ship out of the way, but none of his controls seemed to respond fast enough. After a few tries, he pounded on his control console. “Waitstate, I can’t move us out of the way in time, what do we do?”

Waitstate paused for a moment. “Divert all power back into the shields and keep your fingers crossed.”

Cirrus worked at his console frantically. “Wait, I don’t know what’s happening. Our systems are locking up, I can’t get the ship to do anything, we’re stuck!”