Read Catherine Kimbridge Chronicles 7: Renegades for Free Online

smaller ship and used the field to reverse momentum. This sheared the other vessel in half. The antimatter reactor remained on the smaller of the two pieces which was now outside of Alpha’s shields. He quickly poured his entire remaining energy reserves into his shielding. As they firmed up, the other ship’s antimatter reactor lost containment and went critical. The resulting matter-antimatter explosion released more energy than a typical star would release in a thousand years.
    Had Alpha’s energy harvesters been fully operational the result would have been an energy feast the likes of which he had never previously enjoyed. Unfortunately, between the battle with this smaller ship and the mysterious loss of mass while proceeding through the hyperfield conduit, Alpha only had 2% of his collectors operating. They were soon overloaded. His shields however held long enough for him to re-enter the hyperfield conduit.
    When he re-emerged in the Mardarus system the backwash from the antimatter explosion traveled with him. The effect was much like what a human’s ‘SJ’ round produced. A highly powerful beam of pure energy poured out of the hyperfield conduit in the scant milliseconds it was open between the two systems. Unfortunately for Mardarus III, the backwash bathed the planet in ultra-high intensity gamma radiation. It was enough to sterilize all remaining life. Mardarus III was dead.
    Alpha consulted the jump point map he had acquired from the survey ship earlier. There was another jump point in the general vicinity of his current location. He should have just enough energy left in his reserves to reach it. According to his data, this particular jump point led to a system called Sol. 
    ***
    Cat shuddered awake. Her body fought its way to consciousness like a deep sea diver fights to reach the surface of the ocean after going a little deeper than was perhaps wise. Every fiber of her being fought her as she clawed towards consciousness. It was a battle that seem to rage on for hours but in reality she had little sense of time.
    She could hear the others around her moaning and she knew she was not alone. She was on the bridge of the Yorktown . That sudden knowledge brought her some measure of comfort. This was where she belonged.
    Lights flickered and gravity reasserted itself.  She fell a scant foot to the deck. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to shake her fully awake. She realized that not only had she and the entire bridge crew passed out, but that the ship’s automated systems had been effected as well.
    “Yorky report,” Cat croaked in a voice that seemed oddly gruff and dry.
    There was no reply. She reached out to her internal AI, Cal. In a sudden panic she realized that for the first time since returning from the Proxy War mission several months ago, her internal AI was offline.
    She tried to run a diagnostic with her embedded Heshe encounter unit but without the AI she had no way of interfacing with it.
    Others on the bridge began to stand up. Ken was one of the first. He hit the ship-wide comm button on his command chair.
    “Engineering, Environmental, Weapons… report status,” He barked. His voice also seemed oddly hoarse.
    It took a moment but the various departments reported in. It appeared everyone onboard the Yorktown had been rendered unconscious for just shy of half an hour. The entire crew was OK save for a few cuts and bruises that occurred after the automated systems came online.
    The sole exception was Chief Yeoman Rand. He had been working in logistics supply near the forward shuttle bay. His neck was broken when a piece of equipment fell as a result of the shifting gravitational fields. Fortunately the injury happened after systems had begun to come back online. As a result, his standard-issue medical nanites were able to stabilize him until a medical team could supervise reconstructive surgery on his severed spinal column.
    As the reports were coming in Cat’s AI rebooted. Seconds