Soul of a Gambler

Part XX - "The Future Does Not Belong To You"

//Authors Note: I took a little liberty. Consider this like an OVA of the corresponding scene in Spectrals.

"We are screwed." Repeated the voice, and Jax was in the elevator before anything else could come through.

It's hard to truly say if this pang, this spur of action he felt in his guts that motivated him down to the bridge to bring his new ship to bear and bail out a random stranger, came from the need for justification or the need to cleanse himself of the past. In effect, it would do both. He pressed the button for the bridge.

"How far? Where's the transmission comin' from?" He asked the AI, who processed the question until he had already taken a seat in his captain's chair. The bridge had been miraculously cleaned, in fact, had the bloodbath that occured in this ship been a dream as well? The image was there, though obscured in a black mist that encompassed all of the memories around that time.

"Within this sector. I am bringing the ship to bear. Warning! Multiple Blackwatch contacts! Shields online! Weapon targeting systems online!" The ship moved at the command of the voice, the image of the planet outside slid off the main viewport and was replaced with the distant image of five silvery frigates that had a smaller ship half-surrounded on their aft section.

Up from the chair and into the trench, he grabbed the turret-controlling joysticks and rotated inward until all of the reticles were clustered vaguely in the center of the projection-window. No assistance was needed to tell him that the weapons would be inaccurate at this range, he needed to close the gap or there was a risk of hitting the wrong ship in the fusillade.

An idea hit him, if he had dreamed the ship being basically full to bursting with more blood than a colony of vampires could hope to down in a week then maybe the EMP's abysmal charge rate was too. THE HAMMER was approaching from beneath them relative to their plane of engagement, offering Jax a direct line on each frigate.

He wondered if he would end up EMP-ing the smaller ship as well, but being neither a physicist or a weapons expert--this was truthfully an Arna question, too bad about that--and he figured that closer at least meant less wave-spread as though it were a shotgun. Hit them with the EMP, and then sink them one by one. Pass GO, collect 200 karmic dollars.

"What's our EMP Charge at?"

He positioned the targeting reticles one at a time on each frigates' life support, highlighted with a yellow overlay. While the AI searched for the answer, someone had to slow the ship down, so helmsman Jax climbed out of the trench, leaving his gunner hat behind, and pulled the throttle to zero then briefly into the negative to zero out their velocity.

"One hundred percent and ready to fire!" The vaguely female voice triumphantly announced.

On one hand, excellent news! On the other; had he dreamed all the things that were seriously wrong with this ship? He visualized the shape of the wave in his mind, drawing a wide circle over the formation in his imagination. The smaller ship made some distance, a precious commodity they needed as much of as they could get, as inches could make the difference between escaping and being shut down.

When the smaller ship had cleared the circle he drew in his mind, he gave the command to fire. There was a flash and he shielded his eyes. A dark line was drawn across his field of vision that faded through stunned colors back into reality. Once the world wasn't tinted with darkness, he turned his attention to the screen.

The frigates had drifted slightly, their running lights extinguished. The smaller ship had whirled about and was now facing the disabled formation, and had begun to fire torpedoes into the hulls of those trapped. Each frigate erupted with bright fiery bursts, and a cruel smile cut across Jax' face. These were his kind of people.