Snippet #1323505

"Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear..." Searles continued furiously typing away at the various holoscreens arranged before him, regulating engine output and shield capacity in the absence of his engineer. In open space, the Empty Box was a bit like a whale - absolutely massive, but nonetheless in posession of some measure of grace and articulation.

In atmo, however, the massive transport-class ship was an absolute beast to handle. Its size was great enough that it was heavily affected by the planet's gravity fields, which struggled to keep it earthbound even as the massive ship rose upward. The ship drifted forward and upward, a magnificent display of Horsham's great space shipyards, its engines spewing blue fire as the heat of its fusion pulse drives ignited the air in a short radius around the mighty engines. An altogether magnificent display, save for the grayish-brown streams of waste-sludge spewing from the sluice pipes arranged on the ventral spine of the Empty Box. Searles watched, helpless to end the fetid waterfall of human waste products and galley-water as it poured down on the heads of the mercenaries below. "Dear God, Otto, must you always vent the tanks in mid-flight?" He said quietly, still struggling with the thruster output as he pointed the blocky head of the transport skyward. He keyed open a comlink directly to the Computer Suite where Alensi was working with the ship's electronics.

"No, keep the weapons in for now; no need to draw attention to ourselves. But activate the scanner bafflers; let's not draw attention to ourselves on the way out."

The Empty Box continued slowly rising amongst a cloud of smaller vessels, each one chattering frantically back and forth amongst themselves, trying to discern the nature of the attack. Searles, to his credit, managed to say very little, concentrating on regulating the beast of a transport's engines and keeping them skyward.

In moments the makeshift armada broke atmosphere and found itself facing down what appeared to be almost an entire fleet. Each of the massive, hammerheaded vessels that ringed the Independent planet seemed to train its weapons on the little group of transports that were making their break. A cloud of tiny strike craft broke from the fleet and made their way towards the transports on an intercept vector. Searles eyed the swarm of glistening, dagger-shaped fighters with an inkling of fear and anticipation. He re-opened the comlink to Alensi's station.

"On second thought... Shields at three quarters and charge weapons. We have unwelcome guests on an incoming vector."