Signals in the Void 15

("Signals in the Void" is a character fan fiction story revolving around my adventures in exploration.)

Abandoning my plan of docking near the maintenance hatch, I turn my Arbitrator away from the station and try to put as much distance as possible between me and the drones which are coming out of every nook and cranny of the station.  I leave my combat drones in the hands of my capable pilots, pausing periodically to lock and assign various targets.  By letting my drone pilots deal with blowing up the hostile drone ships; which allows me to focus on maneuvering my cruiser into a nice orbit of the station to see if I can't loop around and gain enough time to extract my salvage team.

The frigate sized drone ships manage to close most of the distance and their small weapon systems begin to plink away at my shields.  Making sure I keep sufficient power supplied to my shield systems, I begin to order the destruction of the small drones.  I watch in confidence as my drone pilots work together and focus each rogue drone I target.  As I currently ignore the drones which are not firing, I internally smile as every drone targeted is quickly reduced to a small explosion or becomes a drifting mass of scrap as it is ripped apart by destructive forces.

Captain Erhan sends me a status report mentioning the continued failure to get past the jamming frequency and obtain contact with the salvage team.  He also mentions they have detected a large mass akin to a battleship moving in the station but as yet are unable to identify what it is exactly.

Digesting the news of a bigger threat, I lock and target the few straggling rogue drones and as my pilots begin to blow them up I question how these drones were able to destroy the few pirate ships we had found when we first landed on site.  There was little damage done by some sort of armament but looked as if they had been destroyed from the inside.

Changing course I bring my Arbitrator in line and approach the station.  The last of the rogue drones which were firing on me are destroyed and I ignore the few drifting on the fringe, they're probably salvage types considering they are much smaller than the frigate sized ones and only seem to sport some small cutting lasers.

Another report from Erhan informs me the large mass should be leaving the station.  Even with his warning it is still shocks me to see the misshapen hull emerge from one of the large docking ports.  I immediately take evasive maneuvers as a volley of cruise missiles are launched and zoom toward my ship.

The following explosion devastates my shield systems and as my shields give out my sensors also inform me the outer armor is being breached.  The small rogue drones are using this opportunity to latch onto various sections of my hull and are attempting to carve their way into my ship.  It occurs to me that the pirate ships from before may be justified in their failure to counteract this unorthodox strategy.

While this drone strategy is new to me also, I begin to divert some capacitor energy to my onboard weapons systems.  Activating the smart-bombs positioned on my hull, they should hopefully disintegrate or at least damage anything in close proximity. 

But it seems there is a slight problem with this plan, the smart-bombs are failing to activate.