Signals in the Void 18

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

As my smart-bombs failed to activate around my ship, I continue to increase my speed to try and get behind the station.  I'm hoping to put something solid between the battleship drone's missiles and myself.  Having abandoned my curving orbit around the station to a more direct route past it, the large drone boat is going to have to try and catch up to me.  Though the smaller rogue drones are able to keep up, I will probably be able to keep the large one in a position which better suits me. 

I have a little bit of confusion as one of my combat drones goes inactive without returning to the hanger bay.  As I track it's movement heading off inexplicably another drone activates inside my hanger.  When the weapons activate and begin firing inside my ship, I trace the signal back to one of my drone pilots.  Considering it hasn't gone rogue, I figure Captain Erhan is up to something and we can figure out the details after, right now I just need to keep us alive.

As I move past the station, another volley of cruise missiles is launched.  I smile inwardly as half of them are detonated when they collide with the station causing pieces to drift outwards.  But the remaining missiles catch up to me.  Though with my speed I don't take the full brunt of the explosions, my lack of shields allows enough damage to be done to the engines to cause one side to cut out drastically reducing my speed. 

Keeping the ship heading behind the station, I recall my active drones and launch some medium sized drones packing larger firepower and send commands for my drone pilots to swing the drones around the station and to blast that battleship to pieces.  Watching the four drones take off it still puzzles me why I have the one Acolyte class drone still firing inside my ship.

As I continue to keep the station between me and the rogue battleship, a few warning alerts bring to my attention to other systems starting to fail within my ship.  Although the notification from Erhan informing me that my smart-bombs should have power reminds me of the ones attached to my hull.  Activating the smart-bombs causes waves of kinetic energy to flow outwards from my ship and wash over my hull.  The drones attached to my hull seem to crumble under the force while my armor remains strong.  Watching the wrecks fall behind my ship as I continue forward, I request an update from communications on whether or not they were able to get in touch with the salvage team.