Massive Disaster 4-19 (Patreon)

There was no time to waste time thinking about it and he couldn’t afford to stall. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it, and, yes, knowing was half the battle. But that still leaves the rest of the fucking battle.

Hands flew fast and furious across controls before conscious thought caught up, Zedd rerouting auxiliary power from stealth shielding all the way to maneuvering thrusters as ADAM handled the systems he couldn't and didn’t reach fast enough. The Grande responded almost as soon as he thought about it, almost like it was wired to his nervous system, frame humming as engines absorbed the sudden power shift.

"Who the hell are these guys?" Dev's voice cut through proximity alarms, sharp and focused like he'd already shifted into combat mode.

Through the forward viewport, heat signatures bloomed against star-scattered black. Two sleek ships moving with the kind of coordination that meant rehearsed ambush, not savage and opportunistic raiders. Too clean, too fast, too organized for pirates, and every single one of them with weapon signatures painting active targeting locks across the Grande's hull.

Shit.

One approached from low-starboard, another from high-aft, moving at close-range speeds that didn’t seem all that fast compared to full-bore ship engine burn until you had to face it armed with weapons. More than just weaponry, pincer angles designed to lock vectors before he could break orbit entry, textbook intercept formation that left nowhere to run except through them.

"I don't know." The words came out clipped, feral. No time for explanations when death was measuring distance in seconds. He killed thrust, spun the Grande into a nose-dive spiral that made his inner ear scream, and dumped a burst from both lateral pods. Behind them, a torpedo detonated near the aft fins, shockwave painting the shields blue before they bled energy trying to absorb impact that rattled through the hull like thunder.

The Grande shuddered, metal groaning.

Kira lurched into the cockpit frame, blue hair whipping as inertial compensation lagged behind physics, eyes wide with the particular look of someone whose tactical training was screaming warnings. "Why are they after you?"

"I don't know." His jaw clenched tight enough to crack teeth, fingers blurring across holo-controls as flight patterns shifted from evasive to something angrier, half-instinctive reactions born from months of testing drives in hostile space. 

He dropped the ship low into the debris field, jagged minefield of fractured asteroids and wreckage drifting like fossils in space. Cover, concealment, maybe enough chaos to break targeting locks if he flew close enough to kiss death.

"Triangulating emission profiles." ADAM's voice cut through proximity warnings and managed to drown the sound of Nina's breathing going ragged a few feet from his ear. "Five corvette-class vessels, one stealth-flagged command ship. Flagship configuration matches Asari stealth frigate architecture."

Asari. The word hit him like cold water on his head. I knew those blue bitches were planning something. Whatever vindication he felt went by the wayside as ADAM’s next words sent another cold chill down his spine.

"Spectre modifications confirmed."

Silence stretched for what felt like minutes as everyone in the cabin took that in. Zedd knew better. It was barely the span of a single heartbeat.Not much time for anything else, but plenty of time for his brain to go crazy.

Spectre. Council authority, license to kill, resources that made even trillionaires nervous. Which meant this wasn't random, wasn't pirates, wasn't…

"What the fuck?" Nina's voice cracked from behind his head, breath coming in hard pants while half-muttered Spanish cut into her sentences. "Why is a Spectre trying to kill you?"

"I don't know, woman!" The roar ripped out of his throat, the taste of iron filling his mouth as Zedd realized he bit his tongue. "Pick a fucking reason! Just shut up!"

The ECM suite screamed warnings across his vision, threat indicators painting red across every surface. "Disruptor torpedoes inbound," ADAM announced.

"I can see that!" Zedd bit back curses as he flipped the Grande backward on its axis, ship groaning. Irritation mixed with rage until vision tunneled, evasive patterns feeling useless against guided munitions that adjusted course faster than he could think.

Fuckfuckfuck.

No choice. 

He launched a full missile spread into the nearest asteroid cluster, hoping for the best. Missiles struck rock and ice and boomed the way he needed them to, an expanding cloud of debris catching the first wave of torpedoes in a wall of shrapnel moving at orbital velocities.

Three deflected.One went haywire, spinning out of control

Another burst harmlessly.

The final one...

Fuck.

The final torpedo clipped the ship’s dorsal plating, electromagnetic pulse washing through hull sections as the entire ship convulsed like something dying. Lights flickered, sparks snapped from ceiling relays, and the particular sound of electronics dying filled the cabin.

"Electromagnetic pulse detected," ADAM intoned, fully in business mode without even the slightest bit of joking in the AI’s voice. "Rerouting power."

Adele shouted something in French.

Nina screamed.

Kira cursed with the creativity of someone who'd spent over a year with no one but dozens of Alliance Marines for company.

Zedd did all three as he yanked the Grande into a corkscrew spin that would have liquefied baseline humans, bringing beam lances online through sheer force of will and muscle memory. One corvette peeling wide from formation, trying to flank around the debris field where cover couldn't protect him.

There.

Three bursts ripped with force and light from the Grande’s Beam lance cannons, each one coherent discrete energy that could punch through frigate armor. The first missed by a mile. The second dropped shields in a cascade of failing kinetic barriers. Number three struck home, home being the reactor housing dead center, turning sophisticated military hardware into an expanding cloud of superheated plasma.

"Thank fuck," Dev breathed out.

Not done yet. Zedd’s eyes narrowed even as he let out a low breath as the second corvette swept in behind, trying to thread through the spinning debris. His hands moved before his brain caught up and the Grande spun a quick counterroll, Zedd cutting the ship’s thrust just at the last moment. 

The sudden shift brought him parallel to the corvette's flight vector, and Zedd’s face loosened up just enough for him to grin.

Two Beam lances ripped out from the Grande's hardpoints, discrete flashes of light that looked almost pretty against the black. The first shot burned off the barriers, but it was the second that did the real job, opening up the corvette's side like a can of tuna.

The ship spiraled out, tumbling end over end until it kissed an asteroid. Rock swallowed metal, barely even leaving a mark as it was buried in dust and debris.

"Jesus Christ," Caleb breathed from somewhere behind him. 

Zedd didn't turn around. "You good back there, Major?"

"Define good."

Fair point.

Third corvette came from above—smart, using the Grande’s blind spot. Zedd had to give him at least that much, the guy had clearly learned something from watching his buddies get carved up. Mass accelerator cannons lit up the void with tracers that looked almost lazy until they started ripping past the cockpit glass, and Zedd felt that familiar tightness in his chest. Close. Too close.

One round clipped the Grande's side, and the whole ship shuddered hard, like it got sucker-punched. The hull plating groaned and warning lights strobed across his console, amber shifting to red. Note to self: upgrade shields.

"Shields holding," ADAM's voice cut through the static. "Vent intake undamaged."

Zedd growled something that might've been thanks and spun the controls. The Grande flipped upside down—or what passed for upside down, considering fucking space—and he opened return fire. 

He launched a missile mid-roll, followed by a forward burst from the beam systems. The missile forced the corvette into evasive maneuvers—predictable pattern, really—and the beam caught it mid-bank.

Clean kill.

Three down. The count ran through his head automatically."How many more?" Nina's voice, low, shuddering and steady.“Two more hostiles on sensors,” ADAM answered.

Course there are. Because things could never be simple.

A fourth corvette closed distance, moving tighter, smarter. Zedd clicked his tongue and bled power into maneuvering thrusters as he spun around it, abusing the Grande’s superior agility for exactly the reason it was made for. As soon as the corvette reacquired lock, Zedd let loose another lance volley. Center mass. 

The kinetic barriers flickered, the protection around the enemy ship holding for half a heartbeat longer than he liked —come on— then the third shot punched through.

The ship cracked and burst outward in a silent explosion that painted the asteroid field with debris.

"Merde," Adele whispered. 

The last corvette hesitated.

Wrong fucking move.

Zedd surged forward, dumped three missiles wide to force evasive patterning—running low on those—then cut hard beneath the enemy's spin. The Grande pulled into a barrel roll that might have pulped him from g-forces if it wasn’t for the ship’s inertia-cancelling systems, but he held formation and fired the lance cannons upward through the corvette's ventral side.

First shot, shields. Second shot, core. Zedd could see the blue flicker of eezo surge and die through the viewport, could imagine the crew floating helpless inside. Third shot… unecessary but it passed clean through the front of the dead ship and exited right through the roof of the cockpit.

No explosion this time. Just sudden silence and a ship that would drift until entropy claimed it. Until someone found it years from now and wondered what had happened here.

"Hostile vessels eliminated," ADAM confirmed. "Flagship in partial retreat. Emission trail shows destabilization. ISV Grande hull integrity down to sixty-two percent. Drive core cycling."

Zedd didn't answer. 

His hands were still gripping the controls like they might try to escape, knuckles gone white under the gloves. The Grande pulled into a slow turn, and he started scanning through the debris field. Wreckage floated in every direction; twisted metal catching starlight, weapon trails smeared across the black like chalk on a board.

The ship groaned under strain. Violet light spilled out of a cracked stabilizer vane, and Zedd made a mental note to check that later. If there was a later.

Behind him, the cabin was dead quiet except for the hum of life support and someone's breathing—fast but steady. Nina, probably. 

Dev was silent in his seat, while Caleb sat white-knuckled in his own, watching wreckage drift past the viewport like he was trying to memorize every piece. 

Not bad for our first dogfight, huh, Caleb?

The Spectre frigate blinked once in the distance, an afterimage against the void, then vanished into FTL. 

Zedd exhaled through his teeth. He could chase it, easily catch up with the Grande easily enough, but he had no fucking idea what it was leading them toward. 

Could be a trap. Could be a fleet. Could be worse.

Still...

"We're not done," he said, mostly to himself.

He pushed the Grande deeper into the belt, scanning for a fallback vector. The asteroid field would give them cover while he figured out what the hell was happening. While he tried to process the fact that this wasn't just a hit. Couldn't be. Pirates didn't coordinate like that. Mercs didn't have Spectre-class frigates.

The Citadel Council…

He pushed the thought down for a moment and turned toward the largest asteroid in scanner range, and tried to remember how to breathe with his life no longer on the line. "How did you take on all those ships with this thing?" Dev finally asked. His voice had that careful tone people used when they weren't sure if they should be impressed or terrified. "I thought we were zeroed, man."

"Me too," Adele added quietly from her station, thoughtlessly chewing on her NicStic. She was slumped back in her chair, looking like someone who'd just watched her life flash before her eyes.

Zedd glanced at his hands, steady as ever with his micromanipulator gloves handling even the worst nerves. "Everything I build, I build to punch above its weight class. My ships too." He gestured at the console display showing the Grande's specs. "This thing might be an Interceptor, but shields and material wise? Without worrying about eezo limitations, it could take on a stealth frigate in a straight up slugfight. Even if the weapons were in the same tier."

He rolled his eyes.

"Which they're not."

Nina turned in her seat. "Meaning?"

"Meaning I design ships that could eat anything anybody sent at me. Batarian, Turian, human, anybody..." His voice trailed off as something cold settled in his chest. A realization that felt like swallowing ice.

The timing. The coordination. The fact that they'd known exactly where to wait.

"They knew I was coming back," he said quietly, more shaken than he'd admit. The words hung in the recycled air like an accusation.

His eyes widened as the pieces clicked together. It was all connected. Had to be.

"Shit."

Everyone turned to look at him, and Zedd realized he'd said it out loud. Realized they were all waiting for him to explain what he'd figured out. What it meant.

It means we're fucked. It means someone's playing us. It means—

"We have to get back to Arkadia."