Repopulated Ch. 11

She held up a hand to forestall Jackie's next question. "Hold on, I want to see what Doris' response will be."

The Gray Dawn was rapidly closing the distance, not slowing down as it made a kamikaze run towards the barrier. At the last second, the force field vanished, allowing the saucer shaped vessel to swoop in on top of the Goodhead before it could bring its weapons to bear.

Several harpoons shot out from the bottom of the saucer, puncturing holes in the larger vessel's hull. The resulting depressurization might kill a few, but the terror of the sudden attack would give them the surprise they needed to board before an organized resistance was put together.

"She's crazy," whispered Kate. "Attacking a vessel that has a self-destruct sequence set? What could she be planning?"

"It's a huge gamble," nodded Jackie. "If she gets the right people to the right places fast enough, she might be able to reverse it before detonation, but if there's any kind of resistance, she might be slowed down too much for it to matter."

"Captain!" broke in Dolohn. "A new engine signature has appeared next to the ESS Goodhead! Someone appears to be attempting an escape!"

Kate gritted her teeth. With the Gray Dawn occupied, there was no way they'd be able to handle another contact. This was the critical decision point.

The seconds ticked down as she balled up her hands, her heart thumping in her chest. "We go in," she decided, sitting back in her seat as determination grew in her chest. "Full speed. Set course to intercept that new target."

"Aye, Captain," acknowledged Dolohn, the tenor of the engines changing as they spun up. The motion of the ship was barely perceptible, but Kate knew that the organic reactors had been kicked into high gear, the sun shifting in the view screen.

She glanced at Jackie, wondering whether her lover would question her decision, but Jackie appeared undisturbed. She trusted Kate to do the right thing. More fool her.

Well, they were well and truly committed now. It was time to ensure that their attack had the best possible chance of success. "Prepare our attack squads," she ordered Jackie. "We'll seize that ship before it has a chance to reach the jump point."

Jackie stared at her display. "That appears possible, Captain, but our room for error is limited. We'll have to time it just right."

"Make it happen," she commanded, gripping onto her arm rests as their ship wobbled, skipping over a communication satellite.

The ship accelerated, the station drawing close in the view screen. Umbilicals had been stretched between the Gray Dawn and the ESS Goodhead, connecting the vessels together. Holes dotted the exterior of the Goodhead, black scorch marks showing where laser blasts had torn into the ship's hull with violent energy beams.

"Captain," announced a crewmember. "The reactor overload is still proceeding. It will enter the red zone within the next ten minutes. After that, anything within its general vicinity will cease to exist."

"Let's tractor our target out of range of the potential blast radius once we catch it," suggested Jackie. "We might have to cut our margins even thinner, but if we let them run a little farther towards the gate, we won't have to tow them as far."

"Do it!" snapped Kate, feeling nervous.

All of these were good suggestions, but she was starting to wonder if there was any point in executing them. There was the theoretical, and then there was reality. How far would the explosion of the Goodhead reach? She didn't really know, and she didn't want to find out.

"This will be a capture strike," she announced. "We will grab any high value targets and bring their vessel under our control as a prize, if practicable. Our top priority is to preserve our own forces, so we shall retreat and move to a safe distance if the Goodhead explodes."

Leaning forward, she gritted her teeth as she watched the display click down the distance to their target. "There," she hissed, pointing at the screen. "It's a captain's yacht."

"Their engines are already at full power, Captain," warned Dolohn. "They will have better acceleration than us, though our top speed is higher."

"Set us on a collision course," said Kate harshly. "Make our best speed."

Dolohn cleared his throat, not mentioning the obvious. Power would have to be diverted from weapons and the environmental systems to accomplish this, which would make things uncomfortable in the short term.

"Aye, Mistress," he rumbled, and the churning whine of the engines increased. A low bong sounded and the overhead lights dimmed, swapping to backups. This was an expected situation for a military vessel, the designers sacrificing crew comfort for engine performance. Matters of life and death were far more important than the sweat that suddenly began to bead on her brow.

"We're gaining on them," announced Dolohn suddenly, his eyes glued to the console. "We should be within capture range before they can navigate the jump portal."

"Good," purred Kate. "Let's end this. I want this vessel secured before Doris can even so much as blink."

The cold, hard numbers on the display kept dropping, an image of the ESS Goodhood on the left. The increasing amount of energy its reactor was putting out was now easily in the red zone.

She ignored the spiking bar graph, keeping her eyes fixed on the sleek, slim vessel that was straining its hardest to make for the jump gate. "Try all you like," she whispered under her breath. "The sweetest capture is the game that tries its hardest to escape."

She imagined it being like a rabbit, hopping along innocently without a care in the world until a hawk swooped down and dismembered it unceremoniously. They were the ones who would capture it with their talons. To force it to stop and obey.

It was too bad that the control interface had a limited range, or she'd just simply order their victims to surrender. It didn't work like that without the relays embedded within the collars around her bridge crew's necks, however. This would need to be done the old fashioned way.

The maximum range of their capture devices flashed in the upper left corner of the display, but she ignored this. She was shooting for the most optimal range, to reduce their chance of failure.

They still had a few minutes before the nose of the ship vanished into the tear, but would the Goodhead hold together long enough? It was a race against time, and Kate didn't know which target she was more worried about.

She hated rushing, but there wasn't time to be a perfectionist. Waiting a few more moments, she turned towards Jackie. "Fire the harpoons. Take them down."

"Aye, Captain," replied Jackie, keying the appropriate code into her console.

Two tiny whump sounds echoed through the hull, long lines shooting out from under their bow to strike the ship in its midsection. "Direct hit!" Kate hissed, raising a fist in excitement. "Reel them in!"

The vessel shuddered as their nose lowered, bringing the captain's yacht into view. She could count every light along the line of the ship's stern, their engines burning with a radioactive green glare.

The massive torque this induced wasn't sufficient enough to shake them free, despite the odd angle they were attacking from. The internal winches hummed, pulling them inexorably closer as they were towed towards the twisted ripple in space.

The extra mass slowed the progress of the yacht, but momentum kept them rushing forward. Kate watched their relative velocity as they closed in on their capture target, the viewscreen filling with the graceful swoop of the yacht's upper decks.

Another shudder rattled through the ship, followed by a solid clanking sound. "Capture target is secure, Captain," reported Dolohn.

"Good, apply reverse thrust. Try to keep them on station as best you can, but allow them to keep pulling us out of the potential blast zone. The rest of you, come with me. It's time to finish this."

She got to her feet and walked up the ramp around the side of the bridge. The stress of earlier was rapidly vanishing, replaced with the surety of action. Good or ill, their path forward had been chosen.

Jackie hopped away from her console, grabbing the leash dangling from the Proctor's collar as she followed in Kate's wake. Kate gave the bridge crew a nudge as she left, making sure that her control was still secure. Pleased with the response she received, she stepped into a transport tube at the top of the bridge, crossing her arms as she jumped in feet first.

The slippery tunnel swallowed her whole, the organism gurgling as it massaged her thighs and breasts. It took more self control than one would think to avoid arriving as a hot mess at the other end. Fortunately, Kate was getting used to this, and the lewd tendencies of the system no longer bothered her.

Instead, she began to think about what she would be doing with Jackie once this assault was over. It was all well and good to assume that they'd have plenty of time for relaxation on the other end, but realistically, there wouldn't be an ending to their duties.

They'd get sucked into another hare-brained scheme and another mission, until they either ended up on top, or were transformed into brainless thralls of the Slanadorians. It didn't help that giving up was still more enticing than it should have been. She really needed to do something about those urges before they became more troublesome.

Her feet popped out of the bottom of the tube, the walls squeezing and tickling at her breasts as the rest of her slid through the opening. Her ass impacted against a spongy mat, and she bounced to her feet with little effort.

Trotting over to a ready station, she grabbed a set of armor that was waiting there for her, pressing a plated chest piece over her bobbing breasts. The internal padding spread them apart, groping at her bodysuit until the internal suckers locked into place.

She added a rear plate, telltale clicks letting her know that it had interfaced with the chest piece, forming one continuous whole. She continued, adding more armor to her groin, ass, and legs, her eyes spearing the faint light as Jackie appeared, her hand wrapped around the Proctor's neck. "Sometimes she gets lost in her obedience," she explained. "She wanted to stay on the bridge because she hadn't been able to play her part in your plan."

Kate frowned, pushing her mind over the alien's, looking for any discord. There was none.

She sighed. "Maybe we should leave her behind? If she starts being unreliable, the entire mission could be at risk."

Jackie shrugged, giving her leash a little tug. "I doubt it will go that far. I'll watch her and make sure nothing bad happens."

"If you say so," Kate replied dubiously, but she wasn't willing to press her lover further. She had to trust that she would keep the alien well in hand.

She finished her outfit by securing a thick gorget around her neck to protect her symbiote, straightening her back as she strode through an open portal to the next room.

A full assault squad made up of converted humans were waiting there for her, fully kitted out with heavy armor and stun blasters. Pacing in front of them, she examined them carefully to make sure nothing was out of place.

"In only a few minutes, we will disembark to face the enemy," she said harshly. "Remember, they would make you their slaves without compunction, so we must do the same. Descending to their level might seem dirty in an objective moral code, but we cannot allow ourselves to falter. They must be taken down. We must succeed, or all of our efforts to save the human race from their aggression will have been for naught!"

A roaring cheer came from the alien throats of the converted humans, and she gave them a vicious smile. "You are the select few who have achieved perfect symbiosis with your Plaxx, which is why you have been selected for this mission. Follow my lead, and together we will take down the Slanadorian menace. To freedom!"

"To freedom!"

The voices shouted as one, and she settled down, feeling altogether mighty. With these trusted troops, they might actually stand a chance of pulling this off. There couldn't be a full assault squad on the alien ship, surely, even if some of the Empress' Guard had been assigned to protect Irizina.