Chapter 3 - A new threat III (last)

As the purple stream got closer quickly, the ships continued to accelerate, hoping to escape before getting hit by that attack.

As the seconds went by the first ships entered FTL speed and all that's left are bright streams, stretching into the distance.

However the bigger ships obviously need more time to accelerate than those smaller ones.

But, even if it might take them a bit most aren't in the line of fire, and therefore didn't face such pressure, after all no one knew what exactly that beam does once it hits.

As the Nexus was the biggest ship, it needed the most time to reach FTL speed, but nonetheless, they were just a bit away.

Together with them still flying away, trying to reach the FTL speed border, were about 8 other ships, including both of the other cruisers. As the green light started shining in the command room of the Nexus, indicating the reaching of the border speed, Vernond started grinning, as he was sure nothing would be able to hit them now.

However just at this moment, the foreign ship charged another light in the center for just a fracture of a second, before releasing it.

Unlike the former, this light spread out as a wave, which was much faster than the beam, as well as every ship still trying to reach the FTL speed.

Although, unlike what everyone thought, the light did no damage to any of the ships as it passed by, but if one watched closely, the beam started becoming slightly eradical after being hit by the wave, before imploding in an explosion that covered every ship in an instant.

Seeing the other ship exploding after being hit by the explosion, Vernond slammed his fist on a red button on his screen, which he had prepared beforehand just in case.

The purple explosion covered the nexus and at the same time they breached the border to FTL speed.

However, they obviously weren't fast enough, as the back of the ship, which included the five main engines as well as the FTL-drive, exploded, leading to the ship loosing control over it's movements while traveling with FTL speed.

As the consequence, it started spinning and shortly after exploded in a huge fireball, as they crashed into thousands of small objects, which the FTL-drive usually protected them from by forming a field around them which would force all the object with which they collided around them.

Obviously such a technology had it's limit, because on one hand the field would only work at those extreme high speeds, and on the other hand objects such as planets, stars and big asteroids had to be evaded, which the ship would usually do automatically by using the data about where each on is, which is gathered beforehand, or is already saved by former scans categorizing and gathering such data.

A few thousand kilometers (a few thousand miles) away an explosion faded away and a big wreckage could be seen, that was punctured by thousands upon thousands of holes and had signs of a great explosion, which caused the ship to break apart.

…

The seconds before the ship exploded, a blue capsule formed around Vernond, appearing out of the ground and closed above his head just as he hit that button.

The moment it closed completely, it immediately shot him downwards, bringing him inside a slightly bigger capsule which was around 5 meters (5.5 yards) high, 2 meters (2.2 yards) wide and deep.

The capsule just like the ship had the vague form of a pyramide , with a pointy top and a wider bottom. At the bottom is one small engine, only big enough to semi good fly around, and the capsule had 4 maneuver thrusters slightly below the top, as well as 4 slightly above to lower end.

The capsule was meant to save the captain of the ship in order to be able to later investigate what happened, as well as save the most important person on the ship.

Of course there were enough capsules on the ship for every crew member, however they were only accessible at specific points on the ship, like the access points for the outer shell. Unlike the captains capsule which was directly usable by pressing a button and would immediately shoot him away from the ship.

Overall the whole procedure from the moment Vernond pressed the button, until the moment the capsule left the ship didn't take much longer than a second.

However, due to the fact that the ship and therefore the capsule too moved at FTL speed and therefore started spinning as it immediately lost control over its flight, Vernond quickly lost consciousness, hoping at least some of his crew would make it out alive.

Luckily for Vernond, soon after he fell unconscious, the capsule actually regained its control and was able to slow down enough to not be instantaneously destroyed by space debris, like small rocks and so on.

But nonetheless the capsule needed a few hours to slow down enough to leave FTL speed. The problem is that during the time it needed to slow down, it was heavily damaged, as well as travelled a great distance, leading to the shutdown of the power system, as well as the complete loss of the visional and propelling systems, making the capsule no better than some piece of space junk.

Fortunately for Vernond, the capsule brought repair as well as emergency rations and so on, in order to secure the survival of the captain.

As he slowly opened the eyes and assessed the situation he was in, he felt great joy at the fact that he was still alive and except a few scratches relatively healthy.

Though the next moment a wave of sadness assaulted him, quickly suppressing his joy and happy feelings, because he quickly realized that the capsule wasn't working properly and he lost his ship as well as his crew and a few other ships.

The only ray of hope he was seeing at the moment, was that maybe some of his old crewmates, which he by now held dearly after working together with them for more than 5 years and making real friends among them.

After a few minutes of sorrow and mourning, he tried to focus on his current situation, which doesn't look too good either, after all if he can't repair his capsule, and bring back online the life support system, he would quickly run out of oxygen.

Therefore without further ado, he started looking for the manual on the capsule repairs and its systems.