Starbound: A Space Odyssey 135 The Pursuit 3

Without delay, the warning ranging all over shuttle's console, stopped.

"Starting FTL Warp Jump." The robotic voice said, "Failed: Escape Pod is unable to perform Warp Jump. Reason: Jamming equipment interfering with the FTL Engine. Solution: Get out of the jamming's range of effect, or destroy the source."

"This is bad." Lenny spoke as he walked back to his seat, "They are still after us and they also have some FTL jammers."
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"What about your friend?" Forge suddenly asked.

"If he performed the jumped just after I called him, he might be arriving." Lenny said, "Try to stay out of their reach until Connor arrive to save us."

"Okay." Forge nodded and went back to type at the console.

"Autopilot deactivated. Starting manual maneuver. Please, pilot, be ready."

Just like that Forge grabbed the controls of the shuttle and started to manually pilot the escape pod.

Lenny could only watch as Forge moved the escape pod with her pilot skills.

Although Lenny couldn't say that she was the best pilot he had ever seen, he had to admit that she was better than himself.

He was simply terrible in piloting s.p.a.ceship, a little better with Mechs, and a professional with his hoverbike.

While he was filling a little down as he simply couldn't do anything to help Forge right now, he consoled himself by remembering that he was the best sharpshooter in the universe, at least as far as he knows.

The Miniknog ships were easily getting close to the escape pod as they had better thrusters and pilots.

It was impossible to overrun a Sparrow-cla.s.s s.p.a.ceship that was built with the purpose of pursing and destroying enemies with such escape pod.

Those ships had more thrusters than normal Sparrow-cla.s.s s.p.a.ceship, and also had better weaponry.

"Warning, warning!" The robotic voice rang at the shuttle once again, "High levels of energy coming from behind the Escape Pod. Energy weaponry locked-on at Pod. Pilot, start evasive maneuvering!"

"s.h.i.t!" Lenny cursed as he heard the warnings.

He was sure that the Miniknog wouldn't give the order to destroy them, but that this didn't mean they could damage the escape pod enough to bring them to halt.

If they were aiming for the engines, the laser would pierce the hull and destroy the equipments in the way and in the surroundings due to the sheer temperature of such energy weapon.

"Forge!"

"I'm on it!" Forge said out loud as she made the pod change route and shake off their aim.

But the movements were very limited with such shuttle, and the Miniknog kept their aim at them as the weapon finished charging.

Lenny stretched his neck to see the situation outside from the screen in front of Forge her shoulder.

He could only see about 5 Sparrow-cla.s.s s.p.a.ceships in hot pursuit, and the two leading the group had already finished charging the energy weapon.

*BOOM!!!!!!*

*BOOM!!!!!*

The shuttle in which Lenny and Forge were, shook at as soon as they were hit with the energy beam.

"Critical damage at FTL Engine, Warp Jump now is impossible." Lenny heard the robotic voice warn them as emergency red lights flashed all over the shuttle, "Back thrusters 3 and 4 had been destroyed, speed will be slowed down significantly. External hull has been heavily damaged, Life Support Systems are failing. Please wear the s.p.a.cesuits."

Lenny was glad that he wore the s.p.a.cesuits as soon as they got into the pod.

With that hit, there was a oxygen leakage and the Oxygen Recycler had also been destroyed with those hits.

"*Tzzzt..."

"Hm?" Lenny shook his head that had been hot by a flying metal shards and as soon as he recovered from dizziness he heard some static noise coming from his the Pod's communication system.

"*Tzzzt... Lenny!?..."

The moment Lenny heard that voice, right in front of their shuttle, a s.p.a.ceship suddenly appeared seemly out of nowhere.

Without delay, Lenny cut his seatbelt, grabbed the Hylotl kid and the dizzy Forge that was bleeding from gnash wound on her forehead, and launched off from the Pod towards the familiar Sparrow-cla.s.s s.p.a.ceship in front of him.

...

"Lenny!?" John shouted at his comm as soon as the Warp Jump finished.

What appeared in front of ship was an incoming damaged spherical white shuttle, and a small fleet of Sparrow-cla.s.s ships completely weaponized, chasing the spherical shuttle.

John was flabbergasted as the sight of a s.p.a.ceship filled with weapons, because even the Protectorate ships didn't have that many of them.

And, as said before, it was forbidden to put weapons in s.p.a.ceships by the Terrene Protectorate, so, John never saw any ship different from those coming from the Protectorate having those types of advanced weaponry.

He wasn't given any time to recover before he caught sight of Lenny through the magnified image on his screen.

Lenny together with two other person launched himself out of the pod towards John's ship.

[That insane b.a.s.t.a.r.d!] John thought to himself as he saw Lenny flying off from the pod at a high speed he carried on with the momentum given by the shuttle's speed.

"Peri, grab them!" John shouted as he pressed a key on his console to open the side door.

Peri nodded and flew over narrow corridors towards the door in which John opened.

John took control over his ship and turned it around so that Lenny didn't need to find a way to change direction in the middle of the s.p.a.ce's vacuum.

Lenny saw the ship turning and opening the door. He became overjoyed that John had reacted this quickly and took a jetpack from his PIPS.

As the ship turned, Lenny also a opening appearing on the faint and transparent Forcefield around John's s.p.a.ceship.

But some people wasn't that happy.

The small fleet of ships immediately accelerated and started charging their energy weapons as they simply couldn't risk send missiles, or use their machines, and end up killing their target.

So, they could only resort at their strategy of destroying the engines of the s.p.a.ceship that was in front of them.

While carrying Forge and Saito, Lenny used the jetpack to slow down his speed before he could get to John's ship, or else he would be completely flattened together with Forge and Saito.

Lenny looked at his arm and saw that both Forge and Saito were unconscious now.

The kid had been pa.s.s out since there beginning, as for Forge, Lenny could see the blood leaking from a cut in her head. She probably had a concussion with some object that flew after the explosion and hit her in the head.

As he approached the ship Lenny saw someone appearing in the open door.

It was the green female Floran that he knew well, Peri.

His expression instantly changed.

Although he didn't hate Peri or anything like that, he disliked being around her because of the faint burning pain he feel on his hand whenever he's close to her.

It isn't that much painful, but every time it activated, he's forced to remember the terrible things he did inside the Ancient Challenge's dimension.

Memories that he rather forget, but every time he's around a "survivor", the memories come back with full swing.

As soon as his expression worsened, he brought it back to normal.

Just like that, Lenny flew towards Peri, and she easily grabbed the three people.