134 Counter-ambush

Everyone took a deep breath to hold it.

This was our second month hiding in the asteroid belt, hunting down the AI's cargo and mining ships. So far, we had encountered seven vessels, and were able to destroy five of them. And right now, we had another opportunity coming up. A cargo ship, seemingly on its own, was trying to reach the inner parts of the Solar System.

"Switch sensors to scanning mode." I ordered Professor Yamamari. If the ship had any escorts, we had to pick them up.

"Yes, sir. Scanning."

"Mei." I then said. "Retract radiators. Thrusters off."

"Radiators retracting. No thrusters."

"Engineering!"

"Sir?"

"Power plant to minimum emissions. We need just enough power to launch some missiles."

"Minimum emissions, aye sir!" Omar acknowledged.

"Anything on the scanners, professor?"

"Nothing except the ship itse- wait." He paused and looked at the sensors console again. "I'm picking up two faint signals right next to the ship."

"Identification?"

"Too faint, I wouldn't be able to see them." he said. "But I would assume they are too small to be of any real threat to us."

"I see." I said. "Well then, switch sensors to tracking mode."

"Sensors to tracking mode." said the professor. "Tracking the cargo ship and trying to figure out its exact trajectory."

I turned to the weapons console and pushed a few switches to load missiles into the missile tubes. The sounds of the mechanical loading system could be heard through the ship's walls. In about a minute, four red lights on my console turned green, indicating the missiles were successfully loaded.

"Trajectory plotted." said the professor. "Estimated time to firing window, five minutes."

"Export trajectory data to my console." I ordered. Now, I could see the ship's trajectory on my console. With this data, I could run my own calculations to figure out the best time and velocity to launch the missiles.

"Mei, rotate the ship to present minimum cross section. Minimum thruster power."

"Yes, sir."

As Mei rotated the ship, our radar cross section decreased from the enemy's point of view, making detecting us harder.

"Two minutes." said the professor. I pushed the switches to open up the missile bays. Launch data was loaded into the missile's guidance systems, and we were ready to fire.

"One missile?" I asked the professor.

"One missile should be enough to bring this ship down." he said. "Thirty seconds."

I removed the glass cover on the manual missile launch button and put my hand on it. We were ready to fire.

"Fifteen seconds."

I quickly set my stopwatch to three minutes and thirty one seconds - the time required for our missile to reach the target.

"...seven, six, five, four, three, two, one..."

I pushed the launch button, activating and releasing one of the missiles. It left the missile tube with a loud noise, and the stopwatch started ticking.

Our sensor suite picked up the missile shortly afterwards. On the sensors screen, we could watch it as it made its way to the target ship.

"We have visual." said the professor, about one minute into the missile's flight. I walked over to his console to watch.

"Looks exactly like the cargo ship we've seen back at-" I stopped, having noticed something odd. "Wait, what are these flying around the cargo ship?"

"What ar... Oh." said the professor as he also noticed. "I... don't know. Maybe service robots, flying around the ship to repair its hull?"

"Other ships didn't have such things." I said.

"Maybe we just didn't see this feature in use until now." said the professor. "Either way, we might take a closer look once we blow them up."

"Good point." I said.

At that moment, we were already three minutes into the missile's flight. In about thirty seconds, we would have an impact. I went back to the weapons console, and started counting back the last moments.

"...six, five, four, three, two, one... Professor?"

"We've got them, sir." he said. "Nice shootin- Wait."

"What is the problem?" I asked.

"New contacts, sir! At the position of the cargo ship. They are changing their trajectory to approach us!"

"Identification?"

"Unknown- Pardon me, known! Auto-ID marks them as AI drones!"

"What the hell?" was Mei's comment on the situation.

"Are you 100% positive that they are coming to us?" I asked.

"Not 100%." said the professor.

"Should we assume we are not yet detected and hide... or hit back?" I asked. The professor turned to me and slowly shook his head, indicating that he had no idea either.

I quickly pushed a few switches to close the missile tube covers.

"Mei, take us behind the asteroid we've been hiding behind. Low thruster power. We don't want them detecting our emissions."

"Yes, sir." Mei said.

We tried to maneuver the ship behind the only asteroid in the vicinity.

"Engineering." I said. "Get ready to increase power plant output to combat levels."

"Yes, sir!" said George.

"I hope we weren't seen..."

The bad thing about hiding behind the asteroid was that we could not see the enemy, so we had no idea if we were already detected or not.

"I say we better get our guns ready." said the professor. "This is the only hiding spot within thousands of kilometers. The drones will eventually look here for the attacker."

"I guess you are right." I said. "Mei, deploy radiators to combat positions."

"Roger that."

"Engineering, power plant to combat mode!"

"Sir, yes, sir!"

I activated our close-in weapons systems, which we didn't have a lot of. Being a missile cruiser, Lodos was designed for long range engagements.

"Sir..." said Mei. "If we will eventually get in a fight, we better leave the vicinity of the asteroid. We will have a better chance trying to shoot them at longer distances."

"Makes sense." I said. "Full thrusters. Take us out of here."

"Copy that."

As we left the asteroid behind, I opened up the missile tube covers again. I also unloaded the remaining anti-ship missiles from the tubes to replace them with flak missiles, which were more effective against drone attacks.

"Contact!" said the professor. "Five o'clock, plus 20 degrees; at 14 kilometers and closing. We are in trouble!"

"It's not fun when the enemy actually shoots back at you, is it?"