143 Hold Position

After a long, eventful journey back to the humanity's new home far away from Earth, we were finally about to dock with the spaceport. It was relieving to see that nothing bad had happened to those mostly defenseless people hiding in fear of being detected by an AI ship or a stray probe.

"Admiral, how are we holding up?" I asked.

"Nicely." she said. "Expecting visual to station in three minutes. I must say, the ship handled better than I expected through the whole second half of the flight."

"We owe it to quick thinking of the command and the engineering talent of the crew." I said. "Did any ships return yet, other than us?"

"Two ships did." said Mei. "One due to insufficient armament, another due to malfunctions. Other ships are either still in the battleground, or are destroyed."

"Do we know if any of our ships are actually destroyed in action?" I asked.

"We probably wouldn't know for some time, as the fleet is so spread apart."

"Visual contact." said the professor. "I have the station on optical instruments."

I walked to the sensors console to take a look at the station.

"Looks like they've made some upgrades while we were gone." I said. "And what is that ship in front of the docking bay there?"

"I don't know, but it looks quite big." said the professor. "Wait, I have an idea."

"What is it?" I asked.

"That could very well be the colony ship that we were going to construct!"

"So the design bureau already started the construction, huh?" I said. "That's... very good news."

"Entering final approach and docking." reported Mei, and took a headset. "Makemake traffic control, this is Flagship Lodos; requesting permission for final approach and docking. The ship requires extensive maintenance, repairs, rearming and refueling. Maybe you could redo the paintjob as well..."

"Lodos, this is Makemake; welcome home. We have you on our sensors, and are now preparing your vibrant red paint. Move to align for final approach to docking bay A3 and hold position. Limit relative velocity to 150 meters per second."

"Station, Lodos; align A3 and hold, copy."

Our ship stopped about five kilometers away from the docking bay in front of the station, as ordered. As we were waiting for the final permission to dock, Mei used this opportunity to retract all external systems such as radiators and antennas.

"Station, this is Lodos; we are in position and holding." Mei said to remind the station; she was getting a bit impatient with the docking protocol.

"Roger, Lodos. Hold your position." was the station's reply. Mei then turned to me.

"Why would they hold us?" she asked, showing me how annoyed she was. "We have a clear path to the bay."

"Maybe they are going to move another ship out or something..." I said.

Just when we were in the safest place in space we could think of, Lodos' alarms went off. Red lights appeared on consoles, and sirens cried loudly.

"Brace fo-"

Before the professor could even warn us, Lodos was hit.

And Lodos was hit again.

And again - all within a few seconds.

It was raining red lights on the sensors screen. Every time something hit our armor or hull, it sent vibrations through the ship, and created a noise that resembled some distant planet-side artillery.

"It's raining missiles!" said the professor.

"Mei, reverse out of here!" I said.

"Already on it!"

I ran to the weapons console to start the automated railguns. The ship's turrets came to life and started shooting missiles that targeted us. However, we didn't have enough turrets for every single missile we were being targeted by. Some of them were still making it through to strike our armor.

Our only advantage was that the missiles were way too weak - a proper anti-ship warhead would take us out in one shot; but those missiles, even though they were hitting us multiple times a second, could barely penetrate our armor.

"Professor, enemy directions! Give me a firing solution!" I ordered as I opened the torpedo bays. "Mei, turn ventral port to protect our missile silos as I fire!"

"Sir, no enemy detected!" he said. "The missile stream may be cluttering our sensors!"

"It's the station." said Mei. "The station has missile launchers. We are getting shot at."

"What?" I asked in shock. "A-Are you sure about that?"

"I'm dead serious." she said. "Someone wants us dead."

"Turn port." I said. "I'm going to take a shot."

"No." said Mei. "If we turn port, we will expose our damaged section on starboard. We don't have any armor there."

"Fine." I said. "Then it is up to the railguns."

I switched Lodos' railguns to manual control and aimed at where I thought the missile launcher could be. It was mostly an educated guess, since our sensors were not very good at the moment...

And then I pushed the fire button.

The rapid-fire railguns sprayed the space station with high speed projectiles, punching holes through it's entire structure. I moved the targeting point around until the missile stream stopped, but until then, half of the station was ripped into tiny pieces. When the chaos ended, the largest piece of debris was no bigger than 20 centimeters in diameter.

"Great." said Mei. "That was the only station left in the universe that could repair our ship."

"Half of it is still working." I said. "Besides, I don't think anyone that intended to shoot us would provide us with any services anyway. But at least my theories are now confirmed..."

"What theory?" asked the professor.

"The Council still wants us gone, after all this time." I said. "You see, they took their time and used some of the resources we allocated for the colony ship to build defense structures. They probably told people that this was against any AI attack, but turns out that they were building assassination tools..."

"Sir, the station is communicating." said Mei.

"I will answer." I said, and took the headset. "This is the commanding officer of Lodos. Surrender."

"Sur-surren- Sir, are you alright?"

"Are you surrendering, or do you need more holes through the station to decide?" I asked.

"We surrender!" replied the station. "Sir, we had a software error and it activated the missile launcher system. We are incredibly sorry, and we take full responsibility for the incident. Now, I urge you to remain calm and-"

"Shut down everything except life support and necessary utilities and wait for our marines' arrival." I said. "Do not do anything you are not instructed to do so by our forces."

"Sir, this was a software error, you don't-"

I closed the comms channel.

"I'm directing marines to board the station." said Mei.

"Yes, please." I said. "And Mei..."

"Yes?"

"I have a special mission for you."