>>5275623<span class="mu-i">"Captain. Water storage tanks at 85%. Shield capacitors at 76%. Weapons capacitors at 42%. Estimated recharge time is 8 minutes 53 seconds. "</span>
"Damn, i don't think they're gonna give us that long. And there's a lot more of them left!"
<span class="mu-i">"Their actions will become more concerted as the number of ships drops. Once their consciousness is no longer divided, it may become a difficult fight."</span>
"Hah..." You sigh. Your adrenaline is pumping right now, making in harder to think. But you've been through worse. You'll make it through this, somehow.
"Lasers don't really work on these bastards. Not against the hull, anyways. And we ain't got enough missiles for everybody, so we need to think of something. Fast."
You can see a number of drone ships converging on your scanners. It's a reactor reading, so it's hard to tell, but it looks like a lot of them.
["They can't armor their thrusters. Every one of those bombs worked great, but lasers should do the job, too."] Sanig offers.
["That trick with the gravity generator was pretty good. If you could get them to focus on the Star-Fall, maybe you could take out a few by ramming... with an entire ruined ship."] Kyla adds.
["Uhhh... well? Maybe we could blind their optical sensors? If we boost use the communication optics to spread out the beam and boost the power, it would be like shining a laser in their eyes...] Cylia finishes.
You're about to respond, but something feels off. You can't really explain it. It's not even like your usual instincts are trying to tell you something, more like a tingle in the back of your head... but nevertheless, you feel like you've been sitting still for too long.
<span class="mu-i">"Captain, i am detecting a large reactor signature! Something's coming!"</span>
You almost never hear urgency like that in SHODAN's voice, which makes you worried.
Almost without thinking, you jerk the flight stick to the side. Not a moment later, a beam of light erupts next to the ship, blowing a large hole in the debris cloud surrounding you.
You can hear bits of metal clattering off your hull as it's launched away from the tunnel left in the nebula by... whatever that was.
["Woah!"]
["Where the hell did that come from?!"]
Your cameras refocus and zoom in on the distant ship, in the direction of the signature SHODAN detected.
What you see is both stupid and terrifying.
[Is that...?]
["Oh, that's so cool!"] Kyla exclaims.
Five ships appear to have... combined, for lack of a better word. More like, they've docked together. But you understand what's going on.
The center ship is actually one of the disabled active ships from before, likely housing one of the AI controlling all these drones. And the front of the ship has completely detached, revealing some kind of gigantic laser weapon.
