On the other side, Jean returned a trigger panel into her watch.
Nova was a good tactician and an experienced assassin, but she had one disadvantage. She didn't know the secret weapon Jean had.
The watch.
Logically speaking, Jean knew if she broke out and created a chaos, Nova would certainly spread all the active forces she had throughout the ship and bring the rest over to the cell. Nova had no idea how Jean got out, and she would do everything she can to be sure.
This would give Jean an opportunity to proceed with her plan.
Of course, just because the cell was a distraction didn’t mean she was going to leave it as anything but a death trap. After all, she was Jean Turner.
A charger from her watch, along with a motion sensor, was installed inside the cell. When Jean saw the alarm on the motion sensor, she waited two seconds to make sure everyone get in and triggered the charger.
She didn’t know if Nova was killed, but she didn’t really mind. If she was killed in the blast, great. If she wasn’t, no harm done.
Turning around once more, Jean walked by a squad of eight elite marines. The Special Forces glanced at her, but instead of walking by her and proceeding with their mission like all the other squads, one of the soldiers raised his armed hand, and the entire patrol group stopped.
“You there, stop.” He pointed at Jean.
Jean stopped.
“Your armor is not of our type. You’re not a Special Forces personnel. How did you get here? Hands behind your head now!” The elite marine glanced at Jean’s inferior CMC armor. It was difficult to spot the difference when the men were in a hurry, but in a calm, safe position someone could see it sooner or later.
Jean nodded and complied. The elite marine walked forward while the others held their rifles up at Jean, but then all hell went loose.
All of a sudden, a dozen metal warbots appeared around the elite marines. Defenders cannons ripped through human bodies. Eradicators rolled over men and women.
“All units, we need…” The leading marine, noticing the situation, tried yelling a warning inside the communication channel. He knew his squad was doomed. Compared to firing pointlessly at the armored warbots and waste the few seconds, he tried to warn his comrades, but he was cut off by a crimson blade to the heart.
Jean dropped the blade and waved her hand, and the warbots, having slaughtered the squad of marines, moved forward. They reached the bridge in no time.
An ARES fired a pair of 120mm cannon at the blast door of the gate of the bridge. The first rounds merely shook the door, but the warbot kept on firing. Ten seconds later, the door was cracked open.
The warbots entered the bridge and started gunning down the officers inside. A couple elite marines retaliated, but all the reserves and ghosts were taken away by Nova to the cell. The rest were severely outgunned.
Bodies hit the floor. Blood splattered around the control panels.
One of the officers drew her pistol and took aim at a warbot and fired repeatedly, but the bullets merely bounced off the armor. The warbot was turning around, but Jean was quicker as she raised her pistol and pumped a single round into the woman’s chest.
Not even looking at the body, Jean walked to one of the panels and started typing.
At first she tried to activate the self destruction sequence, but she quickly realized a function of that length needed someone like Nova to activate. Otherwise, any sailor with some mental illness could bring down the entire ship and kill all the hundreds of personnel on it. Only the captain or other high ranking officers had the authority to issue such a command.
Jean wasn’t disappointed. She merely turned to the engine control and issued an order. As she was done, she glanced at one of the computer screens.
It had a number.
2:00.
1:59.
“Sir, the ship should be exiting warp space in two minutes.” One of the Spec Ops ghost glanced at a clock in his visor and reported.
Nova and the two ghosts were running toward the bridge as quickly as possible. They have met several groups of Special Forces soldiers on the way, and all the soldiers were ordered to join Nova in her quest back to the bridge.
The ghost knew the bridge was compromised, likely by Jean. That meant she had control of where the ship was going. If she wanted to, she could warp the ship to a rebel base and bring the hundreds of Special Forces to their slaughterhouse.
Nova couldn’t let that happen.
“All units within the proximity of the warp drive, converge on the warp drive and manually disable it. Others approach the bridge. Proceed with extreme caution. The target is armed and extremely dangerous. Termination is authorized.” Nova ordered, not stopping.
The battlecruiser held hundreds of Special Forces units, but when spread out all across this one kilometer long capital ship these hundreds of men were not enough to hold all the key positions.
A few squads complied and ran to the warp drive. The leading marine typed a string of access code into the computer, and the drive was put under lockdown. Without the ability to jump, even if Jean was in control when they exited warp space, there was no way the battlecruiser could escape the surround of the Dominion Fleet around Korhal.
Jean was trapped. She might have taken Nova by surprise, but in the end everything was the same. As long as she could trap Jean inside the ship when the ship exits warp space, the girl would still be captured nonetheless.
That was why Nova was heading toward the bridge now. Even if she couldn’t kill Jean, she needed to trap her there.
It took less than a minute before Nova and the Special Forces reached the door of the bridge. One of the elite marines ran forward, but a series of defender cannons hit his shield. The man quickly hopped back and turned over the corner.
“How the hell did that bitch sneak warbots onto this ship?” The man complained subconsciously but quickly caught himself as he realized he was beside Nova. Such unprofessional words wasn’t exactly approved in the Dominion army.
A couple marauder commandos prepared for a charge, but Nova stopped them.
“All we need to do is hold our ground. This is the only way out. As long as we pin the prisoner inside the bridge, sooner or later she’ll be captured. We don’t need to advance, at least not now.” She turned to one of the ghosts. “Contact Alpha and Omega Squadron and tell them to send reinforcements.”
If the Special Forces attacked, they could probably seize the enemy position, but at what cost? Dominion Special Forces were elite troopers, not cannon fodders. Situations like this, charging into enemy mech units through a narrow position without friendly fire support, especially when the situation wasn’t desperate, was a job for common marines and marauders.
“Yes sir.”
“The rest of you, establish a defensive formation. Keep a tab on the ship. I want to know everything the prisoner is doing.”
“Yes sir.” A female ghost nodded.
The Dominion fleets appeared in orbit of Korhal two minutes later. Nova peaked at the bridge once again and frowned. The prisoner didn’t even attempt to break out. Why? She must know she needed to do something.
She turned to a marauder commando and nodded, and the man tried to move forward, only to get shot in the chest by a string of cannon rounds. He was helped back to safety by a couple comrades.
So Jean was still there. Nova had no idea where her warbots came from, but her men had the place surrounded.
“Sir!” The female ghost suddenly caught Nova’s attention. “Sir, the ship’s engine has been turned to maximum.”
“What? Where to?” There was no way the battlecruiser could outrun the Dominion ships. Just the Alpha and Omega Squadrons could do a short ranged jump and fully surround the Special Forces battlecruiser. As the capital of the Dominion, Korhal had half a dozen fleets, including the Pride of Augustgrad fleet. There was no way a single battlecruiser could run away from all of them just by its engine.
The ghost frowned and checked the data again before responding. A sense of disbelief was in her voice. “The Sky Shield. The prisoner is ramming this ship into the Sky Shield!”
Nova’s eyes widened. The Sky Shield was the major orbital defense platform of Korhal. If the capital planet was to be invaded, the Dominion Fleet could fall back to the firepower of the Sky Shield and stand up against an enemy they couldn’t defeat in a frontal engagement.
Such an important structure was obviously heavily defended. A hostile battlecruiser couldn’t even touch it before being ripped apart by the full might of the firepower of both the platform itself and the fleet protecting it. In a normal situation a kamikaze attack would be shut down almost as soon as it was put in action.
But this wasn’t normal.
The Special Forces battlecruiser still had all the Special Forces unit on it. If the ship was to be taken out, then the hundreds of elite marines, marauder commandos, Spec Ops ghosts, and strike goliaths would perish. This would be a heavy loss.
“Sir, General Warfield wants us to evacuate the ship. He needs to be firing upon this ship as soon as possible. We can’t afford to take any risk with the Sky Shield.” General Warfield was the commander of the Korhal Defense Fleet.
Nova understood Warfield’s decision. Jean was valuable, and it would be nice if she could find out who Jean sneaked her warbots onto the top secret Special Forces battlecruiser, but while turning her to a Dominion asset was good, silencing her permanently wasn’t such a bad idea either. If the Sky Shield was down, not only the platform itself would be lost, so would the people’s trust in the Dominion government. If a single prison could easily hijack an entire battlecruiser and use it to take down the shield of Korhal and there was nothing the Dominion could do about it, how could the Dominion protect the people? Neither Warfield nor Mengsk could allow something like that to happen.
“All units, move to the hangar and prepare for evacuation!”
“But sir, what should we do with the prisoner?” One of the elite marines looked at the bridge.
“Leave her. Without a way out she will die in the explosion.” Nova turned around. “Move!”
The Special Forces turned around and ran to the hangar. Every single one of them knew the longer they took to evacuate the ship, the more difficult it would be for the Dominion Fleet to keep the ship from smashing into the Sky Shield.
A dozen specialized dropships were inside the hangar. They were armed with cloaking fields and warp drives. The soldiers entered the transports and shut the doors. A couple pilots were already waiting in the cockpit. One of the ghosts pressed something on his PC, and the door of the hangar was opened.
The dropships left the battlecruiser one by one.
When the Special Forces were clear, the entirety of both the Dominion Fleet and the Sky Shield opened fire. Yamato Cannons smashed into the ship by the dozens. Drakken orbital cannons snapped the ship in two. The battlecruiser turned on its defensive matrix, as if it was the last attempt by the pilot to save herself, but it was useless. The ship was in pieces in just minutes. Everything on it was destroyed.
“All Special Forces personnel rendezvous on the Sky Shield.”
“Yes sir!”
In the end, when Nova reunited with her men, she realized two of the dropships were gone, but she didn’t think anything of it. Modified and elite didn’t mean invincible. If a dropship was accidentally hit by a random debris or stray round, it would explode, and every unit on it, Special Forces or not, would die. That was just a fact, and chances are some of the dropships were in the wrong place.
That was unfortunate, but there was nothing she could do about it.
Still, Nova was quite satisfied. Tosh’s ally was dead, and now she could make a move on the spectre himself without fear of mysteriously losing her ships.
Meanwhile, one of the dropships was inside warp space.
One of the elite marines frowned. “Where are we going? We should be going to Sky’s Shield.”
The pilot didn’t answer.
The twelve elite marines looked at each other in confusion, but the next second the pilot turned around. Two pistols were in her hands.
The elite marines tried to react, but they were completely caught by surprise. Their helmets were up. Their weapons’ safeties were off. They were mentally unprepared.
Twelve shots in six seconds. Twelve bodies hit the ground.
As the men died, Jean returned the pistols to her holster and sat back down.
When Jean was in the bridge, she installed a series of instructions into the computer that would be carried out as soon as the time was there, whether she was there or not. When she was done, instead of waiting in the bridge to be surrounded by Nova, she simply walked out and went to the hangar. There were some guards, but she took care of them with either her blade and other weapons or her warbots.
When she got to the hangar, she went inside one of the dropships and waited. If she went out when the battlecruiser got out of warp space, she would catch quite the attention. After all, she would be the only dropship. The transport had a cloaking field, but the Dominion Fleet had detection.
However, she knew with the battlecruiser set on a course to smash into the Sky Shield, the Dominion would need to take it out. But unless it was absolutely necessary, even the Dominion wasn’t willing to sacrifice someone as useful as Nova and the Special Forces. They would be given a chance to evacuate.
When dozens of dropships came out of the hangar at once, she wouldn’t catch any attention. Everyone would think she was just another transport full of Dominion soldiers. She could get into warp space without being stopped.
She didn’t expect the squad of Special Forces marines to get on her transport, but she quickly solved that problem.
Laying back in her chair, Jean looked at the surrounding and started thinking. At this point, she has already reached her goal. The Dominion thought she was dead and wouldn’t come after her anymore. Even if someone wonders if she was truly on the ship when it exploded, they wouldn’t have the evidence to start a real investigation. She had a dropship with a warp drive and therefore the power to go wherever she pleased.
Jean quietly chose a pair of coordinates.
