Alira willed her body to stay perfectly still inside her pod. Only a slight deviation from her current position would bring her ship dangerously close to the orbits of the fighter craft circling their transports. The proximity of another mass would cause her ship to decloak, and if she were exposed at this moment, their deception would likely provoke attack.
'Allright, here is how we are going to do this' Sandrielle transmitted to the Crimson Covenant fleet. She seemed unaffected by the staggering display of force arrayed before them, nor did she appear to be nervous about the precarious gambit they were attempting here. Her voice remained calm and composed. 'Our transports are going to release the cargo we have agreed upon. They will hold the containers with tractor beams and you can scan them to confirm the contents. Once you are satisfied you will transfer the agreed amount of ISK to the Garoun Investment Bank account we have provided.' she paused to await any reaction, but none came 'You can then reel in the containers with your own tractor beams. We will release them once we have confirmed the transfer of funds.'
A period of tense silence followed. If they disagreed now, the whole plan could possibly be foiled. Then: ' We agree to those terms' came the reply after a time all of them had spent nervously reviewing their ships' systems and the possible options for the worst case.
'Transport wing, release the cargo' Cedrien ordered on their fleet frequency.
Moments later, the cargo containers were floating in space, held by mass-displacing force beams emitting from both of their transport ships. Two battleships of the Covenant fleet slowly crept closer and stopped at the range of their own tractor beams. The small fighter craft launched by the two motherships were speeding around the position vigilantly. Alira mentally went through the steps she had to take on the pre-arranged signal. She prepared both her ship and her crew.
'We have transfered the ISK, release the cargo' The Covenant commander demanded.
'Affirmative' Sandrielle replied 'That concludes our deal'
A mere second after her words were transmitted, two lumpy covert-ops frigates decloaked left and right of the Covenant fleet and tore open new rents in the space-time fabric.
'Transport wing, jump back now! Shisei, jam the closest two battleships. Keram launch bombs at them. Alira I want webs on all fighter craft you can target. Everyone fall back! Go go go!' Cedrien sent a burst of orders via their fleet channel.
Everything happened really fast from that moment on. Small destroyer-class vessels screamed out of the cynosural fields on both sides and launched warp disruption charges. On detonation they expanded into wobbling spheres of disruptive energy, designed to capture the massive Covenant ships and hold them in place.
Alira urged her ship to shed it's cloak and reached out to ensnare the closest fighters scrambling to engage the newly-appeared interdictor crafts which were clearly from another faction. Their hulls were gleaming in dark blue under the light of the local star, stylized gray spiral patterns stood out in the icy glow.
She saw Keram sending his devastating bombs at the closest battleship which was unable to respond due to the sensor overload emitted by Shisei's Falcon. Alira turned her ship toward the wormhole. Keram's brittle-looking Manticore bomber was then already well ahead of her on it's way back. An opponent had cast a stasis web to hold him, but he had engaged his microwarpdrive to overcome the forces slowing down his ship.
Alira felt slight pricks of pain from light close-range fire – the fighers were engaging her. A subtle tug at the edge of her senses told her that her warpdrive was incapacitated, not that it mattered with the escape through the wormhole being that close. Coils of immobilizing tension wrapped themselves around her ship too now. A quick mental command later, she felt her speed surge again as she activated her own microwarpdrive. She pushed the engines beyond their limits by psychic exertion.
Then Alira registered the blinding, burning sensation of heavy pulse lasers tearing at her shields. Subtly twisting her hands at the wrists, she swiveled her artillery cannons around. She put all her mental strength behind the barrage against the closest battleship, which had already sustained heavy damage from Keram's hit. The heat monitors of her guns screamed alarm at her senses, but she ignored that for now. She was exceeding the capacity of the weapons as she continued firing on her way to the wormhole. Finally that ship came apart in a burst of vented gases and the explosion of it's breached reactors.
Alira then saw the two newly-opened cynosural fields blossom and disgorge more ships onto the scene amid a storm of incandescent laserbeams, explosions and streaks of energized charges. An Archon-class Amarr carrier, the rounded hulks of Gallente dreadnaughts which brought their heavy guns to bear and, finally, something obscured what remained of the star-spangled backdrop to this devastation: Two emerald masses of sanity-defying immensity. The last thing she saw were beams of crackling darkness which seemed to devour space itself as they lanced toward the Avatar Titan. Then the wormhole embraced her and she landed in a world of sudden serenity.
***
'Well, we all got back in one piece … extensive repairs notwithstanding' Sandrielle told the holographic representation of a scarred Intaki visage. 'How did you fare?'
The man talking via fluid-router link jerked his head dismissively. 'We hardly had any losses. Sure they took our interdictors and the cyno-frigs, but that was to be expected. We downed their Avatar and the two Nyxes, not to mention the support ships. Got the subsystems for the twenty Tengus you promised too.' He shrugged and smiled lightly 'They did a bit of damage to one of our dreadnaughts, and we had to do some repairs on the armour of one Erebus Titan, but all in all it was a good day for Rasenzoku. We are of course very thankful for your contribution. Apart from a small token of our appreciation, we will arrange for a rendezvous with our freighter full of Ice Isotopes as soon as you can make it out again.
Keram looked at the rapidly trebling balance of their corporate account 'Looks like it has been a good day for Awakened Industries too' he pointed out with a greedy sparkle in his eyes.
'You always had the best ideas for traps Sandrielle' The Intaki said and nodded approvingly 'Are you sure you want to stay with those wormhole lightweights?'
Sandrielle breathed in and sighed languidly 'I very much think so Koi-Tang. I sort-of like to deal with the affairs of insects decomposing corpses' she replied and shot a conspiratorial glance at Shisei.
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