Chapter Twenty-Seven: Ignition

The days pasted slowly in the close quarters of The Angel of Redemption. The ship was not designed for comforatable living, it was designed for functionality, and that is what it provided.
It took days for the ship to revert back into space in the Ranch system. Jonathan began to pilot the ship in towards the planet, but it was not long before a few ships slithered out of space and onto their scopes. They were pacing the Angel of Redemption and surrounded it on all sides. Andy immediately recognised them as the same style of ship that had attacked the colony on Norton. None of the ships had any visible markings.
A gruff voice crackled over the speakers. "We are escorting you through the system. Match our course changes directly or be destroyed." The com crackled off before the crew of the Angel had time to respond.
There were too many of the unidentified ships to try and fight their way out, and by the way they bristled with weapons, a run was out of the question.
As a group, the ships peeled away from ranch and towards one of the outter gas gaints. Jonathan matched the course and began to fly to the outer system. It was a long flight, and the crew of the Angel was so apprehensive of what might happen next that they did not speak.
The com stayed dead as they continued to fly outwards. They passed the first of the gas giants and continued outwards. The second in a series of seven in the Ranch system was the largest in any of the colonial systems. It was so huge that the scientists of ranch were still studying it to attempt to understand why it wasn't a star in it's own right. There were as many as fourty large moons orbiting the beast of the planet, most of them lifeless pieces of rock. Others, closer to the planet were volcanically active, and in the case of a smaller moon that orbited almost danerously close to the atmosphere was a ball of molten iron.
The myserious ships began to pilot towards one of the moons. Grinder's face passed into a kind of scowl. "The only thing out here is a research station. I'm not sure what moon it's on up here, but it could never support all these vessels."
Jonathan just continued to follow the ships. they began a decent onto a large moon that looked much like Earth's moon, but with less craters. It was also much larger. Jonathan was surprised when the Angel began to buffet as it passed through the upper levels of a thick atmosphere. This world did not look as if it had one - nothing but dry grey craters and rock. There was no evidence of weather of any kind.
The gruff voice returned on the radio. "You will dock in port seventeen" is all it said.
Following instructions, Jonathan carefully piloted the ship down to a groud level and saw a large opening in the side of a grey cliff face. The ships began passing into it one by one. Jonathan waited for a moment after the third ship went in before the gruff voice returned once again. "Proceed into the bay." Jonathan pushed the nose forward a little. He glanced at Grinder and Marcelle. "If we're going to make a break, now's the time."
Grinder looked at Jonathan. "Do you think you can pilot us out of this one, son?"
"It will certainly be easier than the last system. This planet might have enough gravitational force for us to preform the dive on - we should be able to jump out of here within seconds."
"I've already got a course layed in." Marcelle told them.
The gruff voice once again made itself heard. "Proceed into the bay," it told them forcefully. Jonathan griped the controlls tightly. Andy poised himself over the missile defence system. Marcelle held onto Norman and Grinder lined up the ships in his sights.
"You have ten seconds to move forward or we will open fire," the gruff voice told them.
Jonathan mashed on a foot pedal and the Angel lurched upwards. A strange noise filled the cockpit. It took a moment for anyone to idenify it as noiseing coming from underneath Norman's carpace. The alien creature looked excited. The clicking hum eminating from his body continued as the ship ripped itself away from the moon's gravity.
Streaks of flame soon burst out of the side of the mountian, tracing their way through the atmosphere towards the Angel and the three ships still outside of the bay immediately took action. The crew of the Angel were being forced down into their chairs, they began to see spots due to teh undue acceleration, yet Jonatha continued. He shifted the rotation of the ship so that the nose pointed upwards. The steaks of flame, whatever kind of weapon they were, could not catch the Angel. The missiles could. Andy deftly handeled the defence system, there were a number of explosions in the wake of the Angel of Redemption.
The three mysterious ships were not far behind, and they began firing their chain guns at the Angel. One managed the trace a pattern of fire across the hull, but the armour held and the only effect was a metallic clinking that seemed to interfere with Norman's voice.
Grinder laced one of the ships with small explosions from his explose ammunition. More ships were streaking out of the base below. Grinder realied that any missed shots would continue downwards and possibly hit the shits behind the one he was targeting. He opened up a little because of this fact. Sure enough, one of the foilowwing ships began to spew black smoke and stalled its forward movement, hanging still in the air for the breifest of moments before it slipped backwards towards teh surface of the moon, landing in a spectacular cloud of dust.
As soon as they breached the odd world's atmosphere, Jonathan started the dive towards the large gas giant. The Angel of Redemption's lightspeed drive locked in on the centre of the planet and started to use the source of gravity as a way to accelerate.
Something went wrong however. Infront of the crew's eyes, they saw the Gas Giant suddenly shudder. there was no other word for it. It began to collapse, great chunks of atmosphere began to sink in towards the interior or the planet. Great jets of gas began to climb their way into space and in an instant, the world suddenly exploded. The light was so sudden that the ship could not automatically compensate for it by tinting the port, and it blinded the crew.
The Angel was struck by a wind off a sudden flare of gas, now burning, and shoved forcefully off course. None of the crew could see anything but white and did not know what was happening.
Eventually, distinct shapes began to fade back into their vision. What they saw before them was not anything like what was there when they had been blinded. In the place of the giant planet, there was now a turbulent white star, flaring out with long arms of buring gasses out into space. More than one moon had already been hit by a flare, and the remaing peices were drifiting outwards from the place of impact. Jonathan tried to engage the engines, but there was no response in the controls.
He leaped out of his chair and back into the living space and pulled a panel off the wall. He was met with a sharp tangy metalic smell and saw black mass of burned parts of the engines.
A large ominous ship that looked a lot like the mysterious ships that had been pursuing them drifted through space in their direction.
Marcelle first noticed that it seemed to have rocking growing off of it. The next thing she noticed was that it was ancient. The ship looked older than anything she had ever seen. There was a sudden tug, and their ship began moving in towards the ancient vessel, directly towards an familliar looking hole.
Andy stared in wonderment at the ship in space. "It was burried in that cliff," he said with wide eyes. "It must be hundreds of years old."
Jonathan returned to the cockpit and flopped down in his chair. "We're done - the engines are basically melted. I think something happened when we connected with the gravity well of the planet."
Grinder stared at him. "I'd say something pretty serious happened," he said, gesturing towards the new sun.
"Well, the engines are basically melted together" jonathan told his companions. They drifted in closer to the large ship. "As ominious as it may seem, that big ship might be our only hope for survival."
They hole in the side of the ship slowly grew larger in the port, and eventually the Angel of Redepmtion, dead in space, passed inside the large ship.
"Into the belly of the beast," Grinder mumbled as the light from the new star was blocked off by the wall of teh strange vessel.