Hunted Down

She was 10 parsecs and over 35 years into her journey when she first became aware of them.

She had no choice but to continue towards them, she had been programmed with a single route that would ensure her precious cargo of dormant humans reached the destination in time. She had no authority to deviate from the course, and even if she did she could never hope to escape the hunters. She considered slowing down just to gain a few extra days, but rejected the idea as the radiation from the thrusters would be like a beacon to the pack.

Their signatures showed them to be gamma class starships, she knew precisely their strength and power. After several days their presence became stronger and her database was able to identify the individual vessels. She was just a small cargo ship, maneuverable but with no weapons, protected by civilian class strength shields that were capable of defending her against only the smallest fragments of space debris. She was a tiny fraction of their size. And there were so many of them.

She had only one slender chance. She killed all main power, trying to become invisible against the vast empty blackness. As they were directly converging her trials were just a single small data point. Depending on their mission they may have stopped monitoring for such irrelevant signals, even if they became aware of her they may not evaluate her as worth losing precious energy for.

As the engines shut down the faint vibrations that had been a constant backdrop to her mind were replaced by total darkness and complete silence. Her internal temperatures began to drop, however she protected the main cargo warehouses.

She had considered bringing her cargo into a conscious state, but rejected it as cruel. However she decided to keep herself aware of her own fate, and left some minimal power to the forward view ports and to her mind.

The pack were in a perfect formation, spread across her path along a distance of over a parsec in all directions. For months she patiently watched them. They swept silently towards her, even though they appeared motionless at the immense distance that they still were from her. A few weeks before intersection they were only fractions of a single parsec away, continuing to converge at almost twice light speed.

Even on such low power her mind repeatedly processed the star fields, hoping for any possibility of assistance and tracking her position exactly. She was however way beyond help, far away from any jurisdiction. Like some primitive animal she had simply strayed too far from home and would surely pay the price.

Her doom and their collective awareness of her was revealed by the smallest shift in their positions, signatures and speeds. She restored her power and burst signals out behind her, alerting nearby systems of her position and impending fate, together with all known details of the pack. In a powerful and beautiful final manoeuvre lasting several days the two nearest starships gracefully converged towards her, one on either side, leaving faint radiation trials on her watching monitors as their hulls dealt with the colossal shifts in momentum.

As they swept by lasers from the two warships sliced her open, exactly as she had predicted they would. The pack had not even appreciably slowed. Full of sadness she watched the input from her viewport monitors for long seconds as she broke apart. Slowly spinning away they showed her the silence and cold black of deep space, beautiful incandescent debris including a few of the still dormant cargo in their pods, followed by radiation across the spectrum as her engines imploded. And everywhere stars.