Chronicles of Athena Lee 6 Imperial Subversion by T S Paul Page B

tightly I began to feel the station begin to move. Very slowly, at first, the station left it’s orbit.
     
    “Admiral your timing is impeccable as usual.” This was harder than it looked, this thing handled like a overloaded truck.
     
    “Lieutenant Lee? What are you doing over there? Why was Commodore Vakulinchuk trying to destroy your planet?”
     
    “Sorry if I can’t answer all of your questions at the moment Admiral, it all boils down to the fact the Commodore is a member of the Cabal. And in case you haven’t noticed, we have a very large rock about to blast this planet to bits if I don’t stop it.”
     
    “Lieutenant Lee, are you moving the whole station?” I swear they have something in the water at HQ. It must make the higher ranked officers really stupid when they drink it.
     
    “Yes, Ma’am. I am flying the station. Do you ever play billiards? Think of this station as a very large white ball. Now if I survive this I’ll answer all of your questions. Lee, out.”
     
    “What do you think George? Are all officers as dumb as that one?”
     
    “I think that you might have an edge on her, Athena.” I smiled at him. The rock filled the view screens of the bridge. That thing was massive. “Brace yourself here we go!”
     
    The station hit the enormous asteroid on the side as it began to angle downward toward the planet. There was a very loud metallic crunch followed by alarms, alerts, flashing lights, and the rush of atmosphere escaping. Wilson likened what I did to an out of control bus being hit by a slow moving cement truck. The impact of the station pushed the big rock into a different trajectory, it missed the planet and was now irregularly orbiting it.
     
    The station sustained massive damage on the rear section. Naturally, my quarters were a complete loss along with those of most of the crew. My favorite lunch spot was also gone, to my dismay. But our injuries were slight in comparison to the Imperial fleet. They had lost four destroyers, two carriers, a frigate, and one battle cruiser. The James Cook arrived back in time to see me crash the station into the asteroid. Captain Gorshin now had his ship in a guard position opposite the Imperial ships. The message he send me said the he was going to start calling me “Crash Lee.”
     
    The Colonial office delegation that the Vanguard was escorting were horrified that the Empire had violated the kinetic strike treaties. The original conference was moved up and would be held on the planet. Even the Imperial representatives would be attending. It was going to be quite the circus, and might have been funny to watch if it wasn’t all so deadly serious.
     
     

Chapter 17
     
     
     
     
    The conference took place more than a week after the Battle for Freedom, took place. The Battle for Freedom, the fact that the space station is called Freedom did not slip my mind. I am not that dense. At least not today. I ‘am’ unbelievably tired. I talked the medical bay into giving me stims, under medical supervision. Even Wilson is keeping an eye on me. Not even counting the giant dent in this station, which will take months to repair, we have tons of work to do around here. We defeated a fleet just a week ago. There are ships and parts of ships floating around everywhere. Luckily, one thing we have lots of are shuttle pilots. A new class had just finished this week, we had to rush their graduation. They, along with some reprogrammed construction drones, and a veritable army of my new Volley series ‘droids’ have been cleaning up the mess I helped to make. I just shook my head, I still can’t believe that damned name stuck to those little trash cans.
     
    Several good things came from the battle. We now had several new allies. The visiting warships that had helped us fight off a kinetic attack on our planet sent word home and groups of delegates arrived. The idea that the Empire would do that to us got them thinking, that they could be next. Also, that