Damn right, I thought as I tore my way through the narrow hallways of Crescent-62. The pain on my jaw almost blinded me, but the adrenaline kept the blackout at bay. Around me were the pounding echoes of more than a hundred people, either scurrying to battle stations like me, or barking orders through sectoral intercoms. It turns out when you're all trapped in a gargantuan tin can floating in outer space, things can get pretty noisy.

I had lost Nera two hallways ago, as she sped towards the bridge on the opposite side. A second later, I heard her voice over the global intercom. She was huffing heavily between her words, suggesting she was still in a sprint and was using her emergency communicator.

"Attention all engineers, initiate a wing-fold and drop from Clarke's orbit ASAP!"

I slowed down without thinking. Did she just say drop from Clarke's orbit?

Regional Defense Outpost - Space (RDO-S) Crescent-62 was one of a series of weaponized satellite outposts launched by the ASEAN to guard its flight space. It was among the first to be deployed, and its tech and armaments were aging very fast. If we drop out of our geosynchronous orbit, and away from our RDO-S network, we'd be sitting ducks against whatever high-tech assault crafts the Conglomerate had launched against us.

As I resumed my pace, the lights suddenly flickered and went dark. Ah crap, she did say we'd be folding our wings. I banged and tripped my way through the darkness of the next three corridors until I reached my station, Communications Room 4.

"Where in heaven's name have you been, Dion?!", a tense hiss crept out from the other end of the darkened room. By the soft blue light of the monitors, I recognized Fitch's thin figure huddled with a couple of others. They were new guys, and I can't even remember their names. A few feet away, our shift supervisor Marcus was glaring at me, his bald head and stocky body sillhouetted against the electronic glow.

"I was resting," I half-lied as I paused to catch a breath. It was much quieter here in the commroom, and I can hear the throbbing creep up again from my left jaw. "What's happening?"

"Conglomerate mass drivers," Marcus pointed at an overhead monitor, showing several pinpoints traveling in a wide arc towards the center, where our space station was. "Must have been building momentum for a long time, with this speed."

"Why the wing-fold?" As I asked the question, I suddenly felt tipsy. I thought it was the pain, then I realized the station's artificial gravity was shifting. At the same time, the global intercom blared out in a robotic voice:

"WARNING. COMMENCING RETROGRADE BURN. DROPPING TO 32,000 KM ORBIT. SOLID FUEL THRUSTERS AT 100%. DURATION, ONE MINUTE."

"Wait a minute, that's going to burn out nearly the entire fuel reserve!" Fitch panicked as soon as the announcement ended.

"Better that than the alternative," I said as I suddenly realized the answer to my own question.

The Conglomerate sent about a dozen mass drivers (essentially massive space stones launched via an electric catapult) towards Crescent-62. But their trajectories didn't aim for the body of the station. Instead, they aimed for the wings -- our solar panel array that stretched several hundred meters on either side. If the mass drivers hit those, then we won't even have enough power to call for help. 

I spared a moment to admire Nera's quick thinking. Recognizing the enemy plan, she initiated a wing-fold to remove the panels from the line of fire. The motion had the secondary effect of cutting off all power to non-essential areas (including hallways), thus allowing the station to focus all its stored power on a lightning-fast evasive maneuver.

"But then what were they thinking? If they want to take our station down, why just target the wings?"

"Beats me," I muttered. I sat in front one of the terminals, donned a headset, and buckled myself to the chair. "I'm going to help scan any stray frequencies. Fitch, you ready to decode?"

I saw the blonde head nod from the corner of my eye, and I began hastily typing commands. "I'm getting wattage-related errors," I said in frustration after about a minute. Apparently the wing-fold also affected the station's sensors, and we can't scan for threats at full power.

We spent the next few minutes in silence, trying to catch any telltale signs of a follow-up attack. If there's one thing we learned from prior engagements with the Conglomerate, it's that they're always planning ahead. Typical for a global-scale, warmongering business outift. In fact, we were all convinced that if they took the RDO-S network more seriously than they did, we'd have plummeted back to Earth in an agonizing hellfire months and months ago.

I tried redirecting my scans, and a few seconds later my blood froze. A string of gibberish had appeared on my screen -- encrypted communications, presumably from Conglomerate vessels. It was accompanied by a shrill sonar ping on my headset. My eyes quickly darted across the wall of screens, showing almost every external angle of Crescent-62. Nothing. Either our visual feed's been hacked, or... no, but it was impossible. Optical camouflage technology isn't mature enough to be useful in the vacuum of space! But we can't have been hacked, and given what I'm seeing --

"They're cloaked!" I shouted as I reached for the emergency bridge comms. "This is Dion Galvez, CommRoom 4, we have cloaked bogies on Sector 18, I repeat, CLOAKED bogies on Sector 18!" Almost as soon as I finished, I heard Nera's voice over the global comms:

"All fighters prepare for emergency launch! Cloaked bogies at Sector 18, number unidentified, type unidentified." There was a brief pause, and then: "Be careful, and come home safely!"

"What in God's name is the Conglomerate thinking?", I heard Marcus snarl as he ran a hand up his scalp. I was suddenly aware of my own hands. They were numb and cold.

The fight took no more than five minutes. Crescent-62 launched five fighter squads, which easily drove away the three Conglomerate ships. It was very anti-climactic -- they hardly fired a shot, uncloaking and taking off almost as soon as our fighters approached the area. Were they recon ships? They were very agile, weaving around and evading both conventional and energy weapons almost effortlessly.

But as we watched the fight through our monitors, an intense feeling of dread crept upon everyone in the commroom.

"It doesn't make sense." Fitch was the first one to voice it out. "What kind of attack is this?"

I had been keeping an eye glued to the monitor in front of me. No anomalies, at least not in our area. I wonder if the other commrooms picked up anything in their sectors?

We didn't have to wonder long. Just a second later, I heard Nera's voice yet again through the global comms:

"Attention SDC, man your stations! We have a manual breach on Section 9, I repeat we have a manual breach on Section 9! All non-combatants evacuate to adjacent sections. For the rest, seal your corridors!"

On the monitor, we saw one of the fighter squads zoom into the sector. They found nothing.

It was a goddamn ruse, I thought as my fists clenched. That's how we were able to detect the first three, and why they uncloaked as soon as we approached. A wild goose chase. Somewhere in Section 9, there's another ship we can't detect, and it has sent men to board our tin can.

My hand instinctively flew up to touch my still-swollen jaw. I should have trained harder!