Free MotherShip by Tony Chandler

within range of their weapons.
    Mother targeted three of the closest fighters with her twelve main guns and fired. Six of her laser lances found their targets and the horned fighters exploded in huge red sparkles of total destruction. She rolled for another group just as she shuddered under direct hits from three other fighters.
    Alarms screamed inside her electronic mind. The direct hits had caused substantial damage.
    These Hunter fighters had more powerful weapons than other Hunters she had previously engaged. The enemy was adapting their firepower in order to destroy her. But their weapons were a two-edged sword, for any direct hit on the shieldless fighters destroyed them with impressive pyrotechnically-enhanced explosions.
    Yet as three more fighters fell to her guns, she again shuddered. Her shields fell to below fifty percent and her main power grid went off-line once again, replaced by her sole backup. She quickly ordered all the Fixers into operation as she began her own internal repairs in response to the myriad of problem signals emitting from her sensors.
    The last of the fighters circled and closed as the frigates finally came into range. They, too, fired.
    She turned directly for the new attackers, giving the oncoming lasers from the frigates her smallest profile. It worked. At this extreme range, she easily slipped between the red beams, only taking a single glancing blow to her shields.
    Mother surged forward as her engines roared to full power. She loaded her precious torpedoes and locked on target. Foolishly, the three frigates stayed in the typical tight formation of the T'kaan. She programmed for a tight spread, but she held her fire as her sensors reported the frigate weapons still not completely charged for their next attack.
    Suddenly, from close range and directly behind, three Hunters fell upon her with guns firing.
    Her own twelve guns roared back with instant response.
    Two T'kaan ships disappeared simultaneously in blinding explosions. But her shields buckled under the direct hits of the last and fell to zero strength.
    Mother was now vulnerable.
    With cool electronic precision, despite her exposed state, she closed and continued to hold her torpedoes. Her processors calculated over a million possible scenarios moments before she launched torpedoes.
    Three more seconds passed, she reconfigured the spread and launched at almost point-blank range. With another burst of power from her engines, she dove straight down just as all three frigates fired at her.
    All three frigates disintegrated with spectacular explosions.
    A few minutes later, Mother destroyed the last of the remaining fighters.
    As she entered the atmosphere of Nuevo Mundo once again, she routed her processes away from her own repairs and back to the rescue of her children. As she reconfigured her sensors around the T'kaan dampening fields she now discerned, Mother felt something new inside her mind. Something odd.
    She was reliving the recent events, trying to determine where she had failed; trying to determine if she could have prevented this catastrophic chain of events. But as she relived those moments each time, her results consistently pointed to her shortcoming. She should have discerned the sensor dampeners. It was her fault, she had failed the children.
    If only she could have handled things differently. If only she had been more careful, more cautious.
    Mother felt her energy levels begin to fall as she landed again outside the complex for the second time that day. Immediately, Guardian's lone figure approached from the complex's entrance as he came toward the waiting figure of Fixer5 who stood under Mother's shadow.
    From under her hull a small door opened that exposed a connection point. Guardian walked up to it and made a direct connection with Mother.
    Mother was an Artificial Intelligence. Her programming could adapt, could learn. She needed to learn from her mistakes now.
    But Guardian was merely a robot programmed to do