Authors: Max Feinstein
Griz’s first shots didn’t miss, however, a testament to the young pilot’s natural skills and splash
ed against the shields of his target. That specific pilot reacted instantly by sending the craft into a roll and maneuvering away from the incoming fire. He watched the other fighters within the group begin to scatter under his leader, Strike’s, assault, just as he swung his Cyclone leftward to follow the initial target. It was at this point that he saw two blossoming explosions at a distance out of the corner of his eye when the interceptor veered away. Concentrating on his enemy Griz pushed the control to his left forward and felt the ship jump in acceleration. He was so fixated at this point that he almost missed the large Adino missile body that streaked past him and detonated in midair a hundred meters above him.
Serti was grateful when the first of the missiles hit and destroyed their targets. He continued firing at the other fighters as they began to scatter further, but held off from pursuing them further to give the Adinos most room in their interception mission. For a second he heartened with the hope that each of those enemy craft would be killed or at least damaged to give his group a higher success rate. When a massive series of explosions lit off in the great distance beyond, however, things changed
. The first hint of what had happened was recognized by Serti when the ‘ground search’ warning indicator disappeared from his cockpit’s display. When the incoming interceptors began to scatter in many different directions all of the sudden Captain Alokow got the confirmation of what had happened.
These
rogue Adino missiles corkscrewed through the air looking using their own sensors to try and locate targets to reengage. Unable to detect the stealthy enemy craft Serti watched them turn away and self-destruct in order to prevent themselves from falling to earth. He shook his head in disappointment or another thing going wrong this day and pushed the Cyclone towards one of the three remaining enemies. With his frustration threatening to consume him, Serti felt the ship infuse him with a slight calming agent, allowing him to turn the emotions into encouragement. He was going to do his best to take all of his frustration out on those fighters.
Quicker than anticipated
the remaining fighters reformed into a single unit, with Lieutenant Kovolanchuk giving chase to one of them. Serti watched as they curved up into the sky together and accelerated away from the transports his team had been guarding. He guided his craft behind these fighters and slipped in beside his new wingman, Razor Nine. Together they became the pursuers just in time to see all three fighters pitch downward back towards the thick forest and reach their top speed. The enemy finally leveled out just above the treetops causing the blue leafed canopy to shudder and bent sideways away from each of the passing ships as they passed the sound barrier many times over. It seemed to the colonel that they were now following a new objective and he accelerated further with Nine in order to close the distance between him and the enemy in order to make sure that that objective was never completed.
In a matter of seconds they covered over seven kilometers and Serti sent off another series of particle beams screaming towards the rear of one of the enemy forces, while Griz took another. Most of these beams hit their targets, but either glanced off or were absorbed by each fighter’s strong shields.
Knowing that it would take too long for them to wear down that heavy shielding he had to think differently. There was only one weapon in the Cyclone arsenal that could easily punch through and help destroy those three fighters.
“Disruptors,” Strike thought and sent that order mentally to his partner
Ashia.
As a unit both pilots switched their active weapons from particle cannons to the single disruptor pulse projector
imbedded within the Cyclone’s vertical fin and pushed their interceptors harder. In order to utilize the powerful DPP they would both have to close to within eight hundred meters of the enemy. The small craft’s powerful engines and sophisticated design assured that they would have little trouble catching up to the slower, less aerodynamic enemy fighters. To increase their success Serti and Ashia flew slightly higher above the forest and behind the enemy, giving them a larger target profile to hit. It was at this point, among the swaying treetops, that something below caught the colonel’s eyes. He didn’t take long to realize that the slightly shifting color patterns between those same trees were those of MultiSpec netting. Having been in the Armed Service for decades Serti had seen that sort of netting before and knew from experience it covered something very important. With that in mind he pressed the attack with more fervor trying to take out the enemy before they comprehended what they were overflying.
He saw the flashing red reticles within his field of vision turn solid a few seconds later as the enemy in front of him grew in size and let him know that he was now within firing range of the DPP.
The same was rapidly confirmed by Griz, allowing him to commence the attack just shy of eight hundred meters. Serti squeezed down on the trigger and felt the interceptor adjust itself ever so slightly before firing what appeared to be a single beam of almost white light. In fact the beam itself was made up of multiple pulses discharging in rapid succession. Before he could witness the effects of the disruptor the three fighters all banked left without warning and accelerated into a tight turn. Their quick turn caused Razor Nine’s pulse beam to go wide and smash into the treetops below, erasing a small batch of purple leafed trees from existence. The pulse beam shattered the bonds holding the tree molecules together, causing them to crumble from the assault into a fine powder.
Cursing to himself once again
Captain Alokow brought the Cyclone around to pursue the enemy in their turn. He figured that they had spotted something on the ground as well and were going back to investigate, meaning he didn’t have a lot of time to bring them all down. Serti wondered if he had actually hit his intended target, but that thought was quickly answered when a line of debris began to detach from the rear of his previous target at the junction between the starboard wing and the fuselage. For a moment everything seemed fine with the fighter, except for the trail of disintegrating material, but as the group of three leveled out once more and accelerated Serti saw the struck craft start to wobble in midflight.
He quickly reacquired the fighter at the end of his own turn and saw it began to decelerate in order to
regain control, but never got the chance as Serti triggered another burst. Another disruption pulse beam fired out and slammed into the top rear of the ship after slicing cleanly through the fighter’s shields. Unlike before the effect of the impact was instant. The material that made up the fuselage weakened at first and finally shattered milliseconds later as the bonds that held it together disappeared. Serti held his position in time to watch the entire right wing tear from the fighter, causing it to spin out of control towards the ground. To his dismay the entire ship began to disintegrate along its trajectory directly over the Federation Army base. Both of its engines detached from their support frames and tumbled end over end into the trees below before the entire body pitched over after striking the tree canopy. When Serti overflew the crash site and pulled away to go after another target a large explosion erupted from below.
To his left another blast caught his attention. Unlike the last this one occurred still in the air. Serti looked over just in time to see Griz’s dart shaped interceptor fly through the expanding debris field and come out the other end surrounded in a blue haze from the growing shields. He looked away
before the scattered and falling wreckage had a chance to slam into the forest and began to concentrate back on getting the last remaining fighter of the alien group. It was at this time that the ground scanning array began to pick up new objects and buildings on the ground that had not been there previously. That event was most unfortunate given the effort Serti and Ashia were putting into destroying the enemy. It was also apparent that the last fighter had detected these previously hidden structures as well when four missiles dropped from beneath the craft’s body and sped towards the forest below.
Reacting quickly, almost completely on instinct, Razor One switched over to missiles and clicked the trigger twice. He felt the last two of his stock release from his spacecraft before taking off towards the fighter in front of him. Serti flicked his eyes side to side, eyeing the enemy warheads descending towards their separate targets below
. He mentally marked those two for destruction and watched his two missiles adjust course to intercept them. At the same time the enemy began to conduct evasive maneuvers, something they hadn’t done since their breaking pursuit of the dropships. In a way the colonel welcomed the renewed challenge and pushed the Cyclone to close the distance between the two ships. His sensors informed him of two successful interceptions from his missiles seconds later as he rolled his craft side to side, trying to match and anticipate the actions of the enemy pilot.
Trusting his own honed instincts, hardened after many years of training and combat, Serti held back on pulling the trigger until he could gain the upper edge. He knew full well the capabilities of his craft and a good estimate of those for the enemy fighter. As such he was able to put those strengths against the alien’s weaknesses.
A cunning hunter, Serti knew that sometimes you just had to guide your prey into the proper position for a death blow. Using the Cyclone’s particle cannons he unleashed a series of blue beams to the enemy’s starboard wing causing the less experience pilot to turn to port in order to evade. He then purposefully over corrected and fired another set of shots over the port side wing. As hoped the pilot pulled up into the climb, leading him straight into Serti’s sights and the disruptor beam he had triggered not a second before. The enemy fighter crossed the destructive beam almost along the entire ship’s top profile. Captain Alokow saw in adrenalin fueled slow motion as a line of material almost evaporated from the top of the fighter, from the cockpit to the tail. For a second the craft continued its climb like nothing had happening, but within a second it rolled over on its back and tumbled towards earth as if out of control. Hitting the cockpit would have most certainly killed the pilot, Serti thought, just as the large sections of the fighter began to break away from the weakened understructure. Razor Lead pulled away before ever seeing the last enemy fighter detonate just above the forest canopy.
Finally relieved, he allowed himself a moment’s rest for the first time since entering the star system. His sensor network also began updating him on the status of the
dropships and their two escorts, indicating their reaching of their designated landing coordinates. With Griz back on his wing and that aspect of his mission complete he banked away in a lazy turn and began a wide CAP, Combat Air Patrol, of the surrounding area. It was during this slow turn that he registered a single Infantry Fighting Vehicle rising from the forest’s surface. The Cyclone quickly classified the armored vehicle on the secure datalink as ‘Zedock’, which happened to be FRONCOM’s codename and meant that the IFV was carrying the Lieutenant General himself.
A large flash of light ignited adjacent to the ascending transport a second later and Serti watched from above as the blastwave hammered into the vehicle. Th
e power of the blast lifted the Centaur higher into the air, but at the same time caused it to flip end over end before dropping back down into the trees below. It disappeared from the sensors and view for a moment before the craft picked up a new signal. This time a distress indicator flashing brightly within the cockpit replaced the lost IFV. In response to this new development Serti triggered his area wide TacNet connection and began relaying the emergency beacon information when he cause a number of metallic looking objects drop out of the sky. One of them screamed down between Griz and himself. They looked like large missiles, but unlike orbital strike weapons these bodies actually slowed down before impacting into the forest.
“Markus, Ben,”
Brinek addressed the two remaining commanders standing at either side of him at the TID, “get your men to Mirjian on the double. Don’t take any chances either, understood? We’re going to need those men when the time comes.”
Sergeant Logwari watched the
now slightly more tired looking general gaze back down at the holographic table, “we postpone Retribution until another time.”
Felix
observed the entire exchange from his dark corner in the makeshift command center. His partner, Specialist Velarsk, did the same from another location within the room. Together they stood silent and motionless, but ever hyper vigilant in their guard duty ever since the start of the invasion. Felix’s eyes constantly scanning the room for any sign of danger even along these esteemed and well known unit commanders he could never drop his guard. Now, more than ever the need to keep the general alive and well was most necessary.
As he glanced over the holographic display he saw that it was focused on the air battle going on above the base itself. A pair of the recently discovered Cyclones was engaging a trio of enemy fighters that had overflown the nearby treetops moments ago. Two of these fighters instantly disappeared from the sensor display, one right after the ot
her, over different parts of Secturo Base. They were quickly replaced by numerous new sensor returns as they disintegrated into many pieces and fell out of the sky on different trajectories. To Felix’s dismay every one of these new objects came down within the base’s perimeter. Crashing through the trees they couldn’t help but shred the protective netting that secured Secturo from the enemy’s prying eyes.