Authors: Max Feinstein
“Lead, I’m Oscar Mike,” Knight Five, Junior Lt. Spencer ‘Ice’ Alervin, called out.
“Oscar Mike also,” Six added a second later.
Other members of his squadron responded similarly to indicate t
hat they were out of missiles, when his second in command Lt. Commander Ari ‘Savage’ Trazman spoke out, “Raven, those bastards are going after the escape pods!”
Styker
called up the sensor display and heard Gator, Knight Eight, through the TacLink as well. “Those sons of …,” he started to say but never finished, “radiation spike! Loosing cont…”
The message suddenly cut out and the commander’s Dragonfire detected the radiation surge as well. It instantly matched its character to that which had been detected
at Chu-Tsao. He scanned his surroundings in a search for the disappeared fighter, concentrating his search on the last area of detection. Because of the enemy jamming, Styker’s standard sensors had no way of picking up Knight Eight. However, no sign of an explosion was found, which brought some hope to the commander.
“
Gator, what’s your status?” Styker tried to contact the man to no avail, “Gator respond.”
“Raven, I’m on it!” Ari called out and he saw her Dragonfire break off towards Eight’s former location.
He shifted his attention back to the fight and was instantly grateful for this renewed concentration when he noticed an enemy fighter slipping in behind him. With that began another space ballet of evasive maneuvers and deadly laser beams. The enemy pilot was no rookie either, proven by the fact that he or she matched his every move and there would be an occasional impact against Styker’s rear shields. Other Knights were locked in similar struggles, but were all holding their own against the enemy fighters.
The Dragonfire’s infrared
detector went off during one of his side rolls. It pointed to a massive surge of heat in the direction of the enemy warship formation. The source was actually from multiple detonations by the
Odessa
launched missiles, which had finally struck their target, Hotel Seven. A wave of three magpulse missiles made it through the enemy’s defenses and went off just before a following salvo of five large Anubis ASMs impacted her. With the vessels shields in temporary failure most of the powerful warheads slipped through and detonated against the ship’s hull, heavily damaging the frigate sized vessel, but still not completely putting it out of the fight. Another IR burst was caught a second later, however, this one came from Knight Three’s location.
“
Savage, sitrep!” Styker inquired instantly, pulling back on the control stick to send the fighter climbing rapidly. This put more distance between him in the enemy just as another radiation alert blared out throughout the cockpit. At the same moment one of his engines cut out momentarily and his rear sensor array went offline. The sensors were already mostly useless due to the jamming, so Styker didn’t mind their loss, but the engines he could not do without. He quickly associated the two occurrences, though. The enemy must be using some sort of radiation weapon that was capable of knocking out Federation electronics.
“Sorry Boss, just downed another Sting,” the Lt. Commander’s voice finally pierced through Styker’s ears as she referred to the short-hand slang for the enemy fighter that the squadron had begun to use. “Gator owes me a beer the next time we’re at port.”
“I’m sure he’ll buy you a couple, Three,” he sighed in relief and instantly hit the Dragonfire’s maneuvering thrusters, while cutting his main engines, making the slick fighter flip backwards and onto its back. In a fraction of a second the fighter completed the hundred eighty degree and Styker ended up upside down facing the enemy head on now. As the Dragonfire continued to move along its previous path because of the momentum Styker took aim and fired a long burst from his laser cannons. These rapid fired shots were low powered and peppered the Sting’s shields. They continued to do so when he triggered his particle beams. These blue beams finally broke through the enemy’s defenses and struck the cockpit directly, sending the craft spinning away out of control.
“Gator is EV
Lead, lucky for him the ejectors still worked. Enemy got his fighter good,” Savage replied before adding, “I don’t think he’ll last long in this environment. Specially if they are going after any survivors.”
“We’ll just have to keep them busy
until SR arrives.”
“Comma
nder, I’m reading Mules inbound,” Knight Four called out as she noticed the resupply drones entering the engagement zone.
Going after another Stingray fighter, Styker finally saw the drones on his TacLink as well. The Mules were fully autonomous craft. At ten meters long and almost that wide they were over half the size of a Dragonfire fighter
. Nearly their entire volume was dedicated to ordinance storage and handling. One of these drones singled Styker out as the squadron leader and accelerated towards him. In mid-flight, as he maneuvered behind the enemy for a shot, this Mule came in from his port side and flip upside down before sliding in directly under his fighter.
With precision only an automaton could accomplish the drone matched Styker’s every movement and triggered its onboard microtractor beam. Commander Telwin felt his
AF-103 shiver gently as the heavy drone attached itself to the underside and locked on tight with its grapples. From then on Styker could fly as he wished while the Mule accomplished its task. It first automatically opened each of the three internal bays and offered the pilot a choice of which missiles to load. Styker glanced over the list and quickly selected a pair of Brimstones for anti-ship assault and the other six Kiba missiles for use against fighters. These missiles were instantly loaded into the waiting magazines, causing the fighter’s ammunition display to change from Red to Green in a matter of seconds.
Its job complete, the Mule ejected itself away from Styker’s AF-103
and maneuvered away from his engagement. The drone accelerated towards its next target with purpose as the others did the same to the rest of the squadron. In only minutes each member of the Knights was fully rearmed and ready to fight at the cost of one Mule, which had been struck and killed by a passing enemy fight. Two more enemy fighters disintegrated into pieces as this rearming occurred. A third enemy kill was recorded seconds later when Styker finished off his opponent with a number of well-placed laser blasts at full power.
“Form up Knights, we’re going
after the big boys.” Styker Telwin expressed and pushed his Dragonfire through the remaining enemy fighters.
“ASMs INCOMING!”
Captain Hinnamen warned at the same time that Admiral Singh saw part of the
Rastaban’s
port side bow explode out into pieces before slowing and quickly getting pulled back towards the center of the blast. At that exact point hung a large singularity that in seconds grew to devour the majority of the destroyer’s bow, eating through the heavy armor plating and superstructure as if it had been made out of the paper.
The whole command deck grew silent as everyone watched the display screens, transfixed as to what was happening. Even though they had recently see such weapons used against the
Odessa
, it was still completely unnerving to see the destruction so close to home. It did not end there, however, as they all witness a bright flash from within the heavy cruiser
Karabela
during one of its evasive course corrections. This detonated appeared to take place directly underneath its starboard side Gauss turret and caused a gasp to resound throughout the carrier’s bridge as they watched the entire heavy turret implode into itself.
As soon as the emplacement
crumpled inward a tremendous explosion erupted forth, set off by the immense compression of the gun slugs held within the weapon, and destroyed a good portion of the cruiser’s wing structure. The fire and debris disappeared just as quickly, sucked back into the vortex as it spread out within the vessel’s interior to consume everything surrounding it. Dozens of the ship’s crew perished instantly as the gravitational anomaly tore through every bulkhead in its wake. Unlike with the
Rastaban
, the damage was much more extensive and with greater loss of life. Thankfully the vortex seemed to wear itself out after ten long seconds and vanished from existence leaving only a large torn hole within the warship’s hull. This wound trekked almost completely through to the cruiser’s underside.
Two other similar warheads went off just as this first subsided to damage the ship further. One disintegrated part of the cruiser’s top along its midline, taking a number of vertical missile launchers with it, while the second appeared directly inside the port side hanger bay. Along with the destruction of reserve spacecraft, the micro singularity
caused a number of darmatium fuel cells to detonate. These explosions proceeded to rip great holes inside the hanger and Admiral Singh watched fire erupt from both sides of the open hanger bay before being sucked back in. The damage was extensive, thankfully however, none of these alien weapons had hit critical areas.
Karabela
was bruised, but not yet beaten. She fought on furiously almost without respite. Even as her damage control teams responded to the attack she continued to unleash waves of fire against the far away enemy.
Other warheads went off
just above the
Karabela
having missed their intended detonation point by the Saber cruiser’s sudden change in course and caused no further damage. Regela registered other injuries to the fleet, however, and quickly began to display them on the large tactical screen. Besides those two warships two others had taken fire. The Redemption class frigate
Gualver
had seemingly taken an unlucky detonation almost exactly dead center inside it. The vortex warhead exploded beside the internal bridge and vaporized the entire command crew with it. Reports were flowing in and indicating that the auxiliary bridge near engineering was being brought online to take over partial command of the ship. Meanwhile the
Gualver
was still somewhat combat functional with some systems still active and being managed by the vessel’s SMS.
The other assaulted ship, the Odin class corvette
Fenris
, had fared far worse. Regela did not know what occurred at the moment, but the ship was no longer in one piece. The corvette had detonated from the inside and fractured itself multiple sections, creating a dangerous field of debris for other ships of the CBG. When three more warheads exploded due to the
Regal’s
defense screen, Achyuta knew that it wasn’t yet over. His formation continued to alter course at random times to throw off the incoming missiles, but still kept on coming. That fact was proven suddenly the large carrier shook beneath his feet. This was quickly followed by the horrible sound of metal tearing and cracking from all around the bridge. Lights throughout the command deck flickered off as did the surrounding display screens. Slowly, however, each one began to flash back to life as power was rerouted around the vessel.
It was then that damage reports began to appear on the holographic displays. Regela in the meantime verbally
called out each section of the ship that had sustained damage. Two enemy warheads had gone off inside the
Regal
herself and casualties were mounting. Multiple weapons systems had simply disappeared from existence and others remained irreparably wrecked. Two of her six main plasma propulsors had been destroyed as well after one of the missiles detonated near the starboard side engineering room. The reactor core on that side was nearly missed, though, so there was no risk of critical failure and further danger to the vessel.
The admiral glanced back at the forward display, his fingers gripping the command chair tightly in anger, and saw that his fighter groups were already engaged in full combat with the enemy’s own fighter groups. Also because of her ability to multitask Regela had visually identified the enemy warship formation
. He could see that two of its vessels had drifted farther away along the starboard flank. Quick thinking and experience suggested that their intent was to flank his force in order to trap it inside a crossfire.
“Captain Chulovski, dispatch Trident Squadron
and escort to Two Four Zero Eight. Stop those ships,” Admiral Singh instructed his Flight Operations Commander, “launch all reserve fighters.”
Acknowledgement came rapidly
when all ten Valkyrie bombers of Trident Squadron dropped in the formation and turned towards the new coordinates. Another group, Ranger Squadron, followed them in Dragonfire assault fighters. The Rangers took up an escort formation around the bombers and continued with them.
“Mules
confirm contact with Knight Squadron!” exclaimed Ensign Balka. “Commander Telwin relays that the
Odessa
has been destroyed. Sir, he states that the enemy has engaged the escape pods. They are murdering the surviving crew.”
She barely finished the sentence when everyone turned in her direction, as if wondering whether the ensign had made a mistake.
There was no mistake however.
“This only further gives notice of who or what we are all up against,” Admiral Singh slowly said as he
pulled himself up from his chair for the first time, fighting the increasing throbbing in his head, and looked forward at the display.