Extinction (60 page)

“Wait, 'enemy' enemy contact?” Wilks
asked. “Or a contact this ship thinks is an enemy?”

“Sorry, sir, you're right. The ship IFF
is designating enemy so it's probably one of our friends.” Bloom worked his
controls for a couple of seconds before continuing, “It looks to be Detrill in
origin. A fast attack cruiser. I'm hailing on all frequencies and requesting
assistance. I'm also updating our IFF. I'll let you know when that's complete.”

“Thank you, Bloom.” Wilks used his comlink
to tap into the hail Bloom had set up. “This is Gunnery Sergeant Wilks of the
Coalition. My crew is aboard the larger enemy vessel and we are in control of
it. Any assistance you can give would be greatly appreciated.”

“Sergeant Wilks, this is Captain Netid
of the Detrill warship
Emilian
. We would be happy to assist you. Please
cease all fire directed at the smaller vessel; we would like to take that ship
intact to review its systems and gather intelligence. I have already deployed
three fighters to deal with it. If our two ships could focus on the larger
vessel, we'll be done with this in no time.”

“Sounds good to me, Captain.” Wilks
looked to Fang to make sure he understood and when Fang nodded, Wilks looked to
Jockey. “Let's separate ourselves from the smaller vessels and finish this.”

Jockey jerked the ship around and sent
it into a dive. The sudden move looked evasive but Jockey knew it was just a
setup so that he could turn back to the offensive in just a few quick seconds.

He had already picked out a seemingly
arbitrary point in the atmosphere for his next move, but it wasn't arbitrary at
all. The atmosphere is always full of thermocline pockets and bubbles where
there is a sudden and drastic change of temperature, sometimes colder and
sometimes hotter. Jockey liked to set his board to show these pockets anytime
there was a significant temperature difference. This planet had some of the
hottest thermoclines he had ever seen and that could work to his advantage.

As they approached a fifteen degree Celsius
thermocline, Jockey got ready for his move. The sudden increase of temperature
made that pocket of air thinner and gave any ship traveling through it greater
maneuverability. If a pilot was paying attention to how his ship and his
enemy's ship moved through a given atmosphere, he could determine what either
ship was capable of and use that information to create better attack or evasive
angles. By using a small pocket of increased maneuverability, Jockey could add
several degrees to an escape turn that his enemy wouldn't be prepared for.

Jockey made his move and brought the
ship in to a spinning turn pullout that seemed to defy Newtonian physics all
together. Wilks thought for sure he was going to pass out as he was sucked into
his chair and almost out the other side. Fang was pushed down into a squatting
position and even contemplated whether or not he should just let gravity lay
him down until it was all over.

As the ship came around and ultimately
behind and above the
Emilian
, Captain Netid's voice came over the comlink.
“That was a most...impressive maneuver, Sergeant Wilks. And I'm a bit
embarrassed to say this, but my pilot has requested that your pilot 'tone it
down' just a bit. He doesn't think he can keep up if you pull any more stunts
like that.”

“My apologies, Captain.” Wilks smiled
and gave Jockey a thumbs-up. “Jockey was dropped a lot as a baby and
consequently he never really did well in physics class. So he's incapable of
understanding what ships are supposed to be able to do and not do.”

A chuckle came through on the other end
of the comlink. “Apparently my pilot should've been dropped more often then.”

Through the banter between ships'
commanders, the respective pilots and weapons officers were getting their
synchronicity together and starting to hammer the enemy ship.

~

Aboard the enemy ship, the warrior captain
was furious. “By all that is sacred, why are you so incompetent?!”

The verbal attack turned into a physical
one as the captain pulled his junior officer out of the pilot's seat and threw
him across the bridge. The captain started as a pilot and was one of the best
in the empire.

Although he knew that he couldn't have
kept up with the evasive turn the enemy pilot had just performed, he would've
at least used the opportunity to switch targets and gone after the Detrill
ship. The pilot of the Detrill ship also couldn't keep up with the turn but he
tried and in doing so, had exposed himself to an attack angle that could have
been used to deliver a devastating attack to his ship's underside.

With the captain now flying his ship, he
decided to put all of his efforts into going after the less-experienced Detrill
pilot. A warship wasn't just one man, and the captain knew that. There were
others on that bridge affecting the outcome of this fight, but the pilot was
the first link in the chain and he had no doubt that this link was weaker than
he was.

The captain didn't turn his head as he
spoke to his weapons officer. “I will be focusing on the Detrill ship, but you
may fire at any target you have.” The junior pilot was just pulling himself off
the deck when the captain addressed him. “If you want to redeem yourself and
die with honor, you will get yourself to an attack fighter and use your limited
skills to try to crash yourself through one of their hulls.”

The junior officer stood straight and
put his fist to his chest and said, “Yes, sir.” But in the core of his being,
he knew that he didn't want to redeem himself, at least not if it meant he had
to die to do so.

As the pilot headed towards the launch
bay, he contemplated his options. The very fact that he thought he had options,
other than following his captain's orders, proved to him something he had
always felt: he wasn't made right. Something must have happened in his
incubation tube. Maybe a gene wasn't spliced together correctly or a stray
mutation had been missed during his final physical exam. He didn't know what
was wrong, just that something was.

Although he did enjoy war and fighting,
he never enjoyed it as much as his brothers. And although they all didn't mind
dying for any reason at any time, he felt his life was more important than
that. He wasn't opposed to dying if it would serve a purpose and the greater
good, but he didn't want to die just for the sake of dying.

Now sitting in the attack craft, he
thought about his options. He could just not launch and die the inevitable
death coming for his ship and crewmates. He could launch and try to be of some
use in the battle but flying against the other ships so far, he knew he wasn't
a match for the other pilots, especially in a smaller craft. He could follow
orders but he knew he'd most likely get shot down rather than actually being
able to ram one of the larger ships. He could run away. He could try to defect.
He could allow himself to be taken prisoner and hope the enemy was more civil
than his own people.

He could feel his ship taking more
damage and getting hit more often. The captain was definitely a better pilot
than he was but the end was already written and no sacrifice was going to
change that. He made a decision, or at least a partial decision. He was going
to launch, not die with his brothers, and decide the rest later.

The interior of the launch bay seemed to
warp and elongate as the fighter craft was expelled from the dying vessel. The
pilot was flattened against his seat for a moment until his smaller craft was
birthed into the atmosphere and the warped launch bay was replaced by a
greenish-blue sky.

The pilot quickly consulted his
instruments and turned his craft to a course that was the least threatening to the
rest of the ships still locked in battle. He hit his afterburners and raced
away from the fight as quickly as possible. Before he launched, he had turned
off the communications system in the craft but he was certain he could still
hear his captain cursing him from his seat on the bridge.

~

“Wilks,” Bloom was reading the tactical
readout, “a fighter craft has launched from the enemy vessel but he is
definitely leaving the battle. He's not engaging anyone and making a beeline
for the safest route away from the fighting. His course does go near our
operations base but not directly to it.”

Wilks could see the battle was going to
be over soon and his side the victor. He wasn't getting cocky or complacent; it
was just how things were. He spoke to the Detrill captain. “Sir, can you spare
a fighter to follow and possibly engage that enemy fighter who just launched
and left the battle?”

“Yes, we can. Unfortunately the other
fighter we were attempting to capture self-destructed when he realized we were
just about to get him. Maybe this other fighter will be more eager to cooperate
because it looks like he's fleeing rather than joining the fun. My craft are
already heading towards the enemy fighter.”

Wilks felt the now familiar “chug” of
the belly launchers letting lose two more missiles. The targeting screen showed
the view from the nose of both missiles and the enemy vessel was in the dead
center of both. The vessel started an evasive maneuver but the Detrill weapons
officer was working in concert with Fang and laid down fire in the only escape
path the ship had.

His choices were to get hit by energy
weapons or missiles but not to avoid either. He chose the energy weapons considering
his forward shields were strongest right now and the energy weapons would be
glancing blows compared to the direct hits of the missiles. Fang knew his
teammates were working as fast as they could but their lag in manually arming
the missiles meant he couldn't fire follow-up shots to the enemy's evasive
maneuver that would have finished the fight.

The two ships were working well together
and none of the respective crews were talking with each other at all. All of
their tactics could be described as synergistic as they read one another’s
moves and added to what the last person did until the symphony of battle
crescendoed with the final act.

The enemy vessel was in the middle of
the other two ships. One was vectored towards space on the underside of the
enemy and the other was vectored towards the ground coming from above the
enemy. They were tens of miles apart but with the speeds these vessels
commanded, they might as well have been playing chicken in a parking lot with Formula
One race cars.

The Detrill weapons officer didn't know
why his allies couldn't fire more than two missiles every forty seconds but he
had figured that out early on. The Detrill didn't fire directly at his target
because that would just encourage the enemy to try to slip out of the attack in
one of several possible escape routes. He had a limited spread that his ship
could fire at his current attack angle, so instead he used that spread to close
off the likely evasive routes the enemy pilot would take.

Fang saw the plan as his counterpart's
firing solution gave the enemy vessel but a single escape route. Fang launched
his two missiles into the only path the enemy could take and watched as they
hit home on the bridge and majority of the superstructure of the enemy vessel.

The ship bucked and erupted with fire.
No longer under the control of its pilot, the ship continued on its last
trajectory as momentum carried it through the atmosphere. Both allied ships
switched their fire to direct targeting and sent everything they had to the
dying ship.

~

The captain knew it was about to end. He
was getting boxed in and while he was better than one of the pilots, the other
was definitely his equal. Although he refused to give the other pilot a personal
rating of better than himself considering he couldn't accurately judge the
other's talent in these circumstances. The captain wished he could call a
ceasefire, if only to challenge the other pilot to face off in personal attack
fighters so they could truly test each other in battle.

The captain saw the Detrill's weapons
barrage and knew he was being herded to a certain vector. He also knew that his
ship wouldn't survive doing the unthinkable and heading through the barrage on
purpose. His only chance was to go where they wanted him to go and hope that
the universe intervened on his behalf and made the other weapons officer make a
mistake, or maybe the other pilot would suffer a stroke at just the right
moment or...

The bridge disintegrated and proved the universe
was decidedly not on the captain's side for this infinitely minuscule and
insignificant moment in the universe's existence.

~

“And that is, as they say, that.” Wilks
walked to Jockey and shook his hand.

Bloom took it a step further and gave
him a hug. “Flying with you always makes me want to vomit but it never makes me
dead. Thanks, buddy.”

“Captain Wilks,” the Detrill captain purposely
addressed the sergeant, “my congratulations to your crew for their exceptional
work. We fought well together today, which will surely help us in our battles
yet to come.

“My fighters have grounded the last
enemy ship that tried to escape and the pilot has surrendered. He's talking but
we have no idea what he's saying.”

Wilks appreciated the captain's assessment
of his team and the respectful consideration of calling Wilks a captain. “Sir,
I believe we can help you with that. We have deciphered their language and have
a program, along with a specialist, we can send over. I suggest we bring this
party back to our base. We have facilities to conduct a proper debrief and my
men need to prep for whatever our next move is. Not to mention we need to check
on our personnel at the base and report back in to our chain of command.”

Bloom interrupted, “Sergeant, the enemy
ship must have destroyed the base's communication array when they started their
attack. However, the base has sent out a few ground craft to determine what was
going on. I am just now getting communication from the OIC of those units.”