Table of Contents
PREFACE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
FURTHER INFORMATION
STAR CRUSADER
HERO OF THE ALLIANCE
By Michael G. Thomas
Part of the STAR CRUSADES universe
First Edition
Copyright © 2015 Michael G. Thomas
Published by Swordworks Books
The official Star Crusades website:
www.starcrusader.com
The official Facebook Page:
https://www.facebook.com/starcrusader
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
PREFACE
The Star Crusader Fighter Combat Simulator is the most advanced and realistic pilot training package ever created for the Alliance Navy. Flight control, battle strategies, and combat tactics are realistic and perfectly suited to the latest generation of military hardware. The simplified Star Crusader Public Platform is a prized recruitment tool, capable of isolating those perfectly suited to space combat. While retaining only some of the main systems functionality, it has a proven track record in training and identifying candidates for future fighter pilots.
The Star Crusader Simulation
The Battle of Retribution
"Pull up! Pull up!"
The computer's voice was incredibly calm, yet equally assertive. Each word become louder, forcing Nate to act before it was too late. He pulled on the control column and narrowly missed hitting the stern of the Alliance cruiser, ANS Farragut. His stomach tightened as he expected to feel the impact, and then he was through.
That was close!
A bright flash to the left marked the death of an enemy fighter. Nate instinctively pulled hard left and spun his fighter around to avoid more fire from a second fighter. His wingman took the shot and cut the fighter apart in a single devastating volley.
"Good shooting, Hornet Five. Close up."
The fighters rejoined their formation and altered course to take them away from the nearby Biomech battleship. Streaks of projectiles fired almost continually from the powerful ship, making it deadly to approach. The enemy ship surged forward, with its engines on full-burn. Another volley struck from the other direction, and Nate put his fighter-bomber into a long roll. He spotted the battered hull of the Alliance ship as the crew of the Farragut fought desperately to get away.
"Stay in formation and move in behind the battleship."
Nate was not a pilot; he was not even in the Alliance military. He was a civilian cadet, seventeen years old, and in his final year. What set him apart from almost every one of his peers was his skill in the advanced Star Crusader videogame. He had fought his way up through the public contest and reached the final event. If he was successful, a prize waited for him beyond compare.
I can do this. I know I can.
Nate knew the warship’s guns had locked onto him before the computer could even tell him. The angles made it easy for him to track, and by heading right at the target; it was almost impossible to miss. He had also managed to draw the gunners away from another Alliance escort, a small frigate that desperately tried to avoid the attention of the larger ships.
And...now!
He had performed this particular manoeuvre a hundred times before and knew the timing to the second. A quick course change threw the craft about and then ducked past a smaller vessel. It was a subtle shift in direction, but it instantly broke the ship's turret lock. It wasn't just Nate in the scenario; there were another five contestants, and each of them led a squadron of fighters. Though in direct competition, each was being scored on more than just individual kills. Contribution to the battle was equally as important.
As each of his unit twisted about in space, they dumped a series of countermeasures, to confuse the trackers as well as giving any missiles ghost targets to attack. These devices were barely larger than a tennis ball, but could trick sensors into thinking they were something as large and significant as a full size fighter. They spun about while panels opened and closed to distort the energy readings.
Behind Nate came the rest of the squadron, as one by one they unleashed a barrage of deadly Sea Skua anti-ship missiles. Each of the powerful missiles blasted great holes in the side of the ship, yet still it fought on. The final missile must have struck an ammunition or fuel storage unit because a large part of the ship disappeared behind a great explosion and vanished from view.
Yeah!
"Good work. Regroup at..."
Cheers rang out amongst the squadron, and Nate was convinced he could hear them in the public simulation hall. There were hundreds of cadets from the Alliance Academy, and every one of them would be shouting and cheering for one of their own from Kerberos to have made it through.
Another seven minutes, and we'll have survived in this battle more than anybody before us.
An indicator on his secondary display showed that the team competing from the planet Spascia had just been destroyed. It looked as though they had found themselves caught between a squadron of Biomech escort ships and were destroyed to a man.
Bad luck, guys.
He felt for them. A loss at this point was a guaranteed failure. Only one of them could go through. But by losing an entire squadron of Lightning fighters, they had also weakened his chances of making it through to the end of the battle. Nate had read about this fight, and though details changed with every re-enactment, one detail always remained true. The enemy would overwhelm the defenders until the marines could fight the final battle aboard the enemy Worldship.
It might have been a simulation, but Nate had a lot riding on this. Law might guarantee his place in the Academy, but the exchange programme was something else. Only six cadets from thousands of possible candidates would be chosen. He was competing against every school and academy in the Alliance, and there was nothing he wanted more. It was a chance to travel the stars and see new worlds, all while competing as a Star Crusader fighter pilot.
We can do this...I can do this.
Nate closed his eyes for just a moment, and when he reopened them, his senses were completely cut off from the rest of the world. He quickly sank back into the battle as though he'd never left it. The helmet and visor blocked all of his primary senses apart from touch, and for the public contest, the organiser had even constructed a mock-up of the fighter's cockpit. The controls and buttons were positioned where they should be for the antiquated fighter. The squadron of aged Thunderbolt heavy fighter-bombers moved on in a dispersed v shaped formation. There were seven, and all of them had seen hard use in the war. They were four-engine heavy fi
ghter-bombers, and while the most powerful fighters in the Alliance arsenal, they were also the least manoeuvrable. Most squadrons had traded up to the newer Hammerheads or even the new experimental drone fighters. With the endgame in sight, all remaining war stocks had been released, and this threatened to be the last battle of the old design.
"I'm detecting turret lock. They've got us!"
He prepared to take evasive action as he listened to the cry from Hornet Ten. His gut instinct was to pull the stick, but they had been forced to bunch up due to the number of ships in their path. With wingmen so close, he could just as easily crash into them and kill them all. Nate instead looked left, then right, before flipping his spacecraft around. It was a tiny delay, but enough to confirm where he could move safely. His change in direction was just in time to avoid the point-defence turrets fitted along the dorsal spine of the battleship. Hornet Ten was too slow, and three turrets converged on the one craft, blasting it apart before his eyes. The wings, engines, and cockpit all vanished in a horrific mess of broken parts.
Another one gone! We're getting crucified out here.
Nate shook his head in irritation. No matter what decision he made, his wingmen were still being shot down, one by one. His fighter-bombers were tough craft, but there was little they could do against such overwhelming fire. Their thin armour plating could offer only a modest level of protection against fighter gunfire, and almost nothing against the powerful motorised automatic cannons fitted to many of the enemy escorts. He shunted to the left just three metres, narrowly avoiding another burst of gunfire.
The faint voices of those in the tournament hall dissipated as the wreckage of Hornet Ten vanished before him. Nate watched in horror as the Biomech ship appeared out of the flames and smoke. At least a third of the ship was burning from within, and though crippled, it refused to die. The crew of any other vessel would already be aboard their lifeboats, but not this one. Entire sections rippled off as explosions rang out through her hull, and still the ship moved on.
Not good. Not good!
It may have been a simulation that had more in common with a videogame than something the military used, but the further they made it into the battle, the more real the entire thing felt to him. When a fighter was destroyed, he knew that meant one or two of his comrades were now dead, and that one fact alone kept the entire event a sombre one. Perhaps in the past the illusion would have been hard to maintain, but with such realism, it was easy to slip into another world, and another life. Only in the lulls of combat did he have a moment to realise none of this was the real battle, and he was in fact sitting in a pod, playing a highly realistic videogame.
"Scratch that order. Concentrate all fire on the battleship. Hit it hard."
The squadron of heavy fighters arced around their position and opened fire with guns and missiles. The battleship was now only four hundred metres from the stationary ANS Farragut, and both were blasting each other apart. At this range, they were able to hit each other, and they were quickly surrounded by hundreds of flashes, like great clouds of flies. A mixture of kinetic railguns, automatic cannons, and particle beams flashed back and forth, causing untold damage.
"Keep firing."
The fighters swept overhead, dropping another salvo of missiles. Their turret mounts traversed and added their own gunfire to the maelstrom below.
"Hornet Leader, what about the nukes?"
It was Hornet Three, and Nate was very tempted to give in and use the weapons. They were the most powerful carried by the Thunderbolt fighters, but each carried just one of the devastating torpedoes, and he knew he had to use them carefully.
"No, not the nukes. Save them for the prize."
For some it may have seemed a callous decision, but even a full volley of the torpedoes had no guarantee of success. They were slower and less agile than the missiles and easier to shoot down. Even if they hit the target, a battleship was a massive warship. Unless totally crippled, it would continue to fight.
No, our job is to hit the cruisers with the atomics.
For a second Nate thought they had been lucky, but then a single white flash erupted at the heart of the Farragut. The battle between the two capital ships had been decided, and Farragut was paying the price.
"Break formation and withdraw!"
He hit the engine override and pushed the engine to maximum, as the Alliance cruiser broke apart. He shook his head and changed one of his displays to show an external view. The Farragut was as tough as any cruiser in the fleet, but nothing could withstand the hundreds of warheads striking deep inside its hull as the Biomech Ravager battleship performed the coup de grace. The ships were poorly matched, and even with the firepower of an entire Thunderbolt squadron, they had failed to stop the Biomech ship. Nate's instinct told him he should have used the nukes, but deep down he knew it would have made little difference, if any.
Could we have stopped that ship? How many lives are gone because of that decision?
He knew that with each capital ship lost, their chances of holding back the enemy fleet would diminish. All of them had a job to do, and there might be one ship in the battle that would decide the outcome. His fighters could not stop them alone. All he could do was to help stave off heavy ordnance, engage fighters, and harass their smaller capital ships.
I need to turn this around.
The battleship gave no quarter, as it accelerated ahead and crashed bow first into the crippled vessel, finishing off any chance it might have of limping away. A small number of lifeboats tried to escape, with most caught in the blast. A final explosion shattered the stern, filling the void of space with spent ammunition and wreckage. The Biomech ship finally succumbed, and the remains of both vessels were quickly shrouded in flames and debris. It was a bitter victory for the allies, but at least Nate had the satisfaction of knowing the battleship had gone.
That's nine of their ships gone in ten minutes, but how many have we lost? We cannot keep going like this. The Biomech main fleet isn't even all here yet.
Nate knew how many hundreds had just died in the collision and the explosion that followed. The scene of carnage left him with a sick feeling deep down in his stomach, as he imagined what it would have been like in the real battle. All of the cadets discussed what the reality of space combat would be like compared to the Star Crusader simulator. Many of them, him included, had family members who fought in last space battles of the war. Right now Nate would rather not know. He'd read the history of this battle, and it was still known as one of the bloodiest events in human military history.
Concentrate, Nate! Concentrate on what you can do, not on what you cannot. The battle is not over, not yet. Stay on course and attack!
Another explosion off to the right marked the death of a troop transport. It was a violent end to another faceless ship, and with each loss Nate found their situation ever more precarious. The only saving grace he could see was that most of the passengers had escaped via lifeboats; four Mauler heavy landing craft were already there and escorting the lifeboats to the safety of a nearby Alliance Battlecruiser. The fleet continued to put pressure against the Biomechs, but the losses on both sides rose with each passing minute.
We have to end this, and before we run out of ships.
His squadron had done well, and so far counted three ships and four fighters to their credit. This was already quite a feat, yet for every kill they made, the enemy seemed to bring on two more fresh ships.
It is like the Hydra from ancient myth. Each time you cut off a head, it sprouts two new ones. I need a new plan.
The sound of multiple voices filled Nate's ears as the captains of different ships called in their positions. As each second passed, more and more ships arrived to give battle. One stood out far and above the rest, the mighty ANS Warlord, the biggest in the Alliance fleet, and flagship of the allied force.
"The vanguard is in position," said Admiral Anderson, the commander of the allied armada, "Commence the attack. All capital ships hit t
he Rift Engine. Everybody else clear the escorts."
Nate had been waiting for this, and after minutes of combat, he began to think something had gone wrong. His squadron had launched along with the rest of the vanguard. Their job had been to contain and slow the enemy long enough for the primary fleet to arrive. With the Admiral in position, battlecruisers, battleships, and cruisers would bolster their fleet. There were even assault ships teeming with marines, each readying their warriors for the multiple boarding actions that would be necessary to end the battle. The voice of the Admiral returned, and Nate completely forgot for that moment that this was actually a recording from the battle, and not the man himself speaking to those engaged in battle.
"All of our battles and campaigns have brought us here to the Black Rift, and to face out greatest enemy. This is it, the moment the future of every race in the known galaxy will be decided. Not one kilometre back. We fight and win, or we die here today. Engage the enemy and collapse the Rift!"
Nate had heard the same words before when watching documentaries and archival footage. The battle was so much more than just a great event. It was also the scene for nearly every kind of space combat ever witnessed. Battleships slugged it out in one on one duels, fighters swirled about, and dropships deposited companies of marines into enemy ships. This time the battle was different, because this time Nate had a personal stake in the battle. Never before had so much ridden on a single event for him. If they lost this battle, it was over, and everything until now would have been wasted. He spotted the timer running just above his eye. There were three more minutes to go if he wanted to beat the score set by the Terra Nova Academy of Science, and give him a chance to compete for the lowest ranked space. Their team had finished in first place less than a day earlier and already had three candidates through. That was unless Nate could beat them, and he had every intention on replacing their third winner.
Star Crusader: Hero of the Alliance Page 1
