“The destroyers were bloody decoys! Probes!” growled Walt angrily. Bloody horrible bastards wanted to see our defenses! Bollocks..!”
“Sir, the carrier's launching fighters!” The pirate carrier's nose barely clear of the effects of the gate, a flight of four fighters appeared, streaking away, the flares of their engines glowing brightly in the darkness.
“We're in the soup now, lads...”
■ ■ ■
Pappy was already sliding the throttle forward when he keyed his mic to broadcast on the Air Control channel, “All flights switch to Fleet Channel...” he flicked the selector over to Fleet. “Blue and Green Flights, hit that battleship, take that bitch out! Hit her fast, before she gets her shields up...” He searched the sky for Mike Warren's Red Flight. “Red Flight you're with White, lets jump those fighters!” He shoved his throttle to the far stop as he broke to the left to intercept the pirate fighters, followed by the rest of White, drawing streaks of light across the darkness. In the distance, Red Flight broke from their position to converge with White on their intercept.
“Red Leader to White, she's launching again!”
“Copy, Red Leader. She's a big girl, she probably holds at least forty...”
“Jesus...” Mike breathed.
“White Leader to Flight Control, Launch Yellow Flight...” Pappy took a deep breath and let it out slow. “And anyone else who can fly...”
■ ■ ■
Still in the satiny-silver, starless transition tube from Cariloon to Velora Prime, the Revenge gained on the pair of pirate destroyers ahead of her.
Raulya turned in her seat to look back at Brian, “The Task Force has returned to standard communications, they have engaged the enemy fleet...” her face looked pained.
Brian Carter shifted in his seat, suddenly feeling uneasy, a rush of adrenalin punching him in the gut, “How many?”
“The Task Force took out two initial destroyers...”
He leaned forward, “And?”
“They are currently engaged with four cruisers, two destroyers, a carrier and a battleship...”
“Fuck me...” he whispered. He wiped the sweat that had instantly appeared on his brow and steeled his nerves.“Mr. Ragnaar, all ahead full, catch these two... we are going to kill the bastards point-blank, the second they clear the gate. Looks like we can track four targets simultaneously with these babies...” He was scanning the on-screen stats for the Valkyrie anti-ship missile system and the VK*527's loaded in the carousels. “Ms. Raulya, as soon as we clear that gate I'm pulling the trigger, find me two additional targets...”
“Copy that, Commander.”
“And as soon as our birds have hit their marks, find me four more targets... I want to leave a trail of smoking hulls in our wake...”
■ ■ ■
Commander Renae Ribundell's UFW77 was weaving its way through an extremely hazardous web of fire coming from two pirate cruisers and a destroyer, as the 77 maneuvered for a shot on the enemy battleship. Intense green streaks flashed above and below the hull of the 77, passing the bridge by mere feet.
“They're bracketing us, get us out of here! Move, Move!” She was desperately trying to get a firing solution and a positive missile lock on the pirate, but the target was too close now. “Pull us out, get us clear, we'll take another run...” The 77's main turret fired, raking the hull of the pirate destroyer as they screamed past it, the shields of the larger ship shrugging much of it off.
“Fighters coming in on our starboard stern quarter...”
“Stern defense, fire. Deploy countermeasures,” ordered the Commander, coolly.
“Aye, popping counters. Stern defense turrets firing.” The weapons officer initiated the countermeasure system, her fingers dancing across her control panel. “Counters away...” Small tubes along the stern of the hull ejected a spreading cluster of mini proximity mines. While ineffectual against larger ships, they could easily damage or cripple most fighters.
■ ■ ■
As Steele pounded across the concrete of the hangar at a full run, he could see the waves, like a heat distortion underneath the Invader, its silhouette in the sunlight outside the main door, landing feet not touching the ground. Her engines and systems were already up and running. “What's going on?” he called.
“Hurry up!” shouted Maria from the top of the ramp, waving, standing in the doorway. “They're in trouble, we gotta go!”
“Who's they?”
“The Task Force is under attack, it's bad...”
“Shit,” he grunted, as he jumped up onto the boarding ramp, Maria grabbing his free arm to pull him in.
“Closing,” she called, pulling on the door lever, the ramp swinging into the hull. “Taxi us out, Dooby.”
“Aye ma'am,” he called from the cockpit.
Beyond the fact that she was letting Dooby handle her ship, Jack stood momentarily perplexed. “Wait. Did I see missiles on this thing?”
“Yep.”
“It doesn't carry missiles...”
“It does now. But we've only got three,” she replied, heading around the seated Marines toward the cockpit, Steele following behind her. “Courtesy of the Army Engineers.” She dropped herself into the pilot's seat, Dooby controlling from the second seat.
“I got this,” commented Jack, waving. Dooby began to unbuckle to rise from his seat. “Not you” he corrected, “Lieutenant, get outta my seat, I'm driving...”
Maria looked back over her shoulder, “Me?”
“I don't see another Lieutenant up here...”
She shook her head, “Don't see how you're going to fly with a broken arm...”
“It's my throttle hand,” he said sarcastically, “I'll deal with it...”
■ ■ ■
“Take it easy on the climb out,” urged Maria from the co-pilot's seat, “we don't want to lose our missiles. Remember they're not mounted with factory equipment. And we don't have a warranty,” she chided.
“I'm barely at twenty-five percent,” countered Jack. “Having the shields up should help...” He glanced out to his right, watching the planet's surface fall away, the Invader angled almost straight up.
“I just don't want to risk losing them,” said Maria stoically, “we might need them.”
“And try not to lose any wings, either,” came a voice from the back, “we need those too...”
“Lisa?” Jack turned to look over at his shoulder, having missed her sitting with the Marines, dressed in full combat gear, Fritz curled up at her feet. “Oh, hell no...”
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
VELORA PRIME : FROM BAD TO WORSE
“Thank God for small favors,” muttered Commander Smiley, angling White Flight in on their intercept. “They're flying light fighters...”
“These are a little different than the ones we encountered last year in the Bahia system, Pappy,” came Mike's voice in his headset. “These are Fallken F4's... they look a little more advanced.”
“Copy that, MadDog...”
“Looks like all their fighters are heading straight toward the Freedom...”
Pappy glanced out to his right, lances of hot magenta reaching across the darkness toward the direction his flights were going. “The cruisers too...” C'mon Walt, he thought, get her outta here... It was if the Pirates were ignoring the rest of the task force.
Paul's headset chirped, “Yellow's launched, they've got six birds out... they're going head-on with the Fallkens...”
Paul wondered who the two extras were, knowing there were only four trained pilots left for Yellow flight. “God protect them...” he muttered.
■ ■ ■
“Green Flight, take her engines. Blue Flight, lets hit those main guns...” Lieutenant Commander, Derrik Brighton kicked the rudder pedals left, leaning the stick to the right, the ship's directional thrusters sending him skidding past a hot green streak that passed between the twin tails of his Vulcan. “Steady on, Lads, the road's a bit rough, but we need to delive
r these tin sparrows...” He flipped the cover off the ordinance firing button as he jinked to avoid the defensive fire coming from the battleship, corkscrewing his fighter, intense slashes of green passing his wingtips. “Give 'em a good squirt first, Lads...” He squeezed the trigger and twin six-barreled Gatling lasers mounted on each side of the fuselage below his cockpit, sang, as alternating blue and red streaks reached out, a set of blurred purple lines cutting into the battleship's heavy armor.
“Green Leader to Blue Leader, she's clear of the gate! Shields coming up!”
“Fire! Fire!” Derrik let two of his four missiles loose before yanking back on the stick and rolling hard as he went vertical to avoid colliding with the massive hull, hitting full afterburner and boost to clear the defensive fire. The engines roared, sucking him back in the seat, the fighter's interior gravity gyro fighting to compensate the normally crushing G forces a move like that would create.
Spread out roughly line abreast, the missiles of the combined flights impacted the battleship along the length of her hull, bright flashes and brief fireballs dotting her hull.
“Hellion!” snarled Walrick, leading Green Flight. “Only half of them made it through! “Dammit!”
“Blue and Green, regroup, on me.” Derrik twisted in his seat as far as his harness would allow, trying to see the damage but he was already too far out, still snaking his line of flight to avoid the defensive turrets. “Damage assessment?”
“Looks like her port engine is heavily damaged, and her port main turret is down... That's it.”
“Bugger...” The Lieutenant Commander was truly hoping for more impact than that.
“Blue Three, I'm hit I'm hit!”
Derrik glanced to his left, spotting Blue Three's Cyclone wobbling off course, ribbons of fire spiraling out of the fuselage and engines, the oxygenated gelatin fuel burning even in the void of space. “Hit you extinguishers, Three! You've got fire...”
“No control..! She's not responding..!”
“Get out, Three! Get...” The fireball was short-lived but it's intensity as the drives, fuel and ordinance simultaneously exploded, launched a blinding sphere of debris. Out of reflex, Derrik yanked the stick in the opposite direction, hearing the particles and pieces thump across the shields on the belly of his Vulcan, the fighter bouncing in the shock wave. Eyes burning, he tried to blink away the image seared into his brain.
“Commander, we've got Gogol fighters out here...”
Derrik frowned, pulling up his tactical screen, “What the bloody hell is a Gogol fighter..?”
■ ■ ■
“There's got to be more than fifty of these bastards out here...”
“Two-to-one's good odds, Ensign. We call it a target rich environment...” Pappy's Vulcan screamed low over the hull of the Freedom, his wingman trying to match his maneuvers, chasing a Pirate Fallken as it disappeared around it's waist and underneath. “Hold still ya little bastard...” growled Paul.
Clearing the belly and swinging upward on the far side, one of the Freedom's point-defense Mercury Gatling batteries clipped the Pirate fighter, beating down its shields, shoving it across the Commander's gun pipper. He squeezed off a snapshot, his twin Gatling lasers cutting through the Pirate's unshielded right engine, watching the Fallken spin flatly away, out of control, driven by the other engine running at full boost. The right wing broke free and tore off a rear vertical stabilizer as the pilot ejected into space.
“Finally,” breathed Paul, as he searched for another target. “You still with me kid?”
“On your six, Pappy...”
■ ■ ■
“Solid hit! Solid Hit!” shouted tactical, “She's done...”
Commander Renae Ribundell swept from her VK*505 launch control to her damage assessment screen, scanning the Pirate destroyer as the UFW77 weaved through the melee. “Her core is open! She's going nova! Helm, break Victor-Romeo, get us clear!”
“Aye, executing Victor-Romeo, full throttle...”
Breaking engagement like a vastly oversized fighter, the UFW77 went vertical, rolling and breaking to the right as the destroyer split, in almost slow motion fashion, the flash vaporizing more than half of her hull, huge sections of her plating and frame spinning outwards, a still-running engine sailing out into space, driving a section of hull. The frigate bucked hard, as the shock wave slammed her hull, her crew desperately holding on to their stations, the massive EM pulse disrupting some of her systems.
“Report...”
“Shield emitters are off line, sensors are blind...”
The Commander grit her teeth, “Get them back up, please...”
“Aye working on it...”
“Commander, fighters inbound...”
“Defense turrets, fire. Deploy countermeasures.”
“All turrets are off-line...”
“Hellion! Countermeasures?”
“Operational, but we're running low on ordinance...”
“Mmm,” she grunted, her jaw set. “Hold the counters until they can't miss. Helm take us through our line; let's see if we can use the Archer and Bowman for a little cover till we get these systems back on-line...”
■ ■ ■
Lieutenant Mike Warren was living up to his moniker, MadDog, violently snapping and slashing at anything that passed in front of his guns as he cut through the ranks of a flight of Fallkens diving in on the Freedom. “BooYa, Baby! Now that's how we do it, out here, motherfuckers!”
“Break Red One! Break!” screamed Santine. “You've got two on your six!”
“Copy Red Three...” Mike yanked the throttle back to zero, kicking the pedals hard to spin the nose around as he rotated the throttle handle, jetting his Lancia flatly upwards, suddenly coasting backwards at speed, facing the pursuing Pirates. With a flick of his thumb he activated all guns, squeezing the trigger, creating a fountain of fire from his four laser cannons and single Mercury Gatling gun. “You're chasing the wrong DOG, bitches!” Using vertical directional thrust, somersaulting over the Pirate, he never missed a shot, the Fallken disintegrated into pieces, as, inverted, Mike hammered the throttle to chase the other one down, debris clattering off his shields like hail.
“What the hellion was that, Lieutenant?” called his wingman, having to work to keep up with his lunatic wingleader.
“Mad skills, Ensign. Mad skills. Stick with me and I'll learn you some...” He thumbed off the safety for his missiles and waited for a lock tone on the retreating Fallken. “Thanks for the heads up Red Three, I owe you a beer...”
■ ■ ■
“The Freedom is taking a terrible beating, Admiral...”
“I'm aware of that Ms. Claire...” The bridge shook as the Archer exchanged fire with the Pirate cruisers, the main guns on all four turrets firing, the constant zwump - zwump, reverberating through the hull.
“Starboard shields down to sixty percent. The enemy carrier has pulled back; she's out of range...”
“Concentrate on the cruisers...”
“They're flanking around us trying to reach the Freedom, sir.”
“Keep us in the way. Where's the Betty?”
“The battleship is moving up the middle, slowly. Our fighters have damaged her but they are out of ordnance. The Freedom might be able to outpace her if she keeps moving...”
“Instruct the Freedom to continue to fall back. Have the Bowman join us to blockade these cruisers as we pull back to keep the Freedom covered...” Admiral Kelarez was hoping that if the Pirates felt the UFW forces were disengaging, they would hold, without persisting their attack, satisfied to have won the engagement and the system, as the reports had suggested would be their normal pattern. In a pitched battle as this, there was no victory for the UFW, there was only survival.
A brace of Fallken fighters streaked past the bridge, the Archer's point defense batteries chattering, sweeping crimson streaks across the darkness, adding to the mayhem crisscrossing the battle. “Damn these fighters...”
“Admiral!
Two additional enemy ships coming through the gate...”
■ ■ ■
Two of the three screens were down on Commander Edgars' command chair and he was having a difficult time keeping up with the flood of information. “Damage report...”
The ship shook, lights and electronics on the bridge flickering, the view screen blurring momentarily. “Starboard shields are down, the generators are off-line and many of the emitters are damaged or destroyed. Our starboard forward turret is destroyed, and torpedo tube two is disabled. Some of our forward sensors are down and we've lost several point defense guns...”
“Is there any good news?”
“Aye, sir. The hull breach amidships on two has been sealed off.”
Walt took a quick breath. “Did we lose anyone?”
“Unconfirmed.”
“How's the port side holding up?”
“Shields forty-five percent and stable.”
“It'll have to do,” waved Walt. “Helm, present the Port side, keep us moving...”
“Aye, sir, changing orientation.”
“And keep us away from that battleship, we take another hit from her and she's liable to cut us in half...”
“We're currently out of her range, Commander, but those cruisers are flanking the Archer and Bowman.”
He pushed the comm button, “Bridge to Flight Control, where are our fighters?”
“Pretty much scattered all over the area sir. Looks like many of the Pirate fighters are returning to their carrier.”
“Probably to rearm and refuel. How many of their fighters are left?”
“About half, Commander.”
“Good show. Did we lose any of our lads?”
“Looks like Yellow Flight lost three, Blue and Green each lost one.”
Walt acknowledged and ended the comm. He wanted to search for survivors but couldn't risk a rescue crew and ship in the middle of a battle. He bit down on the stem of his unlit pipe, his jaw muscles working. The chatter of the point defense guns had fallen silent, the enemy fighters out of reach, the zwump - zwump, of the three remaining turrets reverberating through the hull.
Wings of Steele - Flight of Freedom (Book2) Page 48
