by Will Crudge
“Recommendations, Sir?” John directed the question back to Darius, but the Fleet Marshal had no time to reply.
“New contact!” Fin shouted. “UAHC Air Force IDENT… battle carrier… Star Fury!”
Darius smiled. The image of the battle carrier came into view, and it seemed to have taken the Crimson ships in their bubble-shaped formation by complete surprise. The rugged looking Air Force ship bisected the enemy formation and appeared to be opening fire with massive missiles.
“Sir, they’re firing… Trident Missiles?” Fin had to re-read his scan. It was apparent that he had no clue what kind of missile that even was.
Darius nodded. “Trident’s are anti-energy-shield missiles with a second stage armor piercing warhead…. The UAHC Fleet quit fielding them due to cost constraints decades ago… but the Air Force swooped in and took all of our surplus. Why buy new missiles, when the Fleet has millions of them in moth-ball?”
All eyes turned to the tactical display, and saw the missiles impact the two cruisers closing in on the Hailstorm’s right flank. Cheers erupted in the CIC when plumes of burning atmosphere lanced out of the massive ships, following a brilliant flash of collapsing energy shields. Each vessel lurched, and began to buckle. The sheer kinetic energy of the Trident Missiles seemed to rival that of a ninety-ton KEPL.
“Battleship Hailstorm, this is Brigadier General Cooper aboard the battle carrier Star Fury…” The voice came through on the Fleet’s audio net.
“Switch to visual, and put it on my console, Ensign.” John said. Fin just nodded and did it promptly.
The image a tall man with short reddish hair, and glasses filled the screen. “We have you, General,” John said with an appreciative tone. “Thank you for the brave assist!”
“Always welcome, Sir,” Cooper replied. “I’ve launched all remaining fighters. They’re closing in on the other two cruisers to buy you some time… I’ve analyzed their attack pattern, and it doesn’t take a genius to see what they’re trying to do.”
“You heard the man, Skull,” John sounded off. “Get our attitude lined up for a KEPL barrage on our folks in the rear!”
“Maneuver in progress, boss,” Skull replied. “Firing solutions locked. Will fire on your order.” John couldn’t help but notice how Skull’s tone seemed to level out calmly when he was about to doll out slaughter.
“Weapons free, Skull.” John stated. “Waiting for my big mouth to say something will only slow you down!”
“Be careful, Admiral… Don’t give anyone the impression that we make a good team. I have a finely crafted dickhead persona to maintain.” Skull replied. BG Cooper let out a hardy laugh in response to the banter, and John realized the Air Force Commander was still on the connection.
“How soon can you reload your missiles, General?” John asked him.
“Two and a half minutes to load, another thirty seconds to activate and arm, and then another fifteen seconds for a firing solution,” Cooper replied at once.
This man is oddly precise. Impressive. John thought to himself. “Can your fighters harass the other two cruisers long enough to stave off a stern shot?”
“One cruiser is maneuvering to launch defensive drones, and live piloted fighters… It would seem the other cruiser could care less about my mosquito swarm!” Cooper said.
“No worries,” Darius spoke up. He didn’t know why he said it, but he just had a natural sensation of calmness that told him not to be concerned. John just looked up at the Fleet Marshal in confusion.
“Sir, it appears we have three LRF-90’s that just launched from our primary bay!” Fin reported.
Whew! I almost looked like an idiot there! Darius smiled to himself, but then he abruptly wiped the sense of elation from his mind. He looked around to see Jep and Val still in the CIC, but yet three LRF’s had launched? He knew it couldn’t be Kara’s ship, the Skull-Crusher, since it was now hardwired to the Hailstorm. Who in the hell?
The battleship scanned back over, lined up another shot at the adjacent cruiser, and did a simultaneous shot of sixty-ton KEPL’s. The firing solution dialogue box revealed that these sixty-ton projectiles had end-game thrust capability. Which meant they had the ability to make fine-tune trajectory adjustments, and had additional chemical boosters at the base. The chemical boosters could fire as needed to make up for any loss of velocity that may occur from minute coarse corrections. But the end result of the engagement was even more impressive than the tech on board the KEPL slugs.
Both sixty-ton slugs smashed into the hull, and dead on top of the cruiser’s CIC. But this time, the cruiser was in the middle of an evasive maneuver that left the soft top deck armor fully exposed. The massive hole in the hull and went straight through the keel, and now cruiser was all but a lifeless hulk.
***
“Kara,” Jimma said over their audio link. “For the record, I adamantly oppose your decision to take flight in your condition.”
“Noted,” Kara responded.
“But… I’m glad you did!” Jimma added. Kara smiled, and then looked down at the Blood-Reaper’s tactical overlay. Kindle was altering proposed firing solutions and maneuvering vectors fast than Kara could keep up with. Even Kara’s optical implants were of no use. Kindle had too much processing power, and eons of combat experience, so she decided to trust the ancient NAV with her life.
“Kindle is doing her thing,” Kara spoke on the net. “I can’t keep up with her… anybody else have a plan?”
“We all do, Kara,” Doom replied. “All the NAV’s, that is. You just hold tight and let us coordinate our thing. We work much faster when we have direct net access to each other.”
Kara’s face flushed with embarrassment. Of course they have a damn plan! Kara felt that she should have known that. She wondered if staggering down to the main bay and jumping on the LRF was a good idea after all. She still felt l
ike she had something to prove. Something inside her had changed when she woke up. A new drive to take meaningful action. A passion for justice.
“Jefe and Sasha are ready, everybody.” Jimma chimed in. “NAV’s, let the humans in on our little suicide run, and let them pretend to help… as usual.”
Pretend is right! Kara was still shaky over having to fly with a manual control stick. But she was aboard Val’s LRF, and he’s all about keeping the LRF’s pure to their original glory.
Kindle froze the tactical display, and now Kara could see her place in the grand scheme. She took a deep breath and assumed manual control of the ancient super fighter. Ingress vectors, maneuver points, and designated firing sectors were displayed in a three dimension graphical interface, and she just had to follow the designated pattern, adjust course and vector as required, and then shoot anything that wasn’t a friendly. Easy! Should told herself… but she wasn’t entirely confident in her mental assertion.
“OK, Jimma,” Kara responded. “So what are you and Jefe going to do, and why is he hitching a ride?”
“If she told you, then you’d try to stop her!” Elizabeth chimed in. Kara realized she knew very little of the other red-headed War Master, or her massive tiger, named Napo. But she was a War Master, so she decided to trust her by default. She decided that the time for doubting your teammates should come well before you make an attack run on an enemy cruiser… especially a heavy cruiser!
“I’ll just stick to my little covering maneuver, then,” Kara said with every ounce of confidence she could muster. But the truth was, she was terrified.
The hulking cruiser didn’t seem to bother engaging the three incoming fighters. Without any nuclear energy, or SK readings, then the three small ships were nothing but annoying gnats that posed no credible threat, Kara surmised. She followed her approach pattern and barrel rolled clear out of the path of the massive battering ram shaped prow of the Crimson ship.
Warning indicators flared up and a dozen fighters crossed her path. She didn’t hesitate, and squeezed the trigger on the polished mahogany control stick. She didn’t even stop to think about selecting a weapon system from the arsenal of options onboard. She knew that Kindle had already selected the most tactically viable engagement method… and she had certainly done it.
The energy encased plasma bolts sprayed out in a wide arc in Kara’s field of view. She rolled the control stick to her left slightly, and allowed the fixed trajectory of the Gatling Guns follow the path of the fighter’s adjusted vector. The targeting reticle glided over to the larger mass of enemy fighters that were trying to converge and loop back around to engage her. But they were too late.
The Crimson ships had a minimum velocity from the ship’s launching tubes, and they weren’t suited for immediate maneuvering once the ship’s bulkheads were cleared. The excessive velocity caused the fighters to pull too hard, and they congregated into an easily recognizable pattern. Kara saw the flaming hulls of at least four fighters tumble away into the blackness beyond.
The LRF-90 blazed right past the array of launch tubes, and Kara knew she’d have to double back, or switch her attitude to 180 degrees. If she failed to take action, then the fighters behind her would have time to tighten their banking and line up for a perfect shot on her thrusters. Adjusting the attitude would deny her freedom of maneuver, so she elected to take advantage of her ships high speeds. She raced around, and she was now about to pass right through a formation of at least twenty enemy fighters coming at her at full burn.
“Particle beams blazing, girl!” Kindle chimed in. “Just hold your course and throttle right through!”
Kara could only nod her response. She knew what Kindle was thinking. The superior speed of the LRF would have them clear of the enemy fighter’s effective weapon’s range by the time they managed to cut there burn and maneuver back.
The beams did their job, and two of the enemy fighters were severed in twain by the searing heat at near point-blank range. She cleared right through and kept her throttle pushed forward. Then she heard the voice chatter all too clear.
***
The final defense beams were useless against the exaggerated power levels of Death-Nail’s forward energy shields. The wedge-shaped field of energy built up its own gravitational effect, and the photons from the lasers were literally bending away from the fighter’s hull.
“Hold tight, back there!” Jimma warned. “Pounding through the energy shielding now!” The concentrated energy wedge didn’t so much as penetrate the battlecruiser’s field, as it matched frequencies with it. The atmospheric variant LRF passed through the field without resistance and was now entering the cavernous KEPL barrel.
The KEPL Barrel was rated for sixty-ton rounds but had no permanent form. The barrel of any KEPL was essentially a magnetic field that formed a tunnel to guide the projectile to its precise vector, while offering no physical resistance. In fact, the magnetic field reacted with the steel layers of the round itself, and aided in accelerating the projectile to immense velocities.
The LRF glided gracefully among the arrays of field generator struts that would energize when a round was about to be fired. They reached their proposed drop off point and Jimma did a hard burn to slow the fighter to a crawl.
“We’re here!” Jimma shouted over her shoulder.
“All ready!” Jefe replied. The UAHC Soldier had heavy infantry armor on, and his head was covered by his secondary energy shield in case of decompression. The Soldier slapped the release button on the metal bulkhead door, and the protective energy shield snapped into place. Both Jefe and Sasha pressed against the massive nuclear mine, and rolled it to the door. With a quick code sequence, the lights on the mine’s display panel flickered, and then flashed green. Jefe slapped the cover closed, and looked over at Jimma. He gave a quick thumbs up, and she nodded in response.
Sasha gripped her claws against an open storage compartment on the deck, and pressed against the mine with her hind legs. Jefe pressed as well, and engaged his powered armor to 115% of normal output. He grunted with strain, but it could barely be heard over the massive cheetah’s own roar. A moment later, the bulky mine tumbled out and into the darkness below.
“OK, let’s roll!” Jefe shouted as he slapped the button to close the bulkhead door.
***
“Nuke is delivered!” Kara announced on the audio net. “Cover us as we punch back out of the KEPL!”
What the hell? Kara shook it off, and decided to stay on task. With the Crimson fighters too far behind her, she only needed to focus on any new threats ahead. But there were none.
A swarm of Mark-8 Air Force fighters joined Kara in a defensive formation. She looked to her left and out from her canopy and could see the tiny olive colored spec on the opposite flank of the formation. She knew at once, that Darius’ precious Doom-Raptor had survived the covering action on the other side of the cruiser.
A moment later, the energy reading from an energy shield popped onto her HUD. Death-Nail! Kara knew at once that her friends had come through.
“All fighters, full burn!” Jimma’s voice announced. The Air Force fighters sent acknowledgment icons and their thrusters lit up the blackness of space. Beautiful! Kara thought to herself. Her body may have been wracked with pain, but she allowed a smile to break through to the forefront of her awareness.
***
The CIC’s visual display flickered to adjust to the blinding light. The nuclear explosion had removed the final cruiser from existence. Skull had successfully engaged the four cruisers to the rear, while the Star Fury followed through and annihilated the last of the ships off the battleship’s bow.
“Admiral?” Val asked. The Admiral momentarily took his eyes off the command console displays. General Gordon, and Darius did the same.
“Yes, Val?” John replied.
“I believe the time has come to unleash this ship’s full might.” Val said calmly.
“With all due respect, Val… You’re not in a positio
n to be making strategic assertions.” John said with a wrinkle brow.
“Keep your eyes on your scan… Darius knows what I’m thinking.” Val said with a smile.
Darius did. Just as the monk said the words, images filled Darius’ mind. Ships maneuvering. Missiles and energy beams lancing through the vacuum of space. He could see it all at once. He knew what to do.
Darius looked over at John. “He’s right.”
“Sir?” This time Gordon spoke up.
“In a few seconds, the smaller portion of the Crimson Fleet will emerge from the other taxiway. The main fleet won’t wait for them to converge on their position… They don’t believe they’ll need to. If we don’t strike now, then the smaller force will punch it into slip-space, and begin their coordinated attack on the system. We can’t stop them if we wait. But if we strike first, and bloody their nose, then they’ll hesitate. That’s exactly what we need them to do.” Darius surmised.
“With all due respect, Fleet Marshal… How could you possibly know…?” John was cutoff.
“Sir!” Fin shouted. “The smaller force is on the move!”
John’s eyes got as wide as planets, and shot a look of surprise over at Darius. He then glanced over to Val, and back to Fin. “Ensign, send word to the Air Force Squadrons. We begin our engagement now!”
“Aye, Sir.” Fin replied, and then feverishly began working his console.
“Skull?” John asked. “What can we hit these bastards with?”
Before Skull could say a word, pre-planned courses of action filled the displays of the command console. Ship maneuvers, firing solutions, and proposed primary, and secondary targets were clearly visible, and laid out as if an entire battle staff had planned it for months.
“Shit!” John gasped. “Which do you recommend?”
“This one, Admiral.” Skull replied as the icon for an entire phased course of action appeared. John could barely glance it over, but he knew full well that it was meticulously crafted. He had no time to deliberate, and knew he had to trust the NAV’s strategic mastery.
