Transmission Lost

by Stefan Mazzara

  -Give me your report,- the rebel admiral said calmly, not bothering to look over her shoulder as one of her officers approached her from the rear.

  -We've dropped the enemy down to approximately fifty-five percent of their battle capability,- the officer told her. -However, we're at nearly the same level ourselves. If the fighting continues at this rate, we'll soon be overpowered.-

  -Understood, Commander,- Kris said. She grinned, her tailtip twitching behind her. -All as planned. Continue as we have. Commit what resources we can to our left flank. We can't have them breaking through too quickly.-

  -Yes, Admiral.-

  Selina Kris stood up from her chair and walked to the railing of the heavy battlecruiser's bridge, and she leaned over. -Have you been tracking the location of the Krisa'la?- Her crew pit was a flurry of activity, with officers and enlisted personnel moving about between communications and monitoring stations as they watched over various aspects of the fighting. Though it was noisy and somewhat chaotic down there, one of her senior officers heard her and reported back.

  -Admiral, I have that ship's location,- the Ailian captain told her. -We lost it a number of times, but we have reacquired it. I can transmit that information to your command console.-

  -Do so,- Admiral Kris said with a nod, and she let her grin widen. -I want Te'rou's head. I must update Admiral Me'lia with our status. In the meantime, Captain, you will contact our two strongest and least damaged ships and have them form up on us. Very shortly we shall be making a run on the Krisa'la.- The sable woman chuckled as she saw the confusion on the captain's face. -You don't have to understand. Just follow my orders.-

  -Ah...Yes, Admiral...- The captain still looked like she didn't know what was going on, but she turned back to her console and began carrying out Kris' commands.

  Admiral Kris turned back around and returned to her chair. As the captain had promised, she had transmitted the location of Admiral Te'rou's flagship to her screen. Kris examined the readout for another few minutes as the excitement welled up inside of her, and then she keyed up her communications link to the planets' surface.

  -M'lady. We are ready.-

  ******

  Admiral Te'rou was ecstatic. The battle was going far more smoothly than he had thought it would earlier in the fight. Once the landings had been completed, he had been able to pull back the ships which had been tasked to escort the transport craft. The added firepower had turned the tide back against the onslaught of rebel fighter ships, and they had begun taking a toll on the enemy's heavier assets as well. Now they were pressing the enemy on their flanks, and he was watching on the radar screens as the opposing fleets were being rounded up into a tight group.

  -We have them!- Te'rou declared, as he smacked his fist on the arm of his chair in triumph. -Regroup all heavy fighters and begin attack runs on the enemy's main cruisers. Prepare for mass bombardment, and begin prepping our ships for precision strikes to aid the ground forces. I've got her right where I...-

  -Admiral! I'm detecting a large number of vessels emerging from hyperspace!-

  Te'rou's ears fell back as he abruptly stood up from his command chair. Red lights began flashing everywhere on the bridge as alarms began to sound, and voices began to rise, some of them in panic, from the crew deck. While his flagship's captain began shouting orders into his comm system, Te'rou rushed to the railing overlooking the deck and tried to make sense of what was going on. -Report! Now! What's happening?-

  His captain spoke from behind him, and Te'rou could hear the barely restrained alarm in his voice. -Admiral, we have Pteryd ships incoming on our position. At least two fleets in strength. They're coming around the planet right now and will be directly ahead of us. If we keep encircling the rebel fleets, we're going to leave out flanks wide open!-

  -Pull back our flankers,- Te'rou said, his heart suddenly racing due to an entirely different emotion. -Pull everyone back! Regroup the fleets and bunker down for the incoming enemy.- He swiped a hand across his face. The speed at which the battle had just turned against him was enough that he felt as though he might lose his balance, and he grabbed the railing for support. -I don't want to say it, but start looking for avenues of retreat. I don't know if we can handle two fresh Pteryd fleets, not in our condition.-

  -But...the ground forces...If we leave...-

  -I know,- Te'rou said. He went back to his command chair and sat down, bracing himself for what was about to come. -Let's hope it doesn't come to that. With any luck, our troops on the ground will have some good news for us soon.-

  ******

  Aria was sitting in the lead armored vehicle with General Soumaren, in the back where the compartment was fully enclosed. The vehicles were Ailian in design, little more than elongated rectangles with eight massive wheels set at even intervals in armored housings. The carrier was armed on top with two open gun turrets, one in front on top of the driver's compartment and one in the rear, each manned by a single Ailian soldier who swiveled around as they drove and watched for the enemy. They had been rushing their way towards and through Hayikwiir City for the better part of an hour and a half, dodging here and there and avoiding getting engaged as much as possible, and for the most part they had been successful. Apart from a few moments when they'd had to change direction quickly and fire off a few bursts at some distant enemy, the ride had been quiet.

  The quietness was what worried Aria. -I don't like how well this has gone off, General,- she said to the Nuretan officer, her voice a low growl that was barely heard over the rumble of their vehicle's engine. -I was expecting the enemy to keep themselves inconspicuous inside the city limits, but I was not expecting nothing at all. We should have been attacked more by now.-

  -You're right,- General Soumaren agreed reluctantly. She looked at the soldiers who packed the wheeled transport with them, and she turned to face Aria directly so that they would not be overheard. -I've been getting updates from our air recon. They've been reporting what we already know: except for the major chokepoints, the streets are largely empty. They can't get too deep into the city because anti-air emplacements have been erected, more than we anticipated. But they are giving us the routes we've been traveling.-

  -Has it occurred to you that we are being indirectly herded?- Aria asked her, as she lowered her ears. -This is my mother, after all. I can't imagine that she hasn't prepared for us in some way.-

  Soumaren looked troubled. -I've thought of that,- she admitted. -But whether we're being herded there or not, deeper into the city and to the royal palace is where we need to go. I don't see any way around it.-

  -I just hope we aren't getting in over our heads.-

  Before General Soumaren could respond to the Ailian, they were all jerked forward as the wheeled transport ground to a halt all of a sudden. A few exclamations of confusion could be heard from the soldiers within, and some of them wondered aloud if they were about to change direction again, but then the exit hatch to the transport opened and Lieutenant Ayalis poked her head inside.

  -General, Captain,- she hissed, as her expression appeared quite urgent. -You need to come outside and see this.-

  Without asking any questions, Aria and General Soumaren both rose to their feet. Aria beat the Nuretan officer to the hatch, and she followed the lieutenant outside and around the transport. Aria could tell from their surroundings that they were very near the royal palace, but still a few blocks away from their destination. What she saw as she stuck her head around the cover of the armored vehicle made her heart sink.

  The royal palace was visible through the buildings, but it was behind a wall of Ailian walkers, painted with rebel colors. Her sharps eyes could make out entrenched infantry positions, and more than that, she saw Pteryd airships patrolling the sky. The fortification was a lot more than they had been prepared for, and more than their drone surveillance craft had spied a mere hour ago. Evidently, between when they had departed Mat'aar Airbase and arrived at this point, the enemy had heavily reinforced the area.
r />   General Soumaren said it first. -Not good.-

  ******

  -Not good at all.-

  Te'rou was at the point where even he would have admitted he was beginning to be scared. He had fought Pteryd before, during border disputes on the edges of Ascendancy territory, but he had never fought them at this scale. Because of the telepathic capabilities of the Pteryd, their ship commanders were in absolutely constant contact with each other, and it showed in the movement of their ships. Their fleets seemed to move in concert, and if he had not been on the receiving end of their power, he would have admired it as a thing of beauty.

  By now, his fleets were down to forty percent strength, and that number was falling rapidly. His ships were the ones in danger of being encircled now, and it was only through some fairly reckless tactics that he had avoided already getting to that point. His ship was taking damage now, and there was scarcely a ship among his combined fleet that didn't have some sort of damage to it. As much as Te'rou didn't like the idea, he needed to start looking for a way to get out if he was going to salvage something from this inevitable defeat.

  -Turn us about!- he ordered through clenched teeth. -Start recalling fighters and put as much power to the shields and engines as you can. We need to get out of here. We've lost this one.-

  His captain swallowed hard, but nodded, knowing that Admiral Te'rou was right. He began giving the orders, and Te'rou saw the view outside the front windows of the Krisa'la change as his ship came around. The engines thrummed loudly as the engineers began rerouting power.

  -Admiral!- a voice called up from the crew deck. -We're being flanked!-

  -I see them,- Te'rou growled as the hair on the back of his neck raised. Coming into view as his flagship rotated was the sight he least wanted to see right now. In the confusion of the onslaught of the Pteryd, an Ailian heavy battlecruiser and three smaller human warships had maneuvered around behind his battle group. They all looked undamaged, and that was not good for his ships, some of which were barely in shape for running, let alone fighting. -That's Selina's flagship...She wants me for herself.- He clenched his jaw, but then he felt himself relax. -I suppose this is it...At least I'll get to die over the skies of the homeworld...-

  Just as Admiral Kris' ship began firing towards his, a second round of alarms rang through the bridge. What now? Te'rou groaned inside his head, wondering how things could possibly get any worse. He got his answer a moment later from both his eyes and the shout of one of his junior officers.

  -Admiral, there are unknown ships coming in from hyperspace, directly behind us!-

  Te'rou's eyes widened as he saw ships begin to emerge into space, a hundred of them at least, with more of them arriving every moment. Some of them were Ailian, but the majority of them were human, and they looked much more formidable than the ones that they had faced so far. Several of them were as large as his own flagship, and as he watched a massive human fighter-carrier flashed into existence, and this one really was larger than his, easily the largest ship that humans had ever made.

  -It must be the rest of the rebel fleet!- he snarled. He called up his sensor display as a group of the newcomers surged forward. He focused on one of the Ailian ships, and as he got a lock on its transponders he suddenly frowned. -But...that's the Cha'ren...She's with the Tenth Fleet, on the human border. She shouldn't be here.-

  A moment later, the incoming group opened fire, and Te'rou braced for the impacts of their combined barrage. Instead, he was astonished to see two of the human ships around the rebel flagship take multiple impacts and disintegrate in a flash as their engines detonated. The remaining two enemy ships began to maneuver away, under continued assault from the attacking vessels as they rotated to return fire.

  -We have an incoming transmission!- one of his communications officer on the crew deck reported. -We're being hailed by that human carrier!-

  -What!?- Te'rou shouted, not really believing what he was hearing. He was frozen for a split second, but then he shot to his feet. -Get me someone who speaks human, right now!-

  There was a scramble as they looked for someone, and finally a young Ailian lieutenant rushed to the communications terminal. He put on the headset that the senior communications officer had been wearing and listened for a moment. When he looked up again, his face was a mixture of confusion and glee.

  -The captain of the carrier is talking to me,- the lieutenant reported. His tail was windmilling the air madly behind him in his excitement. -He says he's the commander of the United Nations Expeditionary Fleet, and that they were sent by order from Cerelis. They've come with our Tenth Fleet, and they say they're here to help. They're asking for our targeting data!-

  Te'rou's jaw dropped open as he processed what the lieutenant was telling him. His legs felt weaker than ever, and he sank into his chair, lightheaded and shaking. He covered his eyes with his hands as the biggest wave of relief he'd ever felt washed over him. Then he felt the fire of eagerness for battle rising up again, and he let himself smile.

  -Ask the humans what took so long,- Te'rou said, allowing himself a laugh. -And then start transmitting everything we have. We might win this battle after all.- He closed his eyes and sighed heavily as his crew began to cheer.

  - 10 -

  “All fighters, prepare to launch on command from the deck officer.”

  The commander of the 27th Fighter Squadron, known amongst the armed forces as the “Black Falcons”, adjusted his controls and made one final check of his gauges. His fuel levels were at maximum, his shields and armor were in fighting order, and he had a full load of weapons. The colonel was at the controls of a one-man fighter, sleek and streamlined with forward-swept wings, the space- and atmosphere-capable F-66 Raptor III. The fighter was a few years out of date, like a lot of weaponry in human arsenals these days, but its internal bays carried ten high-explosive guided missiles and two recessed gun mounts held one charged particle cannon and one rotary cannon each. The particle cannons were designed for the vacuum of space, but no human had yet invented a weapon as lethal and accurate in atmosphere as the old-fashioned six-barreled 20mm cannons. Loaded with tungsten-jacketed, uranium-cored rounds, the guns and the fighter they were mounted on had both been top-of-the-line five years prior, designed specifically for the purpose of ripping through Ailian fighters and armor. Today they'd be given that task yet again, though with a very different goal in mind.

  “This is the deck officer. All pilots and weapons officers, you're receiving new data now. Pay attention to your targeting data. Friendlies and enemies are mixed in out there. Let's not fire on anyone who isn't asking for it. Keep your assignments in mind.” There was a brief pause, and the colonel tensed up. “All fighters, launch, launch, launch.”

  The colonel keyed up his radio on his squadron's frequency. “Falcon Lead to squadron, punch out as soon as the path is clear.” He throttled his engines, waiting for the carrier bay exit in front of him to clear out, and then he led the way for his pilots. Eleven F-66s followed after him as he roared out of the bay into space. He gave a quick look around him. The massive carrier was behind his fighter, and all of its bays were boiling over with human fighters and other craft of every imaginable variety. Turning his head for a quick assessment of everywhere else, he saw numerous human and Ailian vessels, as well as those of the Nuretans and the Pteryd. This was his first time seeing any of the latter two species' ships in person. The heads-up display in his helmet marked each ship he looked at as either friendly or enemy, like normal. What wasn't normal was that this time a lot of alien ships were marked as “friendly”, and a lot of human ships were marked as “enemy”.

  “This is a clusterfuck if I ever saw one, boss,” one of his younger, more freely-tongued pilots commented on the squadron frequency.

  “Yeah,” the colonel agreed. He put his eyes forward. His squadron's assignment, like several others, was to link up with Ailian and Nuretan fighters and break the atmosphere of the desert planet down below to support ground operations
. He swiveled his head around to find where he was supposed to be, and his sharp eyes quickly located a route to take through the ever-intensifying battle. He switched to a broader radio frequency. “Black Falcons, Edelweiss, Schwarzblitz, on me.” The other two names he called out belonged to squadrons which were German in nationality, unlike his American one, and they were equipped with newer, faster EF-5000 Hurricane two-man interceptors. Their commanders, under his authority for this operation, acknowledged his order and formed their squadrons up with his.

  The colonel's radar pinged, and he looked back over his shoulder as best as he could. Two additional squadrons of fighters, larger models than any of theirs, were coming up fast behind him. He had a moment of panic until his heads-up display reminded him that the Ailian craft were friendlies this time. The data took a moment to load, but they were identified as XF-867 and XF-869, the human equivalents of the numerical designations for the Ascendancy squadrons they belonged to. He had faced fighters like them before in battle, but as crazy as it seemed to him, they would now be flying together as allies. He only hoped that the language barrier wouldn't be too big an issue; he knew only a few words of Ailian and he presumed they knew just as little of his language. As he watched, a third squadron of the vaguely aquatic-looking Nuretan fighters joined the group, too.

  “Alright, boys,” he said. Despite the fact that many of the pilots in their group were women, and that he knew the vast majority of the Ailian pilots would be as well, that bit of soldier lingo had remained unchanged for centuries. “Hot and fast, make for the planet. Outer wing pairs, do your best to keep the enemy off of us. Command will transmit our targets to us as we descend. Let's get to it.” He opened his throttle all the way and made good on his words, diving for Lirna as the seventy-odd ships with him did the same.