“Nervous?” Acknit asked, his voice ringing through the internal comms.
Gavit looked back at their WSO sitting motionless, looking even more asleep than usual under the shroud. “I’m not used to making combat entries in a dropship. We usually sneak in.”
“Relax,” Mikle commented. The feel of the ship turning forced Blazer to look at the floor, hyperspace playing badly with his inner ear. “We’re coming in through a friendly jump point. Then we’ll slipstream in to right above the surface of the moon where they’re holding our officers.”
“Yeah, I know,” Blazer said.
Gavit cracked his neck as he sat beside Mikle. “Don’t worry boss, at that point it’s all me. Flying the rills doesn’t bother me.”
“We’ll be coming in hot, Gavit, and there’s no way to mask our approach. We’d burn out our ZKEPs if we even tried.” The Zero Kinetic Energy Pods in the spine of the craft served as emergency and stealth heat sinks, but their capacity was finite.
“Our slipstream course will take us close enough to the gas giant to throw pursuit long enough to get us to the moon,” Acknit commented. “Plus, we’ll launch two drones to draw them away as well.”
Blazer still didn’t like it. The plan made sense, but he knew Gavit had issues with flying such an unwieldy ship, compared to their fighters, into a contested system.
“We’re nearing the jump point,” Mikle called, checking his approach.
Gavit nodded and slipped his hands into place behind his duplicate controls, ready to assume command at a moment’s notice if evasive action became necessary.
“Attention, we are preparing to revert into normal space, all hands strap in. We will make for slipstream as soon as we are in-system,” Acknit announced over the loudspeaker.
“Acknit, query the jump buoy. Let’s see what kind of traffic is on the other side,” Blazer ordered, bringing weapons status up on his screen. Their four main turrets, small anti-personnel turrets, and their missile and torpedo load all shone blue.
A holographic sensor screen popped up beside him, showing the dispersal of craft on the other side of the jump point. A number of craft waited in the void, while a few smaller craft engaged in combat off in the distance.
Blazer studied the map. The image gave only sensor returns, no ship identifiers or silhouettes. “Acknit, why aren’t we getting any kind of IFF status on these readings?”
“Older type buoy, IFF is probably faulty, old codes. Don’t worry. Intel reports that the jump point is held by friendly forces.”
Mikle scoffed. “And we all know Intel is never wrong. Prepare to revert,” he announced.
“Hold that, we have a big ship preparing to enter the jump point,” Acknit called out. “Damn, I wish this buoy would ID ships. That thing has a massive displacement, though. Sensors read it to be over a hundred thousand tons.”
“No problem. I can slip past it, probably just a supply freighter, those are some massive beasts,” Mikle replied, having grown up on such a ship. “Going for the point,” he continued, opening the throttle up a little more, and propelled the ship out the exit corridor.
Heric System, Jump Point 3, Dropship 116
A brief but blinding flash forced Blazer to avert his eyes as the dropship passed into normal space—the wash of hyperspace particles clinging to the dropship’s shields annihilating the sparse molecules they contacted as they fell back into the jump point. As the light cleared, the found a massive Galactic Federation Barker class fleet carrier racing towards them.
“I have the ship,” Gavit hollered, punching the throttle forward and driving the dropship away from the massive carrier. The hull of the giant ship blurred as they raced across its surface and they watched as it pushed its way into the jump point. Gavit guided them around the ship’s massive keel-mounted Razer cannon. As they came around it, a turret rivaling the size of their own craft came into view. The ship’s huge hyperplaser turrets were designed for ship-to-ship combat and he could have easily parked their craft in its shadow.
Blazer grunted under the g-forces as Gavit swung the dropship below the carrier, several massive turrets turning to track them. “I thought we controlled this jump point!”
“We must have lost control of it while in transit,” Acknit responded, his artificial voice over the comms too calm. “We’re surrounded. They have a full taskforce out there blockading the jump point. Fighters incoming!”
Blazer checked his sensor sphere and saw Gavit glance down at his own. “Copy that, give me a vector to the slipstream, or plot a jump out of here, quick,” Gavit commanded as he attempted to put some distance between them and the pack of fighters racing towards them.
“Can we still slipstream to the objective or find a friendly jump point?” Blazer asked, as the dropship’s superstructure creaked around them.
Blazer decided to let that pass, the situation being stressful enough without having to dress down his senior pilot.
“No intel on which points are ours now, but I have the slipstream entry plotted,” Acknit growled a moment later. “One problem, our best entry vector passes close to those frigates.”
Blazer looked at a trio of massive saucer-shaped frigates ahead and shook his head before opening up a tactical plot on his screen. Behind them lay the jump point back into hyperspace and beyond that a pair of destroyers, likely training their massive cannons on the jump point in case anything big came through. Above and below, anti-fighter corvettes hung in space, with missile lock alerts telling him that the enemy could fire on their dropship at any moment. To their immediate starboard and port, patrol fighters vectored towards them from light carriers. The frigates ahead of them hung arrayed around the slipstream entry vector Acknit had plotted. If they went to slipstream now, they risked colliding with any one of the three, even Gavit couldn’t thread the eye of that needle Their only saving grace was that the frigates had weapon systems designed to combat larger craft, not dropships like theirs, so the frigates could be easier to get past than any of the other hostiles.
“Wonderful,” Gavit hissed. “Making for the entry point, Acknit, Mikle on those guns, Blazer make yourself useful and help out, would you? The rest of you hold on down there,” Gavit called, whipping the massive dropship about.
“This isn’t a fighter, Gavit,” Chris managed to say from the main hold.
“It’s all on you, Gavit,” Blazer called as he set up their chin and anti-personnel turrets to track the incoming fighters.
Gavit clenched his teeth as he looked at the three dark ships ahead of him. “We’ll ruin our paint job, but yeah, I’m on it.”
“All right, then go for it. Acknit, try and get out a mission update over the link,” Blazer ordered.
“Okay,” Gavit replied and sped towards the trio of frigates, his engines at full power. “Acknit, cut power to the hyperspace shields and divert it to main engines and EMT. We’re going to need all the power we can get if those beam cannons light us up.”
“If I do that, it’ll take a least a hect to restart them. We’ll be trapped.”
“Trapped is better than dead, just get us onto that slipstream!”
Acknit did as commanded, diverting maintenance power from hyperspace shields to main engines. Blazer felt the little extra thrust that provided press him back into his seat, but knew that it also weakened their gravitational deflectors.
“Fighters are in range,” Mikle announced, aiming his heavy Plaser turrets at the incoming fighters. “Engaging,” he called, firing the massive guns at the craft. A double volley from two of the three big guns ripped through the first fighter’s shields and forward armor. The Solaar shattered under the onslaught, detonating its power core and dispersing its wingmen.
Blazer swung the chin turret and smaller anti-personnel turrets at the fighters as they approached from numerous angles. “Tracking multip
le inbounds, they’re firing!”
The tuned main guns of the Solaar fired in an established pattern; the two heavy Plasers mounted atop the wings fired first, attempting to disrupt the dropship’s shields ahead of six hypervelocity slugs launched at the same point by the Solaar’s twin heavy mass drivers.
That combination battered at the dropship’s shields. The twin spinning toroids of magnetized particles caught and deflected two of the ferrous slugs. Four made it through, overpowered their gravitational deflectors, and tore into the hull, digging deep furrows in its armored back. The strike did little to alter their course, but the sound of wrenching metal stiffened Blazer’s neck with worry.
“We’re hit, but no breaches,” Acknit reported.
Blazer didn’t even nod as he tracked his turrets and opened fire on the fighter that had wounded them. A lucky Plaser bolt pierced the ammunition drum of one of the fighter’s mass drivers, detonating the volatile contents. The resulting explosion vaporized the fighter.
Gavit twisted the dropship about, crushing Blazer back into his seat, as another Solaar dropped upon them. “Hold on!”
The rocket packs on the Solaar wings’ ventral surfaces spit their kinetic kill weapons at them. The rockets slammed into their shields at one percent of the speed of light and exploded in a torrent until Mikle fired his heavy plaser into the incoming fighter. The blast tore into the Solaar’s left rocket pack, detonating rockets still in their launchers and breaching fuel tanks in the wing. The fighter burst into a brilliant fireball, its momentum carrying it past the dropship as Gavit vectored back towards the slipstream entry point.
The dropship weaved back and forth as best Gavit could manage, while fighters gave chase, forcing him to evade their blasts. The shields endured a vicious pounding as they raced towards the slipstream entry. Imminent collapse threatened at any moment as Acknit put as much power into them as he could muster. Plasma bolts, mass driver rounds, and rockets lit up space around the dropship as it darted towards its escape. As they neared the frigates arrayed around the entry point, a new weapon came into play.
“Someone’s trying to hack our computers,” Acknit reported. “I’m up against some pretty serious barrier breakers here. They’ll be through my software firewalls in no time.”
“Gok, we need you on the flight deck,” Blazer called out. “Computer problems.”
“On my way,” Gokhead responded, releasing his harness. A moment later, the whine of the ascent line from the main bay filled the flight deck. Just as it breached the hatch the dropship was rocked downwards by a missile assault. Blazer didn’t even bother looking as the sound of armor against metal met his ears, too busy with the turrets.
“Gokhead, tell me you’re not dead,” Blazer snapped, his focus on the next fighter coming at them.
“Still alive,” he groaned and pushed off toward the cockpit’s empty fifth seat.
I wonder how much shock gel that cost him?
Gokhead fumbled his way into the seat and pulled the spare open-face WSO interface helmet free of its housing. Slipping it on, he assessed the situation and set to work as best he could manage. “They’re using high level barrier breakers. I’ll have a tough time of it, but I know some tricks to throw them off. I’m setting up more barriers and implanting false navigation data behind each one. If it works, they’ll assume the nav data they hack out is our true nav course and stop,” Gokhead reported, shaking his head. “As long as they keep trying, I’ll keep setting up barriers.”
“The fighters are breaking off,” Acknit reported a moment later, a note of relief in his voice.
“Oh, thank God,” Mikle responded, relaxing a bit.
Blazer breathed a sigh of relief then stared at the trio of saucer-shaped Corsica-class frigates ahead. “Don’t go thanking any deities yet. They broke off to stay out of the way. We’re about to enter the firing arcs of those beam turrets.”
The frigates floated in silence before their slipstream entry point, their dark gray and black hulls twisting Blazer’s stomach. Three beam cannons on each of their upper and lower hull domes glowed menacingly like the wicked eyes of some beast borne of his oldest nightmares. Wishing he could rub his eyes through the closed face of his combat helmet, he looked away from the red disk-shaped emitters, blinking hard.
“Acknit, plot a torpedo firing solution on the nearest frigate. If we can disable her beam cannons, we can use her as a shield,” Gavit ordered, his voice devoid of emotion.
“On it, antimatter torpedoes locked on.”
“Fire when ready,” Gavit yelled.
“Torpedoes away!”
A spread of four SAW-240-HH antimatter torpedoes erupted from the outrigger cargo pods and raced ahead, three towards the lower beam turrets and the fourth towards the massive heat-radiating fin on the underside of the ship. Blazer watched Acknit guide the torpedoes through a series of evasive maneuvers as the frigate’s point defense turrets opened fire. Turret fire intercepted the lead torpedo moments before it could impact the shields, but the explosion blinded point defenses long enough to allow the second to splash against the shields, which convulsed under the explosive force of the detonating anti-matter warhead, throwing the projectors out of focus and disrupting the ion screen long enough to allow the last two torpedoes to slip through.
The third torpedo made a suicidal dive into the lower beam dome. It speared the armored shell and drove deep into the heart of the weapons emplacement before exploding. The number three beam emitter shattered under the onslaught. Fire and atmosphere vented into space as internal plasma lines ruptured and tore down the dome, shattering the cap and destroying the hyperplaser turret mounted there.
Meanwhile the fourth torpedo dove towards the ship’s thermal radiation fin, the point defense turrets all but unable to engage the massive weapon as it drove in. A lucky blast caught the torpedo, shearing off half of its control thrusters, and sent it tumbling out of control. The blast came too late to prevent impact, however, and the torpedo slammed into the leading edge of the radiator fin. The detonation tore a mighty piece from the structure, severing key cooling lines from the ship. The shock of the explosion ruptured many more, shattering the interior superstructure enough to twist the fin about and almost tear it from its mountings.
“Good hits,” Mikle hollered.
“Energy spike,” Acknit warned.
Blazer looked up in disbelief. Fire poured out of multiple hull breaches along the shattered dome. “No way they could fire with that damage.”
Acknit shook his head. One of the remaining emitters on the lower dome brightened as it prepared to fire. “They are, though, and we’re targeted.”
“Shreg!” Gavit spat, hauling back on the stick to get out of the beam cannon’s firing arc.
The maneuver came too late, and a forty-metra wide plasma beam lanced out at them. In an instant, the beam speared the lower shield of the dropship. The impact tossed it around like a child’s toy and overloaded the energy barrier, dispersing the field of charged particles. The beam burned into the tail of the dropship cleaving a hole through the rear deck and destroying most of the door and lower engine array.
A brief howl of atmosphere escaping met Blazer’s ears through his helmet. The force of the expulsion shoved the dropship about, explosive decompression fracturing many of the cargo bay’s support frames. That blast had come at a cost to the frigate, however. Damage inflicted by their torpedoes had initiated massive failures all across the beam emplacement. The beam turret emitter burst, cleaving a crater in the side of the dome as the energy lance subsided.
“Gokhead, seal that helmet. We’re hulled!” Blazer called out moments before the interior of the dropship silenced, all its air vented into space.
Gavit fought to maintain control of the ship, the instant silence deafening. The rear attitude control thrusters were no more than a memory as he wrestled with the loss of multiple engines. “Damage report! Is everyone alive down there?”
“The EMT Field’s been scat
tered,” Acknit responded. “The lower rear gravitational deflector is gone, and magnetic containment on the EMT is offline as well. Along with half the main hatch and the main fuselage’s lower engine array.”
“Everyone’s still down here,” Zithe replied, relief evident in his voice.
“Rudjick’s injured! I’ve got erratic signs on him,” Marda reported.
The indicator for her seat latches went red, and Blazer held his breath. She just slipped out of her harness to check on him. He activated the command link at his console and an image from her helmet camera lit up his screen. It showed Rudjick as she took a knee before the elf. His face was pale and sweat-soaked, his vitals dancing crazily to one side of his view.
“Oh, crap,” she exclaimed, as the view panned down. “His suit’s been breached,” she announced, tearing the suit repair kit out of one of Rudjick’s tactical vest’s numerous pockets with one hand while she clamped down on the breach with the other.
Blazer’s blood went cold. Death to vacuum isn’t the way any warrior should die.
The indicator for Zithe’s harness went red as he unstrapped to join Marda. “How bad is he?”
The hum of Marda’s handheld medical scanner reverberated through the link. “He’ll live. His suit tried to seal off the affected area. His leg is going to be in bad shape. He’ll be lucky if he doesn’t lose it.”
“Strap in, we’re running for the slipstream,” Gavit ordered.
He’s alive. Marda will do everything she can to keep him that way. Now if Gavit can get us out of here maybe we can link up with some friendlies and…
Gavit couldn’t wait for the pair’s harness locks to turn blue before he nosed over towards the entry point. He opened up the throttle, fighting his previous momentum vector as the maneuver pushed Blazer up out of his seat and into his harness. Engines screamed through the ship, structural damage stressing the craft close to the point of collapse.
Gavit visibly flinched at the protests of his ship as he pushed towards the entry point, the groaning of metal increasing with every cent.
In Death's Shadow Page 36
