by Aer-ki Jyr
“28 kilometers,” Ras added, keeping pace from behind as the cruiser slipped south.
“21 kilometers,” Ally reported.
“Back off a bit,” Brad said over his group’s individual comm. “I know it’s almost impossible to hit a fighter from orbit, but don’t take the chance. Try and stay at least 25 out.”
“I can’t fly backwards,” Ally pointed out, “so I’m having to zigzag to maintain visual contact.”
“Zigzag faster,” Brad suggested as a few more rail gun slugs made it through the shields, all with diminished momentum which negated their destructive power. Poke enough holes, he knew, and the entire shield matrix would collapse, but he didn’t figure they were anywhere close to that point yet.
“Better do what you can now,” he suggest over open comm. “We’re not going to be able to stay with them much longer. They’re definitely headed for space.”
10
“Do we still have a visual lock?” Harrison asked.
“Yes,” one of the Canderians said, referencing the feeds coming from the warships.
“Coordinate all the feeds and plot their course as best you can.”
“Yes, Archon.”
Harrison looked at the holographic display and where their warships were positioned around orbit. There were a few pairs here and there, but for the most part they were spread out. Soon a probability cone arose, coming up from the planet and continually shrinking as position data was updated.
He picked three points around that cone higher up in orbit and designated them as rendezvous points for his other warships while the three currently engaged poured more and more rail gun slugs down on the target as it was now just escaping the atmosphere.
“Stay with it,” he said into his earpiece.
In response the Saber destroyer and light frigate began moving up and back as they kept up distant fire on the now quickly moving target. Most of their rail gun slugs were missing, given that the lizard ship had tipped upward, no longer offering its wide profile as a target. Before long it would be upon the two Saber ships, either to engage or blow past them. Harrison knew they had to keep a ship on its heels at all times else they’d lose the contact since they couldn’t follow it on sensors.
The 1st fleet corvette was already passing by, nearly out of position as it rounded the planet in orbit, but several other ships were coming into range, both Saber and otherwise, closing in a very loose net, one that Harrison wasn’t sure would be able to hold.
He saw the speed indicator for the enemy ship jump up and realized that they were indeed making a run for it, not even attempting to settle into an orbit but going straight up and cutting across the orbital tracks directly…which meant many of their ships would not be in a position to follow.
“Anyone who can chase get going,” Harrison announced to the room.
“We’ve got them if you can keep eyes on them a little longer,” San said from his terminal as he ordered his Clan fleet to intercept as a group from their position orbiting the moon of Dxun. They weren’t right next door, but rather at a 58 degree angle off the projected flight path of the target and with enough altitude to cover the distance for a possible intercept.
“We’ve got eyes,” Mara said as some of the Star Fox ships in higher orbits began moving into position to form a visual relay, some of which were on a direct line with the target and accelerating out from the planet as well so as to match speeds. “We’re going to take a few potshots on the way, then they’re all yours, Monkeys.”
On the holographic display Harrison saw one of the 1st fleet missile ships launch a long range salvo ahead of the target, with the missiles flying almost the completely opposite direction. This wasn’t a mistake on its part, but rather the same tactic the outer warships were using to set up an intercept. The target was now moving so fast that it would be almost impossible to hit head on so the missiles had to accelerate in the same direction to reduce relative speeds in order to have a chance of contact.
The hologram showed the missile positions, but there was still only an indeterminate dot where the visual recorders and some mathematical guesswork were putting it. Harrison also knew that the missiles fired had no lock on target, which meant they were being guided by controllers back down on the planet. It wasn’t a very favorable circumstance, but at the moment it was all they had as the target zipped by the position of the 1st fleet warship and continued to head out away from the planet.
“Bring up the missile telemetry,” Harrison told the Canderians, with a scattering of tiny camera images popping up next to the hologram. Nothing was visible except stars and Dxun on the far left, meaning the missiles were still out ahead of the target. A few moments later the missile images turned as a group to the right and a small, flat object appeared in the corner of the screen, growing larger by the second.
“There it is,” Harrison whispered, watching the warheads close fast. He knew the controllers were watching the same feeds and flying the missiles in manually, but his interest was getting a good look at the ship. So far all they’d gotten up here was fuzzy, long range images.
When the knife-like ship stretched from one edge of the screen to the other it began to rotate around, exposing its flat lower surface to the missiles as a shower of green particles manifested at several points on the hull and flew out towards the missiles. At first nothing happened, but then the missiles’ visual feeds began cutting out one by one until only 3 of the 36 were left. Harrison got a good, up close view of the ship’s hull as they rammed into the target and detonated, but whatever damage they did or didn’t do he couldn’t know, since their cameras had also been destroyed on impact.
The run up to impact did tell him one important thing…there were dozens of the smaller ships attached to the hull of what must have been some form of carrier/base.
Another small view of the ship appeared in the holographic map of planetary orbit, this one coming from a Star Fox warship that was accelerating hard towards an intercept. Watching the live video and the tracking points on the map Harrison suddenly realized that the target was faster than their ships and the cruiser in question wasn’t going to be able to catch up.
Coming to that same conclusion the Star Fox warship launched a series of rail gun slugs from its forward arc, cutting all plasma engines to increase accuracy and hoping for a lucky hit. It fired off 8 rounds before giving up and watched the little dots on the map fly across the distance between itself and the ghost ship.
Another Star Fox ship, this one a destroyer, was nearly matching the target’s acceleration, coming in at a similar angle to the cruiser but farther up the orbital ladder. Its camera view soon became the dominant one in the Canderian command center and showed a decent image of two of the rail gun slugs hitting the target and splattering against its shields.
For a brief moment the disruption in the energy matrix was so intense that the ship popped up on sensor scans, giving them a fixed point to begin reworking their course plotting from before it disappeared again as the shield matrix settled back down and began replenishing the damaged areas with additional power from the generator.
“Good hit,” Anders commented. “Keep it up and maybe the Ninja Monkeys can put it down.”
Harrison glanced at the upper edge of the holographic map. “You got the back door covered?”
“Working on it,” Anders said, having his fleet spread out around high orbit, but with at least a few ships within possible intercept range an hour or two out if they could maintain visual contact that long.
As the range closed between the target and the destroyer the Clan warship began shooting off rail gun slugs and missiles with no return fire coming from the enemy until the missiles got in close and were hit by scatter fire. Most of them were knocked out, but half of the rail gun slugs hit the target, whacking large holes in its shield matrix. As the range shrank down even further the destroyer opened fire with its own plasma cannons, seeing the light blue streaks blur and fade out before impact.
Seeming to suggest that the shot was merely a test of range, the enemy cruiser fired several more bolts in sequence, all but one of which hit the destroyer. The third in the continuous salvo penetrated the shields and kissed the Herculium hull…then the others ripped/melted it apart one after another.
The destroyer twisted around, trying to spread out the hull damage as well as to bring intact portions of the shield into play. The tactic only worked as a delaying measure, for the unending stream of plasma bolts did not relent. What was left of the shield matrix completely collapsed, exposing all of the destroyer’s armored hull to the incoming plasma. Once it ate through the protective plates it cored the ship, hollowing out the interior through a series of explosions to leave a more or less intact shell that began to fall behind as its engines were no longer existent.
The lizards didn’t let up and continued to pound the remains until it fell out of range, then continued on out of the micro-system as the pack-like Ninja Monkey fleet loomed ever closer out ahead, fighting for speed so the target wouldn’t zip right by them.
Instead it altered course to port, causing the Clan ships to have to redeploy and scatter their formation. First contact was made by four corvettes that had superior speed to the enemy cruiser and were able to readjust quicker to the new heading. One was killed on approach by the green plasma orbs, but the other three were able to get inside their own plasma range and fired off small streaks into the enemy’s shields.
A second corvette was destroyed before a destroyer joined the party, firing at range with its rail gun on an approach that the corvettes deliberately avoided so as to allow the support fire. As the third corvette met its death one of the rail gun slugs got through the shields and hit the hull, doing moderate damage given that part of the kinetic energy had already been bled off. None the less, the surviving corvette noted the position of the shield impact and poured plasma into the wound.
The destructive ‘raindrop’ fell into the crater on the hull and melted into it, carving it a bit deeper and smoothing out some of the narrow edges. A second drop fell nearby and cut another divot into the hull before the last corvette was killed, but by then two more ships had come within rail gun range and were spitting metallic shards at the enemy, who once again altered course, throwing off their aim.
The closer destroyer fell in behind the ship and accelerated for all it was worth, inching up from behind and firing away with its larger plasma cannons. The target, it seemed, didn’t have a large battery capable of covering the aft arc, though more scattershot appeared, most of which dissipated before it even got to the destroyer’s shields.
One blue streak after another shot out at the lizard cruiser, most of which hit the aft shields but were too dissipated to do much damage. The destroyer kept draining what energy out of them it could while a few more lucky rail gun slugs hit the target, all but one of which deflected off the shields.
The one struck the weakened area where the corvette’s plasma had hit the hull. The matrix covering it was still replenishing and very, very thin. The slug punched through it like it wasn’t even there and delivered the first solid strike against the enemy, breaking through the armored coating and penetrating into the interior of the ship with a gush of atmosphere flying back out before internal bulkheads sealed off the breached areas.
As if stung by a bee, the cruiser killed its forward thrust and wheeled about, heading directly for the larger Ninja Monkey ships shooting at it from outside its plasma range. It closed the gap quickly, flying in a curved trajectory that no Star Force ship could match, throwing off the rail gun targeting and keeping any more from hitting before it got within plasma range of the ambushing ships and leveled off, unleashing a torrent from multiple cannons spaced out across the bottom face of the hull, which it deliberately tilted towards the Ninja Monkey gunners.
Normally that would have been a fatal mistake, giving the rail guns such a wide target, but for the cruiser it gave four plasma cannon turrets lines of fire and the enemy ship began savaging the Star Force warships. Their thin shields held for mere seconds, maybe a salvo or two if they were spaced out, then the green plasma began eating at their hulls as they fired desperately in return, scattering in multiple directions but not moving fast enough to avoid the speed of the plasma, which was at least twice that of their own cannons.
The Ninja Monkeys did make them pay for the bold attack, getting several plasma salvos of their own off, as well as some close in rail gun shots before those batteries were destroyed. The bottom half of the cruiser took extensive damage, but most of the docked raider ships were on the top half and safe from the attack.
The smaller and faster Clan ships were able to flank the cruiser, taking damage as they went. Two corvettes began attacking at the knife edge of the ship while a frigate crossed over and targeted the top side…only to be hit by the large cannons in place there, getting off just three plasma shots before being destroyed. The dorsal shields held on the cruiser, but the rim damage the corvettes were inflicting began to add up and a few got through weakened shields enough to destabilize the ventral areas enough that three sections of the shield cover on the cruiser’s bottom half completely went down, though there were few Ninja Monkey ships remaining to exploit that weakness.
The corvettes blasted away at the rim at point blank range, trying to stay out of the firing arcs of the main cannons until the bigger ship twisted about faster than they could adjust. They took the brunt of the plasma attacks at their most concentrated and lethal efficiency, with the explosive results shredding the smaller ships. Unlike the others at range, their Herculium armor didn’t hold up to the explosive destruction, allowing the small warships to pop like piñatas when the massive amount of plasma ate through to the densely packed interior of the unmanned warships.
Back in the Canderian command center the expressions on the Archons’ faces were bleak. The enemy ship had just torn through 13 of their own and was still intact and heading out away from the planet…a fact which they could now verify, given that the target had begun to show up on sensor scans during the battle.
“Anders,” Harrison said after a long moment of silence. “Keep a ship close so we can track it.”
“I’ve got three on the way,” he said, looking at the marker on the hologram as it continued to accelerate away from the planet.
“We’ll need an escort on the jumpline from Alpha Centauri to protect the next jumpship,” Mara pointed out.
“3 weeks?” Jaime asked.
“And then at least 8 more before we can get any reinforcements,” Harrison said, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully. “Priority defense should go to the jumpships, then shipyards. If they go in atmosphere we can organize a defense on the ground, but we can’t let our ships get spread out again. Only a fleet action is going to be able to stand up against that.”
“Where do you suppose they’re heading?” Raines asked, still watching the hologram.
Harrison glanced at the Arc Tribune, but Anders answered him first.
“How many more of them are out there, you mean? If they’re running back to their buddies we’ll find them…unless they can get that hull damage patched up to evade our sensors.”
“You think it was the armor?” Jaime asked. “Not some countermeasure?”
“The ship is reading like a corvette, so I’d say we’re just picking up the surface damage, which means something is still shielding the rest of the hull, so my money’s on the armor.”
“Good point,” Harrison granted. “Calculate their current track. Let’s see how coy the
y’re playing this.”
The Canderians punched up the navigation program with ease and had a lazy arc around the system’s central star marked on the now system-wide hologram…no planets or moons intersected it, nor did any even come close.
“So much for that,” Mara commented.
“Guess we have to wait and see,” Anders said, watching the icons for his ship trail the enemy, keeping it within their sensor range but well outside of weapons. At the moment they didn’t want to provoke another attack, just follow and observe.
Four days later those three ships did come under attack, but not from the ship they were trailing. Two more enemy cruisers, sensor ghosts as far as telemetry was concerned, jumped the leading ship and destroyed it before the controllers knew what was happening, thanks to the signal lag of being so far out from the planet. The other two were far enough back that they were able to go evasive, one flying off at a 90 degree angle to their flight path while the other one accelerated hard forward, increasing speed and blowing by the two new contacts. Given that the ship was a frigate its maneuvering speed was greater and it was able to outrun its pursuit, drawing them away from the larger destroyer escaping off to the side.
The frigate amassed enough speed to catch up to and overshoot the damaged cruiser, passing far ahead of it before a mass of contacts lit up its sensor screen. The just updated combat protocols in the frigate automatically returned fire before the sensor telemetry even made it back to Corneria, targeting the incoming fighters with high powered lachar cupolas…a combination laser and charged particle weapon that fired at light speed, but they didn’t pack enough punch to take one out with a single hit so the frigate was quickly overwhelmed and picked to death by the fighters’ small plasma cannons.
The more distant destroyer succeeded in escaping, but within two hours of running from the enemy its signal winked out, having been caught and destroyed by one of the carrier/bases before it could even begin its slingshot trajectory around the sun to return to Corneria.
