by Aer-ki Jyr
The ship shook from the blast of acceleration, but thanks to the inertial dampeners neither man felt it. The massive engines at the rear of the elongated, yet fat gargantuan kicked out blue fire exhaust that churned against the upper atmosphere while the ship was flying backwards, causing a faster deceleration than friction alone would have allowed. The shields along the rear portion of the ship were down along a narrow line covering the engines so that the exhaust wouldn’t catch inside, making the already non-aerodynamic shape of the ship even less so by turning the whole thing into a cup facing the wrong way.
Davion didn’t have a choice in the matter, because it was the only way to get to their target ahead of the Nestafar warships attempting to intercept them. They were coming alone, without escort, while some of the warships made a bluff in higher orbit that had drawn the Nestafar further out of position…but as soon as the freighter had started to head towards the planet they immediately reversed and came after it, knowing that they intended to aid the base under assault.
“Give me the count.”
“Rotational speed in 12…10…8…6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, mark!”
Davion cut out the ship’s conventional engines and briefly kicked in the gravity drive to hold them aloft against the torrent of atmosphere trying to twist them around and out of control. They were still falling, and fast, but by reducing the speed he was giving himself a controllable force to work around, thus allowing him to pilot the falling ship.
With their braking maneuver completed he returned the shields to full cover, immediately reducing the drag on the ship and allowing him a slightly easier pivot as the control thrusters fought to turn the bow around so they could face forward and get the trimmer nose pointed into the air.
“Some help, please,” the Captain suggested.
“Working on it,” Frankton promised as he adjusted the shield geometry to act like ailerons and rudders in order to assist the thrusters to complete the turn in time.
“Come on, come on,” Davion muttered as the sluggish nose gradually turned around as his ship fell belly first towards the ground. They were only going to get one chance at this.
A warning light flashed on the shield matrix on Davion’s console, indicating that a section of the top hull had just gone down…then another, followed by hull damage.
“Is that the atmosphere?”
“No, its weapons fire. One of their corvettes caught up.”
“Where are the others?”
“Too far back to matter now.”
“How the hell did this one make it?”
“I don’t…wait, there’s another headed our way from the surface. I bet this one came up at us too.”
“Even that drag out!” Davion yelled, knowing they had precious little time and that the downed shield was now altering the airflow pattern over the ship and catching like a sail.
“Hold on…there’s going to be a jerk.”
“I’m ready,” the Captain said, goosing what he could out of the thrusters as he watched the altimeter drop rapidly.
“Ah,” Frankton commented to the ship, “this is gonna hurt, baby.”
He hit the commit button and squeezed his eyes shut as the shields suddenly reformed into a large wedge.
Davion got a huge swing to the ship, which brought the nose around crudely in front, then the shields all but disappeared from half the hull as the emitters burned out and the ship became a lot more unresponsive.
“What the hell was that?”
“Don’t ask, sir.”
“You pulled a direct feed, didn’t you?”
“It worked.”
“Yeah it did,” he admitted as he used the thrusters to keep the nose pointed forward as he began to cut out the forward gravity drives to dip the front end of the ship towards the surface. “You’re done here, get going.”
“Captain?” Frankton asked suspiciously.
“I’ll be there shortly. Hold the door open.”
“You’d better be,” the navigator said as he got up out of his seat and ran off the bridge.
Davion’s eyes glanced at what little sensor telemetry the ship had, considering that it was now burning through the atmosphere like a fireball…but he could still see the corvette keeping pace behind and above them. Small pinpricks of damage were popping up on the hull, which only made the Captain smile.
“Go ahead, do your worst,” he said, finally getting the ship rotated over fully using the aft-most gravity drive to act as an anchor to hold the angle as he micro-adjusted with the main engines and thrusters to keep her falling on course. If he missed his target on the wrong side…
But no, the ship was falling where it should, though a little to the south. A heavy thrust from the main engines countered that by about 50%, and he saw that he wasn’t going to get much more out of it. That was good though, to have a cushion on the correct side, for as soon as he left the pilot’s chair the ship was going ballistic.
“Starbright, I think you’re going to live up to your name. You’ve been a good ship. Farewell,” he said, shutting off all but the anchor gravity drive and dashing out of his seat, following the route Frankton had took. He ran through doorway after doorway, all that were locked open so as not to slow him down, until he got to the closest hangar bay and pushed his way inside through the hurricane-like winds whipping inside from the open doors on the hull, meaning somehow the hangar’s atmospheric shields had gone down also.
Fortunately the artificial gravity was still in play, otherwise he would have fallen against the wall because the planet was visible perpendicular outside the bay with just a slice of the horizon popping up along the far left wall, indicating how close they were getting to the surface.
Davion ran hard, leaning into the wind and fought his way across to the open door on the assault shuttle where Frankton was waiting for him. The Captain plowed his way aboard with the navigational officer pulling the door shut immediately.
“He’s in, let’s go!” he shouted at the Canderian pilot, who wasted no time in lifting off and rocketing out of the side of the ship.
The tiny craft hit a wall of turbulence and got knocked out of control for several seconds before the ship passed beneath them and the wake diminished. The pilot eventually got the shuttle leveled out and accelerated away from the flight line and the Nestafar corvette that was still trying to pump plasma into the freighter, even though most of it was never reaching the target due to the friction with the air.
“Oh crap, we’ve got company,” the Canderian said, dropping hard towards the surface at an angle that would also pull them away from the Starbright.
“Fighters?” Davion asked.
“No, that warship is coming after us.”
“Surely you can outfly that hunk of metal?” he goaded.
The Canderian glanced back over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow. “You’d better hope so,” he said, pulling the shuttle through a tight loop and redirecting it off towards the north…a maneuver that the corvette couldn’t easily match, though it wasn’t giving up on the pursuit.
The pilot reversed his turn and headed back southeast, wanting to get further away from the freighter and causing the corvette to overshoot again, then he headed the tiny craft down towards the surface, intent on losing their pursuit in the mountains. The angle didn’t allow them to see the Starbright when it hit the surface, but several seconds later they felt the shockwave as it bounced the shuttle around.
“Sorry, Captain. Know you wanted to see that, but losing that warship is the first priority.”
“No need to apologize. At least now I won’t have to have it replaying through my mind at night.”
The assault shuttle flew straight down towards the mountains, then ducked into a valley and started skimming the shallow trenches until they found one particularly sheer rock wall. The Canderian pilot slowed them to a hover and tucked up alongside it, waiting to see if the corvette would follow them down.
“Comms are back,” he noted when the incoming s
ignal button lit up on his console. “I’d answer that, but I’d rather not give the Nestafar any help in locating us.”
“You have your sensors set to passive, son?”
“Of course I do,” he said, looking at Davion oddly. “And there she is…”
Davion looked on the passive sensors display as well as out the forward viewport monitor, seeing the corvette high above them flying a lazy course across the mountains.
“I think they lost us,” Frankton added.
“For now,” Davion said, thinking hard. He didn’t see any fighters on the sensors, but being tucked up against the mountain diminished their view of the immediate area.
A second comm light lit up on the dashboard, blinking in sequence with the first.
“Can you tell where those are coming from?”
The Canderian pilot tapped on the first, bringing up the info display along with the transmit button which he intentionally avoided. “The seda…” he said, switching to the second, “and the base.”
Davion saw the Star Force ID signature on the base’s data screen, meaning it wasn’t coming from the Calavari or others…and it had a message attached rather than just a request prompt. Before he could tell the pilot to activate it the Canderian did so on his own and Kara’s voice came over the comm.
“Any Star Force units within the immediate area of the base please respond. Repeat, any Star Force units within the immediate area of the base please respond. You’re about to get your asses kicked.”
Davion and the Canderian exchanged frowns.
“What does she mean by that?” Frankton asked.
“Risk it,” Davion said.
The Canderian reached over and activated the response channel. “This is Canderian assault shuttle 28…respond.”
There was a short pause before the feed cut out the automated message and a live transmission replaced it.
“What’s your current status?” Kara’s voice again asked.
“Trying to avoid detection,” Davion answered. “We’ve got a corvette that chased us to ground and at the moment it seems to have lost us, despite this transmission.”
“Never mind that, you’ve got incoming fighters dropping from orbit. Get running or get inside the base. How many of you are there?”
“One shuttle, three occupants.”
“And what did you hit the enemy with, exactly?”
“My ship,” he said, regret evident in his tone.
“Captain?”
“Davion. Despite the skills of our pilot, I’d prefer not to try and outrun the enemy fighters back up into orbit. What’s our best approach to the base?”
“I need you to land on the mountain and come in through one of the auxiliary entrances…on foot, unless you want to run the gauntlet and come in the front door before they get reorganized. Either way those fighters are getting close to the surface.”
“Send coordinates for the mountaintop entrance,” Davion decided in an instant. He knew well how much firepower had been at the entrance and he doubted they’d have a straight line approach, meaning they’d be sitting ducks as they tried to maneuver through his ship’s debris and into the base.
“Get going. We’ll have a reception committee waiting,” Kara promised.
“How many masks do we have?” Frankton asked as the battlemap waypoint came through and the pilot got them moving within three seconds, eager to get away from the now distant corvette should it turn around and come back for them…which it did as soon as they pulled up into the sky and cleared the horizon.
“Down there,” the pilot pointed back into the compartment behind them over his right shoulder.
Frankton stepped out of the cockpit and pulled open the wall panel, revealing a recessed storage compartment with a rack of filter masks. He pulled out three and handed one to Davion.
“Thank you,” the Captain said, ripping the seal and pulling it out of its plastic bag, then placing it squarely over his nose and mouth before securing it behind his head into a firm grip. He took a few practice breaths and found it mildly restrictive, but otherwise fully functional.
“Two minutes,” the Canderian warned them as he pulled up above the mountaintops, abandoning any ideas of using the terrain to his advantage and making a bee line straight to the waypoint as he flicked on the active sensors, which responded with a much stronger image of the corvette along with a cloud of contacts coming down from above. “Stand by the side hatch.”
Davion moved aft, walking through the personnel compartment to the junction with the cargo hold, there he found a short exit ramp covered by a solid door with an activation panel nearby. He waited there with Frankton, ready to move out as soon as the pilot set the shuttle down.
“Go!” he heard him yell, and Davion didn’t waste any time. He jammed the open button in so hard he felt his finger joint bend back, then was forced to wait through a quick release of the door as it pulled out away from the hull and aside as a foot ramp extended down to the surface. He ran out it just as the Canderian was catching up to them and sprinted ahead to where a red armored suit was waving at them across an uphill field of grass so tall it came up to their shoulders.
Davion punched through it with adrenaline at levels he hadn’t experienced in a long time, clawing it apart with his hands as a rocket was launched into the sky from ahead. He didn’t see where it came from, only the lone Archon signaling to him. A loud explosion made him flinch as it detonated in the air above, then two more shot out just before he broke through the sea of grass and onto the flat stones of the entryway where he saw six Archons and dozens of Calavari standing guard over a very small entrance.
“Come on, come on!” the Archon yelled, urging the threesome forward. He yanked Davion into the building by the shoulder, pulling him faster than he would normally could have ran resulting in a stumbling shuffle, but the strength of the man kept him on his feet before he dumped him to the side behind the thick walls of the base.
A moment later the Calavari started coming through, then another Archon with Frankton. After that there was a long line of armed soldiers pouring in followed by the Canderian pilot and the four other Archons, after which there was a large audible ‘clunk’ as the base door sealed over.
Davion sat heaving against the wall, his limbs numb and tingly from the exertion, until one of the Calavari came over and looked down on him. “You came from the crashed ship?”
He nodded. “We bailed out before impact.”
“They said you were the Captain.”
“I am…was,” he corrected himself. One wasn’t a true captain without a ship.
“You may have just saved all our lives. We are in your debt, Human.”
“No problem,” he said with a wave of his hand dismissively.
“No. We are pilots. We know what it is like to lose your ship and ours are small. Yours was not. It was a great sacrifice and we are truly honored,” it said, reaching down and pulling Davion up off his butt. “It is not safe here. We must go further inside. This is a kill zone should they breach the outer door.”
“By all means,” he said, letting the four armed alien escort him across the wide room and through another doorway along with the others.
7
“Oh for crying out loud,” Mark said as soon as he shook the stars from his head as he laid flat on his back looking up at the hangar ceiling through his mech’s display holo. “What the hell did I hit out there?”
Silence answered him…then he noticed that his comm display was dark, meaning it must have been damaged in either the shockwave or fall.
“Ouch,” he said, twisting his sore arms around as he leveraged his mech up into a sitting position…which was when he saw the now ginormous hole in the door along with a shiny, yet pitted chrome walker skittering through and getting pounded by plasma. “How long have I been out?”
He raised his mech’s left arm up, deactivated the hand and pumped a plasma orb into one of the walker’s six crab-like legs, melting a hole alongsi
de several others and snapping the leg off as too much pressure fell on its remaining support struts. The entire machine wobbled, but the other legs compensated before an internal component blew out from the bulky center and killed the thing.
Mark got his mech up onto its feet just as the much larger Nestafar version began moving again…only not under its own power. As he watched another pushed it forward from behind, using it as both a shield and plow against the other bits of debris lying around.
Plasma fell in on it from multiple angles, most of which were coming from the skeets but a lot of the improvised weapon sleds were also nearby and firing makeshift weapons on the entry hole. Mark was impressed with the amount of firepower they’d accumulated from the wrecks in the hangar, but was appalled at what little damage each of them were doing to the walker that was now half exposed. Its armor must have been incredibly dense…probably why the damn things moved so slow too.
Mark added his neo’s weapons to the defensive effort, both the plasma cannon and scattergun as the enemy walker moved far enough in to use its belly-mounted cannon and roasted one of the weapon sleds over considerable distance with what looked like a plasma fire hose, yet extremely thin. It cut through the metal frame like a hot knife through butter, wrecking both the anti-grav and the weapons onboard, though thankfully it had been remote-controlled by the control bunker and no one had been onboard.
The Nestafar beast cut apart another one before it finally succumbed to the combined firepower of the hangar guard, dropping down on its powerless legs like a withering spider and blocking the hole…the primary hole anyway…in the door. When it too began to move forward, much slower than the first, Mark reactivated his mech’s hands and charged forward, running up against the remains of the first walker and pushed back, leveraging as much strength as he could.
“Please don’t shoot me guys,” he said to the dead comm as his mech’s feet scraped on the floor due to lack of traction. “Come on!” he yelled, twisting a bit and shoving at a different angle.
