by Ryan Krauter
The squadron broke into two six-ship formations, Merritt leading the one that was headed out to meet the Keeper ship.
“Warbird One to Viper One,” he heard on his comm net. He looked down to the aux screen and saw Cory’s face, her helmet sitting in her lap in her own fighter. Half her Warbird squadron of Intruders were on standby, and Merritt knew she’d rather be out here in the action with him than sitting in her parking spot.
“What can I do for you, sexy?” Merritt replied.
“Don’t blow up anything without me there to share in the fun,” she said.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Back on the bridge, Ensign Caho at the sensor station had yet another new contact.
“Captain Elco,” she called out, and Elco knew enough to get there as quickly as he could.
“Good news, I hope?” he asked in vain.
“Sorry. I see four Priman fighters and what looks like a ship of about destroyer size behind the Keeper ship. They’re not going to catch it before it gets to our position, but they’ll definitely be here while we try to recover.”
“Too bad for them,” Elco said without pity. He headed to his chair, this time feeling confident enough to sit down before hitting the communications tab to C3.
“Lieutenant Mastruk,” Elco said.
“Here, Captain.”
“Launch the ready Intruders, and put the rest on standby. You’ll see the contacts any second now on your screens; there’s a Priman destroyer and four fighters trailing our team. They should be eliminated with authority.”
Merritt saw the update on his data screen at the same time Cory’s face appeared on his aux screen again, her cheerful look on her face.
“Don’t gloat,” Merritt said with a smile, “it’s not attractive.”
“Fifty credits says we blow up the destroyer before you folks take out the fighters?”
“Ok, that I definitely want a piece of.”
Merritt looked at his navigation map, and saw the half dozen Intruders Cory was leading already heading towards his position as full thrust. He was willing to guess the Warbirds were pushing sub-five second launch times, and merely shook his head at their eagerness to get in the fight.
“Oh, this is finally some good news,” Web muttered to himself as he checked his displays.
“War’s over and we missed the memo?” Halley countered.
“Ok, not that good, but I’ll still take this. Avenger saw us a while ago; there’s six Talons and six Intruders on the IFF board, headed this way very rapidly. I’m getting a coded text-only broadcast from Avenger to just blow straight by them and head for the Vipers’ hangar bay and park up front. I’m guessing they’ll recover the fighters and just stuff them inside the hangar, close the doors, and head off into hyperspace.”
“Excellent plan by me,” she replied.
Captain Lazaf stuck his head into the bridge, having double checked that Velk’s bonds were secure and Ensign Roxis was handling Loren alright.
“Looks like I’ll get to chat with your captain much sooner than I’d expected,” he offered. “And it seems as though I owe all of you several rounds of your favorite beverage.”
“I’ll celebrate when Commander Stone is in sickbay, but I look forward to it,” added Web.
Merritt handed out targets to his squadron as soon as his targeting computer started logging the Priman fighters. Their ECM was still a total bastard to get through, but his computer could still keep track of the enemy and generate a shoot list, so he’d take advantage of that even if he couldn’t use his computer controlled canon auto-tracking. The Primans were taking some long range potshots at the Keeper ship, but Web was doing a very capable job of avoiding the blasts. At least, Merritt assumed it was Web, because he was pretty sure that with Loren in charge he was as a result tasked with leading and not flying.
The distance closed, and Merritt’s computer was finally able to display the Priman destroyer that was bringing up the rear. He saw the icon generated in his cockpit canopy, and knew that Cory must be salivating at this moment.
The Keeper ship and the six Talons of Viper squadron flashed past each other, and Merritt’s computer counted down the seconds until he’d be within laser cannon range.
At exactly the moment time expired, he pulled the trigger and held it down. A steady stream of blasterfire lashed out from his cannons towards the incoming Primans, who returned the gesture.
In an instant, all ten of the small fighter craft were swirling around each other, filling space with angry laser blasts as everyone jockeyed for position to get the kill. With the numerical advantage, the Confed pilots stuck with a wing leader/ wingman combo, providing for protection against attacks from behind.
Merritt had latched on to one fighter in particular, and as he’d describe the state of mind, the fangs had come out and dug into the floorboards. He wasn’t going to lose that Priman if he had to fly through a sun to do it. He trusted his wingman to keep his tail clear, and focused on the enemy fighter, whose pilot was a cut above the rest. He tried several maneuvers to lose Merritt, from old fashioned atmospheric maneuvers like a half loop and roll to change direction, to hitting the retro thrusters and trying to come to a dead stop. Merritt was ready for it all, and only the Priman’s constant maneuvering kept him from sending a killing shot into the enemy fighter. It couldn’t go on forever, though, and without his own comrades to lend a hand, he was destined to run out of moves. Soon enough, he tried another quarter roll to port, then yanked back on the stick to pull into a very tight loop while at the same time hitting the brakes again. Merritt pulled straight up and continued the loop over the top while also killing his speed, and by the time his fighter’s nose came back down the Priman was straightening out, low on speed and options. Merritt triggered a long blast, saw the shots strike home, and watched as the Priman fighter blew up.
“Your turn, Dash Two,” he said over the comm, telling his wingman to take lead while he watched the woman’s tail. Combat was a harsh classroom, so if he could let his lower time pilots get some real life dogfighting in while the odds were in their favor, he’d use that chance.
Cory, meanwhile, had split her Intruders for a classic two-prong attack on the Priman destroyer. She noticed Avenger was still running with her mag shield powered up, and were it not for the fact that she was sending out a low powered, encrypted IFF code, Cory wouldn’t have known where to look for the ship. To be sure, a determined sensor operator could find the ship given enough time, but time was something the Priman destroyer wasn’t going to get.
“Commence your run,” she said curtly over the comm net. Her attack craft knew what to do.
As the destroyer rushed in chasing the Keeper ship, Cory’s Intruders approached as two groups from an angle off the port and starboard bow. Before they could even see the destroyer, they’d launched their payloads; six large Quick Strike torpedoes accelerated towards the enemy ship. The Priman was doomed from the start- no matter which direction she tried to evade in, she’d be turning away from one group of torpedoes only to face the other. The torpedoes raced in, targeting computers seeking to impact the enemy ship, newly upgraded guidance software unfazed by the Priman ECM.
The destroyer veered sharply to starboard and upwards, displaying much more maneuverability that Cory would have expected to see. She also saw, however, the three torpedoes that were off the starboard bow change their track, climbing and adjusting their course. They all impacted one after another about a third of the way down her flank, smaller explosions combining into one larger one. When the light faded, Cory saw the bow floating away while the rest of the ship was merely fragments and debris.
Web saw all this and finally let that worry go, as it seemed like the Primans were well under control. Avenger shimmered into sight in front of him as she dropped the magnetic shield which bent light around her hull. He was approaching from the port side and a little low; a perfect vector. As he passed amidships, he began rolling and pulling the stick ba
ck, wrenching the Keeper ship into a tight left climbing turn towards the port side landing bay.
“Coming in a little fast, aren’t you?” Halley asked calmly.
“For some people yes,” he said with a confident he didn’t entirely feel. “Not me, though.”
“Just remember, you don’t have to risk the ship to impress me.”
“I need to get Loren inside that ship as quickly as I can,” he replied determinedly. “If I scratch a little paint on the hull, I can live with that.”
“You think Captain Elco will dock your pay if you damage his ship?”
“I don’t plan to find out,” he replied, and flashed her a quick grin.
He finally eased off the thrust and into the braking thrusters as he crossed under the stern, completing the lineup for the hangar only seconds before he blasted through the energy barrier at the entrance to the bay.
“Hang on,” he warned, putting in full braking thrusters and slapping a switch to drop the gear. As soon as the gear was down, he pushed forward on the stick and dropped the ship onto the deck, sending a shower of sparks up around them. Halley at first thought he was crazy, but she realized he was using the drag of the gear on the deck to slow the ship faster than thrusters alone could. In fact, he brought the ship to a standstill just last the halfway point of the hangar bay, close to the interior hatches but with enough room for all six Talons to park behind him.
Ensign Roxis was on the same page, and before the ship was even stopped, he’d kicked the side hatch open and was yelling outside into the hangar bay for a medic.
The rest was a blur. Medical personnel were charging up the ramp at the same time safety personnel were blasting the landing skids with fire foam, knocking Roxis and Captain Lazaf out of the way once they saw Loren’s condition. They had him on a portable antigrav stretcher and coasting out of the ship in no time, leaving everyone else suddenly empty and drained.
That was when Halley turned to Velk. “Okay, lab rat,” she started as she drew her SSK on him. “Time to head down to sickbay as well.”
She got him up and marched him to the hatch, where he was greeted by armed Marines and escorted away from the Keeper ship.
“Hey, Halley,” Web said quietly, after everyone else was gone.
She looked at him expectantly.
“I admit; I might have just possibly been a tad nervous about that landing working out all right. Thought you were probably wondering.”
“I never doubted you,” she replied, and leaned over for a quick kiss that nobody else could see. For just a moment, everything was right with the galaxy. All too soon, it was over.
She broke away and gestured to the hangar bay. “I’m going to take Velk to sickbay and keep an eye on him while the doctors do their thing.”
“I guess I’ll postflight this tub and turn it over to the intel folks,” he said by way of reply. He looked out of the hatch they were standing by, and could see several of them already taking access panels off the ship and peering inside. “Look at them,” he added, “pawing all over the thing before we’re even off of it.”
In Sickbay, Doctor Elrad stood over the bed that Velk was strapped to as he watched silently. It wasn’t as though what she was doing was a complicated procedure; in fact, all she really needed were a few biological samples obtained from hair strands, a mouth swab, and a blood sample. Knowing already that Velk was the person whose DNA was used as the baseline for the weapon threatening Toral allowed them to skip all the guesswork and get right down to it.
She was just finishing adding a last blood sample to the analyzer unit on the wall behind the bed. In minutes, a complete genome map would be produced, and they could send those results to Ensign Roxis and the intel people, who were chomping at the bit to get started. They’d sent her their side of the work as well, and she was determined to find the solution before they did. It really shouldn’t take all that long. The computer knew to take Velk’s DNA and compare it to the weapon’s DNA strain. Once it found out what part of the weapon consisted of Velk’s profile, they would know what the weapon was trying to remove, and then they could synthesize a replacement that would either fill in the blanks once again of perhaps fool the weapon into thinking the offending DNA was already gone. Either way, it was something that could be done quickly. Good thing, too, because the people of Toral had roughly eleven days left. She checked the countdown on an aux screen that she’d configured for the purpose. It showed ship’s time, around 2100 hours; at midnight, it would officially be ten days left for the planet.
“The one who led this mission,” Velk spoke to the doctor softly, “is he well?”
The Marines standing guard at the door stiffened a bit but held their ground. Doctor Elrad held out her hand to tell them to hold their position.
“Why do you ask” she replied as the glanced at the computer screen again.
“He led well, fought bravely. He also was prepared to sacrifice his life to get the rest of his team and, therefore, myself, out of the facility. He’s my adversary, but I admit I’m curious about him. It would be a shame if he didn’t make it.”
Doctor Elrad looked at him with a skeptical eye. She wasn’t sure what his angle was. Maybe he was sincere, maybe he was trying to endear himself to her in case she had any sort of ability to make his life easier. She knew enough to not take anything at face value, especially considering this man used to be in charge of the entire Priman military.
“I think he’ll be alright, actually,” she said. “He’ll be a little under the weather for a week or two, but I think he’ll make a full recovery.”
“I realize I’m your prisoner, but I would find it intriguing to speak to him if that was possible.”
Elrad thought about it, then realized it might not be such a bad idea. Loren knew what was at stake, and if he could get this Velk fellow talking, you never knew what he might let slip.
The computer bleeped, and her head snapped back to the monitor. She quickly scanned the results, and a grin spread across her face.
“I regret to inform you that we’ve decoded your DNA already,” she said to Velk. “We’ll be running it against the weapon you released on Toral. We’re also sending the information back to every Confed communications relay station we have coordinates for. This information will reach our scientists within hours.”
Velk merely nodded, seemingly at peace with the comment, which surprised her. Maybe Loren could explain.
“Commander Stone?”
Loren heard his name, but it sounded far away. He really just wanted to continue dozing. He was happy and relaxed, sitting on the balcony at the rear of his house. The sky was mostly sunny, the temperature was just right, and he must have drifted off to a nap in his chair as the sun warmed his face.
“Commander Stone, can you hear me?”
That voice again. It wasn’t Cassie’s, and that was odd. He made to get up, and realized his left side hurt. Not just one part, but the whole left side of his body. What the hell had he done to himself? Suddenly, the sky darkened, the scene faded, and he panicked for a second. Where was he? He blinked a few times, trying to clear his eyes as he dealt with the ever more noticeable pain engulfing the left side of his him.
Finally, he blinked again, and he saw the ceiling of Sickbay. It all came flooding back: shooting the viewport in the Priman base, taking those shots to the back, hitting the deck and realizing he couldn’t take in the air he needed to breathe. His vision had started to go black as he dealt with the agonizing feeling of not being able to get a lungful of air. Then, he’d seen Halley stagger around the corner, alarm in her eyes when she saw him. She’d lunged for him, sleeve already pulled up and combat knife slashing open a cut on her forearm. He had known what she was doing; she’d pressed her gash to his bleeding shoulder, passing enough nanites to him to start the healing process. She’d probably told everyone else that she’d cut herself on some debris, and Loren knew that to this day, he was the only one other than Captain Elco that she was more tha
n just another SAR officer.
He didn’t remember much after that; he figured he’d blacked out shortly after she’d picked him up. He considered himself lucky, in that many people who suffered serious trauma had no recollection of the event. He wanted to remember.
“Commander?” That voice again.
“I’m here, dammit all,” he replied gruffly, eyes still squinted against the bright light of Sickbay, “give me a minute. I got shot, you know.”
He tried to raise his left arm to cover his eyes, and quickly stopped. First, because there was some sort of binding or sling holding his arm in position, second, because the pain was excruciating. He bit his lip, and could feel beads of sweat on his forehead. He tried his right hand instead, and decided that was much better.
“Good to hear you up and swearing again,” said a familiar voice. He recognized Halley’s words immediately.
“Seems like I owe you a few drinks,” he said slowly as his eyes finally adjusted. He was in a bed, a diagnostic panel on the bulkhead next to him giving a readout of his vitals. Well, actually, he hoped they weren’t his vitals; the person’s info on the panel was a mess. He saw Halley standing next to his bed, Doctor Elrad, and a single Marine at the hatch of the semi-private room.
“I’ll trade the booze for an explanation of how you planned to get out of that mess you created without getting killed,” Halley replied, giving him a look that reminded him of the one Cassie gave him when he’d done something ridiculous, embarrassing, or both.
