Hell's Razer

by S. F. Edwards

  Arion groaned from the back.

  “You all right big guy?”

  “Be glad you aren’t on the WSO weave right now.”

  “Why?”

  “Nash is sharing his pain with the rest of us.”

  Before Blazer could inquire more a familiar voice began chanting in his ear, Porc. “I’m gonna kill me some Geffers, do ‘em right from behind. I’m gonna kill me some Geffers, shove some missiles right up their…”

  Arion cut the transmission and Blazer was glad for it. “He’s been like that since before we launched apparently, and those were the tamer choruses.”

  Blazer chuckled in understanding at the Nerzain’s excitement, but still, it was beyond unprofessional to chant it like that. “Thanks. Any idea where our guests are? They’re late, and that’s rude.”

  “No word from command yet – stand by. Command sensor link shows incoming at decimal eight light. Sensor resolution feeding in now, nice. I show a Mitchell Light Carrier, Two Corsicaa Frigates, Six Corvettes, and approximately twelve freighters of varying configuration. Some are large enough that they might be concealing fighters or gunships.”

  Blazer seized his controls and looked over at the squadron of Feral Bombers they were escorting. “Time to transition?”

  “Two pulses. Our big ships are starting to move forward, destroyers with frigate escorts.”

  “All units, Wolfsbane Actual. The prey is entering the kill zone. Bombers, concentrate on that carrier. Destroyers, take out the escort frigates. Strike packages, disable, but do not destroy those freighters. The rest is fair game, people.”

  Blazer liked the sound of that, but it was Porc who gave it voice. “YES!!! Finally, we get to ravage us some Geffers!!!”

  “Stow it Five!” Tadeh Qudas snapped. “Bombers are on the move. Keep close and don’t let any interceptors get through.”

  Blazer’s pulse quickened, knowing that the timing of this had to be perfect in order to catch the convoy unawares. He focussed on the bomber he was assigned to escort as the projected intercept point appeared on his HUD. Sitting in low orbit and blinded by their own dark energy interference, the convoy shouldn’t see the attack force. With those larger ships moving in however Blazer wished that the rest of the taskforce was closer. Instead, they were hidden behind a nearby moon, masked by its gravity and magnetic fields. Once the convoy had arrived, they’d pounce, pummelling the escort ships from long range.

  The countdown timer told Blazer all he needed to know. It was too late for the convoy to avoid the trap now. If they attempted to alter course, what with how tightly packed they were, it would spell disaster for the caravan. He wasn’t the only one to notice that. The bomber force had started accelerating towards the convoy’s projected high orbit insertion point.

  In a blinding flash, the convoy arrived, twenty thousand metra short of the projected intercept and ten thousand higher. Blazer blinked hard. He’d never seen so bright a dark energy flash before. But then, he’d never seen such a large group drop out of slipstream together either. It looked like a firework show, pops of light as the dark energy state-changed back into dark matter.

  The Mitchell class light carrier escorting the convoy led the procession. Before Blazer could blink, fighters began pouring out of the full-length flight deck. Blazer checked his sensor sphere as it cleared to find that it was choked with contacts. His eyes went wide at the sight before Arion filtered through the glut of data feeding in through the battleweave.

  A pair of contacts lit his sensor sphere; Solaar Interceptors, their sensors trained on Blazer’s bomber. Blazer’s eyes narrowed. He targeted the lead craft. The ovoid-winged craft, with their heavy cannons, rockets and missiles were a familiar sight. Optimized to kill bombers, he had the advantage in a straight fight. He just had to engage them before they could bring the bombers into their attack envelopes. “Lead, Three, I show a pack of Solaars heading towards our bombers. Estimated time to intercept, five pulses. Moving to engage.”

  “Negative Three, hold formation,” Tadeh Qudas replied. “They’re already dead.”

  Blazer knew better than to question Tadeh Qudas’ orders. His finger still hovered over the Push To Talk Switch however. Three delta-winged fighters with triple drive arrays raced past. Blazer looked up at them. Arion highlighted the trio of Splicer-2000s as they burned towards the incoming Solaars. Tadeh Qudas is right, they’re dead, they just don’t know it yet.

  The three ICer squadron interceptors were flown by the best the Wolfsbane had to offer. Just to see them in action honored Blazer. He pulled up the tactical hologram to get a better view. The trio entered the maximum effective range of their SAM-281 Battle Ax long range missiles. The Splicer-2000 carried six of the long-range interceptor missiles. Blazer and Arion’s fighter carried only two on external racks. The ICers let the weapons loose.

  Despite their best efforts, there was little the Solaar pilots could do. The pilot’s broke formation, kicking out decoys as they vectored away. The decoys failed to distract the missiles; their guidance computers tapped directly into the battleweave. Unable to overcome their momentum, the Solaars flew directly into the path of the barrage. The missiles detonated at close range, shredding their shields and igniting the Solaar’s own weapons packs. In an instant all that remained were chunks and debris of what had been two fighters.

  “Alpha Claw, ICer Lead, you have a clear path. Happy hunting,” the lead Splicer 2000 called out. “Nach Lead, we’ll be happy to hold your hand again some cycle.”

  That was uncalled for. Blazer glanced over at Tadeh Qudas’ fighter. What are you thinking about that?

  “ICer Lead, Nach Lead, thanks for clearing out the fat for us. That leaves us plenty of meat to fill up on.”

  Arion chortled at that. That was an old Telshin insult that everyone in the squadron had come to understand. Blazer doubted that the ICer squadron commander did.

  “Alpha Claw copies ICer lead,” the lead bomber pilot replied with a soft chuckle. “We’ll let the Nachs handle the surgery now that you’ve cut the skin.” Evidently the Alpha Claw did. “Nachs, we’re going to punch through this hole. Keep it open for us.”

  The bombers surged ahead towards the carrier. It was a simple matter for Blazer to keep pace with the slower accelerating craft, but he remained ever-vigilant, always on the lookout for trouble. Tadeh Qudas moved forward to take point and the rest fell into diamond formation behind him; Blazer to the right, Zanreb left, and Gavit in a low slot behind them.

  To Blazer’s right a brilliant column of light stabbed and swept across the darkness. He looked. The fighters were now in range of the frigates, their beam cannons lancing out at them. That was when the Destroyers pounced. Holding in a slipstream orbit behind the gas giant, they raced into the battle zone. Each of the wedge-shaped destroyers with their heavy armor ribbing opened fire the moment they reverted. Their four forward, fixed asteroid cannons each launched a fifty tonne iron ore asteroid at up to 0.1 percent lightspeed towards their targets.

  Automated targeting suites aboard the frigates prioritized the asteroids; swept the plasma beams away from the fighters and light bombers. Their response and refocus time wasn’t up to the task however. Only two asteroids met any beams before the rest ripped through the frigates’ shields. The polarized boulders shredded the ionized particle screens protecting the ship before they smashed the hulls of the frigates with the kinetic force of a small nuclear warhead.

  The saucer-shaped ships lurched aside. The upper beam dome of the lead frigate had been smashed to bits. The trailing frigate, all but split in half, vented its antimatter ring into space. Hoots of victory echoed over the link, but the battle was far from over. Battered and limping, the frigates still put up a fight. The destroyers however had closed to their own plasma beams’ effective range.

  New flashes lit the darkness around the transports. The Splicer 3000s and their escorts had engaged the enemy. “All Units, Lead,” Tadeh Qudas called. “What’s left of the frigates are droppi
ng back to cover the freighters. Flights Alph and Char, engage the remaining corvette. Flights Brave and Delt, with me. Let’s defang that carrier.”

  Not that Blazer doubted him, but Tadeh Qudas was right. The battered frigates had begun to drop back. That left the door wide for their group of bombers with the exception of a trio of Raatler class corvettes. Those three drew into defensive formation between them and the carrier, filling the gap left by the frigates.

  The Raatler corvettes worried Blazer. While optimized to tackle cruiser-scaled craft, with their hefty torpedo magazines and two large hyperplaser turrets on the dorsal and ventral side, they still featured a quartet of lighter defensive turrets. The hammerhead forward bridge and saucer-shaped hull, the armor of which was plated to look like a coiled serpent, was all that remained of the Sirian design on which the corvette had been based. That shape gave the six turrets virtually unobstructed fields of fire, with minimal blind spots. It was strange, but Blazer almost felt glad to be engaging the larger, more heavily armed, carrier.

  “Explosions Lead, be copying,” Trevis replied. Trevis broke off, leading his half of the squadron away. It made perfect sense to send them after the corvettes. Their annura of training in the academy to capture such craft had made them experts in exploiting their weak points.

  A tone from Blazer’s panel drew his attention back to the carrier. They’d entered optimum firing range for their torpedoes. “Locking on, receiving telemetry from the others. We are locked onto turret one.”

  A blue targeting box snapped into place on Blazer’s HUD over the forward upper turret. He didn’t fire right away however. Additional highlights flashed across the hull of the ship as the WSOs analyzed the ship’s shield for exploitable weaknesses. Multiple interference zones in the shields appeared as amorphous purple blobs. As they drew ever-closer, the blue box shifted through the spectrum through yellow to red. “Lead, Three, we have a solid lock.”

  “Confirmed. All Units, Fire as you bear,” Tadeh Qudas replied.

  Blazer held fast. Shark launches were never smooth affairs. The kicker charges fired beneath the cockpit, first the left, then the right. Each Shark shot out in turn, the fighter rocking as they rocketed free only to disappear into the darkness. Blazer caught only a shimmering glimpse of the guided weapons before Arion guided them towards their targets.

  From under the shroud, his mind linked to the other WSOs in the battlegroup, Arion highlighted the torpedoes on Blazer’s HUD. The first Shark took point and rocketed towards a shield interference zone just aft of the forward turret where the twin spinning toroids of ionized particles created a slight weak area.

  The timing of the attack had to be perfect. With their EM- and tachyon-deflecting skin, the Shark torpedo all but disappeared from sensors when on a ballistic trajectory. If Arion forced the torpedo to maneuver or switched it over to active sensors however it would light up every defensive receiver on the ship. So, Arion played a game. He kept the trailing torpedo on a minimal energy-loss evasion course to distract the carrier’s defenses while the leader raced straight in on a ballistic trajectory, its engine silent.

  The gambit worked and the lead torpedo slammed into the electromagnetic barrier at the interference zone. The charged ions fought to deflect the weapon, but the composite coating was non-ferrous. The intrusion was detected by the ship’s gravitational deflectors however, and their focus shifted to the weapon, stopping it. The sudden halt triggered the detonator. A shaped charge shattered the photon detonator crystal at the heart of the warhead. The resulting energy discharge scattered the ion screen and created a hole in the shields large enough for Arion to drive the second torpedo through.

  Arion skidded the torpedo across the dorsal hull of the ship, beneath the shields, and steered it back towards its target. Blazer felt sure that the maneuver had to strain every joint in the weapon. Sharks were agile, but they weren’t meant to turn that hard. Arion fired the engine again, reversed the torpedo’s vector and drove it into the turret’s mount.

  A brilliant explosion of pure white light and energy carved a neat fifty metra-wide hole out of the trunnion, annihilating the molecular bonds and scattering the molecules. The dissociated matter crashed into the two giant cannons that flanked the mount with enough force to launch them away. The cannons scraped and smashed into the deck, taking out the forward sensor nest that guided the automated defenses before bouncing off into the shields that deflected them away.

  Several more flashes lit up the hull of the carrier as the other strikes hit home before Bichard screeched over the link. “Negative hit, negative hit. Second torpedo did not clear the shield breach.”

  Blazer looked over at Zanreb and Bichard’s fighter. From his seat he could see nothing amiss. But he knew that Bichard would take the miss hard. As for Zanreb, he did not have a good enough read on the man yet, even after several tridecs, to know how he would react.

  “Four, Lead, understood. All units, keep clear of the lower rear quarter. Flight Delt, on me. Flight Brave, provide high cover.”

  Before Blazer could respond, Trevis boomed over the link. “That be a kill. Corvette One be hulled.” Blazer called up the corvette on his tactical display. It broke apart before his eyes. Trevis’ flight had taken a bite out of the side of the saucer-shaped hull, shattering the anti-matter collider ring. Antimatter continued to flow out, brilliant flashes of energy illuminating the hull as they mutually annihilated. The craft was dead, there’d be no saving it. The crew seemed to agree, the bridge and twin escapes modules blowing clear.

  “Looks like the crew is going to try to escape,” Blazer called. Separated as they were, the three modules could act as lifeboats. But they’d be at the mercy of finding a safe ship to dock with, or planet to land on.

  “Two, Five, sloppy work,” Porc added. “We’ve disabled ‘vette two’s engines and its weapons are out. She’s adrift and ready for retrieval.”

  Trevis grumbled back over the link. “Copy that Five. Be joining on my group and engaging corvette three.”

  Blazer tuned the rest of their chatter out as his flight entered the range of what remained of the carrier’s point defenses. The firing zones for the remaining turrets lit up Blazer’s HUD. He adjusted his vector to bypass them as best he could, and still take out the remaining weapons. “Arion, how much do they still have aboard?”

  “That’s the strange thing B. They’re all but empty according to scans.”

  That made no sense to Blazer. A Mitchell carried a complement of over seventy fighters and bombers. The Wolfsbane’s fighter wing had engaged less than half that number.

  Before Blazer could ask, Bichard spoke up. “Three, Four. I’m detecting a breach in the carrier’s forward shields; interference from damage done by one of the attacks. The bay is cleared to attack.”

  Despite Blazer’s own glee, he couldn’t help but feel Arion bristle at the thought. He’d accidentally engaged in the insane maneuver. He’d flown his disabled Splicer-1000 into the open maw of another Mitchell Class, the GFS Bathory, when Vampire Group had attacked the academy several annura previously. The move had destroyed what was left of his fighter and had left him adrift for the remainder of the battle. The difference was that that carrier hadn’t been defanged. “Copy that Four. On me folks. Let’s make sure that anything they’re hiding doesn’t come out to play.”

  Blazer angled their fighter towards the front of the ship and punched the throttle. Plasma rounds streaked past as they moved in to attack. As they flashed past the exposed bridge tower, Blazer could see the crew running about frantically, pointing at their fighters.

  Reaching the front of the ship, Blazer flipped their fighter end for end and fired his engines again. They came to a relative halt, marvelling at the scene. The flight deck was effectively empty. A handful of fighters, F-214 Phantom-4’s, still hung in the overhead racks, all of which, from even a glance, looked to be in various states of disrepair. Three more waited on the deck - beat up FB-223 Mosquitos.

  Grinni
ng, Blazer gave his throttle a pop and let his fighter drift into the open maw. The atmosphere shield flickered as they pierced it and Blazer opened fire. His wingmen joined in, peppering the interior of the carrier with plasma rounds. Gavit poured fire into the waiting Mosquitos. The deck crew ran for cover in the low gravity bay as Zanreb blasted the elevators to the lower hangar.

  Blazer ripped into the ceiling and overhead racks. As he closed on the fighters, he gazed up at them. They were old, beaten and burnt, fighters on their way to retirement. The markings on the wings were worn away for the most part leaving only ghostly impressions. “Arion, record as much of this as you can.” The craft were weathered beyond belief: corrosion threatening to tear off the wing of one, even in the miniscule artificial gravity. It was little wonder why they hadn’t launched these craft. They were unfit to be even hangar queens, let alone fly. Blazer doubted that they’d even be good for spares.

  Then Blazer spotted it, on the rearmost fighter, a hyperspace boost-pack. The Phantom-4 was the only fighter-scaled craft that Blazer knew of that mounted the device. The fighter’s powerplants produced more energy than their onboard systems could utilize, a holdover from their earlier models. With so much energy available, the Galactic Federation had produced specific units for use as long range scouts. The fighters made great scouts and couriers, though the boosters were usually only good for one or two short jaunts into hyperspace. Rumors persisted that the newer F-231 Corvus Interceptor could fit them as well. Those fighter’s maintenance requirements limited their usage however. To see three such beaten craft here made little sense to Blazer.