The trailing fighter acted immediately to save their life. All eight engine nozzles, fore and aft, vectored to their upper vertical limit and burned full force. The thrust shoved the craft down as half a dozen decoy spheres launched from its back. The spheres burst open igniting the electromagnetic spectrum, drawing away one of the missiles. The other pressed doggedly on towards its target however as the fighter spun about. Momentum carried it backwards and all four of the fighter’s plasers spat fire at the remaining warhead. A single plasma bolt sheared off the side of the missile and it exploded well short of the target, saving the fighter.
The other fighter, either due to lack of skill, experience, or simply because the pilot was too target-focussed, wasn’t so lucky. The pilot picked off a pair of decoys. The spheres dazzled the spectrum, but they were too far away. The seekers saw right through the interference even without the WSOs feeding in any anti-spoofing commands. The twin guided rockets shot past the decoy debris. The first missile, Blazer’s, crashed into the shields of the Phantom and detonated. The blast of the plasma warhead scattered the fighter’s shields, scorching the hull, as it buffeted the fighter.
The second missile pierced the space between the two engines and detonated. The explosion shattered the engine mounts and took a chunk out of the outer engine’s fusion bulb. Raw, unconstrained plasma burst forth into the second bulb. It bored a hole into it that produced enough thrust to send the fighter spinning out of control into the void. Star-hot plasma continued to burn the inner engine free and the fuel cell in the wing vented into the loose plasma. Gas cloud that resulted detonated, shattering what remained of the wing.
Blazer had scant cents to catch his breath, let alone celebrate, before the surviving fighter opened fire on their craft. The first volley went wide. It lit the sky beneath them before the second volley skirted their shields. Blazer danced the fighter up and around the blasts. He snapped off return fire as he closed on his target.
Blazer winced as their attacker landed several solid hits despite his best efforts. His shields sparked to life with dancing purple lightning bursts. Blazer evaded, g-forces slamming him about. Blinded by the purple lightning drowning out his HUD, he had no chance to line up a shot.
He punched his throttle. Blazer tickled his afterburner to get some separation from the target before he hauled back on his stick. The targeting box of his attacker slid past, yet remained ahead of him. His shields clearing, Blazer found that his enemy had matched his maneuver, sliding away from him, still nose-on. “This guy’s good,” Blazer hissed and squeezed his trigger. Plasma rounds splattered against the target’s dorsal shields as he vectored down and away, returning fire. “Arion!”
“Narfics up. I’m fortifying the forward shields,” Arion’s emotionless reply came through the shroud link as their shields once again danced with burning spiderweb impacts. Deep within the fighter, the spinning shield generators shifted their focus. They forced the ionized particles that made up the protective barrier forwards as the projectors released more into the counter-rotating magnetic toroids. The flashes grew in intensity. Blazer gritted his teeth and kept his trigger finger squeezed. He attacked his only indicator of his enemy’s position, the holographic box ahead of him.
With a shuddering snap, the Narfic cannons pulled free of their mounts. Motors whirred as the position arms angled towards the target. “B, give me a drop kick this pass.”
Blazer did as requested. Closing with the target, he pressed down on his throttle and nosed over. The maneuver cost Blazer a shot with his fixed guns but afforded Arion an unobstructed field of fire. The snap-hiss of capacitors discharging to either side as the Narfic Cannons lanced out brought the briefest twitch of a smile to his lips as the g-forces poured on. Twin bolts of lightning struck out towards the target before the forward shields cleared. Finishing his forward tumble, Blazer found his target still alive and diving at him again. Eyes wide, a missile launched towards him.
“Frag me!” he yelled and, pulling back hard on the stick and throttle, he flicked the decoy release with his pinkie. The decoys burst, dazzling the missile seekers. They streaked past, rocketing into the void, blinded. “That guy is nuttier than Gavit, firing missiles that close,” Blazer kicked his left rudder pedal to skid the fighter about. “Four, Three, am engaged in heavy combat, need an assist,” he called into the link. The fighter appeared before them again, skidding about in a similar fashion as Arion worked on a missile lock.
“Just waiting on the ask,” Zanreb replied in a clipped tone before a barrage of cannon fire from all six guns assaulted the fighter from above. The fighter’s shields danced and burst open like an overfilled balloon on a skillet. A dozen solid hits peppered the fighter’s spine before Zanreb’s Splicer-5000 dove past. Blazer just watched as Zanreb flipped his fighter about, skidding backwards and popped off a single missile into the unshielded Phantom.
The missile, fired too close to arm the warhead, speared the missile pack on the left side of the fuselage. Zanreb and Bichard’s Firehawk slid out of range, and the warhead detonated. The explosion ignited the missile warheads remaining in the pack, breaking the fighter in two. Short-lived flames engulfed the fighter as raw fuel spilt into space before the fusion batteries in the fuselage exceeded their own thermal limit. The resultant explosion shattered what little remained of the fighter.
“Good kill Four,” Blazer stammered, the dangerous maneuver saving their lives.
“It’s my job Three.”
The implication in that reply did not sit well with Blazer. He scanned the heavens for their prime target. The frigate they’d been attacking drifted through space, dead, the lights of the bridge and other sparse windows dark. Even its few remaining turrets lay silent as he looked it over. He spotted the emergency vents for the main reactor – they’d been blasted open, scorched by nuclear fire. “They dumped their core.”
“Reads that way,” Arion replied. “Looks like it happened right after Zanreb hit it on his run. We were so tied up in our fight, we lost track.”
Blazer nodded and looked for Gavit. “Where’s Six?”
Arion did not reply immediately. “What the Sheol?”
A direction indicator lit up Blazer’s canopy. He twisted about to look up at Nach Six bearing down on the glowing Razer cannon barrel of the Destroyer above them. “Nach Six, clear the blast lane! That thing’s about to fire!”
“No can do, Lead,” Matt replied, his tone that of gritted teeth even through the shroud.
Blazer’s eyes went wide as Gavit dropped right into the path of the glowing barrel of the massive cannon as it prepared to fire. His hearts froze: even when properly constrained the energy released in that blast would obliterate anything directly in front of it. The shields of the destroyer opened in front of the cannon, the final pre-fire cycle. Nach Six released both of their torpedoes.
The twin guided warheads stopped dead in space as Nach Six sped ahead on twin columns of fusion ignited fire. Then the torpedoes gave chase. The point defenses around the cannon fired into the wake of Gavit and Matt’s fighter. They were unable to match the erratic evasion pattern he flew as they drove towards the open maw of the cannon. Gavit hopped up at the last instant, skimming along the curved hull atop the cannon, too close for the point defenses to track. Behind him, all but undetected, the two torpedoes disappeared into the glowing maw.
The inner wall of the cannon disappeared in a flash of light. Blazer did his best not to look away, catching sight of Gavit diving behind the curved hull. He realized what his crazed pilot had done. Looking back at the Razer, the barrel was collapsing in upon itself. The structure had been weakened by the continuous firing, by the build-up of pions pulling at the breached walls and they crumpled, closing off most of the front. Then the cannon discharged.
The blast ripped across the top of the saucer-shaped primary hull. The improperly constrained pions and their containment beam drove through the Razer Cannon opposite and towards the other destroyer. Massive explosions tore
through the first destroyer, ripping open a channel from the cannon to the main reactor. The second Razer cannon shattered. The ship’s fusion core vented into the passageways leading to it, before gouts of irradiated plasma burst forth. The ship shattered, casting the remains of the wrecked primary hull and of the twin crescent arms rocketing away in three directions.
Blazer turned his attention to the second destroyer as Gavit rode the shockwave of the burst fusion core away. At first, he could see nothing wrong with the second destroyer a dozen kilometra away then his optics zoomed in. The beam from the first destroyer had found its mark. The crescent opposite the first destroyer was gone, a debris cloud marking where it had been. A cloud of frozen atmosphere and bodies drifted away from the breached primary and secondary hulls. “Arion?”
“Gokhead is analyzing. The core of that beast was breached clean, meaning it lost containment and vented all its plasma into space. She’s dead in the void.”
“Copy that. Nach Six, Three, what’s your status?”
“Alive and kicking,” Gavit replied, overjoyed. “Still can’t believe that worked, woah!”
“What’s wrong?” Blazer asked.
“An expended ZKEP the size of Gavit’s ego,” Matt replied. “There’s a whole line of them back here.”
“Buy one get one free, Six,” Rudjick hooted before Blazer could offer any conjecture. “Lead, does he get credit for both those kills?”
“Monstero Nach, Lead, adjust course and return to the Wolfsbane. This zone is secured,” Tadeh Qudas boomed.
Blazer looked about. The last remaining frigate was in no shape to fight, limping away on one engine. Its turrets and torpedo launchers had been destroyed; the crew were clearly more concerned with the atmosphere venting all across the hull. They’d be lucky to survive until a Search and Rescue craft could dock when the battle ended, let alone escape the system. “Nach Three copies. Blade Force, form up and prepare to slipstream."
Bridge, UCSBS-Wolfsbane
Captain Sardenon stared at the primary tactical display, his mouth watering. There it was, the Phantom Barker had emerged. Blackened and battered, it rose out of the clouds trailing smoke and fire from a dozen torpedo strikes along its hull.
His plan had worked, drawing the focus of a lifetime’s hatred out into the open. Beam cannons lanced out from his destroyers as they limped into position to fire their asteroid cannons. None of them had escaped unscathed. The wide-area Razer cannon mounted between the Phantom’s runways had seen to that. Captain Sardenon wished he wasn’t stuck here on the backside of this moon, unable to do anything but coordinate the assault.
“Captain, they did it,” Commander Vetter called from his station.
The Captain turned to his First Officer. “Who did what?”
A new holographic window sprang to life beside the Captain; the remains of the destroyer group he’d sent to intercept. Only a single, disabled frigate remained. The two destroyers had gone, and with them the saturation strike that had kept them pinned down. “Officer Margoy, plot us a course through this mess,” he called to the helmsman, motioning towards the volumes of decaying pions around them. “Then bring us in right on top of that bastard. Vetter, what’s the status of that third Sachsen?”
“Retreating Captain. One of its Razers melted down after that last volley.”
“Excellent,” the Captain growled and turned to Sia, his Tactical Officer. “Bring the main beams to maximum power and target that wide-area Razer. All other turrets are to prioritize the Phantom’s Bridge and engines.”
“Aye Sir,” Sia replied from her tactical control station, relaying the order.
“All other ships are to lend fire support and get clear, we’re going CQB.” He pressed the shipwide button on his armrest. “All Hands, Wolfsbane Actual. Prepare for slipstream and close combat, securing the Egg.”
The ship rocked a moment later, red lights illuminating the damage control display. Klaxons sounded alerting them of multiple hull breaches and fires. “Commander Vetter, report!”
The Commander looked over the damage display and threw a quick look towards the helm before turning back towards the Captain. “We’ve collided with several pion pockets. We have breaches all across the port wing. We have containment in the port nacelle, but barely. Hangar Bay 5 took the brunt of it. A pion packet decayed inside their weapons magazine.”
The captain winced at the news and turned towards the helm. “Margoy?”
“Wasn’t on sensors sir,” the puffy-haired man replied, shame in his voice. “But we are now clear of the entrapment zone.”
“Good, Mr Olza, take us in,” he ordered the Navigator, as he laid a reassuring hand on Margoy’s.
A countdown timer appeared as the Wolfsbane prepared to slipstream. Deep within engineering, the captured high-space bulb gathered up the needed dark fluid; changed its state into dark energy. In moments, they slipped away. Blue and green ready lights returned from across the ship, save for the port wing. In less than a pulse, they reverted directly above the Phantom’s blackened hull. “All batteries, fire!” the captain hollered more for himself.
The ship’s two main beams lanced out towards the Phantom, obliterating the Phantom’s shield before coring their way into the massive construct that made up the Wide-Area Razer. At this range, no armor could hope to stand against the shafts of plasma. Metal ablated away in great clouds before a flash ignited beneath them. The bridge went dark an instant later. The ship shuddered with a violence Captain Sardenon had never felt before. He flew into the harness of his command chair.
Ribs cracked under the impact. The sudden acceleration died and he leaned back, wincing in pain. Moans grew around him and cries of pain sprang up from the command pit below. “Report,” he croaked out as emergency lights flickered to life.
There was no response.
“Report, anyone?” he called out again. Screens around his command level began restarting around him.
“The Razer discharged, pion burst,” Officer Slaik called from the sensor station, her voice pained.
“Systems are down across the ship. We’re dead in space,” one of Chief Engineer Baltrow’s technicians called from the engineering station, a dozen orbs illuminating him. “Main overload breakers on the power core tripped. Secondary power cells are online. The EMT is running on backup batteries but our shields are below thirty percent.”
“Give me a visual. I don’t care if it’s a gun-camera.”
The hologram table before him glowed to life. The Phantom hung in space before him, lights out across its hull as well. What remained of the Wide-Area Razer was nothing but twisted metal and a hole through which the Captain had a direct view of the Phantom’s main fusion bulb. “How long before we can get main power back online?”
“They’re working as fast as they can down in engineering sir. But we’re getting casualty reports from across the ship,” the technician replied, hand to his ear.
The Captain turned to Commander Vetter. He remained slumped over his console, a pool of blood forming beneath his face. The Captain jumped from his seat and ran to his XO’s aide, ignoring the cries of his bridge crew on the lower level. A single touch of the Drashig’s neck was all he needed. The vertebrae of his neck were stretched out beyond any hope of survival. The Captain hung his head for a moment and turned back to the floating hologram. “It won’t be in vain.”
The distance to the Phantom increased with every passing cent. The blast had pushed the two great ships apart. One by one, consoles winked to life around the bridge. Captain Sardenon found himself unable to move as medical personnel flooded the bridge to attend to the wounded. He knew the death toll at the stations on the lower level would be high. While the seats there were equipped with crash harnesses and the consoles had emergency air bags, the seats at most stations were little more than round bolsters connected by a single bar. Anyone standing at one of the hologram projectors would have enjoyed even less protection.
A single window appeared on t
he forward SIS wall, drawing his attention. The system was in reboot, but even that one window was cracked and splattered with blood. The captain took a deep breath and turned towards the engineering technician. “Status?”
“Main power is back online. We are restoring the breakers to all major systems in priority order.” The Captain couldn’t imagine how the bridge’s SIS was a priority at the moment. The answer came a moment later as the SIS sprang to life. With it, the bridge illuminated with the faint glow he’d come to know. He looked down towards the lower level. Technicians still manned their posts, med techs seeing to their injuries as their consoles rebooted. Even injured, those that had survived would not abandon their posts. The swell of pride that brought him tore away his doubts before an auburn-haired doctor, her own face bruised, bounded up the stairs.
She scanned the upper level and ran first to Commander Vetter. She felt his neck and found the same snapped neck he had. She ran her scanner across him anyway. “I need a neuro trauma kit up here now. Commander Vetter is down, but I still read some brain activity.”
She turned to the Captain as a pair of med techs ran up to attend to Commander Vetter. “Captain, are you hurt?”
He puffed out his chest, resetting his own ribs and stepped away from her familiar scent. So engrossed was he in the battle that he couldn’t place it at the moment. “I’ll be fine doctor. Engineering, Tactical, where are we?”
“Shields are back online, but barely, shifting power priority to weapons.” Sia called.
“Sir,” Homi called from his comm station. “We have calls coming from the battlegroup requesting status.”
“Put me on.”
He nodded.
“All ships, Wolfsbane Actual, we are coming back online but are half crippled. Report your status and prepare to take the Phantom the old-fashioned way.” The Captain cut the link. “Get me Commandant Dane, if he’s still alive.”
Hell's Razer Page 37
