The Captain eyed the tactical console as the various gunnery stations reported in. His plan was no longer what he had originally intended, but he had more cards to play. A moment later and Savis’ drawl rang across the upper deck. “I’m alive Cap. My boys and I are doing our best to help with damage control though. So, make it quick.”
“Commandant, Saddle Up. You’re going to take the Phantom after I rip out its heart. I need you to recover as many memory cores as you can find. Don’t let them scuttle that data.”
“Aye, Aye Cap’n.”
“Sia, cut that fusion core free the instant we have gunnery back up.”
“Yes sir,” the tactical officer replied with a grin. “Engineering, give me every molecule of plasma you can spare.”
Monstero Nach 003
The sight as Blazer and Arion’s fighter reverted out of slipstream twisted his guts into a knot he wasn’t sure he could ever untie. The Wolfsbane hung dead in space over the Phantom Barker. The lights of both ships were out. Only the faintest glimmer of the Wolfsbane’s shields remained along the interference zone. “Arion?”
“I’m reading power from the Wolfsbane. The main core is still up, but something tripped all the safeties. Probably whatever that burst we saw on sensors a few pulses ago. Stand by.” Arion went silent for a moment. “Gokhead and the others concur. Radiation patterns indicate that the Wide-Area Razer cannon exploded. The whole volume is filthy with decaying pions. Don’t get close.”
As if to illustrate the point several flashes lit up the darkness, the decaying pi-mesons colliding with bits of debris. Blazer watched intently as lights began to flicker back to life aboard the Wolfsbane’s few windows, and then, the Phantom. “Lead, Nach Three, a turret just twitched on the Phantom. Do we engage?”
“All Units, Nach Lead, do not engage the Phantom. I repeat, do not engage the Phantom. The volume is too dangerous. There are bombers and attack craft on attack courses for the Wolfsbane. Move to intercept.”
Blazer turned his attention to the incoming attack craft. Most were accelerating well below their maximum thrust. The crews were either attempting to conserve what remained of their fuel, or limping back into battle. He brought their fighter about and set an intercept course. Checking his stores, he saw he had only three missiles left. He’d expended the rest in their attacks on the destroyer force. “Arion, what’s the status of our forces?”
“Most of the space wing is limping out of the field of engagement. Reading damage to a whole host of ships. The WSO weave is flooded with repair assistance and backup requests. The Geffers aren’t any better off. Watch for debris and dead fighters.”
Blazer pulled his throttle up to avoid a wrecked Solaar, its right wing and sensor stalks gone. Zipping past at their velocity he couldn’t be sure if he’d seen the pilot inside the sealed cockpit or not, but swore that he had. Blazer shook it off and focussed on a Valkyrie Bomber leading a pack of Mosquitos, their drive arrays sputtering. “Arion lock all three missiles onto that Valkyrie. Then prioritize the Mosquitos and any torpedoes.”
Three lock diamonds snapped into place around the Valkyrie in response. Before Blazer could fire, a flash lit up the darkness from the Wolfsbane. Blazer turned to look. The underside of the Wolfsbane glowed with columns of red fire. The beam cannons were back online.
“B, the ‘Bane. She’s cutting the Phantom’s power core out, and that Valkyrie. She’s breaking off for the planet.”
“They’re going to try and head back, inform the Barker.” Blazer slammed his thumb down on his afterburner switch. “Four, Six, Nach Three, form on me. Arion, can we disable a warhead on one of the missiles and make it act as a beacon somehow?”
Arion remained silent for a moment. “Gokhead and the others are working the issue. Setting missile three aside, she’s an EAM-274, telemetry guided. Gokhead is restitching the firmware.”
Blazer grunted in response. The lock diamond for the third missile went red instead of the green of the others. As he reached the extreme range of the missiles, the first two lock diamonds shifted to blue. The glow from beneath the Wolfsbane disappeared. Blazer pressed on. The g-forces crushed him into his seat as the last lock diamond sprang to blue. He flicked up the missile launch cover with his thumb and crushed the button beneath.
One after another, the three missiles sprang from their hatches and sped away. Blazer watched before his threat display lit up. The Mosquitos that had been on a vector to attack the Wolfsbane had turned their attention on them. “Arion?”
“Break off. I’ll keep it on target.”
Blazer nodded and hauled back on his throttle, kicking his rudder to the right to skid the fighter about. The first Mosquito came into view and he opened fire. Nach Four and Six joined in. His fighter rocked as a round from the light bomber’s pair of heavy mass-drivers ripped through his shields. His damage display sprang to life. The left wing reported faults in the cannons. He slammed forwards and down on his throttle and pulled back on the stick. Tickling his afterburner, he fought to cancel his backwards slide, then risked a peek over his shoulder.
The left wing had been holed. Blazer had to suppress a double take as he looked through the massive gash the round had torn just outboard of his plaser cannon. He locked his eyes forward again and glanced down. His fuel tanks were already more than half expended. Had there been more fuel in that bladder, the round would have burst one of his fuel cells open, destroying the craft. Blazer nosed over and dove away from the engagement. He dared not risk Arion’s telemetry lock on their modified missile until it found its new home. “Four, Six, Nach Three, bait and hook.”
Double clicks of affirmation rang back as plaser rounds flashed past. The Mosquito remained in pursuit. Blazer twisted the fighter about. He flew an erratic and fuel liberal evasion course that threatened to tear him from his seat. He glanced down at his sensor sphere. The Mosquito was still with him, but his two wingmen were on it like flies on a rotten corpse. As the massive gas giant re-entered his view, he caught the flashes of missile explosions along the Valkyrie’s rear. “Arion?”
“Shields down. TLM bird just rammed home.”
“The signal?” Blazer croaked, corkscrewed away.
“Dirty and weak, but it’s there.”
“Three, Six, on my mark, break, hard left.”
Blazer double clicked his transmit button.
“Mark!”
Blazer hauled over on the stick and squeezed the slide control before the blur of Gavit’s fighter rushed past, all six guns blazing. Blazer snuck a look over his shoulder. The concentrated fire of both his wingmen overwhelmed the bomber’s shields. Rounds ripped through the forward hull, shredding the cockpit and flanking torpedo mandibles before the bomber began to tumble away.
“Good kill you two,” Blazer hollered and spun his fighter around to re-join them. He took a moment to look back at the Wolfsbane. She’d begun to burn away from the drifting hulk of the Phantom. Dropships had launched from the pockmarked and blistered underside, vectoring towards the enemy carrier. It was a disheartening sight, but what lay beyond made his hearts swell. The Phantom hung helpless in a decaying orbit around the gas giant, a jagged hole bored straight through.
“Monstero Nach Lead, Wolfsbane Control, bring your people in. We have crews trapped all across the ship. You are cleared for emergency landings in the dorsal hangar.”
Blazer returned his attention to the Wolfsbane and could only stare. Their hangar and launch bay was hulled. A massive gash had ripped their fighter’s home open to space. He swallowed hard and hoped that his maintenance crew had survived. He doubted it, however. The explosion looked to have been only a few frames back from their shelf. The joy of their victory began to fade.
UCSB Date: 1005.379
Observation Shuttle, UCSBS-Wolfsbane, Drobile System
The sight of his ship’s battered hull soured Captain Sardenon’s stomach. Pockmarks and blisters from the detonation of the unconstrained pi-mesons of the Wide-Area Razer covered the vent
ral surface. Maintenance crews flitted about, patching or reforming the damaged armor where they could. Where they couldn’t, they pulled entire sheets of Tacit Steel away, replacing them with more standard hull armor. That metal was one of the rarest minerals in known space. The hulls of all five Tacit Class Carriers had been built using the only known source of it, a single asteroid that had emerged from a hyperspace jump point.
The science of how the metal could survive within hyperspace currently escaped the Captain, and most of it was only theory. But every spare bar of the material had been mined from the rock to build these ships. To see patches of the more common composite hull armor grafted to his ship felt like a slap to the face.
He turned to Commander Baltrow, his Otlian chief engineer, as he took stock of the damage. The arms on his right side remained in speed heal casts. “How long Crae?”
The big four-armed being rubbed at his chin. He looked as if he hadn’t slept since before the battle, but then neither had he. “Without pulling us into a dock, I’d say a tridec or two just to fix all the hull damage. We were lucky sir. Most of the damage was external. We lost five ventral turrets. We can scrap them to repair the rest. Then there’s the damage to Hangar 5,” he said pointing towards the gash in the side of his ship. “That’ll take three tridecs or more to repair, and that’s if we’re lucky.”
The Captain looked up. Welding torches and work lights illuminated the otherwise darkened hangar as repair crews hacked away the worst of the damage. “How long until we can resume flight operations from there?”
Commander Baltrow threw him an incredulous look. “We can have the rear doors working again in a couple cycles. But the whole bay will be under vacuum until we can finish cutting away all that mess,” he said pointing towards the jagged hole. “Even then, putting together a patch large enough will take a few decles. I wouldn’t trust that to hold in a fight.”
Captain Sardenon looked down at his macomm. The space wing hadn’t escaped the battle without losses. Enough squadrons to fill half that hangar had been wiped out, and most other squadrons had taken significant losses. He already had Colonel Malamas, Air Group Commander, juggling crews and ships around between the remaining squadrons. Even accounting for that, there wouldn’t be enough room in the three remaining fighter hangars for all of them. Most of the homeless fighters and squadrons were currently waiting in the bomber and dropship hangars. The massive bomber hangar was also packed with a number of captured enemy fighters whose crews had surrendered. Still more remained moored to the external docking pads, or had been transferred to the destroyers’ hangars.
The alert of an incoming video call lit up his macomm. He flicked the button towards the nearest holoprojector to answer. A grainy green and blue hologram of Commander Vetter appeared. A massive contraption held his head and body in place, a nano-surgery collar wrapped around his misshapen neck. “Captain, Sov Krale has submitted his initial battle damage assessment to our forces,” the Vetter reported, his vertical lips barely twitching.
“Commander, I am aware of our losses. What are you even doing awake? I thought Doctor Vaughnt sedated you?”
A hint of a smile crossed his half-paralyzed face. “She went off shift. I can still work, even from here.”
“Commander, you’re going home to recover on the next outbound medical flight!”
“And in the meantime, I can still perform my duties. Commandant Dane wants to know what’s taking ‘them blasted shuttles so long to get here?’ I hope I’m saying that right.”
The Captain ran his hand down his face in exasperation. Savis’s troops were quick and efficient, but had recovered little in the way of useful data. The Geffers had blown their main computer core before the first dropship had even launched. The crew’s individual handcomms had been the next things to go. They’d be lucky to scrape together enough data to fill even a single macomm. “Commander, I thought we’d lost you. You suffered an internal decapitation that should have killed you.”
“And what, leave you to do all the paperwork? I think not. Dr Vaughnt and her team have done a fantastic job keeping me alive. So, until she either sedates me again, or I board that shuttle, I have a job to do.”
The Captain shook his head. There was no arguing with his XO like this, even as nano-bots rebuilt his spinal cord. “Fine. Get the ship back on regular duty rotation as soon as possible and see about getting a mobile repair dock out here for us.” A dark realization came over the Captain. He looked out of the observation dome at his prize as it orbited the gas giant beneath them. What if disabling us out here was the plan all along? A test of new tech on a carrier that could barely do the job anymore and no one would miss? Disabling or destroying us in the process? And we played right into it.
Briefing Room 13, UCSBS-Wolfsbane
Blazer could read the exhaustion he felt reflected back at him by the team as they sat in the briefing room before him. For two cycles, alongside the Explosions and each ship’s damage control teams, they’d been setting up emergency airlocks and/or cutting their way into sealed off areas of the ships in the battlegroup to rescue trapped crews. Now, with all the compartments opened, the alive rescued, and the dead removed, they finally had a break.
If it were up to him, he wouldn’t even be having this debriefing. He wanted nothing more than to just stitch it to the team, and go back to his quarters. There he would just sit on his couch and hold Marda and Chrisvian close before he passed out. He needed to feel them in his arms. He knew they were alive and well, but he had to feel them close. It didn’t matter what they did, so long as he could hold them. Despite that, he had to take care of things here first.
Blazer waited as the last of the team sat, and rubbed his eyes. Rank came with privileges and responsibilities and right now was a mix of the two. He cleared his throat. The air of the ship tasted drier than normal. “First off let me tell you, you all did a fantastic job the last few cycles.”
Grunts of approval washed through the team.
“And, after this debrief, Tadeh Qudas has convinced the Captain to let us all take three cycles leave.”
Blazer didn’t really expect any cheers. They were all too tired for that. Rudjick did manage to hoot and twirl his hand around in mock celebration.
“Your full debriefs, kill scores, stats, all that, have been stitched to you. But Tadeh Qudas wanted me to announce that, yes, Gavit, you do get the kill on that Sachsen, and an assist on the other. Once things settle down, you can mark them on your fighter.”
Gavit and Matt exchanged a quick hand slap before Chris elbowed her new husband. “Do something that stupid again Officer Anit and you’ll regret it.”
“I thought I was keeping my name,” Gavit replied. “Chamalad tradition and all that.”
Chris hit him again. “We’ll discuss that later. Just accept it, and don’t make me punish you for your stupidity.”
“People,” Blazer called, the last of his stims beginning to wear off. “Let’s get this done. Long story short, we won this battle, but at a cost. The Wolfsbane captured the…” Blazer looked down at his macomm, his eyesight fuzzy. “…GFS Inferno, as we’ve come to find out. Therefore, all reports will be amended to replace the name Drobile Phantom with the GFS Inferno,” he said, reading off the official script.
Rudjick made a rude up and down gesture with his hand in his lap. Zithe, beside him, didn’t even react he was so exhausted.
“That being said, the battlegroup took serious damage and losses. And our little trick with the missile was for naught. Turns out the jump point that was inside the tear snare collapsed before the bomber could reach it. Something about the gravitational pressure being too much.”
Gokhead raised a hand. “Any chance we can get that data to review?”
Blazer shrugged. “Stitch in a request. I’m sure the whole science division is on it and would appreciate the help.”
In response, a holographic up arrow appeared besides Gokhead’s implant. Blazer wasn’t sure when Que Dee had add
ed that silent interface to his communications repertoire.
Blazer rolled his eyes and continued. “SAR has officially transitioned into recovery mode for anyone they haven’t picked up already. Plus, as you all know, our hangar was caught in a pion decay explosion. Chiefs Tolic, Kren, and Ster from our squadron were all killed in the explosion along with a half-dozen more of our technicians.” Blazer felt the force of that slam him. All he had to identify the dead crewmembers were their last names. He couldn’t even place faces to them. “And we were lucky. The Nips lost over half of their technical support team. Services for all personnel who died will be held next cycle.”
Blazer let that sink in for a moment. “In the meantime, you’re all dismissed. Go get some rest. You’ve more than earned it, but show next cycle at twenty hundred in dress uniform.”
The team began to slowly shuffle out of the seats before Blazer looked at Zanreb and pointed to him. “Zanreb, I need you to stay behind a moment. It won’t take but a few pulses.”
Zanreb nodded and sat back down. Blazer watched the rest of the team file out. Arion waited just inside the closing hatch. Blazer turned back to Zanreb. Beyond the bags under his dark eyes, he couldn’t read the man at all. A true operator. “Do you have a problem with me?”
Zanreb took a moment to answer, drawing in a deep breath before he did so. “No, sir.”
“Then would you care to explain why I had to ask for an assist during the battle with that Phantom-4? Why you didn’t come to our aid sooner? Moreover, what is your deal? We welcomed you to our team tridecs ago. And, aside from official duties, you never hang with any of us.”
Zanreb looked to Arion then locked eyes with Blazer. “Because you’re the great and mighty Blazer Vaughnt. You can do no wrong. Why would you need my help?”
Blazer looked to Arion. His big friend just shrugged and shook his head. “What are you talking about? I have never put on airs like that. Sheol, I’m as fallible as anyone else. My first op after coming back on duty was proof enough of that,” he said feeling his side where he’d taken a hit tridecs earlier. The scarred skin still didn’t feel right.
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