Blazer looked down through the floor SIS. The missile detonated over the Wildcat’s lower right engine. The engine exploded, rocking the fighter and forcing it into a violent tumble straight into Gavit’s gunsight. Engaging with all six guns, Gavit and Matt made short work of what remained of the Wildcat’s shields, belly armor and power core. The shattered fighter just continued to drift, dead in space, on its previous vector, as Gavit raced past.
Checking his sensors, Blazer found his second wingman, Zanreb dispatching a Tigercat with ruthless efficiency. “Four, commence your attack run. We can’t let that corvette stop the convoy.”
“On it, Three,” then after a moment's pause. “Nice shooting by the way.”
Blazer checked his scanner globe for the three remaining fighters. There was a dark spot in the lower right quadrant. “Arion?”
“Sensor took a hit, filling in from the WSO weave right now.”
The spot cleared enough for Blazer to locate the last three fighters as they lurked beneath the corvette. He angled towards them but then noticed something. The corvette had rolled to keep its port side facing the attackers. “Arion, do you see this?”
Arion waited a moment to respond, studying earlier sensor recordings first. “Yeah, they’re keeping us to port. I’m getting some high-energy interference from the starboard weapons pod that’s disrupting their shields. I’ll bet they burned out the beam on that side.”
“That’s what I thought,” Blazer replied, keying the link. “Four, Three, angle in on the starboard side. The shields and weapons are weak there. Six, let’s draw those fighters off.”
Double clicks of reply came back as Blazer and Gavit both raced ahead and into the fighters’ missile envelopes. No missiles came.
“Ah, poor babies out of missiles,” Gavit chided over the link. “Here, I’ll share mine.”
Gavit fired off a spread of three missiles, one for each fighter and Blazer returned the favor before breaking off to draw turret fire away from Zanreb and Bichard’s fighter. It was a calculated risk, but a fighter out of missiles was also likely out of decoys as well. That made him more useful in covering Zanreb’s run.
Keeping an eye on the trio, Blazer shot ahead and the corvette’s gunners commenced their assault on him. He danced through the defensive screen and checked his sensors. The Tigercat was gone, both missiles finding their marks. The Wildcats had avoided the missiles meant for them however, popping out a few decoys. For one, the encounter ended the same way it would have had it taken the hits. Vectoring away from the missiles the first Wildcat flew right into the path of the burning wreck of the Tigercat. The impact destroyed the fighter just as surely as the two missiles would.
“Six, Three, one got away.”
“Already on it Three,” Gavit chirped.
Blazer skimmed in low over the corvette. He drew fire away as Zanreb slipped past. Zanreb flipped his fighter end for end freeing Bichard to launch their torpedoes. Blazer flipped his fighter around again and gunned his throttle. The two torpedoes limped ahead, their low velocity not tripping the corvette’s automated defenses. Blazer smiled at the tactic as Zanreb raced to catch up. The turrets tracked the two fighters before the torpedoes hit.
Twin, fifty-metra, balls of lightlit up in succession. The first in the weakened shields, disrupting them enough for the second to slip in and detonate above and inward of the anti-matter collider ring. The ship bucked as atmosphere burst out into the anti-matter stream and exploded in bursts of radioactive fire. Unconstrained, the antimatter spilled across the hull annihilating everything it came in contact with until it reached the fuel tanks. The energy of the mutual annihilation ignited the tank and shattered the corvette.
Blazer looked over his shoulder at his team’s work to find Gavit on his return course. The last Wildcat just drifted along, engines silent, but otherwise undamaged. “Six, Three. What happened?”
“He ran out of fuel,” Gavit laughed. “Hit him with the Narfics to be sure, but Lead, we have an intact Wildcat ready for the intel guys to pick over.”
“Copy that. Spear group, you are cleared for your assault,” Blazer called.
Bridge, GFS Barker
How many of my traps will you fall into Sardenon? Admiral Kimmet wondered pushing a stray hair back behind her ear. Damaged and bleeding atmosphere, the Barker continued to fight on. Its escorts moved to engage the Wolfsbane itself after she’d successfully drawn them out. Though the Wolfsbane appeared in a worse shape than her ship, her heavy beams out, the supercarrier fired volley after volley of hyperplasers at them. A few pitiful torpedoes joined the fray. It was almost laughable, and like a fool, Sardenon had withdrawn most of his forces to engage the Barker himself.
She smiled at the orchestration of it all, then it all came crashing down. “Admiral, we have two Stingrays on attack vector!”
“Where?” Kimmet asked and turned towards the tactical board in time to see the two cruisers emerge from behind the Wolfsbane’s sensor shadow. “Take them out!” she roared as dozens of fighters and bombers broke through the clouds around them, launching torpedoes ahead of a dozen asteroids fired from some distant destroyers. Admiral Kimmet stared in wide-eyed fascination as warhead after warhead ate away at their shields, but they held. She was about to breathe a sigh of relief when the ship shuddered. The first of the asteroids had made it through, then another.
She clung to the bulkhead for all she was worth as the two Stingrays raced past, silent in the darkness before the whole ship lurched hard to starboard. She looked at the board: the Stingrays had fired, racing away like the cowards they were. Their beams stripped away the last of the Barker’s EM shields. The ship shuddered under the continued assault before a group of midnight blue Splicer-5000’s raced past the bridge, taking pot shots at the sensor arrays.
“Where did they come from?”
“Port side,” the tactical officer replied, his face screwed up in confusion. “Ma’am, we’re getting reports of…”
“Tanks,” Kimmet cut him off, soberly. To her amazement she watched as over a dozen tugs dropped tanks onto her deck.
“Yes. Ma’am, they’re on the hangar with marauder suits! We’ve been boarded!”
Admiral Kimmet leaned against the tactical board, her knees weak. It wasn’t Sardenon who’d fallen into the trap in his over eagerness for the kill. It was her.
“Ma’am, Confed forces are breaching the weapon’s magazines. What do we do?”
Admiral Kimmet looked around then back at the Predictor in its tube of gasses. She met the eyes of her crew around her. She’d hand selected so many of them, had seen to their breeding and education. Except for the aliens, and the high-borns, each looked like they could have been her family. In a weird way they were, her genes flowing through their veins. “Order any ship that can to escape. Do we have any pilots left aboard?”
“Yes ma’am, but,” the tactical officer’s screen went dead. “Ma’am, we’re losing command function.”
“I know that. Get me a pilot,” she ordered and motioned the twin guards forward. She pointed to the Predictor. “No matter what happens, the Conts can’t get hold of this. Get it and a pilot to my personal launch, now!”
The lights on the bridge died and Admiral Kimmet felt the weight on her body begin to lessen. “They’ve hit the main power trunk to the bridge tower,” someone called in the darkness.
The Admiral slammed a panel next to the tactical console. It opened to reveal a dozen, short range tachcomm transceivers. “Everyone take a brick. Coordinate our defense as best you can. We’ll have to run the ship the old-fashioned way,” she said, handing out the devices as the emergency lights snapped on. “Tactical, do we have any ships left out there that can escape?”
“The Montgomery, ma’am. Before we lost comms, she was making a drift course out of the battlezone. Her dark matter drive is still functioning, but she’s playing dead.”
“Good. Engineering, I want full thrust. Put us between the Wolfsbane and the Montgomery, t
hen overload the power cores. Weapons, everything you have left, launched at the Wolfsbane.”
Reports came in from all around the ship over the handhelds. Drawers similar to the one she opened, opening in response. Her crew did a fine job, but they had to know it was over. There was nothing they could do. She wished she could see the Montgomery make its escape, but in this part of the nebula, she could barely see past the bow. She waited; reports of the boarding party’s progress poured in. They’d breached the bridge tower. It wouldn’t be long now.
The ship lurched, throwing Admiral Kimmet from her feet. “What happened?” The view that burned her eyes as she looked up was all the answer she needed. Her eyes locked on a nuclear inferno bursting from the deck.
“They just blew the main torpedo magazine,” the Damage Control Officer called.
“Ma’am, the number three power core ruptured in the blast,” the engineering officer reported. “We have plasma fountains throughout the ship and the number one core has gone into feedback loop. They can’t shut it down.”
Admiral Kimmet sat down at the first empty chair and looked across the bridge to the door leading towards her private launch at the back of the tower. The hatch was open, a guard, as alien a shape as she would ever allow on her ship, running down the passage along with a pilot in his green flight suit. The pilot stopped for a moment, looking back and Kimmet just nodded to him. Good, glad it’s him. She turned back to the engineering officer standing beside the Predictor’s shattered tube. “Time to detonation?”
“Ten minutes, maybe less.”
“Tactical, contact the Montgomery, if you can. They are to make no attempt to rescue any survivors.” She pulled the antique pistol from her holster. She stared at it a long moment. It was a classic, and had been in her family since the days before first contact, a mint condition Colt 1911, filled with archaic .45 caliber bullets. Were it up to her, she would have passed it to the best of her progeny. She looked back down the empty passage. That chance was long gone now.
The sound of weapons fire reached her. The boarders were close. “Fight until the last,” she ordered, activating the subliminal command she’d had insert in every one of her indentured or bred crew members. Only the high-born and other high ranking officers would be spared the suicidal command. Whether they fought to their honorable death or tried to escape was their decision now. She’d made her peace. She would never be Sardenon’s prize. She placed the muzzle of the pistol in her mouth and pulled the trigger.
Monstero Nach 003
“All fighters retreat to minimum safe distance,” the Otlian Flight Operations Controller repeated for the third time. Blazer was almost sure he’d have to cut his glove off to get free of his afterburner button, he’d pressed it so long and hard. “The Satan’s portside power core has gone beyond critical.”
“Arion, what’s the status on the marines?”
“No word,” Arion grunted. “WSO weave is a mess.”
Blazer looked back. Escape pods rocketed out from all across the Barker then to his relief their dropships began to lift away. “Dropships are launching. Arion, do they have the thrust to get clear in time?”
“Just barely. Reports coming in. The Geffers aren’t jumping ship. Those are our guys in the pods. The Geffers are fighting to the last. What the Sheol?”
“That can’t be right. Can it?” Blazer asked as they breached the safe distance limit. He cut throttle and flipped over to watch.
Blazer had seen power cores rupture before. It was common in space combat, but those had been fighter cores, this, however, this was something else entirely. The power cores of the Barker were massive. The four miniature suns could sustain themselves indefinitely if fed enough hydrogen. The feedback loop the number one reactor had been thrown into, by their marines, meant that the plasma it generated was no longer being distributed across the ship or into the other two reactors that remained. Instead it all dumped back into itself. The containment vessel could only hold back the growing star within so long.
Rays of light seeped through the cracks in the hull, growing brighter and brighter until it engulfed the core of the ship. The mighty ship split into pieces, the central section engulfed in a fusion furnace that exploded and continued to burn before their eyes. It would never achieve enough mass to become its own star, but it shone as bright as one for now.
Still drifting backwards, Blazer watched the shockwave approach and dissipate. It still buffeted the fighter though. He rode his way through the storm and watched the near-perfect sphere of nothingness swell and reach towards them. It was a sight to behold, a miniature star, dimming with each passing cent as bits of the Barker flew away, the remaining two power cores leaving bleeding trails of plasma in their wake.
“All ships, Wolfsbane Actual, Return To Base.”
Bridge, UCSBS-Wolfsbane
It was almost too much to take in. He wanted to splash water in his face to ensure it wasn’t a dream. The Satan, the largest and most powerful carrier in space, was gone. They’d done it. The bridge was silent at first, then a few nervous laughs pierced the room before raucous applause. Were this any other battle, he would have told them all to get hold of themselves, but this... this was beyond amazing.
He turned to the holosphere before him. The rest of the battlegroup approached with an almost undue level of caution, or reverence. Then he saw why. Great hunks of the Barker still remained, the three forward bows rocketing across space, as did most of the bridge tower along with plenty of other debris. The Post Battle Forensic Analysis Group would have a hard time sifting through all of this.
He allowed himself a momentary smile. The rest of the crew might forget the lives lost this cycle, even for a moment, on both sides, but he never could. Not if he wanted to remain a good captain. He turned to Commander Salgou, a speed heal cast on his leg. “Begin fighter recovery operations and commence SAR. There are a lot of stranded people out there.”
“Yes sir, what about the ships that escaped?”
He looked back out at the scene. A Birmingham class had slipstreamed away only a pulse before the Barker had gone up, as had a few other small craft. “Let them run, if they can. I doubt most are even hyperspace capable, but let them spread the word. Let them release it to every channel they can. We took out the Satan, and their Phantom Inferno.” He felt his whole body relax far too much, the fatigue of the last decle falling upon him all at once. He rose to his feet, focussing his all to keep steady. “I will confer with the Admiral and send our report to High Command.”
He took each step of the stairwell down with purpose and pride. Despite their jubilation, the crew went back to work, bringing their comrades homes safe. He knew that the ship would host many victory celebrations in the cycles to come, some small and intimate, others wild, requiring security to step in. He wished he could join them. His celebration would be a single drink and a somber report to High Command that he would have to send via courier. They’d wanted the Barker as a trophy to wage a psychological war on the Geffers. A destroyed ship could be rebuilt, or its name plastered on another to conceal the truth. But if the enemy had it, they had it. Now, they didn’t.
But they did have other prizes, intelligence for one, and numerous crippled ships for study. That new Bremen, for one, with its terrifying Beam Razer. Those crazy bastards the Nip Tails had managed a coordinated assault that had breached the power core on both ends of one. That had vented the fusion bulb into space and had left it stranded, powerless. He’d lost track of it after that. Assuming the crew hadn’t scuttled it, the treasure trove of data within would prove invaluable. Then there were all the Wildcats his pilots had disabled, drifting through the nebula. If they survived the destruction of the Barker, and could be found, then Confederation might find out how the Geffers were closing the tech gap so fast.
Filled with a new pride, he strode down to medical, an idea blooming to life.
UCSB Date: 1006.026
Bridge, UCSBS Trib’Kibal, Prime Jump Point, Dralin S
ystem
Captain Crees wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d slept. Ten cycles maybe? He looked to the holographic counter on his bridge’s SIS with his left pair of eyes. The date and time hung there as he counted the date on his webbed fingers. No, cycles. It was the same cycle that the Wolfsbane, the Trib’Kibal’s sister ship, had gone dark.
The timing of the Geffer’s latest effort to retake the prime jump point couldn’t have been coincidence, not in Crees’ mind. The universe and the war didn’t work that way. His rear-guard action here was intense, his crews running round the clock shifts of stims and sleepers. But they’d had little choice. The Galactic Federation had taken the two smaller jump points in and out of the system, securing both in coordinated assaults launched from hyperspace and in system.
The Trib’Kibal battlegroup had been lucky to hold this jump point after the assault ten cycles earlier. After tridecs of negotiations with the Mapper Guild, they’d relented and allowed the Confederation to mask the jump buoy signal. They buried the new jump code under numerous layers of encryption. And it didn’t happen a moment too soon as reports indicated that the Galactic Federation had launched an assault into a dead system through a jump point using the old jump code.
Despite that, the Galactic Federation deployed an overwhelming force from within the system that crippled half of his battlegroup in the first hects. Confed reinforcements were slow to come as the Geffers continued to rotate ships in and out of the engagement area. They’d send crews away every few hects to rest, only to bring them back fresh, repaired, and rearmed.
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