Movement above him caused Styker to glance up and he saw the large corvette move silently through space. For a moment the ship continued to decelerate in order to await more instructions from the fleet, but then without any warning reignited its thruster banks and lazily turned to port. The ship’s complement of two remaining Azure flight Dragonfires and Pegasus combat vehicles followed suit. Commander Telwin’s instincts told him something was off even before all of his sensors and communications gear malfunctioned. As in practice the TacLink remained in full operation and so combat effectiveness was not degraded. They had all anticipated for this to happen and as such there was no panic among any of his pilots. The Odessa was prepared as well and quickly confirmed its Link with the squadron. Accompanying said Link was a packet of data regarding possible movement detection by the corvette’s sensitive electro-optical suite.
With this new information Styker altered the squadron’s course to match that of the Odessa and began to scan that area of space as well. There was nothing to be seen in that area except for the blackness of space and the twinkling of distant stars. The only objects to register in the entire area were a pair of detection buoys at over a million kilometers away. It was his spectroscopic array, linked with those on the other fighters of his squadron, which finally picked up something foreign in the background of monotony. Acting in semi-autonomous mode the system began to localize the area for a better scan when a red-violet beam lashed out across the space from his current ten o’clock to strike the heavy corvette just past its midsection.
This beam was many times more powerful than the ones previous and rocked the warship severely. Styker saw the corvette’s powerful shields ignite in a brilliant blue all around the ship. He thought he could actually see them bowing inward towards the vessel’s hull as the beam sustained its contact. Armor plating beneath the impact site actually scared and vaporized from the excess energy not absorbed by the shields. Only the quick reaction by the ship’s commander and crew saved the Odessa as they repositioned her in space. Styker watched the ship drop slightly, causing the beam to now hit the top of the vessel inside of the middle, just as the shields failed. The mostly violet colored lance of energy finally punched through and slammed into the Odessa’s topside hull just past the midline. It burned through the armor rather cleanly, slicing straight through to the other side. When the beam finally shut off a second later a trench could be seen cut through part of the ship, exposing the support structures underneath. Unfortunately this was also the area that contained some of the vessel’s electro-optical targeting systems as well as the main data link relay, making communication even more difficult now.
In exchange for the damage the enemy had inadvertently revealed their position. The Dragonfire’s PAS retraced the beam to its origin and confirmed instantly that it was the same point in space where the previous spectral signals had been detected moments ago. At somewhere around three thousand kilometers away, the enemy appeared to be even closer than the computer had previously estimated. How they had gotten so close without being detected by other systems Styker did not know, but those questions mattered very little at the moment. The fact remained that another enemy force was now in the region trying to flank the Regal CBG and the only thing in there were the Knights and one damaged heavy corvette.
By this time the Odessa had reached a similar assessment and let loose with a barrage of missiles just as Styker rallied his troops, “Knights form up on me! I want a flyby to assess that enemy force.”
“Regal FOPSCOM, Knight Lead, engaging enemy forces. Sending location and details. Requesting resupply,” Commander Telwin relayed to the carrier as his fighters accelerated forward past the Odessa.
The corvette rotated slightly at that same moment and moved forward towards the threat with its long range weapons firing. Styker saw particle beams light up the space around him as they flew past his squadron and into the blackness beyond in a search for targets. Most missed at this distance do to most of the most sensitive targeting systems malfunctioning, but a few actually managed to find targets and the commander watched as two explosions blossoms out in front of him. These fireballs were calculated to be closer than the enemy ships were supposed to be. Styker was confused for a second, his mind not able to process information as quickly do to the still throbbing headache, but knew inside that something was indeed off.
“Raven, detecting possible enemy fighters, estimated to number between thirty to forty craft,” the Odessa’s XO updated him. The corvette’s more sophisticated and sensitive spectrographic sensors able to now pick up these new contacts that had stayed hidden this entire time. “Redirecting Klip Two for confirmation.”
The Pegasus drone appeared on Styker’s HUD and maneuvered away from its formation at high speed in the direction of the two explosions, which had now faded. He saw flashes of orange light followed by more detonations, bigger and brighter than the previous, off in the distance at the same time. These were from the interception of some of the missile from the launched salvo by the enemy defensive guns. What happened to the other missiles Styker wasn’t sure, but he had a good guess considering the defenses he had observed on the alien frigate class vessel he had earlier engaged.
“Lead, picking up an energy spike!”
“Copy that Gator, plot it,” Styker replied just in time to see another red-violet beam streak through cold space towards the Odessa.
Coming from slightly below the Federation naval ship, this beam fired up at the vessel’s underside. Fortunately the powerful beam missed a little to the aft of the Odessa as the ship propelled itself forward. It quickly readjusted without powering down, however, and reached across the vast distance to hammer into the ship’s rear. With its shields barely recovered the Griffin class corvette was helpless against the assault. The weapon instantly punched through and cut into the hull, slicing off an entire part of the rear quarter.
For a moment nothing else happened. The damaged ship continued to move through space with its weapons discharging towards the enemy. That all changed in the next few seconds as a large explosion consumed the entire rear. The rear one-third of the warship tore open and blasted apart into space as the dark matter reactor went critical from the impact, adding further injury to a vessel that had already sustained such at its forward sections. Damage to it could have been horrendously worse if the Odessa’s SMS had not jettisoned the reactor core into space just before its detonation. Inertia kept the ship moved forward as its maneuvering thrusters strained to keep it stabilized. At that moment all systems throughout the stricken vessel ceased to function, until finally after a moment the surviving backup generators were brought online.
To Styker’s amazement he saw the heavy damaged remains continued to fight on within his sensor display. In a tribute to its superior design, the reinforced bulkheads and compartmentalized internal structure held the remainder of the ship together even as the massive blast slammed into its unshielded body. At the same time this construction kept a majority of its crew safe from harm. Multiple backup systems powered up throughout the remains of the corvette and feed energy back into the weapons systems, which began to discharge deadly energy beams of their own once again. The commanding officer must have known this was the beginning of the end for the ship because within moments the Odessa’s entire stock of missiles launched into space towards the enemy.
Over seventy missiles of various classes leapt from their vertical launch cells and accelerated at the oncoming alien fighters as well as one of the smaller opposing warships. Guidance for a majority of these warheads came from the Pegasus drone now closing on the enemy fighter formation. It quickly confirmed the number and class of craft detected by the corvette before relaying this data back to the ship’s commander. Following this external management the missiles fell upon the alien fighters just as the Knights were coming within weapons range of them.
Styker’s zoomed in display allowed him to observe this engagement. A number of fighters scattered to try and ev
ade the missiles, but others came closer to together. Just before impact he saw many of the first salvo deflect away. This let him know that the fighters had similar defenses as the alien frigate his squadron had engaged earlier. The next wave that followed was more successful and multiple explosions blossomed out in space as the missiles took their toll. Styker saw other fighters takes hits with what seemed liked minimal damage. None disengaged for repairs, however, and continued on into the fight.
“Here we go Knights!” Commander Telwin exclaimed as he drove his squadron straight into the cluster of enemy craft.
The two opponents came together at incredible speed. Streaks of blue and orange laser fire crisscrossed through space. Some missed completely while others impacted against the shields of both sides. To the credit of their superior training the particle beams of the Knights were more accurate, as witnessed by the increasing number of hits on enemy fighters. This was proven further when three more of the alien fighters went up in large fireballs as particle beams sliced into them. Something about seeing these alien craft up close suddenly brought up flashbacks of the past for Styker. Their design seemed awfully familiar to him and now that he saw them directly up close he instantly recognized them. He could swear that it looked very similar to the Stingray class fighter used by the UPF Navy over fifty years ago. Styker remembered watching historical footage of those fighters in old war holovids as well as history shows. He hadn’t seen one outside of museums and collection show pieces.
Apparently the commander wasn’t the only one to take notice of that fact, “does anyone else think those look like Stingrays?” Knight Seven, York, called out just then.
“Cut the chatter York,” Styker smiled a little at her military knowledge, he knew she was a big military history buff, “you’re right though.” He added the last part as the fighter coming up in front of him fired out a missile.
Staying calm Styker immediately shifted targets. He let his eyes drift over the incoming warhead and kept the Dragonfire flying straight. The fighter craft automatically readjusted to line up the shot as he mentally instructed his PAS to target the missile. Rapidly fired bursts from the twin laser cannons fired out and slammed into the missile seconds after its launch. Styker watched the warhead ignite almost instantly in a bright flash before forming a spinning singularity directly in the path of the alien fighter. The enemy pilot had almost no time to evade its own weapon, possibly surprised by this interception, and flew straight into it. In the next instance Styker saw the entire fighter disappear from existence. Seeing this brought back flashbacks of Brent Revington’s death, but he held himself together, choosing instead to redirect those feelings against the opposition.
In the next moment the engagement turned into a full-fledged melee as the Federation and alien fighters came together. Heavy outnumbers, Styker was actually slightly relieved when a group of the enemy separated from the fight and flew away. It was also at that moment he triggered his last missile and luckily watched it slam into the Stingray-like fighter he was chasing after. The magpulse warhead detonated right over the craft’s cockpit, temporally knocking out some of the electronics and causing the engines to stall and the shields to fail momentarily. Commander Telwin let loose with a particle beam barrage before the warhead even detonated, watching as some of the beams dissipated upon hitting the fighter’s shields before the final ones pierced through after their failure. One of the delta shaped wings separated as a number of beams struck it, while the others impacted the main fuselage to set off a catastrophic explosion that shattered the entire fighter.
“Odessa, Raven, you have enemy fighters closing on your position,” Styker warned as his Dragonfire flew through the spreading debris field of the destroyed enemy fighter and noticed the new course of the group that had separated earlier.
There was nothing more the Knights could do for the drifting corvette. Styker knew full and well what would now happen to the now relatively lightly shielded vessel. He mentally saluted all of those brave men and women aboard and pushed his fighter back into the dogfight. As he reengaged more violet lances reached out across space to strike at the Odessa. Each one cut deep into her severing whole sections of the ship cleanly off. These beam attacks were followed by a flyby missile assault from the Stingray fighter group. The heavy corvette was able to claim two of these enemy fighters before the projectiles went off. Small black holes formed all over the main structure of the ship, disintegrating large portions and even swallowing up a number of lifepods that tried to jettison from the ship to safety. Finally all opposition from the Odessa ceased. Unlike in the simulations there was no massive blast to light up the surrounding blackness. All that remained was a holed out wreckage of a once great warship surrounded in flames feed by what little oxygen remained within her, no longer held at bay by failed shield generators.
“Lead, I’m Oscar Mike,” Knight Five, Junior Lt. Spencer ‘Ice’ Alervin, called out.
“Oscar Mike also,” Six added a second later.
Other members of his squadron responded similarly to indicate that they were out of missiles, when his second in command Lt. Commander Ari ‘Savage’ Trazman spoke out, “Raven, those bastards are going after the escape pods!”
Styker called up the sensor display and heard Gator, Knight Eight, through the TacLink as well. “Those sons of …,” he started to say but never finished, “radiation spike! Loosing cont…”
The message suddenly cut out and the commander’s Dragonfire detected the radiation surge as well. It instantly matched its character to that which had been detected at Chu-Tsao. He scanned his surroundings in a search for the disappeared fighter, concentrating his search on the last area of detection. Because of the enemy jamming, Styker’s standard sensors had no way of picking up Knight Eight. However, no sign of an explosion was found, which brought some hope to the commander.
“Gator, what’s your status?” Styker tried to contact the man to no avail, “Gator respond.”
“Raven, I’m on it!” Ari called out and he saw her Dragonfire break off towards Eight’s former location.
He shifted his attention back to the fight and was instantly grateful for this renewed concentration when he noticed an enemy fighter slipping in behind him. With that began another space ballet of evasive maneuvers and deadly laser beams. The enemy pilot was no rookie either, proven by the fact that he or she matched his every move and there would be an occasional impact against Styker’s rear shields. Other Knights were locked in similar struggles, but were all holding their own against the enemy fighters.
The Dragonfire’s infrared detector went off during one of his side rolls. It pointed to a massive surge of heat in the direction of the enemy warship formation. The source was actually from multiple detonations by the Odessa launched missiles, which had finally struck their target, Hotel Seven. A wave of three magpulse missiles made it through the enemy’s defenses and went off just before a following salvo of five large Anubis ASMs impacted her. With the vessels shields in temporary failure most of the powerful warheads slipped through and detonated against the ship’s hull, heavily damaging the frigate sized vessel, but still not completely putting it out of the fight. Another IR burst was caught a second later, however, this one came from Knight Three’s location.
“Savage, sitrep!” Styker inquired instantly, pulling back on the control stick to send the fighter climbing rapidly. This put more distance between him in the enemy just as another radiation alert blared out throughout the cockpit. At the same moment one of his engines cut out momentarily and his rear sensor array went offline. The sensors were already mostly useless due to the jamming, so Styker didn’t mind their loss, but the engines he could not do without. He quickly associated the two occurrences, though. The enemy must be using some sort of radiation weapon that was capable of knocking out Federation electronics.
“Sorry Boss, just downed another Sting,” the Lt. Commander’s voice finally pierced through Styker’s ears as she referred to the short-hand sla
ng for the enemy fighter that the squadron had begun to use. “Gator owes me a beer the next time we’re at port.”
“I’m sure he’ll buy you a couple, Three,” he sighed in relief and instantly hit the Dragonfire’s maneuvering thrusters, while cutting his main engines, making the slick fighter flip backwards and onto its back. In a fraction of a second the fighter completed the hundred eighty degree and Styker ended up upside down facing the enemy head on now. As the Dragonfire continued to move along its previous path because of the momentum Styker took aim and fired a long burst from his laser cannons. These rapid fired shots were low powered and peppered the Sting’s shields. They continued to do so when he triggered his particle beams. These blue beams finally broke through the enemy’s defenses and struck the cockpit directly, sending the craft spinning away out of control.
“Gator is EV Lead, lucky for him the ejectors still worked. Enemy got his fighter good,” Savage replied before adding, “I don’t think he’ll last long in this environment. Specially if they are going after any survivors.”
“We’ll just have to keep them busy until SR arrives.”
“Commander, I’m reading Mules inbound,” Knight Four called out as she noticed the resupply drones entering the engagement zone.
Going after another Stingray fighter, Styker finally saw the drones on his TacLink as well. The Mules were fully autonomous craft. At ten meters long and almost that wide they were over half the size of a Dragonfire fighter. Nearly their entire volume was dedicated to ordinance storage and handling. One of these drones singled Styker out as the squadron leader and accelerated towards him. In mid-flight, as he maneuvered behind the enemy for a shot, this Mule came in from his port side and flip upside down before sliding in directly under his fighter.
Con-Red: Recourse Page 56