As Frost scanned the horizon ahead, the heads-up display briefly flickered with another Walküre gunship. He glanced straight back to investigate; sure enough, the Hound's gunship was skipping its way through the craft headed for Ceres' surface.
"Ryan's gunship is over there!" he called aloud. "Just beyond that convoy of landers!"
"Shoot at them, then!" suggested White.
"I'm not going to risk killing my boy!" Frost growled at her.
"Ed, if you don't disable that thing before the SAMs get him, your boy's going to be a dead fucker anyway!" she protested.
"SAMs?" Frost asked in a bemused tone. "Port Royal doesn't have any SAMs! Since when did Port Royal have SAMs?"
"Thanks to Grumman in Hygiea, it does now!" White confirmed. "Blame Mags and her weird relationship with Hermod IL's chief executive for getting them here so soon! Now are you gonna wipe those landers before they whip up a shitnado all over Port Royal or what?!"
"Been a while since I used one of these..." Frost remarked as he targeting reticle's gaze upon the nearest lander, the rotary cannon's five barrels spinning up. The whirr of the motorised drum churning ammunition into the cannon's firing chamber filled the cockpit as Frost thumbed the trigger.
The first landing craft ahead of the gunship exploded in a puff of flames as a storm of red bullet tracers ripped into its hull, sending twisted metal and dead levies spinning into the depths of space. Frost glanced at the next dropship and pressed the trigger once again to unleash a flesh-ripping tempest of fire. The leftmost engine of dropship number two exploded in a plasmatic burst, sparking as the craft snapped in half and crashed into one of the devastated battlecruiser wrecks. White had to roll the Walküre and guide it on its side through the split in the cruiser's hull before turning it upside down. The move placed the enemy troopships below the Walküre and back into Frost's view as it emerged from the other side. Frost picked up the ball served to his court by opening up once again on the third dropship in the queue.
By this point the others on the battlefield had sifted through the confusion and come to realise that one of their own gunships was shooting at them. Frost deduced such as a stream of gunfire came from the remaining two dropships ahead of their Walküre, the purple tracer fire distracting him as one of the bullets crashed against the armoured cockpit glass.
"What about the turrets?" he asked. At that point a brilliant flash to his right caught his eye, briefly drawing his attention towards its source.
Another destroyer had exploded in a sharp burst of fire; Frost then recalled how the Martians would install self-destruct devices into their warships to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. Part of his mission to destroy those light dreadnoughts during the war involved activating those devices with a remote control, thus taking out the ships and a huge chunk of the dockyard where they were undergoing repair.
"Walküres are designed for heavy atmospheric combat and come with enough armour to beat off twenty-mil AP," White chuckled, returning Frost to the real world. "Those point-defence turrets are designed to kill atmospheric fighters and missiles, but they won't even dent this thing."
"No, but that might leave more than just a dent..." Frost had sighted something else on his scopes.
White turned to what he was looking at and caught sight of one of the fleet's corvettes moving to protect the landing craft, its flaring engines placing it on an intercept path with the Walküre. The defence turrets on the ship's upside flashed their barrels, forcing White to move her gunship aside. A brilliant blue cloud of plasma erupted right where the Walküre would have been were it not for her manoeuvre, and several more began to blossom around the craft.
"Fasten your seatbelt, Frosty-boy," White smirked. "This'll be a tight one!"
"Don't call me Frosty-boy again..." Frost grumbled, only to be pulled into his seat as White whipped the craft around with the attitude control blocks.
Closing in on one of the ruined destroyers in reverse, White shoved the throttle forward, the Walküre skimming along its side out of the corvette's line of fire and scorching the armour plate with the main thruster like a blowtorch. Yanking the throttle back and allowing the gunship to drift just under the destroyer, White throttled forward once more as space opened up in front of her, pushing the gunship forward. The corvette ahead had begun to turn toward them in an attempt to fly over the destroyer and open up with its plasma flak cannons after outflanking the gunship. The vessel was still mid-turn when White's craft burst out from under the destroyer, giving no time for the cannons to rotate and fire at the gunship at such close range.
"Frost! Pop a couple of missiles into its service bay!"
As directed by White, Frost's sight zeroed in on the gap on the corvette's belly closed off by a large sliding door. Switching to the laser-guided missiles on the Walküre's wing pylons, he loosed two of them, one to weaken the door and the other to blast through. As soon as the missiles began to fly, White ceased thrust and pulled the gunship into another drift, facing the corvette as it slid underneath.
"Special delivery for Assholes Incorporated!" White set loose a vicious smile as she depressed her own joystick's trigger. "Courtesy of Go Fuck Yourself Industries!"
The gunship unleashed a flurry of armour piercing rockets on the corvette's underside from its underwing pylons. The munitions struck to full effect against the ship's weaker underside, the flash of ammunition exploding within the vessel leaving White satisfied. As she took the Walküre under its hull, the missiles that Frost had released punched through the service bay door and detonated, leaving a brilliant spark of fire in the gunship's wake as the corvette snapped in twain behind them. Frost almost felt the raw power of the explosion rattle through his soul as metal and debris showered the cosmic void around the shipwreck.
"Funnily enough, that move back there with the destroyer was what caused me to crash in that sim I mentioned," White said with nonchalance.
"Seriously?!" Frost bellowed. "We're in the middle of a battlefield, I'm stuck in a gunship with a self-professed amateur pilot, and you think the prospect of crashing is an appropriate topic of conversation right now?!"
"I'd go as far as to say the probability of us crashing is generally the least of our worries at this very moment in time," White retorted, a huge smirk on her face. "So I might say that it would bring some small solace talking about this gunship faceplanting into the armoured bulk of an enemy battleship, which would at least kill us instantly rather than see us slowly suffocate to death because a wayward piece of shrapnel punched through the cockpit!"
Frost's attention was diverted elsewhere during the course of White's semi-rant, however. From the remains of the corvette sprang two metallic, arrowhead-shaped machines, engines igniting as they darted after the gunship. His eyes widened outright when a flock of twelve more materialised on his scopes, having emerged from the dreadnought now far behind them.
"Oh, they are definitely not happy about that!" Frost announced aloud.
"Well stated, Captain Fucking Obvious!" White snapped. "Back turret, twin thirties! Aim for the cockpit glass!"
"They're drones!" Frost protested. "They don't have cockpits!"
"Well then shoot at something that may or may not be important!" White barked back.
Handing command and control of the frontal gun turret over to White, Frost switched over to the rear defence guns. Wasting not a second, Frost opened fire on the small ships lurching after them like autonomous spaceborne attack dogs. Like the gunship they were aboard, Frost recalled how these drones, designated X-405 Harpies by the targeting matrix, were far better suited for atmospheric combat, but could manoeuvre in space using similar thruster blocks nevertheless. He fired a barrage of autocannon rounds at the assailing drones, but their thinner shapes made them harder to hit than the bulky, boxlike dropships.
"Frost! White!" Morgenstern's voice called through the duo's radio sets. "What the fuck's going on up there?! I just saw one of their gunships wipe out a whole line of thei
r landers and punch out a goddamn corvette!"
"That's us alright," White stated. "We're having a blast up here!"
"No we're not!" Frost barked in protest. His remark was compounded as a rocket skimmed past the Walküre and rolled ahead, crashing into a destroyer focusing its efforts on the assaulting pirates. The drones, lacking guns, had resorted to firing on the gunship with their underwing rocket pods, White having to slip the Walküre through a barrage that was growing in intensity.
"Well you keep blowing shit up, Kessler Syndrome might just put paid to their little D-Day by itself!" Morgenstern laughed.
"Considering the nature of your present situation, I gather your negotiations with the Hound went less than well," Kane remarked in a sarcastic tone.
"That's putting it in some gentle terms!" Frost growled. "How many of their landers got through?"
"That's what we're still trying to work out," answered Kane. "We're implementing the contingency plan that we devised three weeks back. Civilians are being evacuated into the service tunnels, MANPADS are being positioned on as many buildings outside the central dome as possible."
"Is Jason safe?" Frost asked.
"He's with Sparrow's soldiers," said Kane. "Why?"
"We think Ryan's headed for District Two, and chances are that's where his levies will land too!" answered Frost. "We'll try and head him off, but if we can't ground him, we'll meet you at the park!"
"Copy that," Kane stated. "We'll be waiting for him."
"How far are we to the surface?!" Frost called out to White.
"Six thousand metres and dropping!" White replied. "Ryan's headed for that trench!"
Frost glanced behind him and caught sight of the trench White was referring to. Sure enough, the faint shadow of Ryan's gunship could be seen dipping into an equatorial fissure in the regolith, crossing the surface close to roadways used by cargo crawlers. The trench terminated close to the outskirts of the port city ahead, whose prominent central dome could be observed growing uncomfortably close in the distance.
"He'll be trying to hide from the SAMs," Frost deduced. "Follow him!"
"I'll stay above the trench so we can deal with these drones tailing us," White stated as two more rockets from the drones slammed into the regolith surface below, throwing up massive clouds of silvery dust. "If Kane and Mags are worth their salt, they'll tell the SAMs not to shoot at us!"
"And if they don't?" asked Frost.
"Well then we'll just have to hope they do," said White.
"You and your damn hope..." Frost grumbled.
Meanwhile...
The rolling airframe missile systems – the SAMs that White had been referring to, Wayland-marked like the anti-ship missiles that had decimated the Iron Fleet thirty minutes before – stood watch like hexagon-faced sentinels from manned bunkers on the city outskirts. The RADAR system controlling their guidance systems propped up like a metal mattress, rotating in a slow steady pace before settling on something careening just above the trenches towards the city.
The twenty one-celled missile turrets all turned their six terrible gazes to face the objects shooting towards them. Rockets continued to rain down on the roadways surrounding the trenches as the drones carried forward their assault on the Walküre that had been hijacked by Frost and White as they made their way here. Once again, had there been any air to convey sound, the sky would have been filled with the roar of rocket motors as the SAMs opened fire on their acquired targets, flooding the Cererian sky with fiery death.
~
Warning! Missile lock detected! Evasive manoeuvres recommended!
From the cockpit of his gunship, Ryan listened to the feminine voice of the computer inform him of his impending destruction. Without changing his granite facial expression, he merely flicked open a button on the control panel and pressed it. Into operation came the Walküre's powerful electronic countermeasure package; the jammers would serve to shield the gunship from being tracked. With this trifle all but dealt with, the Hound propulsed his gunship further down the trench.
~
"Hey, Ryan just dropped off my screen!" White stated. Similarly to the heads-up display Frost had for his turrets, she had been tracking the other gunship with her eyes, its details appearing on the holoscreen covering the cockpit window.
The same message that Ryan's gunship had been alerted with made it evident that his disappearance from detection proved to be the least of the duo's problems.
"So much for your hope!" Frost growled as the missile warner played its message, another drone rocket screeching past.
"I didn't know Walküres had ECM jammers..." said White.
"Well this Walküre's gonna have a lot more than that on its plate if you don't find the jammer on this one!" Frost bellowed as, upon looking forward, the flurry of SAMs fired from ahead closed into view.
"Damn it Mags, make them stop shooting at us!" White seethed; she was faced with the monumental task of concentrating on flying the Walküre gunship, avoiding being stricken by incoming rockets as Frost continued to fire on the drones, and keeping her eyes on Ryan. As of ten seconds ago, she was now focused on fiddling with the control set and dodging incoming advanced surface to air missiles. Not an enviable position to find yourself in, she thought to herself.
"She's your fucking friend, maybe you should tell her your-"
Frost's shout was severed by the gunship being rocked with a tonitruous explosion from behind it.
As he regained his bearings, he saw blinks of light flash around the Walküre in tandem, a massive nimbus of metal shrapnel blossoming forth from each illuminant burst. The pursuing drones were torn to shreds by spinning flechettes, some of which buried themselves into the head sensors and send them spinning far off course. A good six of the drones smashed clean into the achromatic surface of the dwarf planet, throwing clouds of debris and stone into space. Three more smashed into the canyon walls below, one of them demolishing a road bridge spanning the trench. The final drones were sent spinning into the cosmic depths at escape velocity, to wander the interplanetary void until scavengers picked them up for materials.
Most concerning of all, however, was the shrill squawk of an alarm resonating from the cockpit. White's wide-eyed face told all that needed to be told about their new situation.
"We've taken a big hit on the starboard engine!" she announced. "Either we land this thing in the next two minutes or we crash into the planet! Or worse, one of those buildings!"
"What about Ryan?!" protested Frost.
"He can't be going far!" said White, "Now find me somewhere to land or we are all dead!"
"There's a hangar bay on the south side," he stated. "Try to land in there – and please try not to get us both killed!"
"Frost! White!" Wilkins could be heard on the radio set. "Are you alright?!"
"No thanks to the bunch of morons on missile duty!" White snapped at him. "We're coming into the south hangar next to District Two! You can start to atone for your catastrofuck by opening it for us!"
"Right-right!" Wilkins responded. Seconds later, he could be heard shouting something to somebody in the background. White was still debating whether or not she was going to punch him out when she landed. Or rather, if she landed.
At last the hangar Frost had referred to materialised in the distance. It was a much smaller edifice than the giant cargo bays used to hold container gravships; the hangar in District Two was typically used to hold civilian pleasure craft, the airlock rolling out into a landing strip. White only noticed such at the last second, however – much too late to divert the craft toward it for a safe landing. Not that it would have mattered anyway; crashing on the landing strip without any space gear to defend them from the vacuum was hardly a desirable outcome even for the most experienced of space pilots.
"Don't crash, don't crash, don't crash, don't crash..." White heard Frost mutter under his breath.
"You have such faith in my piloting skills!" she protested.
"Skill?" scoffe
d Frost. "I'd say it's more beginner's luck..."
Frost and White had their attention diverted by the last succession of declarations they wanted to hear from the onboard computer as they proceeded through the hangar's airlock.
Warning! Starboard engine flame-out! Entering localised artigrav field...
Next thing they knew, the port side engine reignited itself, apparently in a desperate attempt for the gunship to re-stabilise itself in a low-gravity zone, now curiously absent. What resulted was a high-speed barrel roll through a populated hangar sufficient to make any man uncomfortable with flight vomit profusely.
"OH SHIIIIIIIII-" White could be heard screeching as the Walküre corkscrewed out of control to the hangar floor.
Neither Frost nor White perceived the tonitruous thump of impact for longer than a second before the darkness took hold.
~
CHAPTER EIGHT
Frost awoke to a painful ringing in his ears and blurred vision. He could feel some kind of liquid covering his beard; closer inspection revealed it to be slightly ochre in colouration, from just before the fateful crash that brought him and his less than ace pilot back to Ceres. The pounding in his head reminded him of the many hangovers from his young life, back when he would have sincerely considered making sweet love to that Sokolova woman. At least this time his mouth didn't taste like a bucket of sand. It did, however, taste a little bit like battery acid. It was at this moment that he realised what the suspicious fluid running down his beard was. Vomit, another old, ever faithful travelling companion during his younger, more alcohol fuelled days.
The important thing, however, was that he was alive, despite the legendary flying skills of his subordinate Elena White. Alive to fight another day. If only his companion would say the same.
"White...?" he grumbled, wiping his sick-riddled beard with his sleeve. "White, are you there?"
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