by James Somers
“Now we just have to see if there are three working fighters in this mess.”
AEROGORES
Merab was blasting away at the aerogores, but they were difficult targets to hit. Buildings were being blown to pieces around them by the big Vorn cruiser in the plains beyond Sector City and over a hundred pods were on their way to intercept their convoy of ships.
“I’ve got the Maelstrom!” shouted Emil over the noise of explosions. “Captain Viche is online!”
“Captain Viche, this is Kale Soone, the son of the king. We have to get everyone away from that cruiser firing on us from the eastern outskirts of the city.”
“I understand. We had better head west, away from them. There is a place we can regroup some distance from here; the valley of Sayir,” said Viche. “The other rebel forces were rendezvousing there already before coming on to Sector City. I will let them know our situation and have them wait for us there.”
“That sounds good. Please transmit the coordinates to the others while we try to provide some cover for you.”
“I’ll notify all of our ships,” said Viche. “Lord willing, we’ll see you there, young master. Maelstrom out.”
“The coordinates are coming through now,” said Emil.
“Good. Keep trying to raise my father. We’ve got to let him know where we are headed.”
“Those pods are closing in fast,” said Jael.
“Merab, send the scans of the pods into the auto-targeting system and set it to fire at will!”
“Kale, I’ve got your father online,” said Emil.
“Great!” he said, relieved that his father was safe. “Send him the coordinates for the valley and tell him we’ll be meeting the rest of our forces there.”
One of the larger vessels exploded a few miles away over the rooftops. The Vorn cruiser had found a nice sized target and obliterated it. The rest of the ships were filing steadily out of the city to the west, leaving behind the aerogores that had driven them out of the base. But the pods were almost to the others still trying to get above ground.
“I’m taking us right at them,” said Kale as he brought the Equinox to bear on their position.
He charged the ship toward the pod squadrons. The auto-tracking for the weapons systems came alive as the first pod was picked up by its sensors. Gun turrets all across the hull of the ship blazed into action, tracking and terminating the one man attack fighters.
The offensive attack was wreaking havoc on the orderly pod formations. They resembled swarming insects as they engaged the larger vessel plowing through their ranks.
“Hopefully, we can buy some time for the others to escape,” said Kale.
A blast hit the Equinox sending a booming shudder through the ship.
“What happened?!” shouted Jael.
“We’ve been hit by one of the cruisers,” replied Emil as he quickly sifted through the various alarms and information pouring onto his displays. “We’re losing the engine control systems!”
Kale was battling the controls to keep the ship stable. “I’m losing the helm!”
“How did they get through the shields so quickly?”
“Shield Frequency Capture… it’s a system that was developed for the cruisers back during the Baruk war,” said Emil as he tried to bring the engine control backups online. He tried to reroute power to auxiliary systems but everything was failing under the power load. “It’s no good, Kale—I can’t get helm control back up yet. I should have taken you up on letting me drive the next time.”
The ship was beginning to tumble out of control and lose altitude.
“Load the coordinates for Sayir and activate the transgate!” shouted Kale.
The Equinox’s shields bounced them off of the side of a burnt out sky scraper as they continued out of control in their descent.
“Man, I’m getting tired of landing upside down,” said Emil, frustrated.
“What’s going on up there?!” shouted Mirah through the intercom.
“Hold on Mother—it’s going to get rough!”
The ship began to tumble over again in its descent. The pods that had been engaged with the vessel were trying desperately to remove their selves from its path. The pavement was approaching fast. Emil hammered away at the computer controls from his upside down position strapped inside his flight chair.
“Talk to me, Emil!” shouted Kale desperately.
“It’s tricky! We don’t want to land on our backs somewhere else, you know?!”
Their flight chair harnesses strained against their bodies to hold them firmly in place. Kale hoped they were strapped in well enough in the med-lab.
“I’ve got it!” shouted Emil triumphantly.
The Equinox was enveloped in a pocket of bright light and vanished.
☼
Tiet sat in the dusty mold infested cockpit of a relic. The ship was Barudii made, a predecessor of the Viper class aerial fighter. He completed the login of the coordinates that had been transmitted by Emil from the Equinox. He powered up the engines and they gave only a slight choke before coming online fully. Boy, these were well made.
A few ships down, Grod had his fighter’s engines warming up and Wynn was outside of his ship tinkering with a regulator. He made a final manual adjustment that set the engine cycle into a nice purr. He looked at Tiet with satisfaction.
A screeching noise could be heard from the hallway near the control booth—the aerogores were coming back to their nest.
“Get in!” Tiet shouted.
Wynn fumbled with the lock on his canopy, it was stuck. Aerogores began to march through the hallway into the chamber. When they saw the aircraft, powered up for flight, they became enraged. Wynn finally got the canopy to open up again as Tiet and Grod began to lift off of the pad.
The aerogores took to the air, sailing over the railing toward the hovering ships. Tiet instinctively went for the guns and set them blazing, rapid fire. Several of the beasts fell out of the sky, chewed to bits by the onslaught of the aerial fighter’s guns. Tiet brought the nose of the ship to bear on the hallway’s opening in the rock and launched a small rocket into it which shattered the stone to pieces. The entryway was mostly blocked to the others coming back to the nest.
Wynn was airborne and following Grod’s fighter out of the underground hangar bay through the cave that had once served as a launch point. The guns of Grod’s ship blazed to life, taking out oncoming predators that were returning from the outside. Grod cleared the way and all three aerial fighters shot into the open air above ground.
They were immediately faced with the awesome sight of a Vorn battle cruiser hovering above the grassy plains where their ships had emerged.
“Switch on your sensor cloak!” shouted Wynn through their cockpit speakers.
“What?”
“Lower left on the panel—quickly. I don’t think they’ve spotted us yet.”
Tiet obeyed his mentor and tapped the switch that was labeled Sensor Cloak. The indicator lit up green in color.
“What does it do?” Grod asked.
“Just what it says. We’re masked from their sensor scans, at least if they’re working properly,” said Wynn. “Now, we can head toward Sayir and they won’t even realize we’ve been here.”
Tiet studied the ship ahead of them. Lucin could be on that ship. Also on his display, was payload information. He was carrying fifty rockets minus the one he had used inside the hangar and one laser guided smart bomb.
“We’re not leaving just yet,” said Tiet into the cockpit microphone.
“What are you talking about, we have to rendezvous with the others at Sayir,” said Wynn.
“And we will. I just want to give them a little present before we bug out,” said Tiet. “Are your ships armed?”
“Mine is; I’m in,” said Grod quickly, a lust for revenge in his voice.
“Wynn?”
He hesitated. “How do I always get outvoted?”
“Just your luck old friend,”
said Tiet as he brought his aerial fighter on a course for the Vorn cruiser.
The others fell in line at his wings and armed their weapons.
“If they don’t know we’re here then they probably don’t have their shields up.”
“We’ll have to hit them with everything at once before they have an opportunity to put them up,” said Grod.
The fighters were closing in on the target fast at subsonic speed. They looked like insects swarming a large animal, but their sting would be nastier.
“Let her have it!” shouted Tiet as he triggered every weapon to fire on the hulking cruiser ahead.
The triple volley was heaved away from the fighter group almost simultaneously. The ships shuddered heavily as all weapons released their payload at once. The rockets sailed ahead of them at a slightly faster speed, like a prey outrunning its predator. The group pulled up just in time to clear the hull.
Multiple impacts of the smaller missiles swept across the hull like a swiftly moving rain. The three smart bombs sailed elegantly after, crashing heavily against the armor of the hull. Each one erupted in a devastating display of fire and shrapnel, breeching the ship’s exterior hull. The strafed side of the great vessel was a huge patch of fire burning on the hull surface with more damage throughout the lower layers.
Tiet whooped aloud at the impacts, but it was a very small victory. The Vorn cruisers could take much more before being crippled, but at least they had struck back. The trio brought their fighters back around; it was time to head for the rendezvous. From the belly of the vessel, smaller ships were birthed into the air and they quickly set their collective sights upon Tiet and his group.
“Here they come,” said Wynn.
“Split up!” shouted Tiet.
The trio rolled away from one another as a group of pods shot through their formation with all guns blazing. The enemy divided up at a three to one ratio.
“We’re a little outnumbered,” said Wynn as he took evasive maneuvers.
“And your point?” asked Tiet.
“We’ve got to get to the rendezvous, for one.”
“These pods are a bit more maneuverable than our fighters,” said Grod as he barely evaded incoming pulse bursts.
“Head away from one another,” commanded Wynn.
“Why?”
“An old war maneuver from before you were born,” said Wynn.
The trio each put their aerial fighters on a flight path away from the other two and pushed the ships into full throttle. The pods were more maneuverable, but not quite as fast. Each of the old Barudii aerial fighters was trailing three enemy pod fighters as they continued on track away from the area around the Vorn cruiser.
“Now, what?” asked Tiet.
“When we reach a fifty-mile distance from each other, we’ll turn back from our course and head for an intersect point.”
Grod laughed into his headset. “I think I’ve heard this in one of your old war stories, Wynn. I never get tired of hearing them.”
“And he never gets tired of telling them,” added Tiet sarcastically.
“Alright men, on my mark. Three, two, one, and come back on a heading of .0729,” commanded Wynn.
The old aerial fighters each pulled a hard turn and came back on their pursuers who had been lagging only slightly. The pod trios split away into their own hard turn maneuvers and came right back into formation as they pursued the Barudii fighters.
“We’re coming in fast,” said Tiet.
“Use the rockets you have left and lock onto each others pursuing pods,” said Wynn. “As we close the distance, everyone turn down and right 30˚ after we fire rockets at the locked targets. They’ll be so preoccupied trying to catch each of us—“
“—that they won’t realize they’re heading into rockets fired from a different fighter than the one they are pursuing,” Tiet finished.
“Exactly.”
“Remind me to pay closer attention to his stories, Grod.”
The Barudii fighters were closing the distance fast at supersonic speeds, each with a trio of pursuing pods in tow.
“Here we go,” warned Grod as he kept an eye on his comrades approaching on his scanner.
“Lock targets and fire on my mark,” instructed Wynn.
“I’ve got mine,” said Tiet.
“Me too.”
“And three, two, one, fire and turn!” shouted Wynn as he fired his own rockets.
Each fighter loosed its rockets and ducked away according to Wynn’s instructions. They crossed the point they would have intersected with the pods in tow, not realizing that they had been locked in as targets of fighters other than the one each pod trio had been following. The rockets plowed head on with each of their intended targets as the Tiet, Wynn and Grod reformed their group.
“Now, let’s get out of here and meet the others before we have any more company,” said Wynn.
“It’s odd that the cruiser is alone out here,” said Grod.
“And that they only sent nine pods after us,” Tiet added.
“I wonder what has become of the other ships that were said to have been with this one,” said Grod.
“I’m sure we’ll find out sooner than we want to,” said Wynn. “Let’s get moving while we can.”
The aerial fighter trio adjusted their course and speed and headed away toward the Valley of Sayir.
☼
Just above a remote portion of the Valley of Sayir that began to slope upward toward the mountain bearing the same name, the Equinox burst into reality with a snap of white light. The ship was right side up according to Emil’s lightning quick jump calculations, but it was still plummeting toward the ground in a crippled condition.
“Hey, we’re not upside down!” shouted Kale.
“See what happens when I take the wheel?” replied Emil confidently.
The controls jerked hard in Kale’s hands. “We’re still falling!”
“Problem!” Emil focused on his instrument panels. “One hundred feet...sixty feet…thirty feet.”
Kale slapped the docking thruster’s control. The ship lurched, struggling against gravity with all the resistance it had left—it wasn’t enough. The Equinox slammed into the valley floor with a massive Boom!
The shields collapsed, sending random blades of energy ripping into the ground away from the impact. When the cloud of dust began to settle again, the ship was intact but was unlikely to ever get airborne again.
“Is everyone okay?” Kale asked.
“Present,” said Emil.
“We’re alright,” said Merab and Jael.
Kale tapped the intercom, perhaps the only thing still functioning on the ship. “Mother, how are you, back there?”
It took a moment, but they replied. “I think we’re all in one piece,” said Mirah, “I take it, we crashed?”
“Yes, but we made it to the rendezvous point,” joked Emil from the background.
Kale shot him a weary look. “We’re down in the Valley of Sayir, Mother. It’s probably a good idea if we abandon the ship, just in case we were to have an explosion.”
“We can’t move Ramah right now,” said Mirah, “I need to monitor her for a while, especially after that crash.”
Kale wasn’t going to argue a losing battle. “We’ll inspect the ship and try to make sure we’re not in any danger by staying on board.”
The intercom switched off on Mirah’s end. She was adamantly against endangering a patient.
“I’m glad Ramah is doing fine, but explosions don’t do much for one’s health.”
Kale moved from his flight chair and retrieved a tool kit. He tossed it at Emil. “We’d better get to inspecting this heap then.”
It took an hour and a half to get main power restored and they found nothing endangering their stay inside the ship while they waited for the rebel forces to catch up to them. The engine’s hyper-coil was supplying ample power, enough to even use the internal transgate if necessary. The group scavenged for food in t
he galley, and took turns sitting with Ramah in the Infirmary.
Juli and Kale were trying to get the scanners operational on the bridge so they might get a fix on the rebel army and find out how long it would be until their arrival, but no luck yet.
Merab, Jael and Mirah were in the galley finishing their meals, while Emil relieved the doctor and sat with Ramah. They were enjoying a very nice conversation and perhaps even a bit of flirting. All the crew had to do was to wait for the others and then decide on their next course of action.
REQUIEM
Lucin was standing on the bridge of one of his personal transports watching the main display. Information was continually updating and icons were shifting on the screen as the rebel forces converged on the Valley of Sayir. His Vorn battle cruisers were feeding his transport group the information from orbit—they were much too big and clumsy to be a part of the ground battle he planned to wage at Sayir. Lucin noticed that several groups of ships were coming from various directions—evidently they had a number of bases to operate from. His group of ships was flying a parallel course to that of the rebels fleeing from Sector City’s underground base.
Lucin’s armada of troop carriers was maintaining a distance just far enough to keep them out of sensor range, while his orbiting cruisers allowed him to keep an eye on his prey. He had the element of surprise on his side. His plan was simple, wait for all of the rebels to converge on the valley, and then bring his transports toward Sayir from the plateau to the north. They would approach at minimal speed and altitude and then swarm into the valley, making troop drops close to the enemy.