by Sid Kar
Roofus ran right back into the battle and aimed his spaceship straight for Nestor. This time he was fearful because he could not fly too fast or he would slam into Nestor before he could decelerate to a cruise speed.
As he was avoiding the lasers and the rockets, one particular Mercurian fighter took pursuit after him. Roofus started flying his spaceship like a fighter, jerking left, yanking right, but he could not shake the tail. Suddenly he saw a spacefighter coming straight at him. Roofus’ reaction was to bank down hard but then he stopped himself. It was a Nestorian fighter. And it fired a rocket straight at him.
Roofus recognized the tactic. He had practiced it in training but no fighter squadron leader would have approved its use in an actual battle. Theoretically a Nestorian rocket was programmed to skim off the surface of another Nestorian spaceship and fly past but in practice at such high velocities it could not be guaranteed.
Roofus started sweating and cursing. Whoever the pilot was, he was a real yahoo. He could bank away from the rocket but then so would the Mercurian. He held steady even as his hands on the flight controls shook nervously.
The rocket reached his spaceship and skimmed off of its top with a slight metallic tinge, bouncing up and keeping on. The Mercurian fighter saw the rocket belatedly on his scanner, obscured as it was due to Roofus’ spaceship, and pulled his fighter up and to his left to carry out a roll but the rocket was close and it jammed into the fighter plane’s rear just as it was turning upwards and exploded the target into pieces.
Roofus took a few deep breaths and started decelerating as he saw planet Nestor grow bigger and bigger in front of his eyes. There were no spacefighters this close to Nestor because the ground lasers were laying a full barrage into the space. But there were a few Mercurian battleships trading fire with the ground batteries as well as with Nestorian battleships. But they paid no attention to a small fly like him.
“Have a safe journey home, friend,” a voice said on his radio.
Roofus looked at his scanner and saw that a spacefighter, one of their own, was flying down alongside him.
“Was it you?” Roofus replied over the common radio channel.
“Yes, sorry about that,” the pilot said and Roofus detected a chuckle in his voice, “I could have tried to fly over you and take him out but that would have taken time and I don’t know how maneuverable your spaceship is. Who are you anyhow? All civilian traffic headed to Nestor was ordered to turn around.”
“I am…” Roofus hesitated a second, “I was sent by Bakus to spy on Mercurians,” he decided to divulge his identity, it was battle time now, “I was captured but escaped from one of their battleships. I may have valuable data for our government.”
“In that case, I will escort you,” the pilot replied, “I am Capitan Agnosis of Battleship Defender.”
“I am Roofus Bolfus,” Roofus replied as he kept decelerating to counter the increasing pull of the planet’s gravity. He turned his spaceship towards the Senate as he hit the planetary atmosphere.
“I have heard of you,” Agnosis replied, “You were ahead of my time, but our instructors mentioned…what the hell is that?”
Roofus jumped in his seat for he too saw from above that the ocean was parting and huge walls of water rushed out in all directions. Did they have a secret weapon hidden deep inside the ocean, he wondered. No, it was a giant spaceship, and if his scanners were to be believed it was the largest spaceship he had ever seen counting even the mammoth sized Mercurians.
“Pull up! Pull up” Agnosis shouted on the radio and turned his spacefighter vertical.
Roofus’ tried to pull up his spaceship but it was not as maneuverable as the fighter. The next moment the giant spaceship shot out of the ocean, avoided colliding with Roofus’ spaceship at a hair’s breadth apart and lurched towards a Mercurian Battleship in the orbit. But the pass was inside the atmosphere and generated massive turbulence that threw Roofus’ spaceship in a spin and it spiraled down to the ground like a Top. Agnosis brought his fighter down to aid Roofus. Roofus’ head was spinning but he remembered his old spacefighter pilot training and let his hands operate on muscle memory. They worked to try to turn the spaceship in counter-spin and slowly neutralized the original spin and his spaceship settled into a cruise.
“Are you all right?” Agnosis asked.
“A…l…l…M…N…” Roofus muttered incoherently trying to shake off the stars from his head, “My head is scrambled eggs now.”
“Ha Ha,” Agnosis laughed, “You will get better, at least you survived.”
“What the hell kind of a spaceship can accelerate that rapidly against a planet’s gravity and at that size,” Roofus asked, “Even my spaceship can’t do that.”
“Nor can mine,” Agnosis said, “But that’s a Starfirian spaceship and after I drop you off at the Senate, I am going back to fight alongside the Starfirians.”
Chapter 5: Superweapons
Colonel Jarvyk Wilwyk, the colonel of the Starfirian Strike Soldiers left behind on the ground by Commodore Raptor to protect the Senate, was leaning over the horizontal display along with Krotus Torus, former Capitan of Senate Guards, who had now been promoted to the post of Commander of Republican Guards by Chancellor Solus to reward him for his loyalty and bravery in holding the Senate building against overwhelming force. They had quickly put together a makeshift defense of the Senate and the surrounding City after they had received warning of the imminent invasion. The space battle was raging above them while they had converted Nestorian Senate’s underground bunker as their command room.
“I have put laser anti-aircraft batteries on top of the taller buildings,” Col. Jarvyk pointed to various buildings on the digital map that surrounded the Senate, “All of our airships are back in the air ready to engage any force these Mercurians may dispatch.”
“How do you plan to use your ground troops?” Krotus said, “You should disperse them in the city and quarter them into the buildings.”
“Negative,” Jarvyk replied, “Mercurians may parachute ground troops. I admit that is unlikely but if they do then I want my soldiers around to deal with them.”
“In that case we should free up Republican Guard prisoners,” Krotus said, “I am sure they will have reflected on their mistake and eager to prove their loyalty.”
“No, I can’t risk operational chaos, we have no time to instruct them and vet them,” Jarvyk replied.
Commander Krotus opened his mouth to object when Jarvyk’s radio quacked and he took it off his belt.
“Go ahead capitan,” Jarvyk said.
“Colonel, I am conveying message from Conquistador,” the capitan replied, “their long range gravitron scanners have picked up four Mercurian battleships advancing towards Nestor’s orbit.”
“Damn,” Krotus muttered then interjected, “Ask him what happened to our battleships.”
“Commander Krotus,” the capitan said, “the four orbital battleships are now locked in close combat while your General Bakus’ battleships have been intercepted by the remaining Mercurians but they are trying to make their way here.”
“Alright, I am coming out,” Jarvyk said.
“Alright then.”
Jarvyk put his radio back on his belt and indicated for the Starfirian soldiers in the bunker to follow him.
“Let’s go,” Krotus said to his own soldiers.
“No, you stay here,” Jarvyk said.
“But why?” Krotus asked.
“There is already too much confusion in your chain of command and Nestor’s Republican Guard has already lost one commander, it could fall apart without you,” Jarvyk replied.
Krotus turned morose upon hearing this but he had no choice. Starfirians were in command of this battle now, at least till General Bakus returned to Nestor, and Jarvyk’s argument was reasonable.
Col. Jarvyk and strike soldiers rushed out of the bunkers and out of the Senate buildings with their laser guns drawn. The Senate lawn was littered with anti-aircraft laser batte
ries and he looked around and saw more of them on the building rooftops. The Starfirian airships were patrolling overhead and their laser cannons were pointed upwards in the air. Jarvyk did not understand what Commodore Raptor was doing or even where he was. The standard procedure would have been for him to engage the incoming Mercurian battleships. He took out his long range binoculars from his belt and pointed them up at the sky and turned the knob to the maximum range. With these binoculars he could look as far as the planetary orbital space and he pressed a button on the binoculars to engage its microcomputer to scan, zoom and fix on mechanical objects.
After half a minute his binoculars had located the Mercurian spaceships and zoomed in on them. Jarvyk saw that three of them had spread out in the high orbit and were returning fire against Nestor’s ground laser and rocket batteries. The fourth Mercurian battleship descended down further into the low orbit and ignored the fire it was receiving. Instead, its lower hull opened up and it disgorged hundreds and hundreds of airships from its belly.
“Goodness!” Jarvyk gasped as he tried to estimate the number of Mercurian airships now swooping down fast towards them. Even their own Starship did not carry this many airships and it was more than twice the size of this Mercurian battleship. He looked closely at the battleship and realized it was not one, but a carrier, specifically a land invasion carrier, a specialized spaceship that transported all the weapons and soldiers needed to take a planet by force.
“Vultures are coming,” the airship leader’s voice cackled on the radio, “prepare to fire in three…two…one. Now, fire at will.”
The Starfirian airships opened a laser barrage up in the air with their cannons and the incoming Mercurians replied with large number of laser bolts striking the ground all over. Jarvyk and a few of his soldiers ran back near the Senate building and took position behind the pillars. The Senate building itself was strong enough to withstand laser strikes as it had when Republican Guard airships had fired upon it.
The next moment Starfirian anti-aircraft batteries joined in and fired their lasers past their airships into the attackers. The Mercurians had now descended below the clouds and stabilized their altitude. They started targeting the ground batteries as well and didn’t hesitate to strike the buildings hosting the anti-aircraft laser guns on their rooftops.
Jarvyk had ordered the evacuations but he was stunned at Mercurians lack of regard for civilian casualties. They were not bothering to take precise shots at the anti-aircraft batteries, but instead were collapsing the entire buildings with high energy laser shots.
The Nestorians ran out of the buildings screaming and the streets were filled with panicked mob. Jarvyk felt sorry for them and angry with the invaders as laser bolts hitting the streets were powerful enough to kills dozens in each strike.
Airships kept falling out of the sky and buildings collapsed all across the city.
Where the hell is Commodore Raptor? Jarvyk asked himself.
Starfirian infantry soldiers lost their calm as they saw the increasing civilian casualties all around them. They had taken proper cover in anticipation of the aerial strikes but the civilians were running scared every which way on the open streets. These Nestorians were aliens to them but watching them getting mowed down mercilessly – and the fact that they had placed their trust in Starfirians for protection – drove Starfirian soldiers to rage and they came out of their cover and started firing their laser guns up in the air towards the Mercurian airships.
With over twelve thousand soldiers firing their laser guns up in the sky, it was like a rain that rushed up from the ground towards the clouds. Their lasers were not powerful enough to penetrate airship shields for the most part but the combined energy of thousands of laser gun shots started degrading the Mercurian airships.
Colonel Jarvyk watched the surreal scene in terrifying awe, the red lasers flying to the sky, the blue lasers crashing into the ground, machines shattering, buildings collapsing, people running, people screaming, people dying.
Where the hell is… Jarvyk started wondering when his thoughts were interrupted by a cackle on his radio.
“Col. Jarvyk, this is Commodore Raptor, report your status,”
“Com. Raptor, great to hear your voi…”
“Give me battle status,” Raptor said impatiently.
“Taking heavy fire from Mercurian airships,” Jarvyk said, “Estimated enemy strength thousand or thereby. We won’t be able to win this on our own.”
“Alright,” Raptor said, “Drop all of our airships to one hundred meters or below in altitude and hold them there.”
“But sir?”
“Do it now, no time to explain,” Raptor said.
“Alright sir,” Jarvyk said, switched frequency and communicated Com. Raptor’s order to the airship leader who was as agitated as Jarvyk upon hearing it.
Starfirian airships descended down to the altitude of one hundred meters, their accuracy and maneuverability suffering as a result.
“Airships within requested altitude, Commodore,” Jarvyk said when he switched back his radio frequency.
“Requested!” Jarvyk thought he heard a chuckle from the other end. It was not the right word but with lasers hitting all around him...
Starship Conquistador came out of nowhere.
One moment the Mercurian airships were raining deadly blue lasers into the city. Next moment the thousand Mercurian airships were shattered into thousand pieces each raining junk and sparks.
For one moment there was sun, then it was complete darkness for two seconds and when light shone through again the skies were empty of enemy vessels.
“Holy hell…” Col. Jarvyk exclaimed.
The next moment the gale force winds arrived in the wake of the starship with more power than a hurricane at over a hundred miles per hour and lifted up Col. Jarvyk from behind the column he was using as cover and slammed him against the Senate wall. The wind shattered windows of buildings and sent the people on the streets stumbling, tumbling and falling down. The Starfirian airships were set spinning in midair like Tops.
The winds died down as fast as they had come and the people regained their balance on their foot and their airships controlled their spin. Forgetting the minor injuries from falls the Nestorian crowds and Starfirians soldiers alike looked up to the sky and cheered wildly with people clapping and soldiers waving their laser guns overheard.
“Soldiers,” Col. Jarvyk spoke over his radio after regaining his own composure, “Start collecting the falling pieces from enemy airships. Our electronics and metallurgical workshops will be very interested in them. Don’t fight Nestorians who take them as souvenirs, but collect as many as you can.”
The soldiers stopped their celebrations and started moving around looking for the broken metal shards from Mercurian airships.
“That’s that,” Raptor exclaimed satisfactorily after Starship Conquistador had passed beyond the Nestorian Senate’s airspace leaving behind the falling wreckage of the enemy ships.
“You smashed those sods like an elephant running through a pig sty would them hogs,” Tollvyk said.
“Colonel, you would have made a great sports commentator,” VC Barryett quipped.
Raptor smiled. The staff was becoming friendlier with each other and he hoped that the shared experience of this battle would instill cohesion making up for the lack of time they had spent together as one crew.
“Commodore, two small Nestorian spacecraft are moving towards our forward flight path,” said Capitan Flyptar, the flight officer of the Starship.
“Accelerate,” Raptor said.
“Yes sir,” Flyptar increased the speed of Conquistador and it rushed passed the two Nestorian spaceships just in time to avoid collision.
“That was a close one,” Flyptar said.
“Wonder why they are heading back to the planet and away from the battle,” Barryett said, “I hope we didn’t just allow a couple of deserters to escape a deserved fate.”
“I rather not ma
ke that assumption,” Raptor said, “And Nestorian deserters are not our problem. Overyk, how are we doing on our course?”
“Visual range of Mercurian Carrier in thirty seconds,” Overyk replied, “We can launch rockets now.”
“We could have launched rockets from the ocean,” Tollvyk said.
“I don’t want to give them time to launch counter-rockets,” Raptor said, “Tollvyk put thirty Ober Rockets on standby and target the Carrier’s open bottom.”
“Trajectory calculated and programmed,” Tollvyk said, “ready to launch on command.”
“Carrier in visual range,” Overyk said.
“Launch Ober Rockets,” Raptor said, “Concurrent launch.”
“Ober Rockets off,” Tollvyk replied after he hit the launch button on his panel.
Thirty rockets flew out from the launch tubes on the top surface of Conquistador and rapidly closed distance towards the Mercurian carrier that had dropped the airships earlier. It had left its underbelly open to allow for its damaged airships to return for repairs and to offload the wounded. When all of its airships had suddenly vanished from its display and all communications and signals had gone static, it had taken the Mercurian officers abroad the carrier a few seconds to figure out what had transpired.
They frantically worked to close the bottom when Starship Conquistador lit up on their scanners but the two big metallic plates moved up slowly and the drag of the planet’s gravity further slowed down the upward movement of the bottom hull plates.
When Conquistador’s rockets rushed up at the vulnerable underbelly there was no time for counter rockets to be launched and engage. The bottom laser cannons were on automatic setting and blasted away and destroyed twenty three rockets. But the seven got through and went right through the narrow opening a few seconds before its likely closure.
Seven simultaneous explosions in the interior tore apart the Mercurian carrier and sent its shards and pieces down to the planet.