Hell's Razer

by S. F. Edwards

  Captain Crees stared at his tactical sphere with the same intensity he would when stalking prey beneath the waters of Lodrus. Opposite his position, hung the GFS Lucifer, the last remaining ship of the Devil group; following the destruction of the GFS Hades and Beelzebub Tridecs earlier. Then he remembered the Barker, it was still out there, wreaking all manner of havoc.

  Given that no contact had come from the trap the Wolfsbane had set, he had little faith that the ship had been disabled or destroyed. If the Wolfsbane had been destroyed then that would leave only the Var-Fowne and its cruiser squadron to engage it. High Command would never be so foolish to expect them to take down the Barker without assistance.

  He looked around the Lucifer for any weaknesses in their defenses. He could find none. The array of Corsicaa frigates they maintained in their vanguard presented a near impenetrable screen to his fighters, bombers, and long-range torpedo strikes. Worse, they kept themselves out of the beam cannon engagement envelope of all of his ships. Launching bombers on slipstream courses around and behind the Lucifer had proved no better. The destroyer and corvette forces they continually rotated in and out to protect the rear flank, gave no quarter. What he wouldn’t give for just a single opening. He’d swim straight in, turrets and torpedo mounts blazing, as his six heavy beam cannons sliced apart anything that dared come close.

  “Sir,” Dasale, his Drashig communications officer, called out from her station. “We’re getting an open transmission bounce off the jump buoy.”

  Captain Crees rubbed at his gill slits and walked over. He hoped that it was reinforcements, despite the knowledge that they were at least a cycle out. “What is it?”

  “Single message,” she replied, lips pursed in confusion. “‘The Big Bad Wolf is coming to blow your aquarium down.’ Sir, it was transmitted in the clear, there’s no way the Geffers didn’t hear it.”

  He considered the message. Something about it seemed familiar. A nursery rhyme, a Terran nursery rhyme. But that one was about was about a land carnivore eating land prey in poorly fashioned homes. Mentioning an aquarium, a fish tank, made no sense unless they knew he, a Lodran, commanded the Trib’Kibal. Which was likely. But it still didn’t fit, the Geffers had never been so clever with their codes. “Who sent it?” he asked, a sudden dread that the Geffers might have cracked the jump bouy’s encryption seeping into his veins.

  “There was no identifier signal on the carrier wave, sir. And it was text only, so no vocal identification.”

  “Damn. How far out are they?”

  “Based on signal degradation, two pulses at most.”

  Captain Crees’ mind raced with possibilities. But he needed a sign of what was coming. “Sensors, keep all eyes on that jump point. Rear beams prepare to engage anything that comes through. Tactical, pick a destroyer and have them target the next ship that comes through…” His words trailed off as his sign appeared. The Lucifer had begun its charge, the frigate vanguard leading the way as both of its bow mounted Razers glowed in preparation to fire.

  “Jump point fluctuation, multiple contacts” his junior sensor officer roared.

  Captain Crees turned to look back at the jump point, sure that there was no prayer rope long enough to tie the knots he’d need to survive this. Then he remembered the fish tank line and all four eyes opened in a snap. His senses clicked into a more heightened state than any stim could induce.

  Bridge, UCSBS Wolfsbane

  “All Batteries, Open Fire!” Captain Sardenon called as they cleared the jump point back into normal space. Hunter’s eyes tracking, he spotted his prey as coherent energy lit up space all around him. “All Frigates and Corvettes, move ahead and engage those Corsicaas. Destroyers, I want a full barrage on those destroyers in the distance, maximum fire rate. Var-Fowne take your cruisers and carve up the Lucifer. All other ships, engage at will, cover our friendlies,” he ordered.

  It proved obvious to him that using the Barker’s own code phrase, even if he did modify it, before initiating the attack had paid off. The Lucifer group had advanced straight into their weapon’s ranges by the time they’d emerged and even the Trib’Kibal and her battered battlegroup had joined in. Whether Captain Crees had understood his reference to the incident at the academy, when he and a group of first annura cadets had shattered the observer window of the underwater combat training pool, he couldn’t be sure. Either way, it had paid off.

  “Daro, you son of a curr! About time you showed up,” Captain Crees’s hologram commented as he appeared on the upper bridge through the secure command link.

  “Says the ugly fish who was birthed into the wrong pool,” he replied with a grin.

  “We thought you were dead.”

  “No, we were just bringing you a present, sorry we didn’t have a chance to wrap it. I hope it fits,” he continued as a trio of corvettes exited hyperspace, towing the bridge tower of the Barker with them.

  Crees’ four eyes went wide in response and Captain Sardenon could swear there was a momentary halt in firing from all the ships in the area outside of his group. “Looks smaller than its pictures.”

  “Picked it up in a dent and damaged sale. Though we might have caused that.”

  “Still only counts as one.”

  “I’ll race you to our third Barker kill this campaign.”

  Captain Crees looked up, probably at the damage to the Wolfsbane’s ventral hull. The technicians hadn’t even bothered to try and patch the hole in the hull. Instead, they’d focussed on getting the power and shield grids back up and running. They’d only been partially successful. The Wolfsbane’s gravitic shield emitters and EMT controllers, that kept the shield hugging the hull instead of bulging out, barely functioned. It gave the EMT a noticeable ‘gut’ beneath the ship. “Give us support and I’ll let you take half the credit,” Crees commented.

  “We’ll take it,” Captain Sardenon replied and looked back to Sia. “Full torpedo spread. Match with the Trib’Kibal’s next beam cannon barrage. Let’s end this.”

  Monstero Nach 003

  “Blazer, break hard left!” Arion hollered, and Blazer obeyed without question or hesitation. He dropped their fighter down and to the left, engines and spaceframe groaning even more than himself. Before he could even ask why the red glow of multiple beam lances met his eyes.

  All four of the Trib’Kibal’s forward firing beam cannons had bridged the gap between it and the Lucifer. The beams didn’t sweep however, holding steady courses as flights of torpedoes from the Wolfsbane raced down their lengths, staying just outside of the beams’ fields of effect. Blazer had only ever read of the tactic before. Using the beams in a lower powered configuration, to keep them active longer, they would breach the shields of a target and let the torpedoes in while also providing cover from enemy beam cannons. As if to prove that, one of the Corsicaa Frigates fanned their beams at the torpedoes. They managed to destroy several, but those on the opposite side of the beam lance remained untouched.

  That was when Blazer spotted a pair of Valkyrie bombers on a direct vector for the Wolfsbane’s still injured belly. “Four, Six, this is Three. I have two Valks moving on the ‘Bane, vector to intercept!” Blazer twisted their fighter about again and raced after the two bombers, just as the Var-Fowne joined in the beam assault on the Lucifer.

  “On it, Lead,” Zanreb replied. His tone was still not one of respect, but it wasn’t outright hostile anymore. “Low score buys the drinks after.”

  “Won’t be me then,” Gavit replied with too much enthusiasm. He was eager to get the maximum kills this sortie. His new bride, Chris, wouldn’t let him forget that she’d outscored him during the battle to defeat the Barker.

  Wanting to intercept the bombers as far from the Wolfsbane as possible, Blazer tickled his afterburner to close the distance. Careful to be aware of the whole battlezone, he checked his sensors, looking for hostiles. He noticed a power spike instead. “Arion, are you seeing…”

  “The Lucifer’s charging its Razer cannons. Angle ind
icates they’re targeting the Trib.”

  Unwilling to give up his targets, Blazer pressed on. He trained his rear sensor camera on the Lucifer and put it on his main display. The glow under the bow intensified as the pi-mesons built up in the barrel, readying to fire. He zoomed out the camera to see the Trib’Kibal’s exposed belly. He held his breath as the shields in front of the cannon dropped. A single, poorly constrained beam cannon pierced the hole before two pairs from another vector joined. The Wolfsbane had managed to bring the starboard beam back to function and seemed to pour every spare bit of plasma into it. The Var-Fowne was quick to add its destructive power to the mix.

  The armored shell of the Razer cannon vaporized under the assault. The beams continued unabated, melting and shattering the focussing units before they cut out. The damage was done. Unconstrained, the pi-meson burst from their housings into the surrounding structure. The Razer cannon itself burst out of existence, flinging the few remaining pieces out into the void. The resulting energy backlash surged back into the power grid, burning out systems all across the ship and destabilizing the secondary power core.

  The pulse drives on the Lucifer’s T-Bar Engine Array sputtered and went dark. Safeties or the crew shut them down rather than risk an unconstrained anti-matter leak. The massive ship drifted as the shields winked out, the damage to the power grid unable to sustain them. Yet it continued to fight on. The turrets lashed out with whatever power remained in their capacitors as the crew worked to revive the ship.

  As if knowing that Blazer had become transfixed on the events behind them, Arion called out in a chiding voice. “The bombers.”

  “On it,” Blazer replied and fixed his eyes on their targets, Arion changing his screen to standard configuration. With their jet-black hulls, only Blazer’s timely look their direction as they eclipsed the nearby moon allowed him to spot them through the jamming. Looking them over however he spotted something wrong. They were without escorts. “Arion, you ever known Valkyries to fly unescorted like that in contested space?”

  “Nope,” Arion replied. “Can’t spot anything though, not through all this jamming.”

  As they entered missile range, Blazer saw no choice. “All Units, fire as you bear!” He released a pair of missiles at the lead bomber, Zanreb and Gavit following suit, each with a pair of their own. Just then a quartet of Tigercats dropped out from beneath the twin bombers. Each of them had been tucked in close to the bombers to avoid detection.

  “Looks like they came out to play after all. Six, go high, I’ll take low. Four, engage the trailing bomber!” Blazer ordered and pushing down on his throttle dropped his reticle onto the lead fighter. Blazer’s finger flexed on the trigger, just as missile alert tones blared through his helmet and he watched all four escorts loose their missiles at them.

  Blazer slammed his throttle down hard, squeezing the right slide lever and kicked the left rudder pedal to put him into a drop spin as he dumped decoys in his wake. The first missile creaked past to explode amongst the decoys as he hammered his afterburners and rolled to engage the second missile homing in on him. He squeezed off a brace of plaser bolts at the weapon, a difficult task against such a small target. One round drove its way home and the missile exploded well clear of him.

  He pitched around to engage the fighters. Momentum carried him away from them as they broke formation, smiling at their mistake, breaking from their wingman’s cover. He gunned his throttle to cancel out his inertia. After a moment, they raced after the fighter bearing down on Zanreb and Bichard.

  Blazer glanced for just a moment to the bombers ahead of Zanreb. Both of them were still intact. Only a single scorch mark marred the hull of the leader. “What the frag!”

  “Good gunners,” Arion replied. “They managed to take out all but one missile with their Thrasher cannons, keep clear of them.”

  Thrasher cannon were no joke, Blazer knew. His last engagement with a Wildcat had left visible proof enough of that. That single assault had mandated that half of his dorsal armor be replaced. Now his ship flew with a mismatch of colored armor plates from a dozen other fighters that were too damaged to continue flying after the battle with the Barker. At the same time, looking up at the mottled black bombers, he remembered the first time he’d been engaged by such a craft during the Gorvian conflict. One had had him dead to rights. They’d let him live. A pang of conscience, perhaps, stayed the pilot’s hand when the Geffers turned on them to join the Gorvians. “Arion, any ID on those bombers?”

  “96th Bomber Squadron, Red Devils.”

  “Good,” Blazer replied. He knew the time would come when he’d have to face those he’d fought alongside again. He was just glad that it wasn’t this cycle, at least so far as he knew. Shaking that thought away, he focused back on his target.

  The Tigercat was determined to take out Zanreb, sticking to his tail as he made his evasive attack run. Closing, Blazer let loose a burst of plaser fire, splintering the fighter’s shields. But they stayed their course as Zanreb unleashed his first volley at the trailing bomber. Not having that, Blazer continued his assault and shattered the remains of the Tigercat’s shields.

  The pilot broke off, but lost precious momentum that allowed Blazer to close to Biocannon range. With a flick of his thumb, he switched over to the wingtip-mounted cannons and fired. Globs of the sticky green, metal eating microbes splashed across the back end of the Tigercat. At first the fighter began to speed away. Before they could turn again, the microbes had eaten their way through the armored casements into the engines. The microbes feasted on the mounts for the plasma accelerator coils. Weakened, the coils collapsed and the fighter went dead, drifting through space.

  Blazer broke off and engaged the Valkyries, sliding around high above to draw their turret fire as Zanreb continued his assault. The rear bomber broke off, smoke trailing from its massive starboard engine. Blazer watched it for a moment as Zanreb broke off as well before the engine sheared free, taking the angular, dagger tipped wing with it. The bomber spun off, out of control into the endless night. Smiling, Blazer angled in for his attack run on the lead bomber. “Nice kill, Four. Three is on the attack. Give me cover.”

  “Recommend a triple attack, Three,” Zanreb called back. “We’ll go low, Six engages high, and you can drive straight up the rear.”

  “Works for us,” Gavit called. Blazer checked the status of his second wingman, noticed that the debris of two more Tigercats hung in space behind him.

  “Confirmed,” Blazer replied. “Moving into position. Let’s take this beast out before it can lob any torps at anyone.”

  Blazer dropped in behind the massive bomber’s diamond-shaped tail. The thermal radiators that covered it were ‘cold’ for the moment as it was dumping all of its waste heat into the heat sinks buried within. From this position, Blazer could look straight up the engine exhaust cowlings to the ‘hot’ exhausts of the Valkyrie’s massive pulse drives. He waited as the others commenced their harassment attacks, and Arion locked a pair of radiation seeking SAM-273 missiles onto the Valkyrie’s engines. The bomber’s shields shimmered, the dorsal and ventral turrets firing. Blazer mashed the missile launch button atop his control column. ‘SAM-Three’ he called and rolled away, goosing his afterburner to draw away the lower turret.

  The bomber jerked up suddenly in response, giving the dorsal thrasher cannon a clear line of fire on the missiles. Blazer bit back a curse as he skidded his fighter around and watched as the cannon fired. The twin, large bore mass-drivers spit their cannisters of flechettes into the missile’s paths. At such a short range however, the canisters burst open immediately and loosed their hail of his speedy spikes. They caught one missile dead center, detonating the warhead clear of the unshielded bomber. Still, the debris carried forwards to ping off the armor, but the second missile, separated from the first, struck. The angle change prevented the missile from rocketing up the exhaust can. Instead it impacted against the armored shell and exploded, ripping it open.

  The
bomber’s thermal signature lit up. ‘Hot’ exhaust spilled out of the hole and onto the armor as the tail vented ZKEP gas into the void and the radiators sprang to life. “They’re pumping everything into their shields to get them back up,” Arion announced.

  “All Units, shred ‘em,” Blazer ordered. The shields shimmered as the bomber pumped ions back into the protective screen. He opened fire with all six cannons, Arion training their Narfics on the shield emitters. The others joined in, pouring fire into the shields and armor. Chunks of armor exploded from the bomber, exposing internal structures below and Blazer loosed a pair of SAM-271 silhouette seekers. “SAM-One! Arion, drive them in.”

  “On it,” Arion replied and taking control of the missiles raced them through the hull breach into the central weapon’s bay. The bomber cracked like an egg from the secondary explosions of the torpedoes after the missiles struck.

  Blazer raced past, the explosion buffeting his fighter as the escape hatches in the roof of the cockpit blew free. An instant later the ejection seats followed. The crew had escaped safely and a missile alarm ripped through the cockpit. Blazer reacted in an instant, slamming out decoys, hammering the throttle and flipping the fighter about as he dragged the throttle up and crushed the slide control. The first missile sped past into his decoys but another bore straight at him, the last of the Tigercats racing towards him.

  Bridge, UCSBS-Wolfsbane

  Captain Sardenon couldn’t help but feel a certain swell of pride as he coordinated the assault on the Lucifer. The destruction of the ship’s primary armament had left it with numerous internal breaches and likely fires to contend with. While his beam assault had left that weapon burnt out, and unable to continue being used in this battle, they were far from out of the fight.

  While the Wolfsbane and Var-Fowne attacked from below, targeting and destroying the defenses there, the Trib’Kibal continued its beam assault on the flight deck and hangar complex. The earlier torpedo barrage had done its job, stripping the Lucifer of its shields, and the rest of the battlegroup had pulled the escorts away. Now if the Var-Fowne’s beam gunners were as good as Captain Leval had said, it would all soon be over.