Chapter 5
Aril was not comfortable, to say the least. The place was far too crowded for his tastes, not to mention far too loud. A waiter stopped at his table and poured more of the thin amber liquid they had the nerve to call tea into his glass. He sipped the sweetened, watery concoction only because he was thirsty. Bored, uncomfortable, nervous. At least the food was passably good here, or at least the appetizers were.
The food he saw delivered to the surrounding booths and tables was, too say the very least, delectable looking. Plus the smells, oh! These people knew how to eat. He looked down at the remains of his last dish; fried mushrooms. He waved off the waiter once more. The person he was supposed to be meeting was late. He popped the last of the golden fungi into his mouth. This time, at least, it had cooled to the point where it did not burn his upper palette.
A slight, narrow chested man with pale hair, wearing a sleek business suit was making his way past the bar. That was the guy. He was more than half an hour late, but Aril was patient enough. Sometimes it was difficult to keep a schedule in the heavy traffic of the city at this time of day. He spotted him, and squeezed past a few more patrons to reach him.
“What kind of place is this for a meeting?” Aril said as the smaller man slid into the booth.
“I like the steak here. What’s wrong with it?”
“Too damned many people. Too damned many normal working folk having a good time around us. To many eyes to see what everyone is doing.”
“Yeah, and too many eyes staring at their beers and steaks and salads and birthday cake. Relax Mister Tucker.” Heh, like that was really his name. “Have you ordered anything yet?”
“Just something called mushrooms.”
“Well, get the steak. It’s marvelous.”
He looked around at the crowd once more. Actually, his companion was right. Nobody was paying him the least bit of attention. He realized suddenly that he was as well hidden here as in some deserted alley. The crowd was so varied and disjointed that nobody even paid an obvious stranger any mind at all. Well I’ll be damned, he thought. Learn something new every day! That’s how the saying went, didn’t it. “Well, what have you learned?”
“About that construction project? Nada. Zilch. Best guess right now is some kind of hardened bunker. They’ve certainly used enough pentronium armor in it. Whatever it is, they’re doing a damned good job of keeping people zipped up about it.”
“It is all so very strange to me that they are relying solely on ‘company’ personnel on this than using outside contractors.”
“Maybe they’re simply worried about another big attack here. After all, the Miami Starforce center is the seat of the UFSA’s power.”
Hah! Aril thought. They have not even convened the Board of Eight here in years. At least, not that had been publicly acknowledged. They thought, with good reason, that if the wrong people learned the board was meeting, it would draw an attack, possibly crippling the leadership of the American military. A hardened bunker, built beneath the artificial harbor of Southern Miami would possibly allow them to meet here once more.
“This is potentially more useful, at least at the moment.” He passed a memory chip to the other man. Aril popped it into his palm screen, scrolling the details without the sound.
“What the hell good is this? It’s just some silly reservations for some place on Pyrus. Who wasted their time on this crap?”
“Ever the one to miss the obvious. One; that is an official Senior Commander’s residence. Cross-reference that with your computer after you’re back where you’re staying. Two, scroll down and you’ll see some other details. There!” He pointed to a separate listing. “That’s a reassignment of case loads in the Judge Advocate General’s office from one Lieutenant Colonel Argus for accumulated leave of absence time.”
“So, who cares if some Starforce lawyer is taking some time off?” Waitaminute! It started to dawn on him what the significance of that name was. Colonel Argus! It was another Colonel Argus, now a Commander, who had made quite a name for himself these last few years. He pulled up a copy of a recent periodical on his screen. A quick search brought up the picture he wanted. There was his answer. This Colonel Argus was his wife! He reviewed the data once more. Nothing on it came out and said specifically that the hated Commander Argus was taking a vacation, but taken as a whole, it pointed directly to that. Hmm. Lazy Americans. The brash bastard, taking a vacation in the middle of a war like this! Hah! It was almost an insult!
Despite the boiling thoughts in him mind, Aril simply took another drink of the disgusting iced tea and slipped the chip out of his reader. “This will do nicely after all.”
“You mean to do what?” The woman on the other end of the transmission stared back at him, the look on her face a mixture of panic and ire.
“I will tell you once more. I have received a work order to have this property fumigated.” Torvin Charagen felt he could not have been clearer, despite speaking in code. He knew the woman knew exactly what he meant, and he did not like having such orders questioned.
Janice Regul stared at the screen with a mixture of fear and excitement. She knew exactly what her superior was telling her to do. The coordinates he transmitted were for a small property that her front company owned nearby, but the way the message was stated, it actually meant the coordinates would have to be converted according to a table she had memorized.
Having the property fumigated meant pretty much what it sounded like. She was to take a squad and eliminate anyone on that property. It did not worry her so much that she would have to do such a thing, she was well trained for it, only, she was definitely not expecting to be called on to do this, not here!
The details she would have to work out for herself. As it was, the transmission she received was totally innocuous. Of anyone in her command, only she knew exactly what it meant.
Perhaps this had something to do with the man she had seen earlier. She was trained to recognize important people, but this man almost didn’t even fit that bill. She knew him to be a commander by rank, and was part of a logistics command, though, despite the rank, was pretty much a step-and-fetch for even higher ranking officers. Still, he was on the recognition lists, and, as such, would have been mentioned in the next coded report. She did not ask, and did not even speculate what her superiors did with such information, especially since by the time anybody of importance received it, the person sighted had most likely moved on.
If fact, that was supposed to be the sum purpose of her posting on this planet. Beside an office at the main star port and a few orbiting ships, there was no real UFSA presence here. Still, somebody thought it important to know when important people were here.
Somehow she doubted that a noted flunky for a Board of Eight commander would require ‘fumigation.’
Oh well. She keyed the communicator and contacted a pest control company. Just in case anyone was listening, she would have the cover property treated.
Murky sometimes hated his job. He hated keeping things from his friends, and he especially hated keeping things from his wife. He feared that his duplicity would eventually drive her off. It wasn’t hard for her to believe he had been cheating on her. He damned himself for letting it happen before and to even allow her to think that it happened again crushed his soul.
Like I even have a soul left to crush, he thought. It was becoming clearer and clearer to him how he had sold it to the devil, and that devil was a slightly pudgy, balding middle aged man sitting behind a mahogany desk in the UFSA Orbital Station at Earth.
Even being on vacation was a lie. It was all part of an elaborate ruse of which Jimmy was a small but integral part. Poor guy. Smartest man he’d ever met, best pilot, best commander and most importantly, the best friend he had ever had. At least for him the vacation was real. Murky took solace in the fact that, for the most part, he was able to relax here as well.
The trip into the resort hadn’t really been anything more than part of his job. It was an appearance. Certain people had been fed certain bits of information. None of that information meant much by itself, but if a skilled sythesist saw it in its entirety, it would point here. His open appearance at such a public place was the icing on the cake.
He pulled a fresh cigar out of its wrappers and clamped it in his teeth. He didn’t light it, preferring to gently chew on it for some time before actually smoking it. He also didn’t want to leave the telltale aroma here now anyway. He touched the controls of the Valkyrie’s navigational panel, using the external sensors to get a good look around.
Everyone else was lying on the beach. He didn’t have too long, but it shouldn’t be a problem anyhow. He had excused himself a moment before and it would be at least a few minutes before any of them missed him. If nothing else, he’d simply beg off reading something on the can. Instead, he pulled up a local tactical readout.
There it was. The nearby island was barely visible from their beach and at that, it wasn’t much to see. Most of it was obscured by the curvature of the surface, since it was low and covered only in light scrub. The vehicle probably could not pick up the advanced fighter ship’s active scans, so it was easy to assume they did not know they had been discovered.
He checked his chronometer. Nightfall was about two hours away. The moon would not be up until long after local midnight, so it would be almost completely dark. He mentally planned out how he would send an attack. Combat swimmers, using tiny self propelled dive board would emerge and take up hidden positions, waiting for the quartet to head indoors for the night. They would be patient, waiting until the time was right, waiting until everyone was definitely asleep or otherwise engaged before striking.
If he were planning such a raid, he would be silent and swift. Most likely this is what they planned, though he did not rule out an attack in more force. That could be a problem if they planned to disable the Valkyrie.
The plan was under way. He sent a quick coded transmission back to the UFSA offices in the resort. From there, they would trace the vehicle back to its source. It was a long shot, considering how deep the Deltan agents were operating, but it might give them pause to try anything else here.
Something else caught his eye just as he was about to shut down the scanner console. The small ship incorporated Azarian technology. For reasons beyond his comprehension, the alien technology worked with human tech as if it were made to. In fact, the whole ship had been built out of an Azarian “Jump Ship.” Something in that alien tech was allowing the sensors to pick something up a regular scanner might have missed.
The new ship was hiding in the magnetosphere of the tiny moon. It was an old trick to hide a small craft from sensors, and it usually didn’t work in more heavily populated areas. Patrols and specially implanted sensors saw to that. Nobody wanted a repeat of the last Battle of Mars, where the Deltans had actually constructed a small base on the Martian moon.
This changed things utterly. A few commandos, Deltan equivalents of Navy Seals, he could handle with Jimmy’s help. This was something else entirely. He checked his chrono again. New plans and contingencies rattled through his brain. Plans be damned. He keyed the communicator. Too late he realized none of them were wearing their links. He glanced at the scanner again. The ship wasn’t moving, and likely wouldn’t until darkness clouded this portion of the planet. Still, he felt there was little time to waste.
The Valkyrie had three pilot’s stations. Oddly, the primary one was located far forward in the nose of the detachable Sparrow fighter. The other main cockpit sat high on the upper spine of the ship. This was the primary control of the UFSA copies of the ship, the Blackhawk fighter/bombers. The third was located at this very console. He never knew exactly why the controls were so duplicated, and he never thought to ask, but he was thankful now.
The ship was already keyed to him, so it only took a touch of a control to bring the three ion engines online. The high-pitched whine of the Ion W.R.A.M.s coming to life would get their attention as easily as if it were a siren.
The ship was easily the safest place for the women now. It wasn’t due to any latent sexism that he thought of them that way. It was an honest assessment of the women’s value in a fight. He didn’t doubt that either woman could handle herself, since both of them had been through at least some elementary combat training, but that would not amount too much in the face of hardened fighters. On top of that, Susan was a doctor, and normally loathed dealing with weapons. Dona, on the other hand, knew her way around any gun, but had very little experience in actually combat. She’d spent the greater portion of he military career wielding words as weapons, not pistols and rifles. Days before they left, she found out that she was being promoted to a full colonel.
The end of the matter was that the Valkyrie was an armored fighting ship. The bungalow was just that, a wood stone and plastic house meant to keep the mild weather at bay and very likely to be nothing but a smoking ruin in seconds if fighting broke out here. He looked out the triangular porthole to see Jimmy trotting by himself over the dune.
Murky popped the hatch and shouted, “Get the girls! Hurry!”
Not knowing what his friend was up to, Jimmy simply turned and cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted. In moments, the two bikini clad women came running, their blankets and other beach goods abandoned.
“What the hell is going on?” Jimmy said as he helped the two women into the cabin.
Murky was already into a storage locker, pulling armor pieces and other equipment out onto the floor.
“I think we’re going to have company for dinner. Check out that contact orbiting close to the moon.”
Jimmy was far more familiar with the console and, with a touch of a few controls, he brought the image into sharper relief. “Christ! A heavy destroyer!”
“How did a Deltan destroyer get here?” Susan asked.
“Good question.” Jimmy wasn’t wasting time with a flex armor suit like his friend was. He simply grabbed a black and gray helmet off its hook and strapped it onto his head. Knowing what else he would need, Murky tossed him a pair of boots. He felt slightly ridiculous in the beach shorts and the mid-calf footwear, but it would have to do for now. He pulled a lever and a small hatch near the front of the cabin opened.
It led to a small passage barely wide enough to admit him. It wasn’t an original feature of the Sparrow fighter at the nose of the Valkyrie, but it allowed him access without having to go outside the ship. He went in feet first and pulled his way along a series of hand holds, emerging just behind the seat of the mini-fighter.
Mentally, he clicked off a fast start checklist. Of course, the sophisticated computer would take care of almost all of it for him, but the preflight had been drilled into him from the very beginnings of his pilot’s training. With a word from Murky that the women were strapped in, he punched the liftoff controls.
Instead of rising on jets alone, the artificial gravity system came to life. The computer inverted the field, pushing away from the surface instead of pulling. Tiny jets simply kept the crimson craft upright as it rose. He didn’t wait for it to clear the scrub before he pushed the throttle while simultaneously pulling back on the stick. The ship rose suddenly, its nose pointing toward the sky as the three great ion engines flared to life, catapulting it skyward.
Murky was up in the second cockpit, manning the weapon system controls. This type of combat was not his specialty, but he still knew his way around the powerful armaments. He cycled up the Ion Lockin cannons, since they would be the most use against a larger ship such as they were facing.
Susan looked at her friend. Dona was clearly worried, but she also had a sense of calm around herself. Once minute they had been totally relaxed on the beach, and in the very next moment, they were aboard a fighting ship streaking into the sky. Not knowing entirely what was going on beside Jimmy’s exclamation about a Deltan destroyer, she felt real fear. She also didn’t know what she could do to help. Dona, at least, automatically fell into place manning the communication console. Too many years since resigning, she told herself. She had been an attached civilian doctor, serving on second line ships in order to free up full time Starforce physicians for more important, front line duty.
It suddenly occurred to her that she was seemingly being taken into battle. “Hey, why the heck are we here? Wouldn’t we be safer on the ground?” Damn, that sounded cowardly!
Murky decided he would explain later if he had to. “I don’t think you would be. If I’m right, that house is being targeted by a squad of commandos.” He wondered if they had been close enough to see the Valkyrie take off. He thought they would at least have been tracking the ship since it took off. Jimmy had used standard electronic countermeasures, but if they had more sophisticated military hardware on the enemy transport, they would still see it.
So much for capturing them, he thought. He had been planning to put the women into the ship for safety while he enlisted Jimmy’s aid in subduing the attackers. It was a forlorn hope, but maybe one of them could have their tongues loosened enough to lead to the rest of the local spies. It started to occur to him that the arrival of the destroyer might not even be related to the impending attack. “Right now, this is probably the safest place for ya’ll to be.” At least he hoped so. He ticked off what he knew about the local military presence. Being something less than a full colony, it didn’t rate very much of a local fleet. Several K4 scout/attack ships and the U.S.S. Aberdeen, a Hudson class destroyer. All things considered, the women were still safer on the little armored ship than they would be on the old warship.
“Dona, patch me through to the ‘Dean.” Jimmy said over the mike. He knew a little about the old ship. The man who was taking over his previous flagship had once served aboard it. There was long standing argument between her crew and the crew of the Delilah which was the oldest ship serving in the Starforce. The Delilah had been launched first (by a matter of days) but the keel of the Aberdeen had be laid first. The argument had been temporarily squelched when the even older U.S.S. Arizona had been pressed back into service.
The man who popped up on the small screen was dressed entirely in black, making Jimmy wonder if he was one of Adams’ cast offs. Most of the crews serving under the man wore the solid black uniforms he affected, sort of homage to the old Special Forces before they were absorbed into the Ultra-rangers corps. “What the hell are you doing? This is a classified channel! Identify yourselves!”
“Aberdeen, this is Brunhilde One-o-one, XFB Twenty-four fifty two. I’m issuing full planetary defense protocols effective immediately.” He added a coded recognition signal to the transmission, identifying himself more clearly than his call sign would.
“Brunhilde One-aught-one acknowledged!” He shot back, adding a salute as he realized he was talking to a three star commander.
“You need to have your tracking officer brought up to date in enemy stealth procedures Colonel. Check the coordinates I’m sending you.”
The man motioned to somebody beyond the video connection’s pickup. He scowled suddenly, hammering the offending crewman with a string of curses that could only have been learned from the old commander. “Sir, I assume you are coming here to take command of the situation?”
“That’s a negative colonel. Institute the procedure, just as it is written. Your first mission is to defend the population and get the appropriate message off to command.” The deeps space communication equipment on his own ship was probably better than what the old destroyer had, but without a full, purposely trained crew, he didn’t have the time to spare.
The enemy ship they were closing on was not sitting by idle. Apparently they had been tracking the smaller ship since it had taken off. The commander of the enemy ship was probably shocked and surprised that they were deliberately closing on them.
“We’re being targeted!” Murky reported. “Three enemy missiles closing!”
Jimmy already had them spotted on his own threat screen. It was the first attack he expected. Automated weapon systems on the Deltan warship were responding in the usual reasonable fashion. He only partially paid attention to the closing projectiles. Their own automatic systems came to life in response.
Three tiny missiles fired from a launcher located beneath one wing. Each one was no more than a foot long, and three inches across, but they streaked unerringly toward their targets. One by one, the ship-to-ship missiles the destroyer had sent against them winked out on the threat monitor.
The Deltan commander was openly shocked the Valkyrie was making an attack run directly on them. He had seen the Blackhawk fighter/bombers in action before. The American ships were fairly effective, though they were somewhat big for their intended purpose. Fortunately, there were relatively few of them, as intelligence reports maintained how expensive they were to produce.
It didn’t occur to him that the ship he was sent to target and destroy wasn’t actually a Blackhawk, but the prototype they had been based on. He wasn’t even aware they had been scanned. He was relying on the fact the decrepit patrol ship was either very lax in its scanning of the sector or wasn’t even capable of seeing them in their hiding space. He had no idea that the little red attack ship had spotted him from the surface.
“Colonel Commander Sir! Anti-fighter missiles have no effect. They have countermeasures!” One of his scope operators announced.
He didn’t expect the first salvo to work. “Prepare the automatic targeting system. Once it gets close enough we will do the job we came here for in the first place. As he pulls into range, open fire with our anti-fighter weapons and track him with the main guns. We will keep him busy with the small arms. He will not expect us to be able to target him with heavier weapons.”
“Yes Colonel!” he hastened to obey.
Has it already been five years? Jimmy asked himself as he wriggled into the leather acceleration lounge. I should have taken time to put on a tee shirt, he told himself. Despite the effectiveness of the air handling system, he could feel his back starting to sweat against the smooth material. He frowned when he realized he had given the Aberdeen’s commanding Colonel orders wearing nothing but a flight helmet and beach shorts. Fortunately, about all you could see on the other end of the transmission was his face.
He felt his adrenaline rising. This was his home, far more than the command deck of a capitol class ship. Damn the notion that he was as good a ship commander as he was a fighter pilot. His ship was an extension of him. That was especially true of this ship. He could feel each operating system on the ship as if he were an actual physical part of it. The first blasts of anti-fighter weapons fire reached them. His heart raced just a bit, but outwardly he remained calms. He didn’t grip the flight controls any tighter, but he started to respond.
The ship danced around the tiny beams of coherent light. His armor was most likely proof against the weaker weapons, but he was not willing to chance it. He had seen this type of attack before, although from much larger ships. They were trying to lead him into line with the ship’s heavier weapons.
That meant the enemy knew it could track and fire upon such a nimble single ship. “Murk, prepare to fire.”
Murky didn’t even have to ask. Turbo lasers, heavy particle accelerators, ship to ship missiles, even the larger ground attack missiles would not be as effective as the one weapon they had to take on such a large enemy. In fact, the little ship had three of these weapons.
Each engine of the Valkyrie boasted an Ion Lockin Cannon. The same energy the ship used for faster than light travel could be refocused into a coherent beam of charge Ion particles. With the detachable Sparrow fighter mounted on the nose of the ship, only two of the heavy weapons were accessible, but that would be enough. The outboard engines were modified versions of the monstrous drives of an old fighter called a Trident. The tiny ships were all engine, with two monstrous units flanking a diminutive control capsule. They recently went back into production with an important modification. They now boasted the powerful ILC weapon, and they were ship killers!
Murky disengaged the thrusters of the two outer engines, diverting their awesome power to the weapons. The centerline engine throttled up to compensate for the loss of power. Jimmy throttled the two drives up, generating the Ion pulse instead of more thrust. The computer acknowledged their weapons selection and transferred control to the firing stud of Jimmy’s control stick.
A holographic projection of a sight lined up on the enemy ship and he pressed the firing stud.
Twin beams of bright blue light leapt from the massive outer engines, streaking above his head. The canopies darkened automatically to keep them from being blinded by the powerful beams. The consoles dimmed as the awesome weapons, despite the power still being generated by the centerline drive, drained a large portion of the ship’s energy.
The beam intersected the destroyer across its upper spin. It struck with the speed of light, and it was already ripping into the ship, despite its combat armor. The ship’s pilots reacted just in time, dropping the nose of the ship and letting the twin lances of death pass less harmfully above them.
The Colonel was cursing to himself. He was also cursing the commanders and marshals who sent him on this mission for not giving him the data that such a tiny ship had such powerful weapons. He knew now that this was not ordinary Blackhawk ship attacking him. It was something else entirely.
Jimmy cursed aloud, knowing there was no subordinate to hear him. He kept all three throttles pushed forward, still pouring power from his Iron W.R.A.M.s into the weapons, preparing for another shot.
“We’re back to thirty percent ion power and climbing. Estimated full power in twenty seconds.” Murky reported.
He had guessed wrong. The weapon was so powerful that even their sensors were overloaded when they were fired. He intended to rake the ship with the beams, cutting toward the drive. It that had worked, the fight would have already been over. Now he had tipped his hand. The enemy ship was closing with him, hoping to batter him out of the sky with superior firepower. Now a more serious dance had begun.
Deltan ships were fast. Not only fast, but they could maneuver proportionally like a fighter. Her pilot had outguessed him, turning away from his attack before it could do major damage. Still, there was an ugly gash across the top of the ship where they had struck home.
Jimmy targeted the gash and fired two missiles as he passed the ship once more. He glanced at the chronometer on his controls. Fifteen seconds to full power. He wanted to be lined up for another shot when that happened. It would be more than half a minute quicker than a larger destroyer would take to regenerate the required power.
This time the shot was not going to be as easy. The Deltan turned itself right toward them, presenting their smallest profile toward him, decreasing the effective size of his target. They weren’t dumb. They were not waiting for him to generate power once more.
The Deltan Colonel wasn’t totally unhappy. Instead of an outright killing, he was now in a fight. He could feel the juices flowing in him. He knew now that this was a target that could bite back, like the long fanged Lupinas of his home. This was no fawning yekkum or grass browsing uhl-elk waiting for the hunter’s missiles to take its life. This would take skill, and he had it. “Transfer flight control to my chair!” He ordered. Twin pedestals rose on either side of his semi-reclined lounge. He gripped each one, taking control of the ship for himself. This was not the job of a lowly pilot; he would defeat the enemy himself.
He watched the small ship line up for another attack run. The missiles had ripped into the damaged section on its last pass, starting several fires and forcing some of the upper sections to be sealed off. One of the three main turrets was off line, but that didn’t matter. He had enough power with the remaining two. All he had to do was connect with the little gnat once. He read the attack, realizing that such a direct line meant only one thing.
Another angry blast of energy shot through the inky blackness of space. He was right. He correctly guessed that they were going to fire their main weapons again and he jerked the ship in the other direction in response. He was still surprised when his crewmen reported the beams had been just as powerful as before.
“Holy shit and damn! Jimmy shouted. How in the holy hell had he missed this time? Whoever was in control of the larger ship certainly knew what he was doing. It was time for a change of tactics.
Normally, he would drive the ship toward the orbiting destroyer. The Valkyrie danced to one side, avoiding a powerful blast from one of the Deltan’s main guns. The big ship wasn’t being herded, it was carrying on the fight first hand. He considered calling the waiting Aberdeen into the fight, but discarded the notion since that would leave the more populated areas undefended. Deltan Heavy Destroyers were capable of operating alone, but he wasn’t willing to take that chance.
He closed on it for another pass, this time ripping into one of its large ‘fins’ with his twin particle accelerator cannons located in wingtip pods. The charged metallic missiles ripped into the armored skin. The photon charges went off, causing a series of small explosions. It wasn’t much, but at least he had done some damage to the hulking ship.
He almost didn’t avoid the responding blast form one of the large turrets. Instead of being set into fixed positions like American ships, the weapons tracked around the cigar shaped ship on a moving belt, allowing them to cover more area in a ‘cone of effective fire.’ This was precisely why he argued for, and received the fifth turret located on the underside of the new battleships.
Almost too late, he realized that the enemy was actually leading him. He pulled up just in time to keep from slamming into the surface of the tiny moon. Craggy spires of gray rock shot past as he skimmed the surface, dodging laser blasts left and right as the destroyer strafed the surface, trying to drive him into the abbreviated mountains and craters.
“Full charge!” Murky announced once more. “Nothing else on the threat screens.”
“Got it.” Time for something new. He stole one glance over his shoulder, as if he could see his wife and friends through the closed hatch. By himself, he would have done this long ago, before the fight had progressed to this point. Holding back, he told himself, will get you killed.
He pulled back on the stick once more, streaking back into the heavens, away from the meager protection of the lunar surface. Flashes of memory crossed his mind of the first time he took the ship into battle, facing dozens of Deltan fighters streaming from a base hidden on the Martian moon. This miniscule rock even looked like that small satellite, like a squashed potato.
He fired two more missiles as he approached the destroyer once more, keying another weapon up as the bigger ship reacted to his latest attack. This time, it led them right into his sights as he let go with a volley of particle fire. The double attack had the effect he desired. The pilot second-guessed the attack and the twin missiles blasted into the nose of the destroyer. He got the added benefit of the particle attack striking home.
Glistening streamers of gas and debris were pouring from a second turret as the Valkyrie streaked by. Twin bursts of light from the under side of her wings announced the launching of two rear mounted missiles, ripping into the armored outer shell of the destroyer’s drive cone.
Jimmy scanned his weapons console. He was down to two large size missiles. He had barely scratched the surface with the large capacity particle accelerators, but, despite their use for armor piercing, they would take too long to nibble the enemy to death. The pulse lasers, used to fight other small fighter ships, were similarly underpowered to take on an armored capitol ship. It all lead back to the ILC cannons.
So far, the damage he had inflicted on the bigger ship had been confined to its large main turrets. The last was more severely damaged and he could not depend that either one was fully out of the fight. He would have to connect with the Ion guns if he wanted to take out the bigger ship, but the distinctive head on attack would tip off them off.
The Deltan colonel withheld his curses, instead calmly calling for repair reports. He had expected the American ship to attack once more with its main guns, instead, it had stuck with a two pronged attack that had damaged a further turret. The crew was reporting that the first one that had been hit was almost repaired. It would take much longer to fix the other one. Not only that, it was stuck in place on its track, blocking the other two from moving independently. No matter, he still knew how to bring his weapons to bear.
Why was the red warship making another light weapons attack run? Was it only capable of firing the big Ion guns twice? That didn’t seem likely. The big weapons were the mainstay of the American’s weapons, and they could regenerate fairly quickly.
Two more missiles were arcing toward them once more. The internal guidance systems would seek out their target, and despite the nimble nature of the ship, it was unlikely that he could dodge them at this range. He braced himself for the impact as the tiny blips dodged his own countermeasures.
The sudden blast took him by surprise. There was a deafening ‘whompf’ as a large section of his hull blasted away. Twin beams of blue fire cut into the ship, turning armor and framework into boiling masses of gas. The control stick went slack as the power died. Lights winked out, replaced with golden showers of sparks. His ears were ringing, telling him that the pressure was dropping, and fast. His ears popped.
He was spared the ripping
sensation of exposure to the vacuum of space as the ship exploded in a brilliant
display of pyrotechnics as the matter-antimatter fuel went up. The rolling cloud
of outraged molecules parted as the Valkyrie shot through its outer edges, not
able to avoid the expanding blast.
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Chapter 6 -coming soon! |
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