Battleship Avenger (Conquest of Stars Book 2) (5 page)

A few
spacefighters that were painted with blue stripes tried to take laser shots at
him and a couple even launched their rockets. But Roofus had been a
spacefighter pilot before he was selected as a deep space spy – partly due to
that very experience – and he dexterously maneuvered his way out of the battle
and accelerated at top rate away from the melee’ of battleships and fighters.

After putting some
safe distance behind him and ensuring that no one was on his tail, Roofus
looked more closely at the scanners, curious to know where the battle was
taking place and he received another shock to knock his jaw out of its socket.

The scanner identified
planet Nestor! He looked out the windows and turned his head every which way
and saw familiar planets. The scanners were right and he recognized the home
solar system.

The bastards had
attacked their home planet and the capital of their civilization.

Instantly he
turned his spaceship around towards Nestor. Nestor’s immediate space was
overflowing with combat spaceships large and small, a torrent of rockets flying
every which way and a rain of lasers crisscrossing in every direction. But
Roofus knew that Nestor’s planetary defenses possessed far more rockets and
laser batteries than any Nestorian battleship including Bakus’
Republic
.
More importantly he had to get to the political leaders and tell them
everything about his experience. The knowledge he had could be of significant
value to Nestorian forces.

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.”

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
batteries 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 make
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.