Con-Red: Recourse (32 page)

ORANGE
lances of deadly light streaked past the fighter and he cursed to himself while watching helplessly as they exploded against what remained of the dropship’s rear shields.  They flared a lighter blue one last time before quickly extinguishing.  As he coaxed the nimble interceptor left to right, trying hard to throw off the pursuers aim, he knew there was very little he could do to completely prevent the intense enemy fire directed against those transports.  Their intent to destroy the last pair of surviving cargo ships was plainly clear.  To keep that from happening, what remained of his squadron had spread out behind the two much slower and larger lumbering transports in an effort to create a wall between them and the enemy fighters.  

Try as they might, however,
Captain Serti ‘Zeus’ Alokow know that essentially there was no way that his handful of Cyclones could stop all of the incoming fire from getting through.  That was proven seconds later when another volley of enemy beams narrowly missed Razor flight.  One of these half dozen glancing bolts scored a hit and impacted the defenseless Albatross dropship directly on its left rear engine support strut.  Serti watched, completely powerless, as the beam sliced cleanly through the strut, sending a shower of sparks in all directions before the entire engine assembly ripped away and tumbled to the forest below.  The transport rocked from the strike and suddenly dropped ten meters from the air before recovering from the loss of one of its four thrusters.  The captain finally let out a held breath as he saw the other ship rise back to its previous position under the compensation of the three remaining engines.

Serti took another look at the video feed coming from the rear of his craft
and eyed two of the five fighters before pulling on the trigger twice.  That action caused two bay doors on the underside of his wings to pop out and two missiles to eject from each one.  At the same time he focused on the two enemy craft and mentally marked them as targets.  The Cyclone’s computer automatically acknowledged the mental command and transferred that data to the two deployed missiles, causing both to fire forward before instantly coming back around to streak by his ship and towards the enemy.  As the missiles sailed away both of the bay doors slid closed and the ammunition counter projected within his field of vision by his cognitive implant counted down once more to show only a pair of MP-212 Kiba missiles remaining.  He hoped that those transports they were escorting survived so that all of the interceptors could rearm, since all of them were running low on munitions.

Having previously engaged the enemy fighters in space above the planet
Captain Alokow knew ahead of time that the two Kiba missiles would have minimal effect against the alien’s superior countermeasure system.  Just like before the fighters scattered momentarily, giving the group a little bit of much needed reprieve, but the missiles followed their two targets guided by a pair of laser designators.  Upon reaching twenty meters from each fighter craft they seemed to hit an invisible barrier and bounce away to explode harmlessly in empty air.  This time, however, Serti was no longer surprised at the sight and ineffectiveness of the attack.

Once they regrouped the pursuers renewed their assault with increased ferocity, this time directed against the Razors themselves.  The sleek, dart nosed interceptor shuddered as a number of laser beams hammered its powerful shields from behind
. Serti smiled to himself as his previous act had successfully redirected the enemy’s focus on his group instead of the dropships.  The ruthlessness of the opponent’s second response shocked him to the core. A sudden migraine erupted in his head before he was unexpectedly overwhelmed with an assortment of emotions ranging from guilt to terror to intense anger, along with horrible visions of what had happened during the space battle not so long ago.  This was the second time he had experienced this sort of mental attack from the enemy, but was no less prepared for it.

Under the relentless assault on his mind walls that he had built up to stay in complete control began to falter causing the happenings of the battle to flash back.  His hands tightened around both the throttle and control stick along each side of the cockp
it as Serti began to relive the deaths of friends and colleagues alike.  Being a veteran of multiple engagements, both large and small, he had seen his share of death and destruction, but never so much in such a short period of time.  The voices screaming in his head seemed as prominent as they had been moments ago as were the visions of fighters under his command detonating in great balls of fire all around him. 

His entire group of three full squadrons, thirty craft in all, had almost been entirely annihilated in the face of the enemy’s superior number and utilization of the element of surprise.  It had been apparent from the start that whoever these aliens were, they were fully prepared for battle.  They were almost completely invisible to the Federation ships main sensor arrays and had the ability to block most of Task Group’s communications gear. 
Laser Data Links allowed his fighters to overcome the jamming, but it had not been enough for survival.  The most dramatic of the alien weapons came in the middle of the frantic engagement, it was their ability to somehow intrude the minds of the pilots and implant thoughts and feelings.  Many a pilot had died because of the loss in their capacity to make quick adjustments and decisions.

Serti did not know why, but the pilots of his Cyclone squadron had been able to mostly resist the thought insertion tricks.  Each one experienced horrible headaches, but those had been managed by their individual pilot assist systems, which had infused them with specialized blocking agents.  He also figured that their more sophisticated neural implants had helps to isolate these intrusive thoughts from the rest of the brain, not allowing them to be fully processed and expressed.  Remembering this
fact allowed Captain Alokow to slowly return back to the now and in seconds he felt his migraine ease slowly as the medication his ship administered began to take effect.  At the same time the other thoughts and visions faded back into the back of his mind, allowing him to concentrate on the task at hand.

It was then, with a clear head and mind, that
he noticed the rapidly flashing “Air Search” warning in a blue color on his optical display.  Serti knew immediately that that meant there was a friendly surface to air battery somewhere in the immediate vicinity and it was in the process of tracking and engaging the nearby enemy spacecraft.  That realization gave him a renewed sense of hope and confirmed to him that General Stelle did in fact have a plan to help them.  With this new element available to him, a plan quickly came together for Serti and the rest of his Razors.

“Razors, flipback on my mark,”
Captain Alokow sent out to prepare the three other Cyclones through the tactical LDL and listened for their immediate acknowledgements to pour in.

“Two copy,”
second in command Commander Irvin ‘Spike’ Spikzer replied first.

After the XO came Lieutenant Ellen ‘Ice’ Harding, “Five copy.”

“Nine acknowledges,” Serti heard the unmistakable voice and Russian accent of Junior Lieutenant Ashia ‘Griz’ Kovolanchuk, the youngest member of Razor Squadron.

His interceptor shuddered intensely for a second as another laser blast caught his rear shield from the renewed effort of the frustrated enemy to bring down his entire group.  Serti nudged his control stick sideways and sent his Cyclone into a quick roll to escape the rest of the incoming beams.  The
craft was unique in that it was actually built around the cockpit instead of the other way around.  Unlike other fighters its cockpit was somewhat detached from the rest of the spaceframe, held down only by two separate, reinforced, servo assemblies in front and behind.  When activated these allowed the cockpit to hold stationary as the rest of the ship rotated around it or maneuvered in any other manner.  It was meant to help the pilot stay better oriented during combat as well as to provide a fully contained ejection module with its own backup power supply and small shield generator.

The
captain watched the gray body of the interceptor rotate completely around him before locking the cockpit in place when it finished the roll and maneuvering to the right and left in an effort to throw off the pursuers aim.  From the corner of his eye he could see the other Razor squadron mates doing the same to avoid the intense wave of fire trying to knock them out of the air.  As Serti swung back to the right for the third time he saw Lieutenant Harding’s Cyclone, now visible without its active camouflage, spin out of control with its engines fully powered off.  He hadn’t seen it get hit by a single visible energy beam, which made him realize instantly that it had probably been targeted by one of the enemies strange invisible beam weapons.  Somehow that weapon was able to slice straight through the shields of a fighter and disable internal systems as well as kill the pilot with a direct hit to the cockpit.  That knowledge caused him to think the worst.

“Ice
sitrep,” Captain Alokow called out with hope but received no reply, “respond Ice!”

Serti watched Razor Five tumble through the air
shimmering every so often as the multispec camo tried to reactivate on its descent and willed it to pull up before slamming into the thick trees below.  As if in answer one of the two engines, stacked on top of each other, ignited and the craft’s spin began to stabilize.  Within another second the Cyclone leveled out and pitched up to accelerated back into formation.  Serti knew that something wasn’t entirely right with the ship when he say that the interceptor could not hold a steady flight, it was constantly correcting itself.  Its surface disguise now fully disable as well.

“Just
got a little clipped Boss, nothing serious,” Ice transmitted in her Australian accent as she climbed in altitude, her soft voice in direct contrast to her aggressive nature as a pilot.

“Copy that Ice,” Serti sent back with a smile
.

With Razor Five now damaged there was no way he could morally push her into a dogfight.  Because of this fact the plan from a moment before had to be adjusted.

“New plan,” he finally said while avoiding another barrage of laser beams, “Spike, Ice, cover the transports.  Nine, you’re with me on my mark.”

Serti looked right and left for a second trying to catch a glimpse of the other craft in his group
, but only locating Ice visually.  Images and locations of Five and the other two ships appeared within the layers of the Cyclone’s transalloy canopy, between the flashes of more orange beams, as it read his mind to find out what he wanted.  Updating their positions constantly now only through the active laser data links that connected them all the ship was able to accurately show them on either side of Serti.  The projection was actually necessary because of the fact that Spike and Griz still had their multispec camouflage engaged, making them almost completely invisible even to his highly enhanced eyesight.  This defensive technology didn’t seem to work against the enemy, though, whatever sensors they used seemed to see through every countermeasure the Federation Navy had.

Captain
Alokow looked away back towards the large transports after a moment and began to wait.  It didn’t take long after that for their time to act to come.  His display lit up with a ‘lock’ warning, which was instantly followed by a flashing ‘launch’ indicator.  The missile system automatically communicated with all nearby Federation vessels in order to give all friendly forces a notification so that they could react accordingly.  Onboard sensors identified the launched SAMs as Adinos and rapidly plotted their estimated course and ETA.  He kept an eye on the countdown clock as he juked the interceptor in all directions, trying to stay alive long enough to complete his plan. 

Finally at four seconds out
Captain Alokow called out “Mark!” and pulled back on the stick while cutting power to the plasma propulsor thrusters at the same time.  Both him and Ashia simultaneously conducted a perfect flipback, going from forward flight to facing rear almost instantly.  As designed the cockpit rotated upright as the interceptor spun 180 degrees backward, at which point Serti found himself facing rearward and looking out over the underside of his Cyclone.  An underside that now pointed up towards the sky, its color changing to match the new surroundings.  The sudden maneuver generated intense g-forces, pressing Serti into the padded seat.  If it hadn’t been for the ship’s inertial compensators his body would have never been able to withstand such stresses and would have caused him to pass out or worse.

Running his eyes quickly
down the curved flowing lines of the interceptor’s fuselage from its stubby wings to the dart-like tapered nose, Serti took note of a number of blackened surface scars from near misses by alien laser fire.  Looking beyond his eyes automatically zoomed in on the enemy fighters now in front of him.  At the exact same time he push the thruster control forward and accelerated towards the incoming enemy, closing the distance between them even faster.  He picked out one of the fighters and adjusted the nose of his Cyclone to point towards that same target while squeezing down on the trigger.

The Cyclone responded without hesitation and unleashed a rapid volley of blue beams from both of the interceptor’s wing mounted particle cannons.  Three of the beams fired out in quick succession from each of the cannons projecting out midway up the short stubby wings before the both went through a mandatory cool down period.  The first pair of beams missed wide, but the pilot assist system was already making the proper minor adjustment to the ship’s position so that the others slammed into the targeted enemy’s shield.  They flashed red while deflecting these powerful beams, but held until the last pair hit them milliseconds after.  One of the beams impacted against the shield along the starboard wing, while the second punched through the weakened shield to scrap along the fighter’s top, sending parts of the hull’s material flying off.  By the time this set of particle beams hit Serti’s Cyclone was ready to fire again and he began to switch targets in order to keep the entire enemy group busy.