Warship Blue Aerie, System Transit,

Einstein, Deep Periphery,

16^th March 3068

 

“Star Commodore, we have just received the signal to commence our attack.” A commtech reported to Valten Folkner, strapped in snugly in his command seat, as usual.

He asked, “Is it verified?”

“Aff, it is in authenticated code.”

“Very well.” Valten swiveled his chair around to face his helmsman. “Helm, 80% thrust. All gunners, standby. Fighter control, launch fighters in ten minutes. All ships in wedge formation.”

“Aff, Star Commodore.” His men hastened to their tasks, as a steady pull was quickly felt by the entire bridge. The massive warship was accelerating, with its sister ship White Aerie beside it, and a horde of lesser dropships swarming behind. It was an impressive sight for any observer.

Valten knew it would not be enough to defeat the enemy ship. The two warships were still carrying wounds from the last fight, and many of the dropships had yet to be repaired. They needed the additional ground to orbit support, as well as a surprise Lizabet Danforth had promised him. He only wished he knew what she meant by that.

He cursed under his breath. He had half a mind to order one of the jumpships holding position at the nadir jump point to go back to the occupation zone in case they lost the battle. However, the information he had received on the enemy warship had suggested that it would be useless to do so, because if they failed, then the enemy warship would be able to chase the jumpship down anyway.

The full story as related to him by Daniela Mattlov and Lizabet Danforth had him shocked at first. Aliens, civilization destroyers, advanced jump capability, etc. He remembered feeling a bit lost as they threw a whole load of information at him all of a sudden, and then poring over the data for hours trying to make sense out of them.

In the end, he had managed to glean enough information about the enemy warship to know exactly what was needed to defeat it.

It had defensive shields, everybody knew that now. An energy shield capable of blocking projectile and energy weapons of all categories. Backing up the shields further was something called a shield hardening device, which would boost the shield regeneration rate and reduce the damage from shield piercing direct fire weapons, or whatever they are. Even so, Valten wished he had some of those shield piercing weapons, which would even up the odds greatly, considering the weak armor plating of the ship. He had lost his temper when he had realized that he had the alien warship almost crippled in the last fight.

If only I had pressed the attack for two more minutes! The thought ran constantly in his head for the last few hours. If he had done so, they would not be in such a predicament, and the aliens would had been no more than a side note in the eventual Falcon victory.

Things had not turned out that way though, and all he had to show for the previous battle were two badly damaged warships, dozens of dead pilots, and several destroyed dropships.

The enemy warship, in stark contrast, was back to peak efficiency, if reports from the base concerning its self repairing abilities were correct.

Nevertheless, Valten Folkner was a Jade Falcon, and he would never admit total defeat while he could still fight. His men were much of the same mind, and even some of the Inner Sphere dropships which had joined them were eager to rescue their comrades.

“Star Commodore, enemy warship will be within firing range in ten minutes!”

He acknowledged the report. “Aff. Continue on course.”

 

Planck’s Quantum Hole, Copernicus Caldera,

Einstein, Deep Periphery

16^th March 3068

 

Squeezed into the cockpit of his Seraph, Galietra Binneti was feeling rather apprehensive as he taxied the fighter to the launch bay.

True to his word, Frank Meronac had gotten the techs to fix up the fighters for human use. Gal and his men had spent a lot of time trying to get themselves familiarized with the weapons systems, which were quite different from human ones, using the flight simulators.

Problem was, they had no way of approximating the effects of the exotic alien technology with human combat scales. In the end, he had to concede that they would have better off sleeping through the last few hours.

There was a ‘slicer’ cannon which fired a continuous plasma beam, and another called a phaser, which was akin to a laser except for its vastly superior energy output. His craft carried a pair of both weapons in the wings, while the nose packed more weaponry in the form of quad mass drivers, which were described to him as smaller and more efficient gauss rifles.

There were also two scores of missile racks placed above the fuselage, capable of firing a deadly swarm of high velocity missiles with the range of LRMs and the damage profile of SRMs, coupled to an integrated image recognition targeting system. Unfortunately for their ground troops, the missiles could only work in space. The specifications for the fighter had indicated that the launchers could fire 15 salvos before running out.

Last of all, there was the single heavy missile capable of puncturing through the enemy shield, though it required the launching unit to maintain a straight line to the target ship for a certain amount of time for the missile systems to figure out the shield frequency pattern in order for the penetration device to kick in. The ‘torpedo’, as the techs had dubbed the special missile, was slung under the belly of the fighter.

Seraph, the Inner Sphere pilots had named the fighter, after they had tired of just calling it ‘the alien fighter’. In the end, everybody had accepted the name, and some techs had even painted out angels on the fighters, wings and all, decked out with swords and shotguns, in a show of artistry. They had maintained that it was a tradition dating back to the time when men hunted each other through the skies in propeller driven aircraft.

Gal had thought their efforts a waste of time, but he did appreciate their dedication at getting the fighters to work with human interface systems. Even so, they had warned him and his pilots that the connections were not fully reliable, and could fail at any moment, due to inadequate testing. They said they needed more time to work out the bugs in the system, but circumstances had forced them to deploy the fighters regardless of any problems that still existed.

What that meant was something Gal did not want his mind to dwell on.

As the engine beneath his cockpit throbbed with life, he was reminded of the sheer technological advantage the aliens had conferred on them. The quantum engine was capable of pushing 30Gs, an incomprehensible level of acceleration which could instantly crush a human body.

Except that they had another nifty piece of tech called inertial compensators, which could counteract the G-forces. Evidently, the aliens were as vulnerable to physical forces as human beings.

There was a dial set up near the pilot seat to control the amount of compensation. Some pilots had advised setting it to about 98 or 99%, which would still leave the pilot with a ‘feel’ of the Seraph in movement, instead of blocking out the G-forces completely. Gal had agreed, though he knew some idiots who had turned their compensators to the max.

Due to the special properties of the quantum engine, the principles of which Lorik was still trying to understand, the Seraph could also remain indefinitely in combat without any fuel dependence, making it the ultimate endurance fighter.

Not just that, but the ultimate combat fighter, Gal admitted to himself. There was nothing in humanity’s arsenals that could have matched up to the Seraph in terms of speed, firepower, or defensive strength. Which brought him to thinking about the defensive items on the Seraph.

The fighter was covered with an extremely dense material they called ‘neutronium’, which Lorik had described as “basically like the surface of a neutron star, but thankfully not as dense, and gravitic effects are counteracted by anti-gravity devices embedded in the hull”. Which still left Gal with no idea of what exactly the material was.

And before the armor could even be touched, attacks would have to go through the much lauded shield defense system, which enclosed the entire fighter in an energy shell which could absorb what seemed to Gal to be obscene amounts of damage before going down.

Another feature for Gal to be happy about was the lack of overheating in the fighter. Instead of heat problems, Gal had to contend with energy generation ones. The massive amounts of energy demanded by the weapons, thrust engine, and shields meant that he had to carry out a precarious juggling act between the energy allocation to the various systems for maximum effectiveness, even with the virtually unlimited amount of power generated by the engines.

Each Seraph was 75 tons, a remarkable weight for the sheer amount of firepower and armor it packed. The ejection mechanism consisted of a detachable escape pod from the entire fighter, complete with its own small propulsion and life support systems capable of lasting for up to 48 hours.

As he taxied the fighter to the launch pad, which would tilt the fighter towards the skies, Galietra reviewed his assignment of the pilots for the coming battle.

He had tried as much as possible to pair up a strong pilot with a weak one, forming fifteen pairs of fighters. Seven pairs were assigned to one squadron, with one pair selected as the command pair for the squadron, and one member of the command pair being the officer in charge of the squadron. The last pair was his own, with him in overall command.

His wingman Trisha Sawyer was a rookie Inner Sphere pilot who was shot down early in the battles between the Falcons and the mercenaries and captured as a bondswoman. Gal had to push the young pilot hard during the simulator exercises to drill her in the proper dogfighting techniques, which she was sorely deficient in. Overall, teamwork drills and formation flying were largely neglected, due to the lack of sufficient simulators to work with.

Galietra could only hope that their lack of coordination would not hurt them later.

As the Seraph reached the area marked out by paint on the floor, Galietra halted his fighter. A low whirring sound precede the raising of a patch of the floor behind the fighter, for it to brace against when tilted.

“Five minutes to launch.” A tech called out over the communications set.

Gal nodded to himself, as he felt the fighter tilting upwards. Leaning back into his seat, Gal looked around the launch bay, and saw the same thing happening to all the other Seraphs.

The plan called for them to carry out a standard Combat Air Patrol, with the elimination of enemy fighters being their main task. With an estimated 400 enemy fighters still remaining, it would not be an easy task even with the Seraphs backing up the fighters from the Falcon warships.

A torpedo run was up to their own discretion, but Gal had the feeling that the longer lock times required practically mandated the removal of more enemy fighters before they could start any such run.

Gal was shaken out of his ruminations by the commtech. “Launch in two minutes!”

Taking the opportunity to recheck all his systems one more time, Gal also uttered a quick prayer to the Kerenskys for luck. Although Jade Falcons were rarely superstitious, and never did put their faith into the notions of chance and fortune, Gal was worried sufficiently by the imminent battle that he felt asking for a bit of divine intervention would not hurt.

“All units,” the tech called out again. “Launching in twenty seconds!”

“Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen…”

Gal gripped his Hands-On-Stick-And-Throttle tightly with both hands.

“Twelve, eleven, ten, nine…”

He tried to blank his mind of all feeling, of all emotion, focusing only on the huge wall in front of him.

“Eight, seven, six, five…”

The walls before the Seraphs suddenly parted, giving them a good look at the bright sky beyond. There were few clouds, and Gal thought he could glimpse a look of the fusion flares from the arriving warships.

The tech was shouting out the countdown. “FOUR, THREE, TWO, ONE…”

Here we go.

“LAUNCH!”

Gal shoved his HOTAS forward. The Seraph shot forward into the sky instantaneously, sounding like an avenging banshee as it screamed into the skies. Gal had thought himself prepared for the acceleration of the Seraph, but it still amazed him to realize the sheer speed of his flight.

He did not need to check his screens to know that 29 other identical fighters were right alongside him as they dashed into space, gradually forming up into an attack pattern with Gal in the lead.

As they left the planetary atmosphere, Gal could see the enemy warship moving towards two Black-Lion warships, while a whole wave of black fighters headed towards him. He brushed his triggers lightly with his fingertips, eager to do some hunting.

 

The machine intelligence was not at all prepared for the sudden appearance of the new fighters, packing advanced technology that could only be the work of the Qlictorio. It quickly accessed the situation, and it came to a distressing conclusion.

The flesh beings had managed to recover and utilize some of the technology left behind in the base.

Its drones had enough trouble fighting against the flesh beings with their present tech levels. With the advanced weaponry now available to them, the machine intelligence’s task would be even more difficult.

Thankfully, it had two more sets of reserved special drones, one of fighters and one of mechs. It had wanted to hold them in reserve until absolutely required, and the present situation certainly looked like it needed something to tilt the balance back towards its drones.

It commanded its command vessel to depart the sea in which it had hidden for eons. As the craft broke through the surface, fighter bay doors opened in the hull.

Fifty night-black fighters, sleek and deadly, blazed out of the doors, angling up towards the raging space battle.

 

“Tell the Bayer to scatter its explosives now! Helm, hold steady! All gunners, continue to fire at will!” Valten clasped the edge of his seat tightly as the conflict unfolded before him.

His fleet had bored in straight at the enemy warship, with the White Aerie taking point in front of the Blue Aerie as they closed in. The White Aerie had turned quickly to present its undamaged starboard flank to the enemy, while the Blue Aerie, still lacking armor on both sides, engaged at long range, using the White Aerie as a shield to block incoming blows. Valten had the Blue Aerie delivering one broadside after another at the alien ship, hammering away at its shields.

They were concentrating fire as much as possible on the enemy warship, but it kept shifting about, causing them to fire on the stronger shield sections instead of the weaker ones.

Valten had countered by sending his dropships in an enveloping movement, while using them to seed the areas around the warship with lifeboats packed with remote controlled explosives. He intended to direct the lifeboats towards certain weakened shield sections once there were enough of them scattered in any one area.

The entry of Galietra Binneti’s aerospace squadron was the most surprising, and the most welcome. They had torn into the enemy fighters with a vengeance, swiping away the drones harassing his dropships with considerable ease. Valten almost wished he was a simple pilot again, flying one of those awesome Seraph fighters.

The bridge trembled as an enemy fighter claimed a piece of armor near their position before a Seraph swung in and blasted it out of existence.

Valten was furious. “Tell Star Commander Pendiv to keep those stravag fighters away from our bridge!” Warship fighter cover was supposed to be the responsibility of Pendiv’s aerospace star, while Galietra Binneti’s squadron already had its hands full trimming down the enemy fighter population.

He added, “I do not want a Radstadt to happen to us!”

Everybody picked up on that. Free Rasalhague Republic pilot Tyra Miraborg had slain ilKhan Leo Showers by ramming her fighter into the Dire Wolf’s bridge during the Battle of Radstadt, and earned eternal fame and even several lines in the Remembrance for her courage. Nobody wanted that to happen here.

“Sir,” The radar operator yelled, “picking up more contacts approaching from the planet!”

 

Galietra Binneti pushed his throttle forward as he picked off the fighter that had been attempting to shoot at the bridge of the Blue Aerie.

Swinging away from the massive Black Lion, he veered back into the thick of the action, firing his plasma slicers and phasers all the while, claiming two more black fighters. His wingman Trisha kept her fighter close, ready to support him if he ran into trouble.

Their initial strike had been an unqualified success. The enemy fighters had been sent reeling by the firepower of the Seraphs, and together the human fighters had destroyed almost a third of the enemy fighter strength.

But there had been losses as well. Three Seraphs had been destroyed by enemy fire due to interface problems, as the pilots suddenly lost control of their craft in the midst of combat, while another two had been downed by overwhelming firepower from the enemy fighters.

His communications set suddenly crackled. “Seraph Lead, this is Command! We are picking up enemy fighter contacts from an enemy atmospheric cruiser. Ally thinks they are probably advanced enemy fighters, with shields and heavy weaponry!”

Freebirth! Still, we have been warned of such a possible move by the enemy. Gal quickly assessed the situation.

“Aff.” He replied. “All Seraphs, regroup and form up on me!”

He pushed his HOTAS to the upper right hand corner, sending the Seraph into a corkscrew towards the incoming enemy fighters. The other surviving members of his squadron followed him out of the swirling melee.

Gal hoped the other human fighters would be able to handle the black fighters on their own, while his own unit dueled with the newcomers.

He spoke to his squadron. “Watch out, people! These are advanced fighters, and probably on par with our own. Cover each other as much as possible, and focus on staying alive. And no matter what, stick to your wingman!”

“Here they come!” Peggy called out unnecessarily as the black dots came into view.

The two fighter groups fired at extreme ranges simultaneously. Gal decided not to hold back any more, and unleashed the missiles he had been hoarding since the start of the battle.

It was the right decision. His direct fire weapons slammed uselessly into the forward shields of the enemy fighter he had targeted, but his missiles managed to crash through the weakened shields, killing the fighter as they destroyed the front section of the craft.

Before it died, the fighter replied with its own weaponry, a combination of phasers and missiles which reduced his own shield protection by more than 80%.

Gal twisted his Seraph away as a second wave of black fighters appeared, trying to protect his forward section from being denuded by further attacks, as the charge dissolved into a wild dogfight.

He found himself covering Trisha as she went after a black fighter, hammering away at its aft shields with her mass drivers firing one after another, using the sheer volume of fire to compensate for her poor accuracy. Flashes of blue energy around the black fighter greeted every one of her attacks that connected, while his own sensors indicated that she was close to punching through the shields soon.

“Trisha, break hard left!” He yelled as he spied two black fighters approaching from 9 o’clock position. She reacted immediately, her Seraph turning away into the enemy position and taking them by surprise as Gal opened up with his own guns on the flank of one of the enemy fighters.

He failed to punch through the shields this time, but he managed to swing around on the black fighter’s rear, with Trisha covering him his back and returning the favor.

As they fought, Gal realized that the presence of the shields had changed the complexion of the battle completely. The regenerative nature of shields meant that ships could recover effectiveness after a period of time, and this led to longer dogfights.

The cooperation between the human pilots was proving to be crucial, as they were able to ask one another for cover once their own shields were down. Gal could count fifteen enemy fighters down, while he had lost only five more Seraphs, to both equipment failures and enemy fighters. It was very tough going, and he doubted they would be able to make any more contribution to the ongoing warship battle until they had eliminated the advanced fighters first.

As he broke off his pursuit of the black fighter on another warning from Trisha, he spied a series of flashes off to his port side.

Forsen Mandela’s jumpships had arrived.

 

Captain Helene Rice wiped the sweat off her face as the crew of the Sevoto struggled to bring the jumpship around to bring its thrusters to bear on the enemy warship. She looked around the view screen to see the other two jumpships that had followed them trying to do the same. The Tayo had remained behind as its jump drive had been damaged in the earlier jump into the asteroid field.

Conventional spacecraft piloting rules dictated that the operators keep the vessel’s drive venturis well clear of any other ship or facility, as the hydrogen ion exhaust from the primary thrusters could inflict quite a bit of damage.

The rules were all thrown out of the airlock now. That crazy clanner Valten Folkner wanted to use her jumpships as the biggest goddamned PPCs in the galaxy!

Star Commodore indeed, she thought. Weren’t clanners, especially Jade Falcons, sticklers for rules? The order from Forsen Mandela for her to jump in with her jumpships to act as ‘fire support’ for the Jade Falcons had been last and greatest surprise in a journey fraught with unpleasant surprises.

Wait for my order, the Falcon had commanded. Until then, they were to hang back and simply watch the battle in progress.

She prayed for the enemy to continue ignoring her small fleet, which they were doing thus far in favor of the more dangerous dropships and warships. Of course, that was only because her ships did not pose any threat. Yet.

Then a series of jump flashes signaled the arrival of the other jumpships, which had been captured by the Falcons when they had just arrived in the system. Helene could only sympathize with the other jumpship operators, who had been forced by the Valten Folkner into his harebrained scheme.

 

“Star Commodore, the White Aerie reports that they have lost all starboard armor!”

“White Aerie to pull back! Helm, 20% thrust! Tell all damage control crews to prepare for weapons damage!”

The drive thrusters of the Blue Aerie flared, as the ship started to move forward again, closing in with the enemy warship while the White Aerie backed away. Valten could see the terrible scars the enemy warship had wrought on the White Aerie, gaping holes where armor plate once existed, the melted and reformed twisted alloy forming crazed patterns along the hull. A huge piece of half solidified Harjel floated past his bridge, testament to the ferocity of the battle.

All three ships were flinging tremendous amounts of firepower at each other, a virtual light show in space as bright volleys of light erupted from the enemy warship, replied by multi-ton missile swarms and autocannon slugs, only for them to impact futilely on the shields, causing ripples of blue energy as the kinetic energy of the human weapons was dissipated and reflected back into space. Meanwhile the space around them swirled with masses of fightercraft, seeking a way to tip the balance once and for all.

All to no avail, as the alien ship now hung with the crippled Black Lion, pouring laser fire into the exposed superstructure of the ship. Ominous buds of orange were seen blossoming within the interior of the White Aerie, and Valten began to fear the worst.

“Sir, White Aerie is suffering internal damage! Her captain estimates another ten minutes before she blows!”

Valten swore bitterly. The arrival of the new enemy fighters that had drawn away Galietra Binneti’s squadron had been the crucial factor. He really needed the ground fire support now, as the movement of the enemy warship had the merchant jumpships scrambling to readjust their own positions. He also did not want to use the explosive lifeboats so soon, but he could see little choice if the present situation continued.

He had lost three more dropships already, while the human fighter forces had been pared down to just three and a half stars remaining, against just slightly more than a hundred left for the enemy fighters, not counting the advanced fighters still slugging it out. If the White Aerie was destroyed, it would become nearly impossible for them to destroy the enemy warship.

But there were some good news. From all indications, the ground units had already been formed up and were holding off the enemy drones, but the surface-to-orbit cannons still needed some time to deploy and power up their energy reactors.

“Helm, port turn 60 degrees, and then 50% thrust!” He ordered. “Move between the White Aerie and the enemy warship! Cut the engines once we are in position! All gunners, fire as you bear!”

His choice of maneuver could only prolong the White Aerie’s agony, but he would do his best to keep both Black Lions in the game for as long as possible.

Come on, his mind urged the ground batteries, hurry up.