Battleship Furiosa (3 page)

"There they
are,
" said Rex.

"Got 'em."

The pair of fighters circled
around so that they were now moving towards the flanks of these
spacecraft. As they moved closer, the shapes of the craft became
clearer.

Mahingans.

Unlike Alliance fighters, the new
craft used by the Star Empire were asymmetrical and quite
differe
nt in design and construction.
Although not as sturdy as the Lightning, the Mahingan was much more
heavily armed and almost as big as a gunship. They carried eight
automatic cannons along the wings, and a deadly 75mm medium
velocity mass driver in a central pod, slightly offset from the
pilot.

"Follow me in,
" said Nate.

The two accelerated as they gave chase.
The enemy must have detected their presence because they
immediately split apart. One lifted up and away from its pursuers,
while the second rolled over and then accelerated directly at the
Warbarge.

"Split up," suggested Rex,
"I'll take the first."

He began to move
away
, but Nate answered back in a stern
voice.

"Negative. We have to work
together. That's what they want us to do.
Promethium can handle that one. Let's take the climber.
Just hit the second tagged fighter on your system. Remember,
concentration of combat power."

Rex
acknowledged and both fighters then pulled up in a high-g
climb. When they'd first started, Rex had always been the leader.
He was an incredible pilot, perhaps the best of them, yet he was
cocky, arrogant, and hard to control. Nate shook his head as they
gave chase.

"Ready your weapons. This is gonna get
close."

As they moved away from their
previous position, another barrage of gunfire struck the Warbarge.
This time it was a mixture of
particle
beam weapons and mass drivers, the kind of heavy ordnance designed
to cripple a warship. The Warbarge might be ancient, but it was
taking a beating like nothing Nate had ever seen. Missiles, guns,
and torpedoes smashed into its armour, yet each impact did little
more than bash holes in the exterior or tear off armour plating.
The Warbarge's exterior was over engineered to a degree never
repeated afterwards. By removing the powerful engines, or anything
else normally used by a conventional ship, she was fully optimised
as an orbital gun platform and nothing more.

"I have a lock," said Rex,
"Meteors ready to engage."

"Fire!"
Nate said.

Tiny sparks marked the launch of
a
single Meteor missile as it screamed
away from its launch rail and chased after the fighter. This weapon
was standard issue in the fleet and capable of engaging small to
medium sized targets up to half the range of its larger cousin, the
infamous Dragon V missile. As it neared the enemy, the two Alliance
fighters pulled apart until nearly a hundred metres away. It was
close enough to assist each other in the fight, but not so close
that they couldn't manoeuvre in an emergency. Both craft continued
to slide left and right, continually presenting a more difficult
target for any weapons that might be tracking them.

"Lining up...guns ready..."

Nate moved his targeting reticule
ahead of the fighter, and exactly where the computer estimated he
needed to aim.
At that moment, the Meteor
came into view and then ran into a star pattern of countermeasures.
The Mahingan spun about so that it was flying backwards and opened
fired. The light autocannons crackled around Nate, and he was
forced to pull away to avoid sustaining major fire.

"Watch out!"

A
bright flash marked the activation of the deadly 75mm mass
driver. This weapon used a magnetised sled much like an
electromagnetic railgun. Rather than using the complex weaponry
often used n the Alliance; this weapon simply fire anything it
wanted at a target. On this occasion is was a dense ball of
hardened metal that was easily capable of cutting a fighter in two,
even of penetrating multiple layers of armour. The large-calibre
projectile blasted past and narrowly missing hitting the left side
of his fighter as he kept on rolling. The Mahingan then swung
around and boosted its engines in a desperate attempt to
escape.

My turn.

Nate pulled the trigger and was
rewarded by th
e familiar kick as the pair
of Gatling guns opened up. Only a handful of the shells were
equipped with burning material to create a tracer, but he was a
good enough shot to not need them. The first burst went wide, but
as the Mahingan corrected, he managed to penetrate it through the
upper armour. A series of small flashes danced about the left wing,
yet it still kept on dodging. Nate moved his aim a little to the
right and his finger to the trigger.

Try
and fight without your
engines!

"Nice, very nice!" Rex
yelled,
"I'll finish him."

Nate's finger instantly released
from the trigger as his companion hit his burners and pushed ahead
of him, partially blocking his line of sight.

"Idiot, out of my way. Get back!"

R
ex
ignored him and concentrated his own weapons on the enemy, leaving
Nate directly behind and partially obscured from the target. Both
wing-mounted guns spat round after round at the damage fighter
until finally a burst shattered the cockpit, sending the broken
fighter into a death roll. Rex then began to lift up to move
against the second of the fighters. Nate kept his frontal weaponry
pointing at the fighters and dropped back to give him more reaction
time.

"No, stay with me.
D
o not break formation. We have to stay
paired up! Do not do that again."

"Don't worry. I had your
back.
That puts me on seven kills as well
now. Same as you, right?"

Rex laughed in an exaggerated
fashion as he fell back into formation. Nate's face reddened with
anger, and it took all of his self-control to not burst into a rage
right there and then. This was not the first time this had
happened, and it was the recurring theme that stopped the
Knighthawks from being taken seriously in the fleet. Their origin
as a mixed unit of teenage gamers and a handful of placement cadets
was proving hard to shake. Nate was not bothered that Rex had
claimed the kill, or even that he might surpass him. It was the
lack of discipline that continued with him. Nate rolled twice and
then aimed at the spinning fighter. To his annoyance, Rex would not
stay silent on the issue.

"Why not? We have to get the
other one before it escapes. You can't..."

Once more the fighter spun
around, and this time it fired its mass driver first. Nate kept on
rolling, using the distance to avoid the attack. He was ready for
it, but it didn't matter, the target was him this time. The
powerful round slammed into Rex's fighter and punched straight
through, taking a large part of the fuselage with it. The remnants
of the fighter then vanished in a terrible fireball.

"No!"
Nate screamed.

He banked to the left, narrowly
avoiding chunks of debris blasting away from the wreck. Nate then
lined up on the Mahingan that had now moved even closer to ANS
Promethium and fired two more bursts. It was almost impossible to
see what was happening, as the approaching missiles and shells from
the Star Empire ship reached their target. Most never even made it
close to the armour as the Warbarge's twelve upgraded defence
turrets made short work of them. Some of the shells impacted on the
armour, but apart from the impact marks, there was little
discernible damage. He boosted his engines and chased down after
the fighter, even though it was leading into the maelstrom of
battle. Then common sense prevailed, and he shook his
head.

"No, you fool. Pull up!"

He
yanked on his controls and veered away as the Warbarge
unleashed a barrage from its primary weapons. The Mahingan flew
right through the gunfire and disappeared amidst the flashing and
streaks of high-power guns. The return fire from the ship’s
primitive guns was very different to anything he'd seen before. He
almost choked upon seeing the emergency beacon from Rex's cockpit
transponder. It meant the cockpit pod had been jettisoned, and that
he was alive and in need of a pickup.

"Stay put. H
elp is on the way."

Rex began to answer, but Nate cut
his audio feed in a fit of anger and rolled to the left to rejoin
the two fighters from Corsair Squadron. With him on his
own, it was much too dangerous to hunt alone and
would leave him vulnerable. Rex was safe, for now. Few fighter
pilots would fly around looking for ejecting enemies to kill, at
least while the battle still raged. Nate made subtle power ratio
adjustments and then checked the networked threat data. Every
drone, ship, and fighter in the area pooled their information to
create a detailed assessment of the area.

It's time to finish this.

Alliance Minefield, Fiorr Veej System,
Deadlands

23 December 2472

Nate had been in the cockpit for so long
his body ached. He tried to shift around, but the harness pulled
him down tight. It was all, of course, to keep him safe, but right
now, he wanted to twist his torso and relieve the stress in his
body. The battle continued to rage, even though most of the
Alliance fleet remained unengaged. He understood why that was so,
but at this very moment he'd have liked to see a few more Alliance
ships helping out.

Even as he moved to within a
kilometre of the pair
, his threat
indicator activated. A quick glance showed that the damaged fighter
was on his tail, while the second was moving to regroup with its
two companions heading for Lieutenant Commander Holder from out of
the cover of the gunfire.

"Corsair Leader, two hostiles on a
head-on approach."

The answer from Corsair Leader
was instantaneous. Her voice was as calm as it ever was and helped
keep Nate focused on the mission.

"Good eyes, we have them. Lift to
point seven and take
my right flank.
Check your guns. You're going to need them."

Nate pulled up and then boosted
his engines just as the next barrage blasted away from the
Warbarge. They fired in a sequence, a long ripple that ran along
the flank and upper decks. A single 255mm automatic cannon was far
from state-of-the-art, yet what it lacked in technology, it made up
for in numbers and sheer brute force. At the same time, a bright
glow from the ship’s manoeuvring thrusters covered one entire flank
as they attempted to correct for the broadside.

Stay away from them, you fool.

Nate had though
t he was far enough away, but the first four guns fired
perilously close. As he lifted up, he could see the flashes as each
fired in turn. They were much more powerful than the weapon fitted
to standard ships of the line and from a different age of
warfare.

Incredible.

It was a machine built for one
job, and it was doing it well. Twenty-four of these massive guns
could cripple a smaller warship in one salvo, and a
concerted bombardment could make even a massive
vessel like ANS Warlord soon back away. The guns used an archaic
ammunition type where each projectile comprised a hardened
penetrator slug, and behind it a shaped, high explosive charge that
expanded sideways, as well as sending a super-heated stream of
plasma into the breach created by the penetrator. The ship carried
over thirteen hundred crew to manage the defensive systems, as well
as the partially automated loading and firing system for the gun
systems.

"Lock on targets and use your
guns only," said Corsair Leader, "Fire at will."

Nate acknowledged and then
targeted his pre-selected fighter to the left of the enemy
formation. They were coming in fast, the flashes of the guns
backlighting them so that they appeared as silhouettes. The three
Alliance fighters poured gunfire into them as they approached,
simultaneously sliding both vertically and horizontally.
Projectiles sailed past, but not one touched them. One Mahingan
exploded in a fireball, and a second dropped down too far and was
hit by the medium gun turrets that were strewn across the surface
of the Warbarge.

"One left and one
damaged,
" said the Lieutenant Commander,
"Follow me."

The formation of three Lightnings
rolled to the right and just above the barrage of gunfire. The last
two enemy spacecraft had activated their engines and were now
accelerating below the Warbarge. This was the only significant
vulnerability for the ship, but there was nothing the fighters
could do from there.

"They are just avoiding the flank.
Light them up."

It took a little longer this time as
the five spacecraft weaved in and out of the lower superstructure.
Nate spotted the damaged craft make a subtle pulse with one of its
engines.

"It's gonna spin, evade!"

All three Alliance fighters
pulled apart from their formation just as it spun around. The
gunfire streaked between them but caused no damage. The return fire
from the three of them knocked out one engine and then ignited its
powerplant. The explosion destroyed the fighter and sent so much
debris into the last craft that it spun out of controlling before
vanishing in a fireball.