Nephilim or Nefilim, from the Hebrew root nfl, 'to fall'. They are literally 'the fallen ones', fallen angels that fell to Earth from the stars, slept with the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the sons of God, 'the heroes of old' and all this happened before the flood [c. 6-8,000 BC i.e., the end of the last Ice age].
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TCS Bunker Hill.
The Nephele System in Vega Sector, near the Tyr jump-point, approximately six hours after jumping in, 7th February 2681 (2681.038).
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"The fleet is splitting up. Nephele is a big system and we have to find and destroy any bugs that have already followed us here before trying to stop any more that try to," explained the Wing Commander, Colonel Harold Morrison, "each carrier has been assigned an area which will have to be searched. There's some sort of interference disrupting both communications and long range sensors, so unfortunately our SWACS birds are virtually useless. It's back to the war era standing patrols and long-range fighter sweeps."
"You gotta be shittin' me!"
The WC ignored the outburst and continued, "There are only two jump-points we really have to worry about, Alcor and Loki VI, since we don't expect the bugs to jump back into Kilrathi space.
"Therefore the highest priority has been given to the Alcor jump point since that leads to Vega. We are to search out and destroy any and all Nephilim ships we find within our allotted search pattern and then hold the jump-point until further notice. Let's try and put on a good show for admiral Rakak who has just transferred his flag to the Bunker Hill" The CAG left the raised dais in the centre of the briefing theatre amongst a chorus of groans and mutterings of disbelief. Next up to the platform was the Wing Commander and Panther squadron CO, Colonel John Hoffman, or "The Boss" as he was universally referred to. After a quick glance to see that the CAG really had left the room, he hunched forward, leaning on the podium and gave one of his characteristic snorts of disapproval.
"Alright, boys and girls, forget that puke, his word don't mean shit. I do not know whose bright fucking idea it was to put a desk jockey in charge of the Space Force Air Wing of this carrier, but the guy should have his balls crushed-" there was a rather feminine but loud cough from the back of the room, and the Boss grinned, "sorry, balls or tits, crushed between bricks.
"What that idiot forgets is that the bugs won't just be trying to leave this system, they're going to pass through it. We don't know how many groups of these insects there are, where they're going or what they are going to do when they get there. We know jack-shit. The same as fucking usual, really. Get used to it, lads and lassies, because that is what being in the military is all about. We're nothing but mushrooms: Kept in the dark and fed on shit.
"The bugs could easily pour out of that H'rekkah jump-point right this fucking second. The Midway has been battling its way deeper into Kilrathi space and coming up against an endless supply of the fuckers.
"You will probably know by now that the Midway managed to close the wormhole the bugs were coming through. This is good news, however, this isn't some 'mopping-up' operation: We don't know how many bugs had already come through, 'cept for the fact that it was a shitload, so don't start celebrating yet - there's still a lot of fighting to be done.
"In my opinion we shouldn't be out here on our own without the 1st, 4th and 7th fleets. We shouldn't have fallen back, and now that we have fallen back we shouldn't split up our forces and fuck around here. The fighting is going to centre on Proxima again, just like it did at the end of the war; it's still the most expedient route straight to Sol.
"But since we are here, we're going to do the job we've been assigned."
"Son of a bitch..!" The same disgruntled pilot again voiced his opinion, gaining a deadly glare from the Boss.
"I don't like this any more than you do, but nobody forced you into your jobs. You all wanted to come and fly fighters. Well, now your flying 'em. Quit your whining.
"The SWACS can't do the job they were intended for, that is, sit safe and cosy within a short sprint of Mother and tell us what's going on all over the system, so we're going to have to take 'em out on recces, and see if they can burn through the jamming at a shorter range. We have five of them on board. We'll need to keep at least two back here so that we can have one up at all times, therefore the other three will be deployed with one in front of the carrier, one out on the left, and one to the right. That way as we patrol nothing should sneak up on us."
"Yeah, right!"
"If I hear one more peep from you that isn't 'Yes, Sir,' you'll be facing the bugs flying a paper fucking plane! Is that absolutely bloody clear to you?"
"Yes, Sir!"
"Good! Alright, now the good news. You might have noticed that the targeting computers are giving designations to the bug ships, and we also believe we can translate some of that crap they keep transmitting on Guard. Much of this data has come from the Midway, but unfortunately, due to the interference in this system, we've temporarily lost their regular reports.
"We've extensively studied gun camera film from both the Midway encounters and our own engagements, and these bastards are nowhere near as nasty as we once thought. Their main weapon was surprise. Given the unknown nature of the foe and the horrific, organic nature of their ships and insect like appearance of their pilots, it understandably scared the shit out of a lot of people when they first came up against them. Hell, I even browned my speed-jeans the first time I encountered 'em. It was probably the same at the beginning of the war when we faced the Kilrathi for the first time. We beat them, we'll kick these bastard's arses, too," the Boss turned and aimed the remote at the viewscreen, which sprang to life showing alien ships being obliterated under a hail of Confed fire.
"Right, you may think you know all this by now, having faced the little shits a few times, but I'm going to run through what we know anyway. If you get bored, tough, but something you pick up here might just save your tail and the fighter it's sitting in. Alright?
"The standard alien fighter seems to be the Moray. Luckily it isn't all that fast, manoeuvrable or heavily armed. Better armed is the Manta, which seems to be a heavy fighter-bomber, but it's not too fast or agile either. Squid are much faster and have some good guns on the nose but aren't too aggressive: Fast head-on passes coupled with an extension and another high speed pass is usual. Plus they don't seem to be seen anywhere except near the alien capital ships, so we think they're short range interceptors, roughly comparable to our Wasp, but not nearly as good. They're very fast under reheat, but without it they're surprisingly slow.
"Another fast attack craft are these Stingrays which have pretty good guns, and can combine with two others to form an even bigger gun. The ones you really have to watch out for though are Devilrays. They really are mean bastards. Very fast, very agile, and very powerful.
"There are also these slow, cumbersome Rays, with their Remora entourage. We haven't really worked out what those Remoras are there for yet, because they only come into play after the Ray's dead. Come to think of it, we don't really know what the Ray is designed to do either- they never live long enough for us to find out!
"The enemy do massively outnumber us, and unfortunately Confed hasn't seen fit to equip the Bunker Hill with the usual heavier types found on a fleet carrier, Vampires and Devastators, but even so, I can honestly say I'd rather face this many Nephilim than half as many Kilrathi."
"Anyway, onto the details: Blue Slime [Navy Intel] reckons that the only way the bugs could be jamming this entire system is with a large transmitter array, either mounted on some sort of orbitting station or fitted to a large capital ship. They also reckon that these Nephilim have some sort of a 'hive mind' that allows them to keep in contact with each other, and that this jamming transmitter and comms setup are probably built into the same doohickey. The jamming might even be an unintentional side effect of the constant transmissions that lets them stay in touch. If it is mounted to a ship it is likely to be the 'mother ship', something like a queen bug, or at least somewhat similar."
"The 'mother creature'?" someone asked, half in jest.
Hoffman nodded, "Knocking it out could really hamper alien operations in this sector, at least for a time.
"The slime and science boys have therefore devised a gizmo to work out where this thing is, kind of like our missiles' home-on-jam capability. The only thing is that it can only give a strength and bearing, so to find where this thing is we're going to have to do a triangulation. However, since we can't communicate over large distances, another carrier's SWACS can't do it for us, and we're going to have to send one of ours out on the 'grand tour' of the system and try and get two or three readings, and therefore a location. The SWACS will have a four-ship of Panther's as an escort.
"In the meantime, and in case it doesn't work, we're going to do a recconaisance-in-force in our assigned area. Since we're expecting lots of little bugs and big bugs too, we're effectively going to be sending out strike packages to do the recces, rather than the old wartime fighter sweeps. On top of that, we're sending our destroyer escorts ahead with their Tigersharks acting as scouts. If the shit hits the fan they should buy the Bunker Hill time to back off a ways and organise a counterattack.
"As usual there will be an SWACS orbiting safely within a short sprint of the carrier. With this interference they won't be able to see much, but they might be able to give us a little advance warning if the carrier group is attacked. They will of course have the usual pair of Panthers as HAVCAP." [High Asset Value Combat Air Patrol]
The Boss seemed to become bored with the whole proceedings and scratched his left eyebrow.
"Any questions?"
"We were just through this damn system- how the hell did the bugs set up a jamming centre so quickly? And if they can build something like that, what about fighters or capital ships?"
"I honestly don't know, and I doubt the slime does either, although they would never admit it. Besides, as I said, we're not sure it's a jamming centre, it could just be one or more of their ships. You've seen those ships like I have: Maybe they grow the bloody things. I hope not, but at this time we just don't know. Any other questions?"
"Will we still be able to keep in contact with the carrier over all the interference?"
"Your guess is as good as mine. I hope so. I doubt we'll be able to stay in contact with the rest of the fleet, though."
"Ah, shit..!"
"Yup," the Boss agreed, "well, what are you turkeys waiting for? An engraved invitation? Let's go, people!" The briefing theatre rapidly emptied except for the Boss. He rubbed his sinuses and let out a long hissing sigh.
The WC stepped onto the bridge and paused for a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust to the gloom. The area was still called the bridge, but the large darkened room was really a command and control centre designed to monitor and control the movement and operations of not just the Bunker Hill herself but her entire carrier group, including every capital ship, fighter and shuttle. More than a dozen officers worked at their own comms station or console, mostly holding their own individual conversations with people elsewhere and unseen, a constant background of chatter. Figures: Times, distances, bearings and velocities, sparsely interspersed with a few ship types and tactical callsigns.
In the centre of this organised chaos, right in front of a three-dimensional representation of the system and everything in it, sat arguably the two most important people in the battle group: The Captain and 'Strike'. Strike was the universal calsign for a carrier's flight control officer, the person who directed all the carrier's flight operations.
With them sat a man important in rank but not in reality - admiral Rayak, having newly transferred his flag to the Bunker Hill.
"Ah, Colonel Morrison," the admiral's smooth voice greeted him, "we were just about to call you up here. We're a bit worried about all this interference."
"The admiral," the captain explained carefully, "was wondering if you had any idea why the Nephilim would suddenly try to jam us."
"With respect, sir" the WC frowned, "I'm not at all certain that it is jamming. It seems more like interference."
"Nevertheless," Rayak cut in, "it severely hampers operations in this system, if not the entire sector."
"Actually, sir, I think it may be a good sign."
"Just what the bloody hell do you mean by that?" Rayak exploded.
"Well, sir," the WC continued calmly, "we know they seem to have some sort of a hive mind. They have to talk to each other, and there seems to be evidence in the analysis of these transmissions that suggest they're communications rather than deliberate jamming."
"So why should it suddenly start now?" asked the captain.
"I can think of a couple of reasons: The bugs are spread out over a much larger area now - maybe their transmissions have to be more powerful to keep in touch with one another, or they may been using a different communication method before and have had to change, either because we've already damaged their comms or because it won't work over these distances."
"I've just had another thought," the captain said slowly, "the interference started shortly after the Midway took out their wormhole..."
"Supposedly took out their wormhole," Morrison interjected. "Things are pretty FUBARED back at HQ at the moment,"
"The interference started shortly after the Midway supposedly took out their wormhole took out their wormhole..."
, the captain continued doggedly.
"You're saying that it's an interdimensional transmission?!?" Rayak was almost having a fit.
"I never said that, sir."
"Preposterous!" Rayak was now being stared at by virtually the entire bridge crew, "Good God, man! Don't be ridiculous! They've simply found a way to jam us, that's all."
"Well, even if that is true," Morrison argued, "that's still a good sign."
"I still don't see what you're driving at."
"If they're having to change their tactics, try new ways of tackling us, we must be doing something right."
"Hmmph!"
"Is that all, sir?" Morrison asked, trying to keep his tone neutral.
"Oh, yes," Rayak was already light years away, "you're dismissed."
"Thank you, sir," Morrison said, saluted, spun on his heel and strode briskly from the bridge.
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En route to Navigation point three, approximately fifty minutes later
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Lieutenant Sean 'Warrior' Harper eased back on the throttle as he slipped into position on the right of 'Hero', also known as Captain Anthony Mitchell, and their pair was on the wing of the Boss and 'Chatterbox', otherwise known as Captain Roger Elliot. Behind the lot of them came the four Shrikes. Off to the right were the Tigersharks, also a four-ship. The group were intended to be able to tackle whatever the bugs threw at them.
Warrior used the trim control to lock his Pather's velocity to its current vector and performed a vertical and horizontal visual autoslide check of his surroundings. Disengaging the Shelton slide he kicked hard with his left foot rapidly rolling the craft around its own axis, and a quick stab with his right foot stopped the roll exactly in the level position.
The conventional airfighter controls of having the rudder on the pedals had long since been discarded since fighters no longer used their wings' lift as the primary turning force. Pitch control stayed the same, but yaw had been moved to the stick, and roll control to the pedals, which worked remarkably well. However, in fighters with an atmospheric capability it was usually possible to reverse the controls, intended for use after re-entry. However, this change had been implemented in the days when most craft had very similar pitch, yaw and roll responses, but the newer fighters coming off the production line with thrust-vectoring often had radically different response rates of yaw/pitch/roll and this switch was a neat feature, particularly for the Vampire, for which a quick roll either left or right and then hauling back on the stick to use its incredible vertical plane agility was a much faster way of tracking a target than using its (very respectable but rather slower) yaw rate.
"Everything's clear," Warrior declared, with about as much conviction as he had in the 'lone gunman' theory. How the hell was he supposed to spot some small black craft against the background of space when that space was black, too?
"Boss, these bugs ships are black, right?"
"Looks that way. Very dark, anyhow."
"Well, it's just that if the scanner's bugger-all use, and since these things are black... its just, you know, the thing about space is, well, your basic space colour is, well, black. You see what I'm getting at, Boss?"
The worst of it was, the Boss could see exactly what he was getting at. The excellence of scanner's during the war and after had meant that visual searches by the mark-one eyeball weren't considered much. Bright red and blue warpaint was used on the fighters, adorned with nose art and kill markings. After the war it was just as prevalent, and in fact, especially since the enemy was usually Border Worlders and pirates in similar craft it had grown even more garish and loud, large, high-visibility identification marks straight onto the shiny metal finish. Even if the Nephilim were jamming their own scanners as well with this interference, whatever the hell was causing it, (which in any case he severely doubted) they'd still have a huge advantage even with simple visual aquisition.
"Alright, fine, when we get back, you can get out the paint and paint all the squadron's Panther's black, OK? Of course, you can try and ask the bugs to paint themselves bright red as well, but you know, I'm not quite sure how they'd take that. Perhaps you'd like to invite them over for a beer and we can discuss it, along with why they want to kill all of us..?"
"Geez, I'm sorry I pointed it out! I mean, we're only all gonna die, hell, it's not like it's anything bloody important!"
"Yes, alright, Harper. I'm not very fucking happy about it either, but bitching about it doesn't help, so shut the hell up!"
Suddenly green blobs of ectoplasmic goo sliced through the Panther finger-four. Warrior though the blasts looked like some space giant had just sneezed as he executed a high 'G' barrel roll to the right through sheer instinct. Another blast hurtled up through the area of space he'd just vacated. Looking up [down?] through the canopy of his inverted Panther he could see several flights of Nephilim fighters sweeping up from their blind belly position.
"Bandits 5 O'clock low! Break Right!" Warrior hollered the warning as another barrage of the strange fire tore through the flight. Chatterbox's Panther was hit and visibly shuddered, but seemed to be intact.
"They're Squid. There must be a cap-ship around nearby!"
"Who cares what they are? Blow 'em away!"
"Yes, Boss!" Warrior replied emphatically. Glancing over his shoulder to see that Hero had pulled onto his wing to cover him, he selected Imrecs and locked up the first Squid, but didn't launch, instead squirting his full energy-well's worth of full guns straight in its face. It refused to pull out of the collision course, also blasting away with its own guns. Luckily the curious green blobs of whatever-the-hell-they-were seemed to miss, and he was left playing chicken with an alien ship with a closure rate of over 3,000 kps. Warrior came out of burner and yanked back on the stick. Unfortunately the alien pilot had had the same idea and the two ships smashed heavily into one-another.
Having gritted his teeth and closed his eyes Warrior was surprised to survive the impact, but it seemed only to have taken off a couple of layers of shields. Chopping the throttle to idle, Warrior dropped behind the squid and gave it a few blasts of full guns. It suddenly shot away from him and as he firewalled the throttle Warrior thumbed off the Imrec which streaked out to crash into the Squid's aft section, removing its rear shields and some of its armour. However, from the almost dead-stop he'd been at, it had left him well behind, and out of guns range to finish it off. Suddenly he was aware that it had reversed and was now heading straight for him. Warrior was reminded of the darting attacks some fish make, and the more he thought about it, the more he realised that the Nephilim fighters did seem to almost swim through space. The eerie revelation sent chills down his spine.
As the ITTS targeting reticle appeared over the fighter speeding toward him he fired a burst of full guns and then bunted the stick. The squid flew over the top of him and he hauled the Panther around, viciously retarding the throttle so as not to overshoot: He'd been surprised at how fast the squid decelerated the fist time, and had chopped the throttle to nothing too late, only to then be left trailing in its wake. This time as he came out of the turn where he expected it to be, he pushed the throttle to full military power ready to ignite the 'burner when it tried to outrun him. There it was, a perfect, slight deflection shot as the squid clumsily tried to reverse into him. Warrior raked it from stem to stern, showers of smoke, sparks and what looked almost like blood or slime flew off it, but it stubbornly refused to explode.
"Warrior, break left now!" As this warning was shouted, his missile warning klaxon also assaulted his senses. Punching out a couple of decoys and breaking as hard to the left as he could he saw his attacker as it flashed by his right shoulder, a short, stubby little fighter with a single glowing yellow exhaust: A moray. Warrior reversed hard into it, changed target and let fly an Imrec that he quickly followed up with a short burst of full guns as he just about rammed it. The Moray vaporised with a surprisingly large explosion for its size. The Panther was jolted by the blast, but completely undamaged.
"Splash one Moray! They ain't so tough!" Warrior cycled through the targets on his scanner for 'his' squid, but it had disappeared. Hero probably got it. Next up was a Manta that had got in behind him. He turned hard into it, narrowly missing a Squid that blasted past with a Panther hard on its heels, and soon got in behind the Manta. Although it couldn't get out from behind his gunsight its squirming was managing to put off his aim enough so that the high energy usage of his guns coupled with the Manta's tough shields and armour meant that he was having little effect.
"Oh, bollox! Fox one!" Warrior let loose another Imrec. The space between him and the Manta suddenly turned almost white as it spewed a myriad decoys whilst barrel-rolling first left and then right. He didn't know where his missile went; it certainly didn't track the Manta. He was about to launch another when his Panther was hit heavily from behind. Breaking up and right whilst simultaneously rolling the craft hard to the right did as he'd hoped- hardly surprisingly his attacker couldn't follow the manoeuvre. It was another Manta. As Warrior rolled out of his dizzying spiral the Manta behind started to line up on him again whilst the other that he'd originally been following turned back toward him, trapping him in the middle in a terrifying crossfire. Realising that they were probably flying as a pair with one dragging him for the other, he suddenly remembered his own wingmen.
"Get these bastards off me!" Warrior pleaded whilst turning hard left. A Moray was now coming in from about his seven-thrity position, firing madly.
How is it, he thought, that one minute there just seems to be you and the guy in front, and then the next second the entire galaxy seems to be filled with bad-guys? He asked himself. Jinking hard and dropping in and out of afterburner he tried desperately to throw off his pursuers' aim.
"Warrior, stay in that left hand turn a sec, but ease it up a little... OK, hold that turn a sec... got the fucker! Now reverse. The other Manta should end up in front of you," the Boss had come to his rescue. Sure enough, when he broke right the other Manta had got too close and was forced out in front of him. At close range Warrior let rip another missile which smashed heavily into the Manta. Miraculously it still had some armour left on its aft section, but Warrior let fly with the guns. At point-blank range they rapidly stripped off its remaining armour and shredded it.
"Good Kill, son!" The Boss gave him the thumbs-up as he came close by on Warrior's left, afterburner glowing brightly, right on the tail of a Moray which was quickly blown to pieces by his guns.
"Thanks for the save, but where's Hero?"
"He punched out. Chatterbox has gone with the Shrikes while we finished off these here. We better get over there."
"Over where?"
"That huge, gigantic, fuck-off destroyer right in front of us."
"Holy shit... I though it was an absorption nebula! It's huge!"
"Yup." That was it, his entire comment. Warrior only knew one man who could convey so much feeling and information in one simple syllable, and flying on his wing, he suddenly felt a whole lot safer.
Chatterbox skimmed low over the surface of the destroyer. The Nephilim destroyers had been assigned the Confed reporting name 'Orca', but he couldn't see why. Killer whales were just friendly, oversized dolphins that had picked up an unjustified reputation. This thing looked like it had come from the deepest depths of some deep sea trench, or perhaps his worst nightmare. Its surface seemed slimy and strangely organic, and apart from the fact that it bristled with huge gun turrets it put him in mind of the crashed space vessel in Alien, one of the classic 20th Century sci-horror movies he was fond of. The holo remakes just weren't the same. His other quirk that gave him his callsign was that he never shut up. He muttered on incessantly, in the cockpit, in the bar, in his sleep, even while making love.
"Look at the size of this thing... ugly bastard. Flick left, line up that gun... take that, you mother! Hah! Squid coming in from 3 o'clock high... no problem, single firing pass and he's away. Okay, next gun..." and on and on. Every thought he had seemed to be immediately transmitted to his mouth like a running commentary. No one told any secrets to Captain Elliot, not unless he wanted it to be known to the entire sector.
"Alright, how many guns is that now, six? Shrikes should be able to find some blind spots now for their torpedo runs, if we can keep the bugs of their tails. Let's get it on, Quick blast of 'burner, closest target, still the Orca, OK, try it now... Manta crossing left, roll in up his butt. Missile up the chuff and finish him with guns. Stop squirming, you bastard! Right, he's a gonner - who's next?"
Warrior and the Boss had also entered the fray, the Boss grabbing himself a Devilray. Warrior tried to stay with them, but gave up and latched onto a Moray that was stupid enough to attack him.
"That's the engines gone - she's dead in space!" The leader of the Shrike flight informed them. Another few seconds and hopefully the bridge would go too, although Warrior had the horrifying thought that it looked more like a major nerve bundle than a bridge...
A small fighter zipped past a fraction after its blast. It seemed to be all a flying gun, with small stubby wings and an engine. Warrior locked it up and barrel rolled to its six O'clock position. Suddenly two more identical fighters appeared and they locked together. Suddenly they/it did a 180 and Warrior was suddenly staring down the barrel of an even bigger gun. Mesmerised like a rabbit in headlamps it took the first powerful hit to bring him out of his trance. He wrenched the stick hard back into his stomach and the Panther shot straight up. A glance at his shields and damage display assessed the damage. It had cleaned his shields and most of his armour off, but he'd got away with it for the time being. On the other hand, he'd taken his eyes off it and his targeting computer was still locked onto the Moray.
Where the hell had that flying gun got to? Warrior stabbed the 'closest target' button and locked onto the Stingrays, working their way into his rear quarter. Breaking hard right he instinctively flinched as it opened fire, but luckily the shots flew over the top of his craft. As he zipped past the Stingrays one of the Tigersharks rolled in on them, opening fire with its rocket pods. The Stingrays were rolling and weaving, trying to put off its aim, but without warning one of the three exploded and the other two split apart instantly, flying in different directions. Warrior took one and the Tigershark driver was still glued to the tail of the other.
Warrior gave the heavily damaged craft a couple of seconds full guns, and it disintegrated in front of him, the blast utterly enormous. The Panther was flung about in the shockwave, and it took Warrior a second or two to get it under control. Then he realised what had happened. He had chased the Stringray close to the Orca, which had taken that particular moment to explode. There were now only a couple-of-dozen fighters to worry about...
"How's everybody doing?" Boss asked.
"Lost my no-claims bonus, Boss," Warrior quipped.
"Not a scratch here, Boss. Well, OK, I tell a lie, maybe a scratch or two, but no serious panel-beating..." Chatterbox seemed to be OK too.
The Boss was worried and puzzled. Everyone still flying seemed all right but they'd lost a Shrike (no ejection) as well as Hero and the Tigershark pilot Colin 'Jock' McGregor who were going for a spacewalk, but the Nephilim seemed unfazed by their mothership's demise. Their destroyer was nothing but a smoking hulk, and when he'd fought the Kilrathi, something like that had taken most of the fight out of them. They wouldn't surrender, but they always seemed to seek an honourable death from a Confed fighter's guns rather than try and escape to another ship and face the dishonour of having lost their own. These bugs just didn't seem to care. They also didn't seem to worry about their own survival either: 'My death means nothing: You shall fall!' was their favourite dying statement. Assuming the translation was right. Fighting these creatures was like nothing they'd ever faced before.
Warrior despatched the Moray he was on with, and selected the closest target. It was nowhere near him. He turned onto it, but it was going to be dead long before he got there; it had the three remaining Tigersharks and one of the Shrikes all over it. That was it, the only enemy in scanner range. Warrior took a glance over his systems. He now had no armour on his nose or left side, no missiles, a couple of decoys, a few seconds AB fuel left, and 12% core damage. Could be worse.
"Let's get the hell out of here," the Boss suggested.
"Amen to that," Chatterbox agreed. There was something chilling about the shattered remnants of the Nephilim destroyer that sent shivers down his spine. Something unnatural.
"Let's go," Warrior seemed to read Chatterbox's mind, "the sooner we get the fuck out of here, the better I'll feel."
As they formed up to leave, Warrior asked guiltily, "what about the guys who ejected?"
"SAR's on the way. They'll be alright. Unless you wanna stay here on RESCAP?"
"Screw that!"
"Right," the Boss was exasperated, "then shut the fuck up and let's go!"
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Debriefing, half an hour later
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"The good news is that the SWACS found the source of the alien transmissions," explained Colonel Morrison, "The bad news is that since we still can't transmit through the jamming, we've had to send one of the Panthers to the carrier covering that sector so that they can organise a strike to take it out. Until that time we're still blind.
"That was good work out there people. Well done."
Again the Boss shook his head as he prepared to address his pilots.
"Yet again, that guy had made a fundamental error. We are outnumbered here, boys and girls. We have very few of these nice, new, shiny aircraft. If you get a few of them and lose your own ship, that is a net loss. We don't know how many ships the bugs have exactly, but all estimates agree that we are massively outnumbered! Bring your 'planes back with you! Don't get me wrong, I'm not concerned for your safety; I could happily live without seeing half of your ugly faces ever again, but I need those fighters. We need those fighters.
"We were lucky today. We met a single destroyer, on its own away from its battle group. Next time I don't think we'll be as lucky."
Twenty boring minutes later after all the important details had been gone through, out came the gun camera videos and the beers. Things loosened up, and soon the room was resounding with laughs, groans and cheers. Over the top of this commotion Warrior almost didn't hear Hero and Jock come in. They'd obviously both been picked up by the SAR shuttles, but Hero was having an argument with the Boss. Then Warrior's own gun film came on and he was slapped on the arm.
"Hey, you're up!"
"Yeah, OK..." Warrior turned around and started to watch his kills, soon forgetting the troubling scenes enfolding behind him.
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Pilots Ready Room, approximately two hours later
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"Bad news, man," Chatterbox announced as Warrior entered the ready room.
"What's up?" Warrior asked.
"The alien transmitter was taken out about an hour ago. It was a huge mothership."
Warrior was confused, "I thought that would be good news..."
"Well, yes, in theory," Chatterbox uncharacteristically paused for effect, "except that it's revealed an Alien carrier group heading straight for us, cutting us off from the rest of the fleet!"
"Ah. That would be bad. What are we planning on doing about it?" Warrior asked.
"How the hell should I know: 'We are but mushrooms', remember? Briefing's in five minutes, ask the Boss."
"I'd rather smear my balls with honey and lie naked on an ants nest!" Warrior retorted.
"Alright, you prepubescent little piss-pots," the Boss addressed his pilots warmly, "listen up, and listen good, cos I ain't about to repeat myself.
"After our glorious victory, the bugs have gotten to wondering what happened to that lovely destroyer they used to have running around this system, and came looking for it, only to find us. They seem a little pissed at us. So pissed in fact, that right this minute, I'm told, they've launched a strike on us. I have no exact estimate of the numbers of Nephilim ships involved in this strike, because there are too many for the scanner to count. For those of you who don't know, that means that over one hundred and fifty fighters and bombers launched from the carrier and her escorts are on their way here.
"The plan we have devised is elegant in its stark simplicity: Get up there and kill the little fuckers. Then when you're done killing the little fuckers, come back here to rearm and refuel because then we're going after the big fuckers! Everybody clear on what they're supposed to do? Goooooooood. Well, GET MOVING!"
"And I thought I was starting to like this guy," Warrior muttered.
"I heard that!"
Warrior was helped to strap into his Panther by the crew chief who removed the safety pins from the ejection system and handed them to Warrior (who placed them in one of his flightsuit's numerous zip pockets) before saluting and disappearing down the ladder. After powering up and checking that the Nav data had downloaded properly, Warrior closed the canopy, checked it was down and locked, then taxied forward and to the left. He trickled forward until instructed to stop, and the blast deflector was raised behind him. He checked that he was getting full movement from the thrust vectoring unit and that the control jets worked, and then saluted to the plane handler who gave Warrior the thumbs up back. Warrior firewalled the throttle and ignited the burner. The Panther hurtled down the flight deck, through the atmosphere-retaining forcefield and out into the 'big black'.
Warrior took a quick glance at his displays and VDUs. Everything was in the green. He came out of burner quickly to preserve his fuel and cut the corner to slide up onto the wing of his leader, which for this flight happened to be Chatterbox. Hero hadn't been cleared by the quack after his ejection as safe to fly again, but Warrior suspected that his dissapearance from the flight roster might have rather more to do with his argument with the Boss than any injury he might have sustained.
All the spaceworthy aircraft in the Panther squadron except the pair providing CAP for the SWACS (twelve in total after losses and those being repaired) were setting up a BARCAP patrol to stop the Nephilim strike getting through. With them were all the Bunker Hill's Tigersharks, leaving only the destroyer Glasgow's 8 F/A-105s and the Bunker Hill's squadron of Wasps to intercept any alien craft that got through.
"Gunslinger, Deadeye. Multiple bandits 220 by 30 for 120," the SWACS driver verbally informed the Panther squadron (Alpha, Bravo and Charlie flights) the location of the Nephilim strike group whilst simultaneously sending a databurst to update the enemy positions on their navmaps/scanners.
"Boss copies. Two minutes, people."
Warrior mentally went through his checklist. Target: Locked; Guns: Full; Missiles: Imrec; Throttle: Mil - OK.
"Boss, do we take out the bombers first, or take out the fighters first and leave the bombers to carry on unescorted?" Warrior asked.
"Go for the fighters, then either us or the inner defences can pick off the bombers more easily. We'll get minced otherwise."
"Copy."
There were a few BVR missile shots before the merge, and then all hell broke loose. There were so many alien craft! Morays and Mantas, mostly. There was a flash to Warrior's right, and suddenly the number of blips on his scanner seemed to double: Someone had got a Ray. The Remora's seemed to be unshielded, because one blast of guns and they were history. They were numerous, but not terribly deadly. They were purely an annoyance. Warrior wondered if he should count them as 'kills' - they barely seemed to count. Morays seemed to be little better. For the enemy's standard fighter type they didn't seem particularly good. On the other hand, during the last part of the Kilrathi War and even after the standard Confed type had been the Hellcat. Hard to believe that Confed had actually signed a contract to buy the damn things, let alone the vast numbers that they were produced in. Now they'd all been dumped on reserve units, or the Border Worlds. Even Border World militia wouldn't touch them if they had a choice. The Kilrathi had gone with the Dralthi as their 'standard' type during the war, too, and that was outperformed by, well, just about everything. Maybe 'standard' fighters are the cheapest, or easiest to build. They certainly weren't picked for quality.
Warrior almost idly picked another one off and then got the shock of his life when the Manta the Moray had been acting as a decoy for opened fire. The whole aircraft shuddered under the hail of fire and Warrior barely managed to get the craft out of the volley before it exploded. He had no rear armour and fairly severe damage to the craft. Normally the armour wouldn't have worried him too much, except that his shield generators were about 80% trashed. Without their normal healthy recharge rate Warrior felt very, very vulnerable. Not only that but his other main aid to survival, his afterburner, was also 60% damaged, and working in intermittent, short bursts. This wasn't as bad as it might be because although he couldn't run from the bugs, it did cause their targeting systems hellish problems getting a firing solution.
Warrior did the only sensible thing: He jinked madly, puking decoys every time the 'lock' klaxon sounded, and pleaded for help. Lt. Bob 'Fatboy' Little (who was as skinny as a rake) obligingly cleared Warrior's six whilst his auto-repair system tried to patch up the damage his overconfidence had caused.
Warrior split-essed and locked up the closest target, another Manta. It had already taken what must have been a missile from the rear, but had light damage. The cumbersome heavy fighter twisted to try and evade Warrior, but despite its best efforts, it couldn't lose him. A quick check of his own tail first and Warrior hosed it, stripping off its shields and the remains of its armour. Smoke, sparks and phosphorescent debris flew off it as his shots hit home. Suddenly the nose of the stricken vessel pitched up violently then it swapped ends and broke up.
Warrior instantly broke hard left, then right, jabbing the 'select closest target' button again. High and to the right was a Devilray rolling in on him. As he brought the nose of his fighter around he got a good lock tone with his Imrec, and fired, followed quickly by a second missile. The Devilray rolled inverted and plunged down past his nose, continuing its rolling motion, over and over like a falling leaf, dumping masses of decoys as it did so. Both missiles missed, but Warrior saw one definitely arc back for a second try. Warrior changed targets and went after some Stingrays that were joining up.
It was long as dogfights go, maybe twenty minutes, but as usually happens, one minute the sky is full of targets and the next you're virtually alone. It took another couple of minutes for everyone to form up again. They'd trashed a hell of a lot of bugs, but lost four Panthers. No one had escaped without at least losing some armour and two of the Panthers would be grounded for quite a while. Warrior's would probably be the 'hangar queen' for the rest of the cruise: 78% core damage, and no armour at all remaining on the rear or left side. It was a mess.
"Warrior, you and Phoenix had better get those heaps of junk back on deck. We might be able to salvage something," the Boss dished out the orders, "we'll go and find a replenishment shuttle. Then Frag and Puma, you guys go and relieve the Panther's on HAVCAP. They need to come to this navpoint, where we'll rendezvous with the strike birds."
"What's going on, Boss?"
"We'll be launching a retaliatory strike, assuming of course the Wasps and Tigersharks get the ships that slipped past us. If we can take out their ships, or even just immobilise them we can rejoin the fleet."
"And if that doesn't work?"
"The Alcor jump point. It's a long run, and the Bunker Hill isn't exactly the fastest tub in the galaxy, but it'll be the only chance we have. At the rate that enemy battlegroup is bearing down on us we'll be dead well before the rest of the fleet could get here. Answer your questions?"
"Yes. Worse luck." Warrior shook his head. First the Boss and now the Nephilim, he thought, I must have done something really terrible in a past life...
Captain Piotr 'Tsar' Chenkov blasted out of the Bunker Hill's flight deck on full afterburner. Checking he was clear of the ship he ignited his booster. Tsar loved the massive feeling of speed, better than burner, catapult launches or re-entry. He loved everything about his job and his fighter. The Wasp was fantastic: Brilliant missiles that would take out the heaviest fighter with one shot, fast, manoeuvrable, and no long, boring CAP or fighter-sweep missions. Just a scramble, a few quick kills and back to the bar for celebratory drinks.
Tsar chopped the burner and waited for the others to form up on his wing. He waggled the Wasp from side to side, and got answering nods, almost at the same instant as the enemy blips started to appear on the scanner.
"Engage," he commanded, and ignited his 'burner. Not wishing to waste his swarmer missiles on the fragile Skate torpedo bombers, he cycled through the targets until he found something heavier, a Manta. The Swarmer missiles easily tracked the alien ship but its pilot tried to evade the inevitable, jinking and twisting even as the missiles slammed into his ship. The Manta almost seemed to be writhing in agony. Tsar put it out of his misery with a well aimed burst of guns. Next came a Devilray. This took a Swarmer and an Imrec. Tsar was shocked that any fighter could absorb such punishment. He used another Imrec on a Skate that found itself in front of him, and chased one of the component pieces. Though fragile, it presented a reasonably difficult target and it took several seconds to get in a killing burst of gunfire.
Suddenly a huge shape loomed above him, blotting out the stars as he looked through the Wasp's canopy. A Ray. Tsar pounded away at it, and chopped the throttle as he crashed heavily into the Ray's shields. It seemed almost as slow as a capital ship, and nearly as tough. Finally it exploded, flinging its entourage of Remora everywhere.
Damn! This makes it ten times harder to find worthwhile targets for Swarmers! Even so, it was not long before the skies were clear of bandits.
"Status! Call off! Alpha!"
"Two's OK."
"Three - I'm hit bad, but I'll make it,"
"Four - I'm hit, moderate damage only."
"Bravo!"
"Two - I've taken a few hits."
A long pause. No three. Tsar cursed, "Three?" No answer. Damn.
"Four?" Double damn.
"Hotshot and Mindbender. They didn't eject," Tsar could see no SARBE beepers on his scanner, "there is no point in remaining here. Let us return to the carrier."
Warrior eased his battered ship onto the 180 radial of 'Mother', the TCS Bunker Hill.
"Strike, Warrior for recovery,"
"Copy, Warrior, call the ball."
"Panther ball, manual approach."
"Copy that, Warrior. You're cleared to land."
Warrior couldn't use the automated landing system as it had been knocked out during the fight. Still he was on the glidepath and all he needed to do was keep her steady and remember to throttle back before reaching the runway threshold. Then it would be an easy enough matter to drop the gear and gently put her on the deck. He hoped.
15,000 klicks back in trail he heard Phoenix get landing clearance as well. If anything went wrong with Warrior's landing, that would give him time for a wave-off, and if everything went OK, enough time for Warrior to land and taxi into one of the hangar bays to clear the flight deck.
Warrior had throttled back to 150 kps by the time he crossed the landing bay threshold, and then dropped the gear, chopping the throttle to nothing whilst dropping the nose. Warrior didn't get a 'greaser', there was a large squeal of protest from his tires, but he got her safely down and taxied left off the runway. A few seconds behind him Phoenix set his bird down as well, and Warrior relaxed. He checked everything was still off and safed, and powered down the Panther's systems as his crew chief got to the Panther with the ladder. He waited while Warrior replaced the ejection seat's safety pins, and when Warrior gave him the thumbs up he climbed the ladder and helped the exhausted pilot unstrap and clamber rather unsteadily out.
"She's a hell of a mess, man," 'Spanners', his crew chief grumbled.
"You shoulda seen the other guy," Warrior shot back.
"Hey," Spanners was craning his neck to look at some foreign material on the Panther's hull, "what the fuck is this stuff?" It was gelatinous, a sickly green colour, and was dripping onto the deck.
"Don't touch that! It could be anything. Acidic or toxic or something..." though also curious Warrior didn't want to get too close, and tugged Spanners away, "c'mon, we better get someone from science division down here. They'll want to take a look at that gunk."
"Rather them than me," Spanners held his nose, "it stinks!"
The Boss disengaged his Panther from the replenishment shuttle. Frag and Puma in their lightly damaged ships had already headed back to swap places with the pristine fighters providing cover for the SWACS. Everyone had rearmed and refuelled, and they headed back toward the earlier nav point where they had intercepted the alien attack. Boss had just done one orbit when the Panthers arrived with the Shrikes in trail.
"No Wild Weasel?" growled the Boss.
"The WC wouldn't release any Tigersharks for it. Said they'd be better off staying to protect the carrier."
"I'll fucking kill him when we get back!" The Boss was furious, "I had them scheduled to go in two minutes ahead of the Shrikes on a SEAD [Suppression of Enemy Air Defences] strike on the guns and shield generators! Alright, fuck it! We'll self-weasel. We'll split the Panthers into two groups - some will take out the fighters while the others try and thin out the enemy guns, then go for the fighters themselves to keep them off the Shrikes' backs while they make their attack runs. OK?"
A few mic double-clicks, a 'copy' and a couple of 'roger that' calls were his reply. They didn't really have much choice.
"We'll weasel, Bravo and Charlie flights can provide top cover."
"Jee-Zuz H. Kee-Fucking-Rist!" Fatboy exclaimed, looking at the Nephilim carrier, looking like a gigantic sea-cucumber, but about a tenth as appealing, "their carriers are even uglier than their destroyers!"
"Yup."
The Boss thought there'd been a lot of alien fighters in the strike package, but there seemed to be even more here. Thinking back, there couldn't have been anything like the numbers in the attack wave as the SWACS count had predicted. Maybe it was a feint to see what sort of strength they were up against, and draw them out. Without having properly fought them before it was impossible to know what to expect from the Nephilim. At least with the Kats you could get into their heads, into their minds, out-guess 'em, out think them, but these bugs? How do you think like a hive mind?
Ignoring the oncoming interceptors he bored straight in for the alien carrier. Contour hugging, he streaked low over the surface of the alien vessel. Movement to his left caught his eye, and he whipped his head over only to see one of the huge guns turn to track him. The Boss was already jinking before the turret opened up on him, the incandescent projectiles flying over and around his Panther. Cursing, he cycled through the capship's separate areas until he found the offending emplacement. He took a deep breath and swung the Panther in a flat, skidding left hand turn, deftly stopping the turn with his nose squarely pointed at the gun. The aiming reticle had by chance fallen directly over the bore of the huge gun's barrel. As he blasted it with his own guns, the Boss realised [with some alarm] that the alien turret was larger than his whole fighter, let alone his guns. He bunted the stick to dive beneath its blasts, and gave it a last, fatal shot before yanking hard on the stick to avoid slamming into the Nephilim carrier's hull.
"Boss, we need to get that shield generator down so the Shrikes can use their torps," Fatboy reminded him.
"Copy that. I'll get it," he characteristically took the job on himself. Selecting it he skimmed around the hull of the carrier. The missile klaxon whooped, and he punched decoys before rolling inverted and pulling the stick down and right. He'd seen the missile launch from out of the corner of his eye. Without changing his selected target from the shield emitter, he blasted away at the missile turret, puking decoys as he did so before climbing out inverted and rolling to line up on the shield emitter again. The Panther was rocked by another burst of turret fire as he lined up. He ignored it and chopped the throttle to slow his approach and allow time to fire longer before he had to pull-up to avoid hitting the alien ship. The turret fire became more intense, and he firewalled the throttle, only getting off a couple of shots before he had to turn away, extend, and come back again. It took him four passes, and by the time he had got the alien shield generators he had lost layers of armour all round.
"Fatboy, we have to knock out more of the defences on this carrier, otherwise the Shrikes are never going to make it!"
"What about the destroyer and cruiser, Boss?"
"We'll tackle them next. The carrier is the main priority, then the destroyer. The cruiser's not much of a threat to the Bunker Hill battle group."
"Boss, can we start our attack runs yet?" The Shrike flight leader was getting impatient.
"Be my guest, but be advised, they still have a significant number of guns left."
"Copy, but we're coming in anyway. Try and get a few of the destroyer's guns while we take out the carrier."
"Wilco, out." The Boss lit the burner and snaked the Panther from side to side as he got some distance from the carrier. He latched onto a Moray that was foolish enough to get his attention by firing at him. He dispatched it in seconds, and made his way toward the Nephilim destroyer, the type that had been assigned the codename 'Orca'.
He set about single-handedly eliminating its turrets too, but his attention was focused on the destroyer and he failed to notice the Manta attacking him. The missile Klaxon and alien gun impacts warned him simultaneously of his predicament. A quick 180 whilst dumping decoys should have got rid of the missile, but although it lost its lock it still crashed heavily into his shields. He held the trigger down and at the same time squeezed off three FF missiles, two of which hit the Manta head on. The Manta exploded in a fireball, but the Panther was a mess as well, no frontal armour and some system damage, including badly damaged shields. The Boss cursed fluently but nevertheless reversed his turn and went back to the job of knocking out turrets.
A Moray came in from 3 o'clock high, and instinctively he rolled in behind it, chasing it low over the strange surface of the alien capital ship. The Moray suddenly pulled up vertically, lighting the burner, and the Boss found himself staring down the barrel of a very large gun.
"Shit, I'm dead!"
Warrior was standing on "goofers' gallery", the observation area that looks out over the flight deck, watching the strike birds return. Most were badly battered, trailing smoke, sparks and flame. Warrior recognised the familiar 'smiley face' nose art on Fatboy's Panther as it crossed the ramp, and he went down to greet him. Fatboy popped the canopy and disconnected himself from the numerous umbilical, electrical and mechanical fastenings that fixed him into the cockpit, ripping out the wires and flinging the seat straps away hard enough to clatter against the canopy, shattering the already starred and cracked material. He half climbed, half slid down the boarding ladder, anger and despair fighting for control of his features.
"I'll fucking kill him!" Fatboy was fuming. He pulled out his service pistol and thumbed off the safety.
"Whoah! Calm down, man. What happened?"
"The Wing Commander cancelled the SEAD strike, didn't he? Me and the Boss had to do it ourselves with only a space superiority loadout. I'm gonna kill him, the stupid fucking jerk!"
"What happened to the Boss?"
"He didn't make it, did he? Stubborn bastard took on a friggin' destroyer all by himself, didn't he?"
"He didn't eject?"
"Never got chance, did he? And even if he had, how the fuck would we have picked him up from the middle of an enemy battle group, especially as we're going full speed in the opposite bloody direction! I think maybe he decided not to pull the handle."
"Oh, Jesus..."
"Yup," Fatboy holstered his weapon, "c'mon, let's go get plastered."
========================================
Briefing room, four hours later
========================================
"Alright, ladies and gents, time to get to work," the WC waited patiently as the last few people settled themselves into their seats.
"There's good news, bad news and very bad news," he paused for effect before continuing, "the good news is that the Nephilim carrier group has stopped pursuing us for the time being, presumably whilst they effect repairs.
"The bad news is that as you probably all know, Colonel Hoffman didn't return from the last mission. Neither did several of the pilots of the Shrikes or the other Panther's escorting them. We are now down to about two-thirds strength in both pilots and aircraft, although the Shrike and Panther communities have come off rather worse. They're both down to about half strength, but even the surviving 'planes are bent and the pilots fatigued. I appreciate what sort of strain you're under but you've just got to hang in there: Losses so far have been bad but not catastrophic.
"The very bad news is that we've just spotted another alien battlegroup heading to intercept us before we get to the Alcor jump point." He let it sink in for a moment,"we've therefore got two choices: carry on to the Alcor jump-point and try and smash through this new alien force, or turn around and try and sneak past the first crippled battle group to return to the main part of the fleet.
"The admiral, captain and I have discussed it and decided that the latter is the most strategically desirable and tactically sensible course of action. However, as we attempt to skirt past them we can expect to come under another heavy attack."
"I presume I don't have to tell you that if one of the ships in the Bunker Hill's battelgroup gets disabled, we will have a huge problem. If it's the Bunker Hill herself we are very obviously in deep shit. If it's one of our escorts, we will be faced with the difficult decision as whether to stay and help defend them until they can make repairs and get under way again or keep going, save the rest of the fleet and leave them to certain destruction."
"Sir," Warrior protested, "you're not seriously suggesting that we leg it and leave them to their fate? I wouldn't do that to a wounded dog!"
"Well if you boys and girls do your job properly, the situation need never arise."
Suddenly the doors of the briefing theatre hissed open and a young Naval officer dashed in, running straight up to the WC.
"Sir, you have to read this," he panted, handing a slip of paper to the WC, who turned pale as he read it.
"I have just been told that the two Nephilim battle groups have launched simultaneous strikes at us. Early estimates run at 4-500 craft."
"Boje moi!" Tsar was shocked. Others sat in stunned silence.
"That's it then? Do svidanya tovarish? Goodnight Vienna? That's seven or eight to one!"
"Secure that shit, soldier! I don't want that sort of talk! We will not roll over and die for a bunch of overgrown 'roaches! If we go down, we're going to go down swinging! We'll continue as planned, and try and fight our way back to the rest of the fleet. Alright?"
"Yessir!" came the chorus. Warrior turned to Tsar as the WC left and their ICIS came to life, shaking his head.
"First cats, now insects. What's next - the attack of the killer amoebas?"
=============================================
Twenty Minutes later, in the vicinity of Nav Point one
=============================================
"Die, you mother fucker!" Warrior screamed at the Manta he was attacking, as if it would help finish it off faster. It exploded in a crimson fireball, but everywhere he looked there seemed to be more Nephilim of one sort or another. His scanner was almost swamped with red dots. He would pick the closest, get into a firing position and have four more on his tail. How could you fight like that? Even if you got a shot or two in, by the time you'd shaken your own pursuers, his shields had regenerated. And when you did eventually fluke a kill, a dozen more of the ugly bastards took his place.
Meanwhile, Tsar was discovering the limitations of the Wasp. A great interceptor it may be, and even a passable dogfighter, it didn't have much staying power. Once those precious few missiles were used up, good though they were, it was left with guns that soaked up energy at an alarming rate. Great for finishing of targets already crippled by a missile hit, but not fantastic after 10 frantic minutes when everything in the sky seems hostile, and you can't get in a decent snapshot because your energy well is empty...
Everything had been put up, including the Shrikes, just to stop the attack from the battle damaged Alien battlegroup. Even then the escort cruiser Kinsasha and the destroyer Glasgow had taken moderate damage, with the other destroyer New Delhi and the Bunker Hill not escaping unscathed either. And there would be more in the second attack. They were running flat out away from that attack, 100 kps, but the Alien attack, even cruising, was travelling three times as fast, meaning a closure rate of double their own speed. They had a head start, and no-one had any idea of what sort of a range the Nephilim ships had, but it seemed unlikely that they could outrun them before they were overtaken by the massive strike force.
To cut some time off their own route, Admiral Rayak had decided that they would go through the first alien battlegroup, rather than detour around as first planned, which meant that a significant portion of the Bunker Hill's already diminished defensive forces were leaving to try and take them out before they got there. Four Shrikes (all the spaceworthy examples of the type still aboard the Bunker Hill), a couple of Panthers and four Tigersharks. Warrior watched them go. They stood a better chance than he did, by his reckoning. That Nephilim carrier and escorts had twice thrown everything they had at them, defended against one themselves, and were a destroyer short already. Arrayed against the Bunker Hill's defenders was the entire air group of a pristine alien battlegroup.
Warrior felt light-headed at the realisation. He knew they were going to die. All logic dictated it. He'd come to terms with death at an early age; everybody dies sooner or later, there's nothing you can do to stop it, so why worry? You may as well have fun before it happens, and if that fun hastens the inevitable, well, that's just hard-luck. Flying fighters was worth the risk. He'd faced the possibility of death before, even a reasonable probability, but never a dead-certainty. He should, he supposed, be afraid, but he wasn't. The proximity of death didn't fill him with fear, rather it seemed to drain him. He felt hollow inside. It felt similar to the first time he broke a neighbour's window as a boy. The awful realisation that it had happened, and nothing could change it. That was the feeling, he could put his finger on it, now. Like it had already happened.
Or had it? The Bunker Hill was finished, that was for damn certain. A simple time/distance equation proved that. But what about him? His fighter wasn't the fastest in the fleet, but his AB tanks had been topped off after the engagement, and when they ran out, he could put all the power into the engines. How long would it take to get to the rest of the fleet? Would his life support keep him alive that long? Of course it would, the SWACS and escorts had already done it. Wait a second. If you did that, even if you make it to the rest of the fleet, you'll be court-martialled for, oh, lessee, cowardice in the face of the enemy, desertion, gross dereliction of duty, theft of Confed property namely 1 (one) F-108 Panther Space Superiority Fighter and warload... et cetera. Nope, getting splattered by some giant bug was better than that.
"Ah, shit!" Warrior said to the universe in general.
"What's up?" Tsar. Warrior realised he must have automatically transmitted his comment without realising.
"Well, we're screwed, aren't we?"
"Da."
=============================================
Nearing Nephilim battle group, ETA 1 minute
=============================================
Fatboy and Chatterbox lit their afterburners and accelerated past the Shrikes, followed quickly by the Tigersharks as the enemy came into range. There were a few long-range missile shots, and then they were through the merge and arcing around to tackle each other, a cross somewhere between chess players and boxers, circling, searching, looking for the opening to try and exploit. Move and counter move, at first graceful, but then degenerating into a close-range, bloody brawl. The few interceptors the enemy had left were locked in combat with the Panthers and Tigersharks, and the Shrikes blasted past unimpeded, turning immediately to attack the carrier. It was still in a bad way from the earlier attacks and the already shattered carrier soon succumbed to the volley of torpedoes crashing into it. The Shrikes turned their attention to the destroyer. However, its defences were still reasonably intact. One Shrike was knocked out by a missile turret before it even got close enough to get a torpedo lock. A second was caught in the crossfire of two turrets as the pilot bravely but stupidly sat almost stationary whilst taking out the shield generator. He pulled his crippled aircraft away from the destroyer, but the afterburner had been damaged, and the bomber moved agonisingly slowly. Far too slowly. A squid sliced past almost cutting the Shrike in half.
The sacrifice had however made it possible for the other pair of Shrikes to attack the destroyer though, and they attacked its engines first. If it couldn't move, it couldn't chase them...
By the time Fatboy had run out of adversaries, the destroyer too was an explosion-wracked hulk, and the cruiser damaged badly enough for it to turn and move away. Fatboy called off the attack, and they turned to return to the Bunker Hill.
"Gimme a status! Alpha."
"Two. I'll live."
"Bravo two. Chainsaw didn't make it."
"Three. We lost Four-she punched out."
"Flame? We can pick her up later."
"Too late. They got her."
"Oh, Jesus... Charlie flight?"
"Charlie Lead. I'm pretty banged up. Two's gone. Crashed into the cruiser."
"Kamikazed, you mean?"
"Maybe."
"Sonnova..." Fatboy shook his head, "what about the other pair?"
"Both dead before we knocked the destroyer out."
Fatboy took his hand off the throttle and rubbed the back of his neck. All the hairs were standing up, and he felt icy cold.
Warrior desperately chased the huge missile. It was called a missile but really it was beyond even a torpedo; the cap ship missile was larger than his own fighter. He was overtaking it, but too slowly. It would impact with the destroyer well before he got in range. All he could hope for was that it would be taken out by the destroyer's close in defences, but given the profusion of targets the turets were faced with, he didn't give it more than a one in five chance of being shot down.
Things were turning very pear shaped. The individual Nephilim craft were nothing to write home about, but their sheer numbers... they were winning simply through attrition. Every time they destroyed a wave of the enemy there was the rise of hope, maybe this is the last wave, just maybe... and then another huge swarm would appear on the edge of sensor range, and he could hear the Grim Reaper laughing at them.
He realised he was still pushing the throttle through the reheat detent, desperately willing the fighter to go faster and overtake the deadly projectile, but his fuel was long since gone. It was instinct. He fired a long, long burst, but he knew it was futile. A flash, and the hope that maybe the guns' projectiles had exceeded the specs in the manual, and then the awful realisation that it was the missile detonating not under his fire, but inside its target.
"We're hit! severe casualties on decks three through seven, sections 5 through nine! We're losing life support!"
A ripple as he passed through the bubble of expanding hot gases transmitting the remnants of the deadly blastwave, then the debris hitting his shields. Plasteel, ceramite, and body parts. His effort was as much use as a man pissing on a forest fire.
Tsar had lost count of how many bugs he'd got. Possibly a couple of dozen. It hadn't helped much though. The Bunker Hill's escorts, a Plunkett class cruiser and two Murphy class destroyers, had tucked in close and tried to add their anti-arcraft defenses to the carrier's to produce an impenetrable blanket of fire. It hadn't worked. The captain of the Kinsasha deserved to be either shot or given the medal of honour after he deliberately put the cruiser in the path of a cap ship missile. The cruiser was still roughly in one piece, more or less, but her left side was exposed to hard vaccuum the full length of four decks. The Bunker Hill had still taken a hard hit a few minutes later. It ripped through into the flight deck taking out the portside hangars and cooking off several missiles and torpedoes when one of the replenishment shuttles that was being 'bombed up' was destroyed. Miraculously though, so far she seemed to have suffered no real structural damage, and the engines were still running, though one of the reactors was nearing redline values after a near miss to the engineering section. Coolant was being vented to space from ruptured lines, and it seemed to Tsar almost as if the the carrier herself was bleeding. Bleeding to death.
The destroyers had fared less well. One had been completely destroyed, exploding so forcefully that debris caused damage to the other ships. The second destroyer had the bridge section knocked out, and it was being steered from the engine room from instructions radioed to it by the Bunker Hill. The turrets (those that were left, anyway) were still firing, and her hull was relatively intact.
Warrior was dead. Tsar had heard him scream, briefly, as the Stingray blew his fighter to pieces. The Stingray hadn't lasted long, he'd made sure of that, but who would do the same for him? His perspex canopy was starred and cracked, his VDUs smoking and sparking. It was impossible not to take damage, no matter how good a pilot you were. For every one you had in your sights, three would be behind you.
And the endless waves of fighters - how many waves? And why not come all at once? Because, you fool, Tsar realised, if they did they would be in far more danger from collisions and friendly fire than from us, of course!
The shuttles were gone. One or more had been destroyed on board the carrier and the others had been destroyed in the last attack, along with several fighters trying to refuel and re-arm at the time. He'd cursed when he was last in the queue but just as quickly given thanks when he found himself outside the huge scarlet fireball that engulfed the Wasp and two Tigersharks in close formation with the replenishment shuttle he was joining. It had saved his life, but not for long. He had no afterburner fuel and no missiles with which to fight the incoming wave of hostiles.
Perhaps if they survived this coming wave of enemy... they were getting further from the enemy carrier every moment. The survivors (if any) from the strike mission would be returning any miute. Maybe, just maybe. Fate cruelly held out the hope of survival only to take it away again.
"Bandits! Multiple bandits inbound!"
"Da. I see them. Missile!" Tsar hauled back on the stick, thumbing the 'decoy' button on the throttle madly. Only one burst of chaff and flares emerged. The missile was still tracking him. He tried to tighten his barrel roll, keeping his speed high to force the missile to turn even tighter to maintain its intercept course. The missile, travelling even faster, shouldn't ever be able to hit him, in theory. The downside is that an Image Recognition or Friend-or-Foe missile will come back for another pass, and once it is behind you the same trick will not work. However, if you turn to face the missile again it exposes your rear to the enemy and the possibility of more missiles. Tsar bored straight on, jinking from side to side and up and down randomly. The missiles often built up so much speed as they shot toward you that they couldn't even track small manoeuvres.
It didn't work. The missile smashed stright into the Wasp virtually cutting it in half. The kinetic impact was heavy, and the missile penetratd the interceptor's armour before detonating. The explosion tore the entire right side off the Wasp.
The world seemed to slow down to Tsar and with terrifying clarity he observed the canopy shatter into fragments. Saw hypersonic shrapnel rip through durasteel, perspex and his own body. Felt the agony in his ears as the cockpit pressure suddenly dropped. Felt the blood start to boil in his veins, and all the alveoli in his lungs burst. Tasted the boiling blood frothing up his throat. His vision went red as the capiliaries in his eyes suddenly burst. He reached for his sidearm to blow his own brains out, but the impulses sent out by his brain never reached his right arm that they had been sent to, because the explosion had torn it off at the shoulder. What little air there had been in his lungs was blasted out of them with the boiling blood as his chest was at a much higher pressure than the void outside his body leaving only empty, soundless, frantic gasps. Blood was everywhere, bursting, errupting from the veins, arteries and capiliaries that had all ruptured beneath the skin, spraying everywhere. His death agonies ended as his entire body disintegrated, followed almost instantly by what was left of his fighter.
Runing at 110% of stated safe limits, and with a coolant leak, it was only a matter of time: The number three reactor went critical and suffered a meltdown. The resluts of this were not as catastrophic as might be thought. A nuclear reactor, contrary to popular belief, cannot go off like a nuclear bomb. A matter/antimatter fusion reactor as this was cannot even suffer an runnaway reaction as unlike a fission reactor where the whole of its nuclear fuel is already in the reactor, a fusion reactor's fuel is being constantly fed to it, and the reactions can be stopped simply by stopping this fuel supply. However, the super-heated plasma in the reactor needed to be vented, and found its own release. The explosion completely destroyed the engine room and the right bank of engines, but the safeguards did their work and the carrier herself stayed intact. Blue-white plasma, ionised gas as hot as the hottest stars, burst violently forth at ultrasonic speeds, vapourising virtually anything it touched. It was still white hot as it hit the Kinsasha. The already shattered Plunkett class vessel simply disintegrated as the blastwave and hot gases hit it. The shockwave continued on expanding and cooling so that by the time it hit the remaining Murphy class destroyer New Delhi the blastwave merely rocked it and the red hot gases (now no longer hot enough to remain in their high-energy ionised state) simply washed over it.
Like a wounded beast chased by hunters or predators until it dropped, the Bunker Hill's heart had given out, and she lay at the mercy of her pursuers. Her war was over.
=============================================
Bunker Hill CIC
=============================================
The Wing Commander Harold Morrison yanked off his headset, flinging it across the room.
"Well, that's it. We're finished!"
The Captain didn't react, except to throw one furious glance at Rayak. Admiral Hanton's formidable Battle Group Valkyrie (CVBG-V) was only a few hours away. If Rayak had allowed him to call for help as soon as they had slowed down the first alien battle group, the Valkyries might have been able to link up with them, or at least launch their fighters to provide additional cover. Rayak had insisted they take the alien group on their own, saying he "would be damned if he would beg for help from Colonials."
"Any luck?" he asked his comm officer anyway.
"No, sir," the comm officer said tiredly, pushing her hair out of her eyes with one hand. By the time they had found out about the second group, it had been far too late. The two alien groups had thrown a short range jamming blanket over them, cutting them off from any help. "Not that it matters," she added bitterly.
"Keep trying," the Captain said, laying a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Let them know what happened to us."
"Aye, aye, sir."
The Captain rounded on Rayak. "What the bloody hell did you think you were playing at, Rayak, sending off half our remaining fighters to knock out that other carrier group?"
"I..." Rayak, Admiral of the 3rd Fleet stammered, "We'd never have made it going around them! We needed to get back in range of the rest of the fleet for reinforcements."
"We'd have lasted longer if we'd had more ships to defend us! What the hell is the point of saving a few minutes when we wouldn't last that long without those fighters? And why the hell didn't you let me call for help sooner?"
"Our ships are so superior... we should have been able to kill that battle group, but the second group... the communications... I'm so sorry," Rayack was almost in tears.
"Well at least you didn't deliberately send us out on a suicide mission. I assume even you wouldn't be stupid enough to come along if you'd expected this to happen!"
"Oh, Christ, what have I done?" Rayak put his head in his hands and sobbed. Suddenly he seemed to reach a descision, and reached inside his jacket, pulling out a Colt C-6 pistol.
"No!" the WC and the captain both reached to stop him, even Rayak's aide Commodore Arnold who watched in helpless horror, but it was too late. Rayak pulled the trigger. The left side of his head disintegrated, blood and brain fragments being sprayed all over the wall, ceiling, his XO, the WC and captain.
"Oh, God..!" The Morrison groaned.
"I don't think he's listening," said the captain.
Fatboy, Chatterbox and the two Tigersharks hurtled through the blackness. Every available fighter was needed at the Bunker Hill. The single remaining Shrike had been left trailing in their wake minutes ago. All excess energy had been poured into the engines, and the Bunker Hill herself was travelling toward them at 100 kps, but even so... Fatboy dreaded what they might find when they got back. The SWACS feed had been lost about the same time they'd attacked the alien carrier, and they were flying blind.
"We're almost in sensor range now," Chatterbox told him, "I can't see anything..."
"Give it another minute or- there! She's still in one piece! I don't see any of the escorts, though."
"-day! Mayday! This is the TCS Bunker Hill to any Confed ships. We are under heavy Nephilim attack! Our engines are out! We've taken heavy casualties- engineering's gone! We need help! Can any one hear me? Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!"
"Mayday, mayday, this is TCS Bunker Hill------ to any friendly craft, we
have been ---ushed by ---- Nephilim ----- and figh---- forces. We have
------. Don't forget us. We to--- of the bastards down. Bunker Hill out."
"Hold on! We're on our way!"
"Too late, she's -AAARRRGHH!!!-"
"No, come on, she can't be! She can't be!"
A massive blue-white explosion lit up the void ahead of them, confirming
their worst fears. The TCS Bunker Hill, once a fearsome 980 metre-long
fleet carrier, once the pride of the Third Fleet, once home to over 3000
men and women, was no more. The Nephilim raised an eerie, ear-splitting
howl, glorying in the kill, mocking the fallen.
"You bastards! Die you mother fuckers!" Fatboy started to use his remaining few seconds of afterburner fuel, suicidally ploughing into the melee. The Tigersharks followed him. One splashed a Moray before a Manta blew it to pieces and the second Tigershark was obliterated before he could even get a kill.
"This is suicide! It's pointless!" Chatterbox roared.
"They have to pay!"
"They will! We'll get them, but dying here isn't going to do anything! We have to get back to the rest of the fleet!"
"We'd never make it!"
"We will, they'll never chase us that far! If the other carriers are suffering these kinds of losses they'll need every fighter they can get!" Chatterbox reasoned. Not to mention the fact that I'd rather prolong the inevitable, he thought to himself.
"I guess so. It just doesn't feel right."
"Death hardly ever does," Chatterbox told him.
"It's over, isn't it?" Fatboy despaired, "it's all over."
For the first time in his life, Chatterbox didn't know what to say. There just weren't the words.