I will close my heart
to disquiet of any kind.
F-120 "Arkangel" - Da Houg System -Taïrian Front
~~*~~
Masconi never thought she'd be so enthused about flying towards an asteroid field.
Using TAC-net and linking into the Imperial charts of the Da Houg system, she had discovered a nearby asteroid field that lay not too far away from them. Distantly she remembered the awkward flight path they'd taken on the way there to avoid it. She'd ordered all of them to charge at it at best possible speed. It was the best chance they had of evading their pursuers.
They were lucky that that she had bothered to pay attention to the Nav map. All she'd thought to do was run and if possibly run faster. She'd have to keep this incident in mind for future reference, assuming she lived through it.
Rather unsurprisingly, the largest problem that they faced was one of fuel, or reaction mass. They'd be able to get pretty close to the asteroid field with afterburners, but after that they would be forced to fly towards it at cruise speed, giving the Amsus more then enough time to close the already narrowing gap between them and blow them all away. Also, even if they got into the field, there was nothing to stop their far more manoeuvrable ships following them.
What they needed to do was lose their pursuers in the field, then shut own as many systems as possible, if their electronic emissions were sufficiently low, they'd be able to move away from the Amsus unnoticed.
Hopefully.
She checked her tactical display, the closest ship to them were a wing of four Predators that had jumped in with two enemy cruisers. They were a little over 23 kilometres away. What fleeting hope she had that they'd be able to make it to the field without incident died with that discovery.
Seven minutes later ticked by.
Her speed indicator switched from 1000kps to 380kps. She still had a drop or two of fuel left, but one of the F-120s had run out, and it made more sense to stay together. None of them probably would have been able to accomplish anything more then a fifteen centimetre lead anyway.
The distance between them and the Predators was closing fast. She could imagine the looks on the Amsus's faces now that their prey could no longer run fast enough to evade them.
The asteroid field was visible, barely, she could make out brief hints of grey rocks in the distance, and they seemed very far away.
Her 'lock' light sprung to life abruptly, sending a surge of panic through her. She released a decoy and pulled upwards; hitting her afterburners and spending what little fuel she had left as she did so.
The alarm and the lock light died in unison. The missile had detonated on the decoy. She didn't feel much in the way of relief seeing as she was now falling behind the others.
"We're not going to make it with these cockroaches hounding us," Masconi said suddenly, "All units, break and attack, let's make this quick people."
She pulled her ship around and launched one of the four remaining image recognition missiles that she had left at the nearest Predator. It was somewhat helpful that the pilot had neglected to deactivate his afterburners when he had engaged them; he was probably trying to close the distance to make targeting them easier.
The downside, for him anyway, of dong this was that he had little time to evade the missile heading at him, and also the increased speed of the collision resulted in greater damage to his ship.
The explosion ripped off the right wing of the Predator, sending what was left of the ship into an uncontrollable spin. She fired off a few shots for good measure, and sure enough the rest of the enemy fighter exploded.
"That's one down." She said quickly, trying not to waste time in acquiring a new target.
Her rear turret suddenly sprung to life, she switched to her rear view display and noticed a second Predator hovering behind her.
He opened fire a second later.
Masconi's F-120 shuddered under the multiple impacts. None of the shots missed.
She pulled right, the Predator stayed with her, after a few second he opened fire again, the first shots barely missing Masconi, the next few tore away what was left of her rear shields.
Her ship shuddered again, and her hand was knocked away from the flight controls.
Then the shuddering stopped.
She pulled away regardless, not wanting to tempt fate. She checked her radar, the Predator was gone, and a blue dot was moving away from where it had been, she checked her contact list quickly to see who it was who had presumably just shot the enemy off of her tail.
"Thanks Ice-Fox-Five." She said quickly.
"Don't mention it." He replied, "Two down."
She activated her damage control display. Her rear turret was gone, as was most of the durasteel armour she had in that section. Her engines had taken minor damage that according to the computer wasn't critical. Not nearly as bad as she had feared. She had expected to find herself confined to 50kps for the next hour or so.
"Three down." Masconi added after a few more seconds. The enemy were beginning to succumb to their greater numbers.
If their roles had been reversed and Imperial pursuers had been suffering at the hands of the Amsus, the surviving pilot would most likely fall back and join the second wave of fighters closing in on the enemy.
The remaining Amsus had other ideas.
She pulled her ship around so as to get him in her gun sights and readied another missile. They didn't have much time left. The Raptors were closing on them. In their current condition they were no match for them.
The Predator veered to the left, he was moving very quickly, Masconi wondered briefly if he was in fact going to pull back to his friends after all. That was until she saw his ship collide with Lieutenant Schneider's F-120. The Predator went up immediately, Schneider's fighter spun momentarily before coming to a stop.
The entire aft section looked charred and mutilated. Pieces of hull had been torn away, atmosphere was leaking from one hull breach, fire from two others.
"Schneider," Masconi shouted, "What's your status, can you still fly."
After a second, Schneider's face appeared on the com screen. Accompanied by smoke and what sounded like a continuous electrical discharge from somewhere behind him.
"My engines are shot, that bastard took out every…" he cut himself off, barely keeping a lid on his panic, She couldn't blame him, "I'm dead in the water." There was another pause, this one longer. "Look, all of you keep going, I'll stay here, try and distract them."
Masconi was clearly struggling with the responsibility and the hard decisions that she had to face. It was something that she had faced so many times during the war, the choice over life and death…
She performed her duty, automatically.
"You heard him," Masconi said after a moment, "They have to keep moving, quickly people, they don't have much time. The Hope needs this data."
Without the fighters, the Hope was effectively blind. They did not have any stealth capable vessels that weren't needed on escort duty, sending a destroyer or a cruiser to the jump zone would be foolish to say the least and would leave them with one less ship with which to fight the enemy.
It was pure luck that they had been where they'd been when the Amsus came through. It was a truly a miracle that they had survived this long.
They started moving again, each doubtlessly cursing themselves for wasting time, and then cursing themselves for considering listening to what were doubtlessly going to be Schneider's last words a waste of time. That was what Masconi did anyway. At this time her mind was largely becoming a mess. The Raptors were closing quickly, and the chances of them reaching the field before she reached them were becoming slimmer by the second.
In the radar she noticed a small swarm of red dots advancing on the stationary blue dot. Schneider's F-120 wouldn't even slow them down. All it would take was a few gunshots and he'd be gone. He probably wouldn't be able to even return fire.
As the five red dots closed in on Schneider, his face returned to their com screens. She thought he was crying.
"Jamie, Cassandra," he said the names of his children back on Karin, "this is for you."
As his face vanished from the screen, space lit up behind the fleeing fighters.
Masconi switched on her rear view display and witnessed an explosion far more powerful then the destruction of an F-120 should have been able to produce. An explosion like that was often the result of a small cap ship blowing up, or…
Mines.
In that instant it made sense. Schneider had waited until the Raptors were close enough, then he'd detonated all twelve mines in his ship's arsenal. It was surprisingly, and almost a little disturbingly comforting when she realised his death would have certainly been quick and painless.
She checked the radar. Only two Raptors remained, she fired up the tactical display and noticed that one of them was in no better shape then Schneider's bomber had been in before he sacrificed himself. The other appeared to have stopped completely; the explosion must have damaged his engines.
The first of the remaining Raptor's wasn't foolhardy enough to continue the chase. The dot on the radar soon moved back towards the orange swarm behind them.
"He's done it." Python, (the second F-175 pilot,) was almost shouting, "They're falling back."
"And they can't reach them before they reach the field." Masconi added, her voice betraying a weariness that had abruptly fallen upon her. She pushed it away as best as she could. They weren't out of the woods yet; not nearly.
"Don't get careless," Masconi continued, "the roaches got careless and look what's happened to them already."
Her pilots knew she was right. They'd been hopelessly outnumbered, and they'd had a Dreadnaught to content with, and on top of that they'd already taken out thirteen enemy fighters and severely damaged four more. Not bad.
"I'm reading new hostile contacts," Ice-Fox-Five uttered, relief at the Raptors' defeat evident in his voice, "Predators, eight of them."
"They just don't learn do they?" Python added.
"We're almost at the field," Masconi said, "maintain radio silence, and deactivate all systems except engines, radar, shields and life support once we get inside the field."
Now came the hard part, or the easy part, depending on how fate favoured them in the field.
F-120 "Arkangel" - Da Houg System -Taïrian Front
Eleven minutes later
In the course of her career she had noticed two different types of asteroid field. Some were largely empty and allowed plenty of room for ships to manoeuvre and after burn without too much risk of collision just so long as you employed a little common sense.
The second type of asteroid field was so densely packed that the space dust has a hard time moving through it. The field she was not in fell into the latter category.
This did have its good points, the density of the field made it all the more difficult for the Amsus to locate them, if things kept going as they did they might be able to sneak through the field and run back to the Hope. Unfortunately, the density of the field also resulted on restrictions on their speed. They were travelling at 120kps, at that speed the Dreadnaught may very well have reached the Hope first.
Masconi knew that was unlikely, the Amsus would assemble their fleet first, maybe send in a few patrols to determine or perhaps weaken their defences. They wouldn't strike for a day or two at least.
She could still see the Dreadnaught on her scopes. By now it was a tiny blotch in the corner of her rear view display. She couldn't tell exactly how far away it was, but she knew that any other ship in both the Imperial and Amsus fleets would be invisible at this distance.
Even if they were able to warn the Hope, there was little they'd be able to do about that abomination except run away from it. They didn't stand a chance against it.
But they couldn't keep running.
Retreating only pushed them back further into a corner. The Amsus weren't overextending themselves, and they weren't going to. They needed to draw the line somewhere.
Desperation and defeat had stared them in the face twice before, once before the now legendary mission of the HMS Excalibur, at the battle of Ordessus. Now the Empire was feeling the noose tightening around its neck for a third time. They were falling back on all fronts, and losing many more ships then the Amsus. They needed to…
She shook the thoughts away. She'd had this train of thought several times before and no good had ever come out of it. Besides, an asteroid field wasn't a good place for a daydream.
She pulled her fighter underneath a large piece of rock that lay in her path, smaller fragments impacted on her shields, not doing any considerable damage. She didn't know how long they'd be in this field; the majority of their navigational equipment had been deactivated to lower their electronic emissions. All they had to go on was one white crosshair telling them what direction to fly.
It was a shame they couldn't rely on autopilot in a field of this density. She could use a rest after the overly eventful sprint into this field. But that wasn't an option. Maybe she would be able to order some rack time after they got back.
You humans are such timid creatures, shying away from every challenge fate gives you.
Along with the memory of Shale's assessment of humanity, she could almost see the stern look of disapproval on his face at her desire to be out of the firing line for a while.
She shook this thought away as well and silently cursed herself for her complacency.
She looked ahead, taking in the view of endless grey rocks. There seemed to be no end to the asteroid field.
F-120 "Arkangel" - Da Houg System -Taïrian Front
Three hours later
For what seemed like hours, they just sat there, staring at it.
The Amsus shouldn't have been able to see them. They were still in the field. The end was now in sight, however the inconveniently placed Amsus missile destroyer and its two Raptor escorts. No doubt they'd been placed there so as to prevent their escaping out of the field and warning the Hope, or failing that, they could simply radio their position to the rest of the Predators and the chase could start all over again.
After a few more seconds of staring, Masconi broadcast to all of her fighters.
"Listen up people," she said in a rushed voice, "we don't have a lot of time before the roaches lock down on this transmission. Adish, you and I will both launch a torpedo at the destroyer. Python and Zulu take out the escorts and do it quickly. If we're quick we might just blast through without the rest of the hive noticing us. Let's go.
With that she closed the com channel and increased her thrust to maximum. That was a risky thing to do considering they were still in the asteroid field, but what choice did they have?
She powered up all of her ship's systems, increased power to her engines and sped out of the field. Well, She guess sped isn't a suitable choice of words really.
"Python, take the one on the left, I've got the other one." Called Zulu through the TAC.
"Right."
She fired all of her remaining image recognition missiles at the Raptor. The pilot didn't react at once; maybe he was surprised to see them.
When he did react, it was with experience that he dodged the first missile. He deployed a decoy and strafed to the left. The first missile sailed gracefully into the decoy and exploded.
The second two fared better. The pilot didn't even have time to scream.
"Got one!" Zulu shouted.
She pulled up the second Raptor on her targeting display and moved after it. Judging by the way it was moving it seemed that Python had the same idea that she did, although his missiles looked to have met with less success.
Masconi noticed gunfire in the distance that seemed to be coming from an F-175; it was somewhat difficult to tell at the distance that seemed to have grown between their two ships very quickly.
As she continued to move at an agonisingly slow pace towards the dogfight, she heard a pained Amsus voice on the radio. There was no accompanying face.
"Emergency…"
The voice was cut off as the area was lit up by the exploding destroyer.
Almost involuntarily, she let out a celebratory cheer. Even if they met their death here, that destroyer kill strengthened her belief that they'd taken enough of them with them.
"The second Raptor is down." Python said after a few more seconds, "Killed the maggot-brained fool as he was gawping at the toasted cap ship."
"Great," Masconi replied, "Let's move it people, they don't know if they got word of their position off or not. Resume radio silence."
She quickly set her speed to full and re-entered formation with the others.
F-120 "Arkangel" - Da Houg System -Taïrian Front
Four hours later
All of them except Masconi actually laughed with sudden joy when the Hope appeared on their RADAR. When the Dreadnaught had come through the jump event, none of them had ever expected to see her again.
Captain Shale's face appeared on their comm. screens before they could request landing clearance.
"Group Captain, what happened to you out there?" demanded his XO standing beside him.
"I'll explain when we get onboard." Masconi replied, her voice echoing all their desires to get out of the cockpits.
"Fine, you've got clearance as soon as the two F-150s from Delta wing are onboard." He paused and shuffled closer to the comm. screen, "Commander Samson reported already, the Amsus, they're here aren't they?"
Masconi offered a grim nod, watching Shale's face tighten as his whiskers twitched from side to side on the end of his muzzle.
He murmured something to himself that sounded like a Taïrian curse. After a few more seconds he closed the channel.
After a few seconds the two F-150s disappeared from sight.
"Good work everyone." Masconi said, already accelerating towards the carrier. "Zulu and I took the most damage so we'll head in first."
She increased her speed and headed for the launch bay. Enjoying the fact that for the moment, the threat of an upcoming Amsus attack was drowned out by her own relief at being back alive.
She knew the feeling wouldn't last long, especially considering three pilots who hadn't been so lucky. Triumph rarely went untainted in that war.