Chapter 18

MARK

He made the call, sent his coordinates and powered down. He could see the others speeding away from the battle to the resource controller. From his standpoint the fight looked to be in their favour. More waves kept coming but were held off successfully for now.

Servants of the Taiidan, he recalled. They were responsible for what happened to his home. What purpose could they have? Who were they, these Taiidan? He couldn’t understand senseless slaughter on that scale. Surely, he thought, they had some kind of reason. He needed there to be one. If they had a reason he had something to fight against; he could make an enemy out of them. He could comfort himself with them being evil and knowing why so many people had to die.

Valerie came to mind without notice. “She’s really gone,” he said to himself. He had been with her for only three years, but three was enough to know he loved her. He was about to agree on moving in with her and leave his small desert home—his solitude in the sand—for the comfortable city life of Tiir. He had actively avoided letting thoughts of her come to mind because of his inability to accept or even acknowledge her loss. Dizziness overcame him having again accepted it, and upon seeing the chaos unfold. A casualty of a war he knew nothing about and felt he couldn’t do anything to stop.

The eerie silence of space crept up to him in his distracted remembrance. All around ships were exploding in flashes of light and smoke, bullets flew by like rain, and everything was in constant motion. No sound; one of the most noticeable of differences from dogfights planet-side. The occasional light tick from small pieces of debris hitting his ship were heard, but otherwise it was entirely silent save the sound of his breathing. A maddening, deafening silence. Knowing how far from Kharak they had gone and knowing how much farther than that there was ahead, he felt laughably small compared to everything else.

He relaxed back into the seat. He’d lost a wingman. He trained Henry along with the others the best he could, but it wasn’t enough. He didn’t blame himself for it, they did all they could. Henry’s family was on Kharak, so there were no others to mourn him. A sad thought but it was better than his family waking up on Hiigara to find out he wasn’t among them. He was the same. No one was left in his life from before.

It took ten minutes until he saw a Porter to his right turn clamps facing the cockpit. He waved to them and saw a silhouette wave back. He felt the ship jerk slightly and noticed they were moving. Once in the clear he powered on communications. “Thanks for the lift,” he said.

“Not a problem. Not much a salvager can do against fighters. Makes us feel a little useless.”

“Right now, I know the feeling.” They had a laugh at that. He checked how the fight was going. They had the upper hand now; there were far fewer enemy ships than friendlies. The carrier now showed itself on the scanners and it was huge. They’d nicknamed it Rancor after an extinct beast of unimaginable strength and hideous appearance that lived in caves near mountain ranges.

“Isabella,” he said over comms.

“Yeah?” she responded after short delay.

“Status update.”

“Only cleanup left here,” she said. “Intel shows we have a few ion frigates ready to go and are bearing down on the enemy carrier. Four salvagers are coming up the rear to capture its escorts and disable them.”

“Smart plan,” he said wondering if Jasiid was among them.

“See you soon.” The Porter was making its docking approach on the Mothership as she said this.

Jasiid was part of his life from before, but they’d gone years without knowing one another. He decided he’d settle their old dispute and try and get back to how things were between them. He barely remembered what it was he got angry about.

Once safely on the bay floor he was taken aback by the damage. The hull split every couple feet and the back end was a mess of charred wiring and warped steel. “How am I alive?” he said to himself. Looking down the hangar towards frigate construction, he saw another Matriarch nearing completion and a familiar face among those standing off to the side. He disengaged the magnetism on his boots and floated over to the group standing nearby awaiting their new ship.

“John! I imagine this one’s yours?”

“Right you are,” he said. “I call her the Ifriit-Gar, after two greats of the Naabal.”

“Aye, heard stories of both. I’ll be seeing you out on the battlefield, then.”

“Give my regards to the others, will you? I’ll be launching on her as soon as she’s done, probably won’t see them for a long time. Support frigates can go the longest without resupply, at least three months. Five if we stretch it out with rationing.”

“Will do,” he said. They shook hands, but before they could continue their conversation, the PA system turned on.

“There are several Turanic Raider capital ships emerging from hyperspace around the Mothership,” Fleet Intelligence said. A screen nearby displayed them on a sensors manager. Six more ships like the ones escorting the Raider carrier.

“Looks like they’re not done yet,” he said. His ship was a smouldering wreckage off in a corner of the hangar, its fate to be decided on when there was time to do so. “I would love to see you off, but as my ship is trashed, I’m headed up to Strike Command to help out however I can from there.” He nodded, and Mark jogged over to the nearest elevator and changed out of his flight suit, leaving it in a bin to be washed and delivered to him later.

Luckily, everyone was busy frantically running about to get where they needed to be and didn’t notice the disheveled pilot in civilian clothing making his way to the bridge as fast he could. It took about fifteen minutes total from the hangar to Strike Command despite distance travelled being something like a few hundred meters. Elevator stops, lines of confused people frightened by Intel’s announcement, random disorder and chaos, the list went on. He glanced at a few screens on his way and they depicted the enemy ships firing blue beams into Mothership’s side. It must be that ion cannon technology the Bentusi gave them, but he wasn’t too knowledgeable in any of that.

 He saluted the man at the door to the command centre and stepped into the red backlit cavern with a waist-height sensors manager holotable at its centre. Leonard was at the table with a handful of others thinking up battle strategies smoking a cigar to help concentrate.

“Red Leader on deck,” he alerted stepping towards the table when Leonard nodded to him.

“Saw you get busted up out there, sure you should be running around this soon?”

“I’m fine, I’d rather make myself useful to those who still have ships that’ll move.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Ships that’ll move without exploding, anyway. What’s going on, anyhow?”

“See for yourself, enemy ion array frigates came out of hyperspace right on us to our aft,  port, and starboard. Only one ship on the two sides so we’re sending in Porters to catch them before they do too much damage. The aft enemies are aiming for our resource drop off. We’re recalling the support frigates and repair ‘vettes to mitigate the damage while we figure out what to do about those three. It seems their beams are focused using the panel arrays instead of how the Bentusi tech describes, meaning if we disable the arrays somehow they won’t do as much damage. We turned around our Firelances—ion frigates—on a closing vector with those since they’re closest. We’d recall the assault frigates too but they’re busy putting a beating on that swarm of strike craft. I’d rather not leave our pilots out to hang, I feel guilty as it is recalling the Matriarch out there. Damn this.”

“I assume we don’t have enough Porters to go grab the remaining three?”

“Nah, only got nine so far. Four are moving in to take out the carrier’s guards and one is already most of the way picking up a round of ejected. Even if we did manage to quickly capture the two frigates near us there’d still be one able to lance off the Porters as they brought them in.”

He sat on that thought, watching the battle unfold in front of him. “Those panels, they’re reflective? How are they working, exactly?”

“Hell if I know,” he said.

“Well, if the reason they’re folded in to begin with is to protect the inner surface, say we send a squad over to pot shot the hell out of the panels? Fighters would be too maneuverable for them to lock on.”

“Think you’re onto something with that one, if that’s really how they work.”

“Patch me to my squad, they’re docked with the Matriarch right now and closest to get the job done. Someone off to his right handed him a headset.

“Red Leader joining from Strike Command. We have a vandalism job for you Red Two, if you’re interested that is.” He heard a few snickers behind him at that.

“Oh boy, is it my birthday? What’s the target?” she said.

“The three far frigates to the aft. It’s a guess, but I think if you rain some hail on those panels it should cut their firepower.”

“Got it, coach. We’re nearly done here, but either way we’re being towed along. Is the damage that bad?”

“It’s pretty bad, yeah. Ripped holes through the outer hull layers, ignited some of the hydrogen RU stores. We’ve put a nice note in for the Somtaaw to move that shit where it won’t explode from now on but it’s mostly some lucky aiming on their part.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty bad.”

“She wasn’t designed against weapons of this class.”

“Fair point. Alright, gas tanks full, Red Squad follow me!”

He handed the headset back to whoever gave it to him, looked down to the table and saw the four fighters leave the dock and speed straight for the enemy frigates.

“She’s a fine pilot, that one.” A compliment from the Strike Commander carried weight. “She’ll be promoted along with you and a handful of others for their service in these past days.” He’d heard rumours of rank promotions to be announced so it didn’t come as a surprise to him to hear it. His attention was mainly focused on his squadron.

“Cross your fingers that I’m right,” he said. A few silent seconds went by, Leonard shifted to the main battle now being won as the Rancor’s escorts were captured and in tow. One of the Porters was lanced off by the carrier’s ion cannons, but the salvager who was picking up pilots got the last one and moved in to grab hold. He worried it was Jasiid’s until he heard him over the chatter to his left. He was capturing the frigate on Mothership’s starboard.

“Red Squad reporting completion of task,” someone said.

“And?” Leonard asked.

A pause.

“Enemy ion weapons at sixty percent previous damage output.”

Leonard gives him a wink, he’ll be the talk of many after that fluke of an idea.

“Enemy carrier baring down on Mothership, frontal ions pointed at the bridge. Firing range in one minute.”

Leonard spoke: “Keep Firelances headed to their current targets, order all assault frigates and corvettes to ignore the fighters and open fire on that carrier! Tell our fighters out there to clean up and come on home.”

“Aye, sir!”

The room continued to move around him, his task done. He was now merely an observer to how the end of the fight would play out. As the enemy carrier opened fire with its ion cannons, a captured enemy frigate left the hangar bay, extending its foils to take aim on its former flagship.