Chapter 30

ERIC

The dogfight was near impossible to keep track of, all he could do was pick a target and then another, on and on until this chaos was over. He took a few hits, nothing that he thought was serious. He lost count of how many of these small craft he’d gotten, but it seemed they had infinite supply of them and pilots apparently.

His mind kept racing between thoughts of the fight, to Tristen, to Mark, to himself, then Tristen again, then the fight when he heard something hit him, he could not keep focus. Not only that, the air seemed heavy somehow. He was feeling light headed, and then dizzy. “Squad, I think there’s something wrong with my ship,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Mark asked.

“I feel light headed, dizzy even. It’s getting c-cold in here too. H-hold on I’m running a s-scan again. I did a full diagnostics before coming out and had nothing wrong.” He began to cough too.

“Eric!” Isabella shouted.

“I-I can’t breathe! Oxygen levels f-five percent and falling?!” He began to panic. The diagnostics showed nothing of concern. The low oxygen alarm never sounded. Something was not right, and his vision was blurring in and out.

“Go back! Get to the carrier now!” Mark ordered.

“Y-yeah, that’s my plan now! S-sorry g-guys!”

“I’ll escort him back with my wing,” Isabella said. “You two just keep up the fight.”

“Roger.”

He was going full throttle directly to the carrier, he could see the opening of the bay in front of him, but his vision was worsening, and his cockpit was now fogging up. Once close enough, it became easier as he simply had to keep in a straight line. “Straight, Eric. All you gotta…” and he lost consciousness.

TRISTEN

She heard a screech of metal on metal from the entrance of the hangar. A Kushan interceptor was crash landing her way. She was on the catwalks so was in no danger, but felt she could be of use and so started running towards it. The ship continued to scrape itself to a halt, slowing down bit by bit until no longer in motion. As she ran, prisoners being escorted by armed guards moved out of her way, the Kadeshi looking at her though she were some unholy creature from a story book. She made her way beyond them to the crashed ship. Another interceptor was docking as well but not nearly as fast. Once she got to the ship, she knocked on the windshield. No response. She found the manual release and turned it. When she saw the face of the pilot her heart sank and a cold shiver ran from her neck to her feet. It was Eric.

“Eric!” She screamed, unbuckling him from his seat and placing her hand over his mouth to check. “He’s not breathing!” She lifted him, and brought him not gently onto the hangar deck and started chest compressions. “You fucking ass, I said no dying!” she said breathing air into his lungs and continuing in her attempts. After a fourth attempt she was losing hope. “Wake up dammit!” She smacked him across the face, and he coughed. She placed her hand in front of his mouth and nose again, he was breathing. She dried her tears on his chest crossing her arms around her face.

“Medic!” She heard someone shout. It was the other interceptor’s pilot. She ran to them, stopping only a few meters away.

“Is he…”

“He’s breathing.” She said lifting her head to see the young girl’s relief.

Eric was being wheeled to the hospital. Unconscious, but alive thanks to her. The other pilot refused to meet her eyes, probably her hair gave her away as not Kushan. The two of them sat in the waiting room alone as the staff took it from there.

“You care for him a great deal, don’t you?” Asked the Kushan girl.

“I do. And yes. I am Taiidan, since you seem to have noticed.”

“Indeed.”

The doctor exit the room. “He’s stable but still unconscious. He should wake up when he’s ready.”

“I’m not leaving him ‘til he’s up,” she said.

“That’s fine, you’re allowed to stay at his side until that time. Just one at a time though,” he said looking to the Kushan girl.

“No, by all means. As long as my squad mate’s gonna live I don’t care to stick around being useless,” she said starting for the exit.

“Wait, you’re Isabella then, aren’t you?” She stopped.

“Yeah?”

“Sorry, he talks about his friends sometimes. Thanks for being one of them.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“I mean it,” she said.

“Yes and so do I. Imagine, me remotely wanting thanks from a Taiidan. The only reason I’m not kicking your ass right now is because you saved his life.” And with that, she left Tristen in the waiting room. She opened the door and sat in the chair next to the bed where he lay.

“Almost die on me like that again and, and… I’ll kill you. Or something.”

ARAZIS

She made her way to a fuel pod once her tank reached one tenth capacity. She could see to her left, the Suteh was engaging the enemy’s frigate groups. The enemy had one that apparently could repair damage, but the main cannon on the Needle was doin more than they could heal. All they were doing was buying their ships another couple shots at best. She almost pitied them.

It was the words of the woman who spoke that dominated her mind as she waited. “The homeworld we seek may be yours as well.” Were they truly the long lost rest of the eternal prison convoy? Others with the same ancestors? It was possible. It didn’t matter. If these other Hiigaran descendants escaped the Garden, all hope was lost. They had to be stopped at all costs regardless of who they were.

In terms of who was winning, neither. They had less strike craft, but the enemy had far greater numbers of frigates and some even larger vessels too. And when the first wave of their  frigates moved in to engage, half of them were destroyed whereas the other half, two craft each between a fighter and a frigate in size were latching themselves on and towing them away back to the two kilometre tall crescent-shaped flagship. Hopefully if the woman commander was correct, they’d treat prisoners of the same blood with more kindness than otherwise. Should this fail, at least. These other medium-sized ships, the ones with the orange midsection and the many cannons, were very capable at targeting multiple swarmers at once. They were a danger, and were to be avoided if possible by all but the frigates.

A squad of swarmers tried attacking one of these tow ship units, but did not damage it enough, and another similar-sized vessel also equipped with a repair turret and a single bottom docking pad healed that damage up anyway. This battle was likely to go on for a lot longer than she hoped. Perhaps they would be lucky and it would go on long enough for their reinforcements, but they were still several hours away.

MARK

Mark was horrified at simply how many targets there were. He’d seen a swarm of bloodflies suck cattle dry. This was that, but more deadly. He barely expected to make it out of it alive. All around him in every direction were ships of both sides exploding. There was an accumulating cloud of debris to worry about running into as well, and if one paid too close attention they would on occasion see someone’s limb floating by. He had to ignore it, but that limb might’ve been someone he knew.

He zoomed out to the whole of the battlefield on his sensors manager while docked with a support frigate for repairs. Isabella made it back out at this time. Eric was in stable condition but in the hospital. Mark only cared that he was alive.

“Tank’s full,” he said taking off. “Thanks, John. Catch you when this is all over with.”

“Roger that, Mark. Or should I say Captain Redblood apparently?”

He laughed back. “Don’t know, I sorta liked it back in training but now it makes me sound like some sort of drunkard space pirate.”

“I suggest grouping up with Blue and Violet squads, they’re the closest to us and look like they could use some cover fire.”

“Gotcha, we’ll head there now.”

Off to the right of him, he noticed one of the enemy flagships was venting atmosphere. He hoped their hyperspace and repair thing wasn’t something that had no cost and is therefore why it hadn’t done that yet, but could not possibly know. Yesterday they had one ship and its fleet compliment to face. Well, technically once ship twice in a row. Today they had three of those to defeat. And if that three was actually six? He did not want to consider that possibility too much.

One final salvo from our ion frigates, and the long pointed flagship erupted in a ball of fire and light. “I suppose that answer’s that guys, we only have to kill these ones once not twice at least,” he said to the other fighter squads. “Blue and Violet, Red’s coming in to help out a bit.”

“Thanks Mark, appreciate it. I already lost two wingmen today,” Blue Leader replied.

“I lost one as well, but we’re still hanging in there,” Violet Leader replied.

“So any guesses as to what those things it launched before going out were?”

“Probably escape pods or something would be my guess,” Isabella answered.

“I tend to agree with that assessment,” Blue Leader said.

“Should we bother picking those off too?” Violet Leader asked.

Mark answered. “Negative, focus on threatening targets.” He stole a quick glance, and saw that those tiny pods broke off into two streams. They were likely heading for the other two flagships.

“Let them go, squads. Show our kiithid brethren mercy in this regard. After all, we’re the invaders here. Not them.”

“Agreed,” Violet finally said.

One benefit of getting rid of a flagship-class that large aside from cutting their support force by a third, was the resulting shockwave cleared out a large swathe of the surrounding dust and gas, opening up the opportunity for a clearer image. Mark then alerted the fleet channel “I have an idea, lead them our way all squads.”

“What are you thinking, Red Leader?” Intelligence inquired.

“Well, since that flagship made a large enough explosion, we now have a battlefield where we can actually make use of our sensors manager in the void created by it.”

Intel agreed. “Good idea, follow Soban’s direction pilots, we might gain the upper hand with that alone.”

“Roger that, heading your way now.”

“Need superior firepower?” Cobalt leader, one of our new multi-gun corvette captains, sounded off.

“Verily. We’ll stall them until your team shows up.”

“On our way.”

“Heavies inbound as well, we might as well see where in Sajuuk’s name they’re shooting at us from since apparently this nebula does nothing to their sensors.” Iridium leader said.

JOHAN

The explosion was bright enough to activate the viewport’s auto-dimming function and rocked the hull when it passed by. Another explosion shook the deck sideways.

“Captain! We’re receiving damage at critical levels, engines lost, nano containment breached, and we have a huge crack expanding all along starboard fighter dock.”

“Seal the bridge, cut off all connections with the rest of the ship!” He ordered. “Seal all hatches, seal cooling system exchanges, cut ventilation, and only use internal canisters.”

His first officer began: “John, you don’t mean—

“Eject the command centre.” Everyone hit the deck or grappled their stations for what came next. A special feature implemented into the Matriarch’s hull design was the ability to eject the entire bridge section should the main body take critical damage. This was scrapped for all later unit designs to reduce costs and build times, but seeing as this unit was an early model, it had that ability. The force of the explosive severing of the whole top part of the vessel rocked them all over the place until the power cut out. And when it did so did the gravity, sending them  tumbling in all directions. Lights cut out and backups activated. Once he had his bearings, he oriented himself towards the front of the vessel—or what remained of it. “Status, bridge. Sound off.” He waited until everyone was marked safe and accounted for. “Do we have comms?”

“Negative, we can’t reach Mothership.”

“Try short range.”

“We can reach our strike craft, but that’s it. And only a beacon no comms proper.”

“Send it to Mark Soban.”

“On it.”

MARK

He received a distress beacon from the Ifriit, John’s ship. He pulled it up on sensors, but the only thing remaining appeared to be the bridge, the rest of the ship was gone entirely. That was no good. “Jay, your ship’s closest. Check on the Ifriit and come haul our friends home, would you be so kind?”

“Wait, what?” He answered. “Oh my, they can do that?” He said upon seeing the damage.

“Early design idea that was scrapped for most other frigate hull types, but yes. The Matriarch can eject the command centre.”

“Setting course, we’ll go pick them up,” came Jasiid’s captain.

“Red Squad, follow me. We’re gonna need to escort a salvage op.”

“Understood,” Isabella said.

“Green, we’re going too just in case.”

“You don’t need to come Jeroll, you’ll be of far more use staying here.”

“You want to save your friend. I get that, Mark. You’re my friend too, so I’m not just letting you wander off alone.” He was not going to argue.

Once he arrived at the scene, he took a swing around to the front end. As he suspected, he could see tiny silhouettes of people moving inside with no gravity. He encircled the command centre module until the salvager arrived to clamp on. “Magnetic binds active,” Jasiid announced.

“Set to sphere formation. We’ll be guard duty until you’re through the fire zone,” Mark told the salvager. And it was a good thing they did, as about a couple dozen enemy fighters were headed their way.

Half of the cluster broke off and went elsewhere, but the other half kept coming. He swivelled the interceptor backwards, using momentum to carry it forward and opened fire on the approaching hostiles. The others followed suit. It did not dissuade these enemy pilots. However, they were targeting the interceptors, not the salvager.

“Looks like they want us not the salvage team, let’s claw up and give them a warm welcome party.” Isabella was right. They were only firing on their interceptors. Specifically at Red Squad. “Taking hits, and another, and another, damn. Okay I have to go get a heal, there’s a corvette nearby.”

“No rush,” he replied. Once she peeled away, they changed targets onto him when she was out of range. “Alright Jeroll, glad you’re here now. Sorry to do this, it’s not showing off, but rest of Red go form up with Green. These things seem to have a hate-on for me alone,” he said flipping the lid on the large red button to never ever click unless absolutely necessary. When he did, his engine speed doubled and he made a sharp evasive maneuver away from the salvager. Sure enough, all of them followed him away, but his concentration was on being bait. Green and Red squads would take a few passes on them soon enough, which they did eliminating half of the enemy on one pass.

“Am I crazy?”

“What’s that, Mark?” Isabella asked.

“No, it’s just yesterday Eric said the Kadeshi pilot he saw had pasty skin and red hair, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, so does whatever pilot’s in the lead for those things. Think it’s just the same one with a grudge?”

“It’s possible,” she said.

“Mark!”

“Wha—

The lead enemy pilot apparently had an afterburner installed as well, and was already speeding ahead and coming his way fast. He tried to lose it, but couldn’t. It swung right past him and turned to face forward not firing. “No, not at all crazy,” he said. Only meters from him, sat the enemy. A young-looking girl with reddish brown hair and very pale skin and blue irises. And she was staring him down.