Chapter 7

Chapter 7

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In all, there were twelve Swarmers, and one craft that resembled a Multi-Beam Frigate, pursuing us. As the makeshift captain onboard, I had ordered the Endeavor's pilot to engage thrusters away from the small but deadly fleet. Not that it would make much difference.

"Ensign Kaplan, how long until our hyperdrive is fully charged?" The officer answered, "About ten minutes sir." I was not pleased. We saw what they did to the Corporate battleship, we would last far less long. I had to make up a plan. "OK. Nolan, you're good at crazy maneuvers, you stay on the bridge and pilot this bird. Jacyn, you and I will man the mass driver turrets on this ship. Ardee, Areff," I was surprised that the robots responded to that. "You two man the twin Ion Cannons. We have to try to hold them off for a moment."

Everyone sprang into action. I ran to the top turret of the ship. On the way, I called the ships in the sector, I knew for a fact that the Base had ferried over a contingent of Defenders. "Angel Base, this is Lieutenant Sjet. Can you have your Defenders protect us while we charge our engines?"

Commander Paktu sounded incredulous. "Jake, what are you doing here? I thought that you weren't interested in coming." I had to grin, even due to the circumstances. "Change of plans. When can you hyper out?"

"Five minutes."

"Good. Have your fighters cover us. I'll try to take potshots at the fighters in the turrets, but they're too big to be accurate."

I got to a door labeled PRIMARY MASS DRIVER, and I opened it. I nodded to Jacyn and the two robots as they raced by, and I sealed the door. In the room was a huge chair, filled with wires leading up to the ceiling, which housed the actual turret. I sat down in the seat, and lowered the holo-specs, which would give me a complete display of the action from the viewpoint of the turret. I switched it on, and with a low hum I was in. I grabbed the joystick, and I swiveled the turret around. I had several of the targets illuminated with red triangles. I aimed the turret at one of the Fighters, and the triangle changed to green, indicating a target lock.

Heh, heh. For all their maneuverability, it was no advantage when they were flying straight. I pressed the trigger, and after a short delay, and with a large recoil, I saw a huge volley of bullets shoot off. The Swarmer couldn't react in time, and the huge shot smashed through the hull, and it left nothing to salvage. The rest of the squadron dispersed in reaction, and I was left swiveling the gun around to search for them. I trailed one fighter that was on a sharp course to the left, and I fired, but it was too fast.

Fortunately, I did see a trio of Defenders fly by me, attacking the more advanced Kadeshi fighters. One of the Swarmers got on their tail, and incinerated the top one with a pair of verdant rays.

I scanned to search for the Multi-Beam Frigates. When I found them, I noticed a few differences from the original Multi-Beam design from the Archives. First of all, they were about twice as long, and they had sleek wings spread out from the ellipsoid center. The Quad-Ion Cannons were mounted on turrets, which they used to spread the blue beams along a wide axis. One of them fired, and the blue beams raked along the Endeavor's hull, violently shaking me in place. The seat's powerful gravity compensators kept me from being launched out of place, and I saw two red beams fire out towards the deadly craft.

A good thing about attacking Multi-Beams was, while they had incalculable power, their hulls were very weak. These new models didn't seem to have improved on this. The beams hit one of their Ion turrets, which detonated, rocketing the egg-shaped ship off on a tangent. That bought us some time.

Two Swarmers swooped down from above the Destroyer, on an angle that made it difficult to shoot them, and fired several deadly shots. The hull shook from the force several times. One of the shots actually hit my turret, and the camera shifted to holographic static. Thinking quickly, I tapped some commands into my chair's computer, and it switched to the auxiliary camera. When my sights came back up, I was consoled that the fighters had only grazed me, not disabled me. However, I could not find them after my sight came back. They were good.

The chrono in the lower left hand of my holo specs told me we had four minutes left. The ship fell under attack by the MBFs again, and it turned on its side to minimize the damage on the forward hull. I turned and aimed at one of the frigates, but Jacyn's turret beat me to it. He pumped three salvos of fire into the engines of the ship, and the back part exploded, horribly distorting the hull shape. I saw the pilots who survived the explosion vent out into space. They were a shock to look at, all pale and skinny. They seemed half-dead already, and I found it rather interesting that these corpse-creatures could inflict so much pain on so many people without leaving the safety of their Nebula.

Until now…

I watched helplessly as a group of five lamb-Defenders being slaughtered by the might of the wolf-Swarmers. I was rather glad that my squadron hadn't arrived in our Interceptors. Piloting skills often filled the gap of obsolete fighter capability, but the opposite was also the same. My pilots were still green, and had they pitted themselves against greater firepower, they would surely have lost.

I scanned space, and found another Swarmer. I fired, but only part of my salvo hit the ship, causing the ship to spin wildly on its axis. However, its attitude jets quickly compensated for it, and the fighter raced towards me, guns blazing. I fired back, but with the recoil and shock of the lasers' impacts, I could hardly get a clear shot. The sights went to static when the Kadeshi fired a clear shot, and I felt a powerful explosion above me.

The turret was dead.

And it was even worse. I heard a faint moaning sound, and I was shocked to find a hole in the hull above me. The air was being sucked out of the chamber, as I soon would be. I could feel the force of the sucking when the alarms set off.

The chair's build didn't protect me from the sheer force attracting me to space. I pulled out of the chair, and shrugged off my flight jacket. It fell over the hole, which lessened the force of the decompression, but it was being sucked out as a thin string of material. The air began to seem a bit thin, making me light headed. I clung for my life to the chair, and pulled myself towards the door. I barely managed not to tear out my arm in pressing the release button, and the door opened, which added more air to the ever-increasing vacuum, which increased the volume of the whine. As the doors opened, my fingers gripped one side of the opening wall. I let my other hand go off the chair, and I was being pulled more forcefully out until I got it to grab the wall. With all my strength, I still couldn't pull myself into the corridor.

I felt one of my boots fly off my foot, and blocked the hole. I fell to the floor, and scrambled out of the room. I took deep breaths and hit the close button. When the shoe had gone out into the void, I felt once more the icy pull of space, but it wasn't long for the doors to shut it out completely.

I raced to the bridge and opened the door. It had become a dark, spark-lit room, where only the lights of the consoles showed me that not all power was out. The blast shields for the main viewport had been raised, so the beams of the ships wouldn't blast through the room. I yelled out to people I couldn't see, "Punch it!"

And with a final shudder, I knew we were gone. Thank God.

Day 20

The Endeavor was in ruins. Repair Corvettes and the Angel Base ran along the hull with their green repair beams, regenerating pieces of the hull. It was blackened for the most part, the new paint job having been soiled by the battle. I was on the bridge of the Troop Transport, watching the repairs with the other four senior squadron members.

I had just informed the Commander of our slight breach in protocol, expecting the worst. She surprised me. "In light of the consequences of your actions, since you did try to help us, and you did protect our ships as we were hypering out, I guess I will forego the court-martials. For now." I nodded. "Thank you, Commander." She acknowledged, and sent me off.

The five of us opened the door to leave the bridge, and we were confronted by the other seven members of the squadron. None of them spoke; they all glared. I said, "Good evening, guys. How was life when we were gone?"

Tengo approached me. "You didn't tell us you were going off to fight the Kadeshi." Myla added, while she was under the arm of her fellow tactician. "You didn't even tell us we were up against the Protectors." The gangly figure of Iliom Se said, "Didn't you think we were up to it?"

I looked at all of them. I looked to the others for assistance, but they merely shrugged. I said, "Look, we didn't even know ourselves until a few minutes before we left." Mara Liir Hra spoke up, "You lie. There was still enough time for you to inform us of your plan. You could have ordered us to load our fighters on a Support Frigate and join you." Lara concurred. "Lies. Dishonesty."

One good thing that happened, Hal stepped up to defend me. "Now, hold on guys. It isn't that he didn't trust us. He just didn't want to put us in harms' way. After all, we've only been in one fight since we arrived here. Just look at the surviving ships. I doubt any one of us would have lived through that dogfight."

Tengo sneered. "Maybe you would have buckled under, Soban, but I graduated from the Academy with a B+ in the Great Nebula simulator missions. I have extensive knowledge of Kadeshi battle tactics that would have given us the edge on this fight, which I would have been more than happy to share with you guys." He stared coldly at me. "Which is more than I can say for our proclaimed leader. And besides, Hal, why are you defending him? He damn well near left you back on Hiigara."

Hal looked from him to me, I could only smile weakly at him while the squadron drifted away. When there were only the six of us left, Nolan said, "Well, Lieutenant, looks like you've got a mutiny on your hands."

I nodded. "And that's more deadly than anything the Kadeshi can throw at us."