18 March 3050, Above Chateau, Federated Commonwealth
Chateau’s primary shimmered through the atmosphere as squadrons of Rapiers, Lucifers, and Lightnings punched through the ionosphere. “Lucky Actual to Command, we are transitioning to orbital flight.”
Below them Marshal Sarah Steiner tracked the squadron of dropships from this ‘Clan Wolf’ while the Chateu Mechanized Infantry regiments rushed to battle stations alongside the 10th Donegal Guards. New defensive works were dug, and the base’s own emplacements pointed skyward wary of air raids.
“Roger that Lucky Actual. Proceed with caution.”
“Affirmative Command.”
Kapiten Marino lowered his neurohelmet’s gold tinted visor as his Rapier moved the armored canopy into position and switched to cockpit projection. There was no stealth in space, but they were on the nighttime side and using the planet’s orbit to sling them toward where the planetary search RADARs had tracked their enemies. It would give them an element of surprise and crucial speed. His fighter’s own RADAR confirmed the track and two Leopard sized and shaped vessels broke from their tight formation, positioning themselves for an intercept in ten minutes.
“All fighters drop auxiliary fuel tanks,” Lucky, Lotus, and Lily squadron’s flimsy fuel tanks dropped off and fell toward the planet. “Weapons free. Primary targets are incoming bandits. Anything else can be handled on the ground. Switching to Squadron level command.”
Green lights signaled the wing confirmed the order and he switched the primary frequencies to their squadron leaders. Their formation separated enough that they could maneuver without risking disastrous collisions. RCS thrusters puffed and changed their heading as the primary engine ‘lifted’ them away from the clinging molecular remnants of Chateau’s atmosphere.
One of the Leopards opened comms, “This is Star Captain Rotheran of Clan Wolf’s Two-Hundred-Seventy-Ninth Battle Cluster. I have Six Points of Fighters under my command and am issuing a formal batchall to the commander of these incoming fighters. Identify yourself and transmit your challenge or face Annihilation.”
Ten sleek and deadly fighters were launched from the smaller crafts, their cross-sections marked them as heavy fighters. Two more deployed from the ship matching a Union’s profile. The others were slightly larger with a corresponding increase in the RADAR cross-section.
His wingman, Lucky Four, spoke over their battlenet. “Batchall? What the hell is this guy talking about Actual?”
“Damned if I know, but if Rotheran wants a battle we’ll give it to him.”
The enemy blazed toward them; so fast that a ten minute intercept was hastened to less than four minutes.
“How are they accelerating at top speed for so long?”
“Maybe they are aliens.”
Marino calmed himself as he watched his biosigns begin to rise on the Life Support Monitor. “Cut the chatter, get to the splatter.”
Wolves fired first from beyond the Guards capability. Laser pulses, particle beams, and missiles ablated or cut away at the fighters. Lily Three and Lotus Four’s fronts disappeared, their wings twisted and forced their trailing squad mates to evade the debris. Put into a death spiral their flight computer explosively separated the wings, powerplant, and engines while the cockpit section automatically stabilized with reaction wheels before boosted higher on its emergency hypergolic jets for recovery.
His board showed warnings and the computer generated voice spoke through his neurohelmet, ‘Avionics damaged, Fire Control damaged, Integrity compromised.’
A sense of dread fell over the Kapiten, another volley like that in the right place might be the end of his airframe and perhaps life. The Rapier came into range of one of the alien delta wing designs and he gave the invader its all.
Beneath him he could feel the RNG Ranger Autocannon shaking the airframe, its engine compensated for the firepower within maintaining constant velocity. Twin particle beams raked its wings, but a silent explosion shattered the enemy nose cone damaging the missile launcher ensconced within it.
Lucky Four’s wings were shredded and compromised by the enemy whose wing-mate fired on Marino in turn. This plane, while looking nearly identical had two large cannons mounted over-under in the nose, they flashed magnesium bright and launched hundreds of kilograms of nickel-ferro alloy at incredible velocities. These rounds punched through his wings and into heat sinks, globs of ammonia coolant trailed in his wake before evaporating in the vacuum.
Lily and Lotus squadron struggled against the enemy fighters which although seemingly identical from afar contained a variety of weaponry more dangerous than any Successor State and perhaps the Star League itself. Lucky Five and Lily Six disintegrated before their flight computers boosting the cockpit pod into a recovery orbit. Lotus One caused one of the enemy fighters to lose attitude control with a precision shot next to its likely cockpit location. Its pilot spun on their axis, somehow staying conscious, trying to manually restore control.
Fourteen vs Eleven was still long odds but not impossible maybe, Marino executed the flip macro in his neurohelmet, his Rapier’s RCS thrusters engaged, completing the flip just as his enemies and allies did the same. His aft was pointing toward the enemy dropships but they maintained distance trusting their air wing to handle any threat to the transports.
Their joust was once more on as the engines threw out millions of ions stripped away and thrown together in their thermonuclear power plants. Marino watched his engine’s temperature gauge approach caution levels. “That’s a later problem! En Guard Rotheran.” His RNG Autocannon roared again, vibration propagated the compromised airframe as another silent explosion erupted on the enemy fighter craft tearing off one of its wings. Debris continued behind it moving at its previous velocity as the hyper-accelerated protons of his dual PPCs ripped and burnt away more armor.
Wolf cannons fired once more further cutting through the ablative armoring that surrounded the titanium and carbon fiber airframe. Marino’s Rapier was approaching a critical limit and his squadron commanders reported the same, if they continued much longer it wouldn’t be long before their enemy outnumbered them with more advanced airframes. “All Squadrons this is Lucky Actual. Dive for dirt, full evasive.”
A woman’s voice, Lily Actual Hauptmann Sciavo, came over the radio, “Lucky Actual, Lily Actual. What about the others?”
“We’ll send a gunship to recover them on the dark side. Now dive if you don’t want to join them.”
Lucky Actual and the others flipped once more, their thrusters edging dangerously close to safety limits. They passed rapidly beneath the invading task force well beyond their weapon’s range. Hostile fighters flared behind them fighting orbital mechanics and their own velocity to restart the engagement.
Star Captain Rotheran came over the radio once more, the signal emanated from the fighter with a torn wing. “You have not asked for nor been granted Hegira coward, turn, and fight me.”
The survivors dipped into the atmosphere, hypersonic velocity and aerodynamics superheated the fighter’s leading edges scrambling comms and sensors as plasma gathered around them. His airframes exposed structures glowed cherry hot radiating their excess heat to the atmosphere whipping around him. “Command this is Lucky Actual. We have bandits on our tail, damage, and are coming in hot.”
Marshal Sarah Steiner looked to the sky to see where the tower would be projecting a landing signal to her air wing. Her Zeus lifted its arms to the sky, its height giving it a similar view to the larger search RADARs that the soldiers of Chateau’s planetary militia relied on. Ammo runners loaded flak shells into their field artillery guns to cover their fighters from the ground. The quad gun turrets of Partisan Flak Tanks moved in unison as the approaching fighters appeared on their scopes, the ‘ears’ of their tracking RADAR rotating faster to provide the necessary information for its battle computer.
Rotheran’s fighters bore down on the Guards’ fighters occupying the dominant ‘high and six’ position while the Tenth’s fighters were maintaining an altitude of a few hundred meters but side-slipped or rolled away from their attacks. That all stopped when the fighters pitched up bleeding away their forward velocity and forcing the enemy to dive beneath them or risk a collision.
Flak shells and missiles filled the sky around them shredding the already damaged Wolf Airframes while the enemy fighters got a final volley in against their aft damaging thrusters and control surfaces. The Clan Pilots fired at and decapitated a Marauder while crippling a Thunderbolt. Three Wolf Aerofighters lost control; their pilots ejected from doomed airframes which crashed into the parade grounds. The remainder boosted for orbit and away from the withering ground fire.
Kapiten Marino deployed his landing gear, drifting on vectored thrust toward the ferrocrete landing strip, the heavy lift of the thrusters scorched the ferrocrete beneath him. Ground crews sprayed water onto the surface to cool it to acceptable temperatures. He opened the canopy shifting his orange g-suit and LSU feeding canned air to his neurohelmet over the edge as he descended the built in ladder. The Crew Chief’s silver fire-resistant coat reflecting light creating a prismatic beam through the water particles.
“You okay Kapiten?”
“Affirmative Crew Chief. Four for Four.”
Behind them the parade grounds were on fire, the wail of the AFFC fire team’s sirens blared around them just over the hissing water beneath them. “You cheated a bit.”
Marino looked at the tortured airframes around him, ground crews responded to a Lucifer whose nose gear had failed and bent the airframe around the cockpit. “Not nearly enough.”
White parachutes fluttered as motorcycle riding MPs were dispatched took them prisoner. “I don’t know who these guys are, but they are determined and good. If their ground troops are as good as their Pilots I’m not sure how we can beat them.”
