Friday, November 25, 2011

War Angel: part thirty-nine


Gina and Kate sat silently in the dojo, each relaxing after the tough workout Kate had put them through. Gina finally gave up on sitting and laid down flat on the mat, her chest rising and falling quickly, her body gulping every last bit of available oxygen as though it would its last. “You, woman, are a taskmaster,” she choked out.

“Oh, come on,” Kate replied. “It wasn’t that bad.”

“No, you’re right. It even felt good for a while. But I am seriously exhausted.”

Kate lay down next to her. “Bah. This will toughen you up. You fly, right?”

“Atmosphere only,” Gina told her. “My dad started teaching me when I was fourteen.”

“So you’re used to pulling all those Gs. Work on your cardio fitness and it’ll get easier and easier.”

Gina rolled onto her side and faced Kate. “I hope so. Maybe I’ll even move on to space flight.”

“Can’t be that hard, can it? No gravity to worry about, no crashing,” Kate offered, rolling over to talk to her friend.

“Ha!” Gina giggled. “The lack of a horizon is tricky, sure. But gravity? There is always gravity…”



Alarms screamed throughout the ship as systems faltered or went offline. Gina struggled to get their movement under control, her frustration growing. “Sonofabitch!” she screamed. “I can’t keep us steady while taking these hits!”

At the rear of the bridge, Sarah blew her stack. “Well I can’t hit these bastards back if the ship isn’t steady!”

“That’s enough!” Jack roared. “Do your jobs!”

Kate turned back to Jack. “I have an idea,” she said, taking time to make sure she looked at both of the women, then back to Keys. “We’re a very short distance from the rings, which are made of mostly rock and debris. Stuff that the port side is still protected from. Why don’t we flip around the Omegans…”

Jack cut her off. “Make them give chase, scrape off the fighters for a few moments…”

“Fire into the rings and use the material as extra weaponry against them, and it should clog their targeting computers for a minute or so as well,” Sarah finished. “I like it and I can do it.”

Before Jack could say anything else, Gina was engaging the engines and maneuvering the War Angel in an arc around the Omegan cruiser. “Keeping the starboard facing them, Captain,” she reported.

“Yes!” Sarah exclaimed. “Just took out one of the fighters!” Her eyes stayed glued to her tactical readout. “That seems to have stunned them for a moment.”

“As does our movement,” Kate added. “Their last couple of shots weren’t direct hits.”

Jack cleared his throat. “They’ll adjust quickly enough.”

Friday, November 18, 2011

War Angel: part thirty-eight


The Omegan cruiser re-adjusted its firing pattern and changed its targeting. As it did, the fighters swung wide, taking care to avoid the new firing solution. On its bridge sat the young-ish warrior who had finally been given a command of his own, but who was now watching it evaporate in a fruitless battle against a surprise enemy. There was no question that they were going to lose. It was merely a question of whether or not they could hold out until reinforcements arrived, and he lost face, or they all died in the vacuum of space.

It hadn’t needed to be this way. When the majority of his pilots and their fighter craft were commissioned for suppression duty on Earth, he had protested mightily. His words went unheeded, and to the Omegan high command, they were almost baffling. The ship was to be sent to the outer reaches of the system and look for minor traffic. Earth’s complement of military cruisers was in the inner system.

“We are being shunted aside,” the warrior told his second in command. “Glory is being denied us.” It was no salve when it was discovered that on old military ship was actually in their area and they would be required to accept its surrender.

His hollow words to his superiors were ringing in his ears as his tactical officer suddenly moved from his post and to his side. “Lord, I have detected what I believe to be an unusual pattern in their movements.”

The Omegan raised an eyebrow. “I am listening, warrior. Speak of it now.”



Kate watched the fighters flash across her display. “They’re taking a wide berth, Jack! Coming around us at mark 270!”

“Sarah!” Jack said, whipping his head around. “Options?”

Before she could speak, a new barrage from the Omegan weapons pounded the War Angel, this time striking the shielding almost directly on top of the bridge area. Sparks flew from multiple pieces of equipment. Pieces of jagged metal fell from the ceiling, one coming dangerously close to hitting Richard in the head. He dove for cover, a second piece impaling his chair.

The ship began to spin slightly out of control as Gina was stunned by the barrage. As it did, the fighters swung around to the far side of the War Angel, sandwiching her between two Omegan forces.

Jack tasted copper in his mouth and knew instantly that he had bitten his tongue. He spat the blood on the ground next to the captain’s chair and gathered himself. He spun around to Sarah but was startled by what he saw. Blood was cascading down her face. He could see a large gash across her forehead and that her left eye was extremely swollen. “Sarah?” he said quietly.

She looked at him blankly, not responding. Not knowing what to do, Jack did the one thing he could think of: scream. “Dammit, Sarah! Wake up! We need you or we’re all going to die!”

Her head shook slightly; her body suddenly began to quiver. Finally, her hands started moving along the screens in front of her. “Setting cannon four to bombardment mode and keeping it locked on the Omegan ship. Cannons one and two now on random laser mode. It should… keep the fighters guessing and moving, make it harder for them to stay in one place long enough to hurt us.” She gave him a long, cold glare.

“Excellent work,” he said, then returned his attention to the helm. “Gina?”

Kate reached over and shook the young woman sitting next to her. This snapped Gina to attention and she began gathering herself. As she did, she began to once again manipulate the controls to pilot the ship. “On it, Captain. I’m on it.”

“Fighters are making a run, Jack,” Kate yelled.

He looked at Sarah. “How many hits can we take on that side before…?”

“Maybe two runs at best before hull breaches. Maybe.”

“Brace for multiple impacts!” Jack instructed them. “Keep shooting, Sarah!”

Laser blasts from the cruiser and from the fighters struck the War Angel simultaneously, pounding her port side and her upper bow.

Friday, November 11, 2011

War Angel: part thirty-seven


“You know,” Sarah had told him, “with a ship the size of the War Angel, I’m surprised it didn’t carry some individual fighter craft.”

Jack took a long drink of wine, admiring the label of the bottle sitting in the middle of their table. Putting his glass down, he swirled the liquid around and watched it slowly gather into a puddle at the bottom. “Nice legs on the wine,” he commented. Suddenly he realized that Sarah had asked him a question and he felt embarrassed at how he had lost track of where he was. “I’m… I’m sorry. What did you say?”

She repeated her observation, and Jack found himself nodding along with her words. “It probably should have. In fact, if we get the old tug up and running and the EAD puts it back into commission, I suspect that it certainly will. But back then, there was one simple problem: who would fly them?”

“Ah. True.”

“Ships like the War Angel weren’t exactly crewed by astronauts and pilots from various air forces. Hell, my ancestor wound up on one, and he was a linguistics professor.”

“What did he do?”

“Manned the sensor station. It was only fair, I suppose. He helped design the Revenge-class ships.”

Sarah poured herself some of the wine. “That’s so weird.”

“Tell me about it! Back then, educators truly did not have much in the way of other training. But he had joined an early resistance cell, and he was on the very first mission to infiltrate and destroy an Omegan ship.” Jack took a sip. “He was also the only survivor of that mission. His team had each worn a tiny camera on their clothing and in a stroke of luck, he got inside the engine room, the landing bay, areas near the crew quarters, you name it. He saw a pretty good chunk of the ship.”

“I can only imagine how much faster the First Period would have ended if guys like him would have had more pilots to back them up on their missions.”

“Yeah,” Jack sighed. “An old earth tyrant once said that the first thing he wanted to do was kill all the lawyers. But a smart invading army knows better. The first thing you do is kill all the pilots.”

Friday, November 4, 2011

War Angel: part thirty-six


“Cannons 1,2 and 4 firing!” Sarah’s fingers whizzed across the targeting screen, pushing the buttons to activate the cannons with all the speed she could muster. As she did, the Omegan ship continued to return fire, its shields on and now at maximum.

“Kate! Status of the Omegan ship?” Jack asked.

“Their shields are weakening, but so far, we haven’t hit the target. I’m detecting power movement. They’re diverting power from… best guess, they’re diverting from the landing bay and the engines.”

The War Angel bounced and rolled a bit, trying to keep her orientation to the Omegan cruiser. “Captain,” Richard spoke up, “how far away is the next Omegan cruiser?”

Jack swiveled his chair around, watching Sarah continue to try and hit the tiny target that they needed eliminated in order to execute their plan. “About two and a half hours. Why?”

Richard ran his fingers through his head, making calculations in his head. “Oh, hell. With this power diversion, their shields will hold up just fine for quite a while.” He turned to face Jack. “Did we jam their comms?”

All heads on the bridge turned to face Sarah. “Oh, fuck all of you.” She looked around. “Seriously. I’m not a damned comms officer.”

“No,” Jack whispered. “our comms officer is in a coma.” A heavy silence hung in the air, finally punctured by Sarah returning to the targeting screen and continuing to fire on the Omegan vessel.

Spurred back to the reality of the situation, Gina began maneuvering the War Angel, doing her best to keep their shield-less side away from the Omegans’ firing solution and to keep giving Sarah a target to shoot at.

The ship continued to shake and roil, the Omegans showing no letup. “That’s fine,” Sarah thought. “The more I use this thing, the better I shoot. I will make this shot. I will.”

It was a reverie not meant to last. “Dammit,” Kate cried out, “we have incoming! Four fighters launched from Omegan cruiser!”