a brilliant flash signified the end of another of the pirate vessels. someone had gotten lucky and hit a fuel core. the shock wave hit a little bit later, but was accompanied by no sound. funny thing about dog-fights in space… jason sluiced the tail of his lance in an attempt to get angle on one of the faster of the enemy ships and nearly ran into a randomly fired rocket. at the range the ships were spinning around each other, there was no room for a lock of any kind, making self propelled weaponry a danger to all of the combatants. as he watched, the pirate he was moving in behind fired off a barrage of auto-chaff in response to a harmless radar lock.
“Wrong thing to be worried about,” mumbled jason under his breath, as he walked a focused burst through the starboard stabilizer of his target. the explosion of the small stabilizer jet was not enough to destroy the craft outright; but without it, the ship’s primaries sent it spinning off out of the fight before the pilot could do anything about it. the pilot might limp the ship home, but he was effectively out of the fight.
“Bravo one, this is Alpha leader. We could use a hand over here…got us a Frankenstein rigger. Transmitting coordinates now…Goddamn, this is a big sonofabitch. Repeat, Bravo one, this is Alpha leader, please disengage soonest and give support. We’re getting our asses handed to us over here, boss.”
jason tapped his virtual controls, filing through the remaining targets. there was only one light scout between his unit and what looked to be a converted freighter. it was big…nearly a quarter the size of the fls drake. “Roger that, Alpha leader. Just cleaned up over here and coming to you now. Hang in there, Bret!” tapping the controls again, jason upped his magnification to get a look at the thing. judging by the general shape of the frankenstein, it had been a freighter of some sort at some time. it was hard to tell what kind through all of the miss-matched armor and the bristling of jammers and cannons covering the hull. these types of tank/ship combos had enough room to house the proliferation of jamming equipment required to stimey most any type of missile attack, leaving a head on run through the gauntlet of laser and plasma banks as the only option. judging by debris and inert lance’s, alpha section was getting pretty chewed up trying to run that gauntlet. jason keyed the general override push.
“All Alpha units, disengage frankenstein rigger. Make distance from contact one-five-oh kliks at shortest. Get out of the way, ladies.” jason quickly did some calculations with the help of the ai, and sent them to bravo wing. “All Bravo units, disengage all tracking and radar, repeat, go to visual only. I have sent you clearance codes to feed your ai’s. do so now, and on my mark, fire all remaining missile salvos at that big bastard! Three…Two…One…Mark!” as a unit, bravo wing loosed it’s remaining missiles. jason had fed their computers null commands, turning off all warheads and tracking for all of the missiles making them immune to any jamming or premature detonation countermeasures. essentially, he had just launched about two hundred jet-powered spears at the great hulk.
he dialed up the magnification just in time to watch the ats on the frankenstein try and pick up all those targets. it got about a third. the heavy plate along the beam of the ship deflected another quarter. the rest started punching through the weak points of the armor, making small sparks as atmosphere was voided from the converted freighter. it was only a matter of time before…
the ship seemed to expand as rays of light poked out of the breaches in the hull. the final reaction was blindingly spectacular…the huge power core in the freighter went off like a tiny supernova. even the ships that had made the 150 kilometer range from the ship were tossed around like leaves in a hurricane. jason saw two status lights go blank for Alpha wing, but there was nothing left to fight. the threat to the convoy was no more.
