Niandra was leading the way towards the cockpit when the interior of the gunship dimmed down and its interior lighting changed to a tactical setting, switching light energy sources from the main circuit to independent units, and a low siren began to ring out as the air tensed up.
Following Niandra, I crossed a door hatch. Since this was a void capable ship meant for space marines, the cockpit compartment was spacious enough for four people.
There were two pilot seats at the front of the cockpit, inquisitor Thaberus occupied one of it without his signature capotain hat, beside him was a lady in a smart, blue imperial navy uniform with a pair of cool shades. A constant chime of warnings could be heard coming from the instruments and the panel lights were reflecting off nicely on the lady pilot’s shade.
‘We might be in trouble,’ Thaberus cut to the chase and looked at me. ‘Niandra mentioned the machine spirit was telling you something, can you elaborate?’
I quickly tried to recall the message log I saw, amazingly it came back to me with absolute clarity. ‘About sixty seconds ago we were hit by severe system jamming followed by four suspected readings of unknown weapon systems locking on to us.’ I quickly summarised.
‘Well, that certainly explained why our auspex had gone haywire.’ The pilot lady pointed to a radar looking screen, on it was a jumbled up looking mess of readings.
I got a really bad feeling about this… my feeling of unease rose exponentially as I threw out my next question. ‘Are we flying over hostile territory?’
‘No, we were going through the green zone held by the forces of the governor. We deliberately chose the safest flight path to our destination.’ Thaberus replied. Somehow, his answer only added to my feeling of foreboding.
We needed answers and fast! Thankfully, I got this cheat ability right here and... [Cogitatio Acceleratio] activated. The world slowed down again around me. First, I took a closer look at the panel of instruments and immediately gave up, too much to learn and not enough time. I then ran [Analytica] on the lady pilot and nothing came back suspicious, looks like my only weapon here was thinking.
Something about this scenario felt amiss, flying through a friendly area and getting the auspex system jammed before being attacked? Why would the enemy go through that trouble unless...
‘Are there any notable supposedly friendly anti-air assets situated around here that could take down Flameraven?’ I immediately asked. There was a slight pause before Thaberus realised the purpose of my question. The Flameraven was a huge gunship of Astartes usage origin in design, nothing short of some serious firepower could threaten it from the sky. That meant the enemy knew the only way to take us down was that we did not know what was coming.
‘Tahsya?’ He turned to the pilot, urgency in his voice.
‘Already on it, sir.’ The pilot lady accessed a touch screen data panel and quickly found the information she was looking for.
‘Records showed four operational Manticore anti-air platforms nearby, about 60 kilometres away.’ Manticore? Those things with the dreaded storm eagle rockets? Just the mention of the term Manticore conjured up memories of mass devastation during my tabletop gaming days. These weapon platforms carry the notorious storm eagle rockets that can absolutely wreck their intended targets from an extreme distance and the anti-air version of it existed.
‘That meant…’ I said before my mind was suddenly flooded with all the relevant information about the weapon in question.
Manticore anti-air platforms were usually armed with the sky eagle rocket variants which were heat-seeking warheads that targeted enemy aircraft’s power signatures and engine exhaust. The standard rocket is divided into five sections: a fuse, the control and guidance equipment, the electrical unit, an explosive warhead and a propellant container for the two-stage solid-fuel rocket with a top speed of 1080 kph.
‘... by calculating the speed of the rockets and distance of roughly sixty kilometres, assuming the weapons were deployed at the time of jamming, the estimated time for rocket impact on Flameraven is about thirty seconds. Since each platform can have up to four rockets, up to sixteen rockets could be heading our way right now.’ I heard a calm and soothing female voice conveying the information before realising it was my own.
I looked up and saw Thaberus staring straight at me. As our eyes met, a split second later his face somehow turned grimmer than usual as the implications of my words hit him.
‘Throne’s blood,’ he whispered.
Niandra sprang into action, pushing me into a back seat on the wall of the cockpit and securing my harness with inhuman speed before doing the same for herself.
‘Be advised, we are going on a full evasive manoeuvre!’ Tahsya announced on the intercom. The onboard alarm went into full blare as the Flameraven picked up speed. I was pushed back onto my seat by the sudden increase of g-force.
What is with this endless amount of action film like events? This is still the same lucid dream session, right? I couldn’t help but think to myself, wondering if this must be some overcompensation for my decades of mundane life, but the warning blares in the cockpit and g-force felt real enough. I felt the gunship climbing as it continued to pick up speed.
‘Inbound rockets confirmed on auspex!’ Tahsya’s voice came through on the intercom. Apparently, the rockets were so close now even the jammed auspex could pick them up.
‘Hold on!’ Tahsya said before commanding the Flameraven to go from a climb to a steep banking dive, for a second there I felt gravity leaving me, then suddenly the g-force came back with a vengeance, pinning me to the back of my seat. Then a series of updates popped into my head.
<++Chaff-Flare discharged++>
<++Chaff-Flare discharged++>
<++Chaff-Flare discharged++>
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
<++Chaff-Flare discharged++>
<++Chaff-Flare discharged++>
<++Chaff-Flare discharged++>
<++Chaff-Flare discharged++>
<++Chaff-Flare discharged++>
<++Chaff-Flare discharged++>
<++Chaff-Flare discharged++>
<++Chaff-Flare discharged++>
<++Chaff-Flare discharged++>
...
Chaff and flare are countermeasures used by military aircraft to help evade missile attacks, but why was I receiving these messages? Am I still connected to the gunship’s machine spirit? Pinned and unable to do anything, I tried calling it.
<++ Received and ready to serve, Authority. ++>
It replied. Seemed like I don’t need to be in a trance state to communicate with it.
<++ Complying. ++>
A 3-dimensional image of the gunship surroundings materialised inside of my mind, and I could see the gunship was being chased by multiple flickering icons of incoming projectiles while dropping countermeasures. A second later, I understood that while Tahsya was doing a great job getting the rockets off our tail, there might be too many of them for us to have a clean getaway.
A huge explosion sounded from somewhere, coinciding with my auspex readout of a rocket detonating on one of the chaff. The whole gunship shook and amidst the chaos, I could even hear Herlindya’s cries of horror from way behind in the fuselage.
A feeling of unsuppressed terror started to assail me. Can you die in your dreams? They say if you die in your dream you might die in real life too, right? Wait, how could they know that if they died in their dreams and never woke up to tell anyone?
The Flameraven shook violently as more explosions were happening nearby, waking me from my silly stupor and this time I could even hear Amael and Rantor joining Herlindya with their outcry of cursings. I could have sworn I was screaming too but instead, a familiar message appeared in my vision.
[Regalis] Action override-
Wait, what? This message again? Whatever, I don’t want to die.
I put my attention back to the auspex readings again. To my utter horror, I soon came to the dreaded realisation that if the events continued to unfold as the auspex was showing, we would be cornered by the mass of rockets in the next eight seconds.
No no no no! I immediately activated my thought acceleration and studied the readings, staring at the impending death sentence. We were already doing a steep banking dive at maximum speed with full chaff-flare discharge and were out of cards to play.
Hold on, this gunship has two fully rotatable twin heavy bolter sponsons right? I closed my eyes and tried to communicate with the machine spirit of the gunship again while in the state of thought acceleration.
…
Was that too complicated?
……
<++Unable to comply, auspex ERROR++>
That darn jamming again.
<++Complying.++>
Two video feeds popped up inside my vision, directly showing me where the twin heavy bolters were aiming. Everything happened in a painfully slow manner while my thought acceleration was active except for those darned incoming rocket icons, they were fast approaching.
I immediately rotated the guns to point at the rough direction for intercepting fire while consulting the flickering auspex readings.
These… These inaccurate readings won’t work. I wanted to cry as despair was setting in, then it hit me; I had my own auspex, just that it might not have enough range. Still worth a try rather than being dead though.
I concentrated inwards on that feeling again and a moment later, activated [Auspex] as hard as I could, a massive sensor net burst forth from me towards the swarm of approaching rockets and registered their true locations to me in real-time. I got you now you bastards!
A brief moment after I consulted my auspex reading, a transcendent level of calculation took place inside my head in slow motion as the ideal path of intercepting fire appeared in my mind. Putting my faith in what was revealed to me, I adjusted both the left and right sponsons to the exact position and mentally triggered the firing mechanism.
Four streams of mass reactive rounds burst forth from Flameraven, hitting some of the incoming rockets at the last second and the resulting chain explosions pushed the gunship just enough to escape the massive impact zone from the rockets’ crossfire. Even protected by the solid hull of the gunship I felt the huge shockwave.
The massive gunship groaned, spun and tumbled uncontrollably for a while in the air before the advanced avionics stabilised itself, the pandemonium ended abruptly and we continued on our journey as if nothing ever happened. I gasped and looked around, confirming we were all still alive as evident from the screaming still coming from the passenger section.
<++Unknown command, unable to comply.++> it sent back.
I wanted to laugh out loud, only to be stopped by a message appearing in my vision: [Regalis] Action override-
Utterly flustered, I resigned myself to the fate of sitting quietly on my chair. We continued our flight in silence until Tahsya spoke up. ‘It seems like Flameraven took out a few rockets with the heavy bolters at the very last second. But this is weird, I had been trying to engage the ballistic interception protocol but it would not boot up probably due to the heavy jamming, and here the system records indicate those guns were on manual control at the moment it fired.’
I might as well come clean again before incurring any unwanted misunderstandings in the future, so I raised my hand like a dutiful citizen and declared. ‘It was me, Flameraven didn’t want to die either so we cooperated to get out of that tight spot.’
Everyone in the cockpit turned and looked at me. ‘Just who are you again, Lady Syrine?’ Thaberus finally asked. Seemed like the inquisitor was showing me some respect.
But… Lady? Lady, lady, lady... it was so cringy being called that my skin started to crawl. My male soul cried out in protest.
‘I… don’t remember but please, just call me Syrine.’ Thaberus did not reply and his face was unreadable. ‘I insist on it,’ I said, surprising even myself.
The rest of the short trip was uneventful other than the trio at the back of the gunship finally crammed into the cockpit asking what just happened. By then I had closed my eyes and tried to get some rest but found it impossible to sleep again. It continued to be so right up until we reached our destination to meet the astropath.