Ariman Jackson
I could feel the G force lessen as I pulled out of one last turn, breathing a sigh of relief. We had only been in this fight for twenty minutes, and I was damn proud of how humanity’s fighting force was holding up compared to the overwhelming numbers that we were facing. I watched as my WSO locked onto an enemy fighter, lighting its engine up with the minigun, only to be swiftly followed up with a missile that crippled the craft. As I saw the light fade from its engines, I quickly pulled into another hairpin turn to miss some munitions coming our way. I looked back at the fighter that shot at us to see that had been swarmed by Terran forces, destroying the fighter in the process. I let go of the breath that I wasn’t even aware I was holding. “What’s that put our kill count to now?” I breathed into the mic, keeping my eyes peeled for any more contacts that wanted to mess with us specifically.
“That puts us at seventy-five,” my WSO replied proudly as he checked the kill counter helpfully displayed by the computer system. “If we survive this mission, I’m sure they’ll have to put us in a hall of fame for this shit. We’re big damn heroes, always had been, as far as I’m concerned.” There was silence for a moment.
“Damn right, we are!” I replied as we pulled into another hairpin turn to go after another hostile that was getting a bit too close for comfort to the Double.
“Shit, we’re out of flares and missiles,” he said as he opened with the minigun on another hostile, causing a hull breach that would kill the occupants if they weren’t wearing a suit. “This is Blue Eagle 37 requesting a resupply run,” he said into the radio.
“Acknowledged,” came the reply. “Proceed to resupply hangar 10.”
“Proceeding along the route,” he said as I directed our fighter to the correct hangar. We didn’t run into any resistance on the way back, because they had to focus down our much smaller and more agile fighters. After a minute of flying, we were finally in sight of our goal, a heavily fortified and defended hangar that was primarily used for refueling and rearming fighters in the middle of a battle. We had never used it before today, but due to the three times that we had used it in the last twenty minutes, I was confident that it would rearm us so long as there were missiles to be fired and flares to be used. We flew past the point defense turrets that would shred any unauthorized visitors to the carrier with extreme efficiency and prejudice.
We were forced forward into our harnesses as our ship was caught by an autofab system that started refueling and rearming at a prodigious rate. Knowing from the experience of the last three go’s we’ve had, this would only take a minute. I looked around to see dozens of other fighters also in here with us going through the exact same process. “Thank God for autofabs, this would take forever otherwise,” I said to no one as I zoned out for these precious moments out of combat.
“One of the best inventions humanity’s ever come up with, perhaps not as important as the jump drive, but still extremely important,” replied my WSO. He glanced over at me, before quickly doing a double take. “What the hell are you doing?” he suddenly shouted, knocking me out of my xen like state.
“What do you, oh,” I said as I saw my finger resting on the fighter’s dispensary control panel. I quickly scrolled through the many injections that I had accidentally given myself, all of it adrenaline and thankfully none of the other combat stimulants that I could have stuck myself with. “I guess this has taken more of a toll on me than I thought.”
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My WSO shook his head in disgust. “You’re sure as shit lucky that you didn’t inject yourself with some good old-fashioned meth!”
I looked back at him in shock. “They put meth in this shit?!” I hurriedly looked back to the control panel.
“God, you’re fucking hopeless some days. It’s a miracle that you even got out of flight school!” he said, throwing his hands up in the air.
I shrugged. “I’ve got it where it counts, got us through this battle good enough so far!” I could already feel my hands start to shake as the adrenaline got into my system properly.
“That doesn’t change the fact that if you’re going to be flying this thing, you can’t be hopped up on drugs!”
“Well, they wouldn’t put it in there if there wasn’t at least some justification for it!” I shouted back.
He shook his head. “We’ll debate the morality of combat stims more once we’re not in mortal danger, deal?”
“Deal.”
---
High Commander Thagath
I watched the live footage that we were getting from the space battle all around us. It seemed that despite their diminutive size, they still managed to put up a fight that some species in the galaxy couldn’t possibly match. I watched with great interest as a group of their tiny fighters followed up on a volley lobbed by one of their corvettes, destroying the engine of a battleship in the process. A volley of shots coming from The Strength Through Diplomacy disabled another battleship. It’s impressive how well they are doing, despite never fighting us before. It seems like we will have to upgrade the armor on all our ships, but that won’t stop us from winning the day through sheer numbers alone. I stopped focusing on that long enough to see a swarm of ships coming and going out of several hangars on the Terran carrier. That must be where they rearm their ships. I highlighted one of the larger hangars. “Have six attack groups make a bombing run on this portion of their carrier, we will declaw these insects before landing the killing blow. Once we have neutralized their carrier, we will begin the boarding operations on The Strength Through Diplomacy."
“At your command, High Commander.”
I watched the bombers begin their attack run with an intensity that could melt ship hulls. One of the corvettes tried to intercept the bombers, but there were simply too many of them to be stopped completely. Terran fighters joined in to attack the bombers, destroying several of them in the process, but like the corvette, there were too many to be stopped. The point defense turrets were the next obstacle for the bombers to defeat, and some of them even went so far as to shoot missiles at the turrets to give them something to shoot at that wasn’t them. Clever. I’ll have to promote the ones that came up with that idea, assuming they survive the rest of the run. My focus got more and more consumed by the display as the bombers got closer to their target. It seemed like the closer that they got to the hangar, the more fiercely the Terrans would fight, some even going so far as to crash their fighters into the bombers to stop them from getting to their destination. These vermin would make a good fodder species for the next war after this.
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Captain Kaushal
I looked on in horror as the Yalayan bombers made their slow and ponderous march towards the Rabbit’s Foot. Our fighters and point defense turrets were doing their best to deter their advance towards us, but there were simply too many of them to be stopped. My heart lurched in fear as I saw the first bombers drop their payload into one of the ten resupply hangars, presumably incinerating everything inside of it.
The shockwave came a second later, shaking the Rabbit’s Foot to its very core and causing everyone that wasn’t sitting or holding onto something to take a tumble to the ground.
“Shit! Status report!” I shouted to the bridge crew.
“Massive detonation in Resupply Hangar Ten, and massive decompression on the surrounding decks!” shouted one of the engineers between his own fits of swearing.
“Any casualties?” I asked.
“Thirty-seven fighters were in there when the bombs went off, and the entire support crew. Sending in a rescue team,” said one of the medical personnel.
I nodded and signaled for the evacuation of that portion of the ship, just as I was warned of no less than fifteen separate bombing groups coming after the rest of the resupply hangars. I spared a moment to look at the clock the admiral had set up with the sinking feeling that we weren’t going to make it. Twenty-two minutes.