A short lifetime of eight hours later, they were bursting from Jump into the orbital space just above Higarin. In the span of a few seconds, the empty space around them was filled to capacity with Higarin fighters, projectiles, and a lot of 'trying-not-to-get-killed' maneuvering.
The safe houses had launched their own strike-and-hide attacks, providing just enough delay for the Ghosts to get there.
"Do you think they expected us?" Citram called out over the com, letting loose a volley of high-caliber armor-piercing incendiaries, laughing at the resulting explosions. Two things that never mixed well; synthesized oxygen and fire. One of the deadliest things in space, besides space itself, was fire. Fire in space made for big, beautiful, silent explosions. And death.
It was sometimes surreal how little noise pure chaos and death would make in space. It was a lightshow, with everything happening on mute. Unless something hit your ship, then all sorts of alarms started going off.
Vorn pulled a handful of fighters from the skirmish, giving Mac and Citram more room to maneuver. The smaller fighters were highly underpowered when compared to the Ghost ships, but they came in droves that could overpower the three Ghosts with sheer numbers alone. So the Ghosts separated. They put as much distance between one another as possible. Vorn made it a point to split pronto; more for his safety than theirs, to be honest. He wanted absolutely nothing to do with the 'driver rounds' careening about in that particular part of orbit, thanks to Cirtram. Even without making contact, the little bastards still exploded after a set time, or after reaching a certain distance. They were nasty little buggers and it would only take one ricochet or stray to ruin his already fucked-up day.
Mac had his own preferred toys, and he liked it close and dirty, but it was still a very good idea to give the Ghosts room, when in open combat.
"Kitty," Vorn called, flying through the explosion of one fighter that had not been able to evade his spray.
"Yes?" She asked mockingly, bringing up the peripheral tracking in the HUD and Cabin feed.
"Don't 'yes' me. Put the music on." He wasn't sure if Saedah had programmed her to take a particular liking to being his personal pain-in-the-ass, but she latched onto him with an infuriating habit of pushing his buttons.
"Of course." And the 'music' that spewed from every audio device on the ship was shrill, obnoxious, and definitely not his style.
"HEY!" he yelled. "Come on! What did I ever do to you?!"
"I would like a 'please', if you don't mind."
Oh for the love of the suns… "Please put the music on?" he asked, distractedly, rolling the ship and coming in directly behind one of the little fighters.
"Thank you, and right away." The heavy bass pulsed through his very bones. This was what he was built for; what he was used to. He wasn't meant for deskwork.
Another fighter exploded in his crosshairs.
He wasn't meant to be restricted to land.
"Requiem. I believe we have a problem." Kitty spoke, turning the volume down a bit.
"And that would be-?"
"The hauler is very near to breaking away from ground forces. They are readying for launch." Vorn's stomach dropped. He turned his mic on for the Ghost com.
"I'm going in to delay the Hauler." He immediately did a flip, meeting the remaining two fighters with his own spray of driver rounds. Before Citram or Mac could protest or break away from their engagements, he dropped toward the dark side of the planet, not caring to fight the gravitational pull.
Unfortunately, he was met with more than a dozen fighters.
Hasty move, Vorn. Hasty move. He berated himself.
But he was a Ghost. He was Requiem riding his Phoenix. So, he did what Requiem was known for. He lit the world up with eight flavors of destruction and disappeared into the smoke and flames. However, disappearing was harder than it sounded with that many tails. Even in the night with his stealth ship, they were able to keep close enough to see the flashes from his turrets. He just needed to get to the Hauler.
Two shots flashed across the cockpit and he recognized them for what they were; a warning to cease and desist. There were just too many of them. He was almost upon the hauler.
Just a little further.
He rolled again, to come up behind another of the fighters. Unfortunately, they had learned from this tactic the first time. His enemy, it seemed, was able to adapt quickly.
He'd fallen into a trap.
He spent a moment analyzing the sense of impending doom before his fight-or-flight response kicked in. He put the Phoenix through hell, maneuvering as he had never maneuvered in his life. He wouldn't have tried some of his stunts in a simulator, let alone in a real situation, and would never have thought he'd be so reckless. But his tail was massive, and he was taking hits left and right. It was all he could do to avoid the worst of it.
Shit. Shitshitshitshit.
"What the fuck are these guys flying?!" Vorn yelled above the alarms in the cockpit.
"You gods-damned idiot!" Citram yelled, finally able to get to Vorn's com.
"What the absolute insanity were you thinking?" Mac joined in. "We are stuck up here, do you get that?! We cannot break loose!"
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"Get out of there!" Citram yelled at him, a note of hysteria to her voice. Vorn had a moment of regret for giving her that.
"I'm working on it." By then, he had reached the lower atmosphere and it was a short dive to the city. He rolled between buildings, taking the fight downtown in the hopes it would minimize his danger. It did nothing. Vorn watched as the walls just ahead of him were peppered with projectiles.
His shields would fail soon enough under the barrage.
The alarms were blaring and his stick was starting to vibrate with each impact, when a shadow came streaking over the building ahead.
A curse slipped from his lips. The end was upon him. There was no way he would survive the strike from one of their Falcon-class fighters. Then the damned thing opened fire on the fighters behind him. It was then that he noticed the tag in the HUD. It was dark blue. Raze had arrived.
"Flaming flamingos…" he breathed, watching the reserve power kick over to strengthen the weakened shields. The Leviathan circled around and dipped a wing. Vorn returned the gesture as the com clicked.
"Duuuuuude….?" Raze started, drawing the word out. "That was a close one."
"I owe you one." There was no way Vorn could forget it.
"Raze?" Citram asked. "Are you on surface?"
"Uh. Yes." He confirmed, watching as Kitty started displaying stats on the Hauler. "And we've got issues down here. How's the situation up there?"
"Complicated. Ground the hauler. We've got this." Flux replied for Penance.
Connecting privately to Requiem's com, Raze started asking questions.
"So…" he drawled, "Who else thinks its shit up top, too?"
"I'm with you." Vorn conceded, "They were waiting for us."
"I'll get the backstory later. Are you seeing the report?"
"Ah, not yet. Kitty?" Vorn's HUD and monitors were filled with stats on damage reports and power reserves. He wasn't able to control the HUD like the other ghosts using thought alone. He usually required Kitty's assistance or had another Ghost perform the tasks. Apparently the node the HUD depended on for those functions had not integrated well with him. Mac offered to modify the connection or perform another installation, but Vorn would rather leave things as they were. Kitty cleared the displays and the report began scrolling. "Holy…"
"Yeah. We need to stop that thing." The Leviathan came into view of the Hauler first, and immediately started dodging anti-aircraft fire. Nearly every building in a five-block radius surrounding the DuraCore Building was topped with turrets, making reaching it extremely difficult.
But they didn't have to be that close to take out the turrets.
"We've gotta take the nests down, Req." Raze stated, banking his Leviathan behind a building to take cover.
"On it!" a new female voice called out over the the Public Ghost frequency, music blaring in the background, as another massive shuttle dropped from the clouds directly above the buildings. The turrets couldn't track it.
The ship stopped as though it hit an invisible wall, and a body plummeted through the air. A body encased in a black and violet suit. While she fell from below her shuttle, the ship turned to fire on the nests.
"That bitch is completely insane." Raze breathed.
"No argument, there." Vorn replied, watching as the free-falling woman aimed a massive rifle and aimed for the turret gunman stationed atop the DuraCore building. In freefall, she had only one shot. She made it count. Even though it set her into a spin, she blew the gunner off the building and removed the station from the fight, if only for a time.
She strapped the rifle to her back, unfurled the fabric between her arms and legs, and caught air resistance. In a matter of seconds she was once again in control, circling the DuraCore building with the grace and ease of a hawk.
She flew down to the Hauler, dodging bullets and returning grenades. Vorn and Raze were quick to destroy the other nests while the people manning it were distracted. Then they moved to provide backup for Vidian.
Vorn laid cover-fire while she unhooked one of the cargo boxes and moved up to the next car. She placed the tracker, then recognized Saedah's tracker signal in her HUD.
"Delta Confirmation. Vitals recorded." Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. He was alive.
Then the blasted ship took off at a ridiculous break-neck speed, followed closely by three triad ships. Vidian was forced to bail after only barely reaching the release hatch for the trailer. The wind and rapid climb had stolen her breath and nearly ripped consciousness from her. Vorn and Vector attempted repeatedly to ram the hauler back to the ground or force the ship to redirect into a less hostile area.
Simply put, no. The ship would not be forced back down. It refused to give way, expending tremendous energy to maintain velocity, even while Vorn bore down on it.
The pilots drove the ship like a blasted anti-barricade tanker.
Vorn pulled hard against the controls, knowing he was pushing the fine line between reckless and suicidal. The initial impact jarred his teeth as the underside of the Phoenix thudded and ground against the hauler. He was forced to use the thrusters and the gravitational anchors against the hauler. His hopes were to delay the ship long enough for reinforcements to arrive. Typically the anchors were used for parking on their carriers, and not ideal for clamping onto other ships.
It was a pitiful attempt, doing precious little to prevent the ship from climbing. The boxy hauler did not depend on aerodynamics nearly as much as the Phoenix or the Leviathan. The turbulence from the gods-damned hauler was bouncing Vorn around, threatening to take control from him. His own ship didn't seem to affect the hauler in any way.
If they had one more ship, they could anchor it. Their anchors took at least three points to trap a ship. If only they could slow the Hauler down, just long enough for Ker's crew to get to them, they could still save Saedah.
And they were giving the Valkyrie hell. They pushed her systems hard, racing for the Hauler.
Just as it seemed that the Valkyrie would reach then, the Hauler rammed Vector, causing him to plummet over a thousand feet. Vorn's chest constricted at the barely controlled spiral Vector fell into before leveling out.
Then Vorn was watching the planet race toward him in a sickening spin.
The hauler had smutching jumped. In atmos.
The shockwave killed his electrical systems. He was dead at the stick and dropping rapidly. His suit had even lost power for a split-second, just before emergency power took over. His ears were hurting and his vision was blurry. Clumsily, he started pumping the lever that should engage the emergency engine power.
Come on. He recited over and over, watching the buildings and trees below flip and swirl around him, nauseatingly, as he spiraled out of control. A chilling thought crashed through his mind, turning his blood to ice. He might not be able to recover from the spin, even if the engines returned.
The electrical system flickered to life. With the flood of power to the systems, the alarms immediately went ape-shit, filling the cabin with a nauseating cacophony.
"Eject." the mechanical voice commanded. "Eject." If he were to eject, he would die from enemy fire. That was a certainty. If he stayed with the ship he might die in the crash.
He would take the more promising option of the two.
"Fuck you." He growled, still pumping the lever as the 'eject' warning issued again, blaring through the cabin. "Come on."
Someone was screaming over the alarms. Prayers and curses overlapped one another.