17
Even beauty can be tedious. After two hours of staring at gas clouds, that was the only conclusion Justin could reach. Gone was his endless fascination with the stellar nursery in its raw state. He just wanted to find the freighters, tag the enemy, and get back to the Greengold, hopefully without being fried by the energy discharges randomly erupting from the energy fields around him.
Justin had carefully plotted several groups of possible contacts during his grid search. However, the first two contained nothing but highly charged plasma pockets. Ships had possibly been there, but there was no way for him to tell.
He was on the way to the third set of coordinates. It feels odd to be out here alone. Justin missed the camaraderie and banter of the rest of Alpha element. A few pangs of fear worked their way into his brain as he dodged discharges of ionized gas. If I take one of those head-on, I’m dead. Alone. No one would ever find me. The consideration was sobering.
Scanning the sensor display in his HUD, Justin perked up a bit at the tightening resolution of a contact. By the looks of it, something big too. The range between him and the target vessel dropped quickly. With the extremely low visibility of the nebula, Justin couldn’t make anything out until he closed within five kilometers.
The hull of a freighter loomed out of a cloud of bright-green gas, energy discharges crackling around it and off the vessel’s shields. To avoid ramming the ship, Justin wrenched his flight stick to the side, barreling away from the oncoming hazard. Too close. Between deep breaths, he began to reconfigure his sensor system.
With the cargo ship located, Justin’s focus shifted to finding the enemy. The entire operation was predicated around the idea of the pirates tagging vessels in the nebula, where they couldn’t be seen. Once he figured out the course and speed of the freighter, Justin began a slow and steady loop around it.
A few times, a whisper of a contact appeared on his HUD, necessitating a quick change in direction to intercept. None panned out, however, so Justin persisted, circling the vessel again and again.
After twenty minutes, a kernel of doubt appeared in his mind. Maybe I’m at the wrong ship. They could’ve already tagged this one. Justin pulled up the expanded sensor screen in his HUD and superimposed the possible contacts he’d plotted during the grid search. Two remained, though they were much farther away. At least an hour of flight time at max speed, assuming a direct course. Which was unlikely, thanks to the gas clouds and energy discharges. The pirates might not even be here.
Following a few minutes more of circling, Justin decided to try his luck at the next possible freighter location. He rotated his craft away, pushed the throttle up to maximum, and settled in for another long trip through the nebula.
Even though as a trained, battle-tested fighter pilot, Justin knew to keep constant watch of his visual situational awareness, inside the never-ending nebula, he relaxed. The first indication that was a severe mistake was his Ghost rocking to the side and the aft-shield strength indicator dropping like a stone.
What the hell? Justin’s first instinct was he’d taken a glancing blow from one of the energy ribbon discharges, but as his deflectors continued to collapse, it was clear that wasn’t the case. He wrenched the fighter to the right, and the hits abated for a moment. Shit. Someone’s out here shooting at me.
As Justin’s heart skipped a few beats, energy-weapons fire flashed by his cockpit canopy. He began a series of wild maneuvers, hoping to throw off his pursuer and turn the tables. A pang of fear built in his soul, as there was no one else out in the muck to help him. If I’m going to die, it will be alone.
“Conn, TAO. Thirty thousand kilometers to maximum weapons range, ma’am,” Bryan called out.
The words roused Tehrani from her pondering of the tactical plot. With numerical if not quality superiority as well, the pirates had spread out into a double-wing formation. They seem to want to envelop us. There was no indication they’d detected the Astute, which was looping around to catch the hostiles in the flank. “Flight status?” she asked Wright.
“Eighteen craft in the void, ma’am. CAG’s leading the charge. We should have the rest of our birds out within five minutes.”
“Good. Send the Boars and the bombers at the corvettes. We need to knock down as many of those things as possible, quickly—before we’re overwhelmed.”
“Concur, ma’am,” Wright replied as he sucked in a breath. Blue light played over his face, making his nose seem more prominent than usual.
“Navigation, adjust our heading to zero-four-eight, declination six degrees. Communication, signal the battlegroup to match.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am,” Mitzner replied.
“Conn, Communications. All vessels acknowledge your orders, ma’am.”
The icons representing the CDF ships shifted on Tehrani’s monitor, heading toward the formation of hostiles off the carrier's starboard bow. “TAO, firing point procedures, forward neutron beams, Master Six.”
“Firing solutions set, ma’am,” Bryan replied.
Tehrani counted down the seconds as they traversed the distance remaining to the enemy fleet. The moment the red line representing the Greengold’s weapons range crossed the first red icon, she spoke. “TAO, set primary fleet target as Master Six.” She counted out three seconds. “Match bearings, shoot, forward neutron beams.”
The blackness of the void came alive with bursts of color. Blue neutron beams reached out from the Coalition vessels, crisscrossing the darkness and smacking the shields of the pirate corvette. The Marcus Luttrell let loose with a withering barrage of magnetic-cannon shells backed with anti-ship missiles, while the Earnest Evans and the Vasco da Gama added their own weaponry into the mix.
The pirate ship’s shields buckled under the onslaught, flaring brightly before blinking out. Multiple Starbolt warheads, magnetic-cannon shells, and neutron beams laid into its armored hull. The corvette returned fire with its plasma-cannon emplacements and meson emitters while taking more punishment than a
