“Red Wing of the Atlas, you are ordered to stand down and surrender. You are charged with high treason and are not worthy of flying for the Core.” A voice boomed in to the speakers.
“Lizardman, you …! “ said Echo. “Understood HF01, standing down” he came back with a lower tone. He flipped a switch and the laser comms grid was active between all three Hawks in the wing. “Care to explain, Red 2?”
“This thing is screened and firewalled. They couldn’t have possibly known about the data. I think we’re being set up” answered Lizardman.
“The HF 01 cannot be in two places at the same time. One of them is not it. I agree with Lizardman, Red leader” said Talon.
“9 o’clock high, near that asteroid! High guard fighters incoming!” yelled Lizardman.
“We stand down, HF01. What are your orders?” said Echo over the wireless comms. “Lizardman, start scanning the incoming fighters, tell me what they are doing”
“Already on it. They are locking onto us. I’ve isolated their comms, patching over laser. “ said Lizardman. “This scanner is brilliant” in that moment, a whole new layer of chatter started to be heard across the comms.
“Locking Red one.” “Locking Red two” “Locking Red three” was heard from the high guard squadron. “Releasing at 1 km” came the confirmation.
“Escort wing 0116 you are authorised to eliminate the targets”
“Understood, control. Proceeding”
“Red wing, prepare to engage” was heard from Echo. “Lizardman you are to take out HF 01’s comms, Talon you’re with me. Start in 3, 2, 1. GO”.
All 3 Hawks started their afterburners, and moved towards the HF01. Lizardman painted the comm array and shield generator on Echo’s HUD. “Need to take their generators down before we can touch their comms”.
“Roger! Talon, focus on the generator. I’m covering you .” said Echo. A green pulse beam hit his shields. It was coming from the transporter’s turrets. The HF 01 looked like a pleasure cruise ship, however there was nothing pleasant about its turrets. They fired highly charged pulse bolts at speeds of over 5kilometers/second. It was hard to dodge them, and getting hit by a full barrage was not a pretty sight.
Echo turned his fighter towards the high guard wing and started slowly waving in an S-pattern towards his target. He couldn’t survive a head-on attack from one of those ships, and there were three of them. At around 600 meters the high guard wing lit up firing their pulse cannons. Echo pushed the afterburner and dodged the salvo while moving at full burn towards the enemy wing. The Hawk is the fastest ship in the Core and Echo knew that his only bet was to keep his speed up and use it against his enemies. He flipped the gun sync button and started firing a few shots at his target before it went out of the auto-tracking zone of his guns. At 200 meters he switched the flight assist off, and all engines stopped. He was no longer controlling the movement direction of the craft, but he could rotate it while keeping his current course. In a split second he turned his nose towards his target and unloaded on it as it flew by , taking out its shields and damaging one engine.
He then resumed his course and turned the flight assistance on. He felt a push from behind and a small hit to the shields. His target blew up.
“Scratch one” Talon reported over the secure comms. Echo made a high speed turn to watch what happened, as Talon’s Hawk intersected his flight path moving up on his wing. One of the High guard fighters was indeed, destroyed, but the explosion pushed one of its engines and took down the shield a second fighter.
“Talon, engage target nr. 3! Don’t let it turn on you or you’re toast!” ordered Echo as he accelerated towards the damaged fighter. The HF01 was clearly visible on the port side, with a huge plasma fire near his shield generators. “Red 2, incoming on your 6”.
“Roger, leader, on it”
Echo closed in to the damaged fighter, at high speed, when he suddenly pushed his lateral thrusters and afterburner at the same time. The damaged fighter turned on a dime in a similar maneuver to what he pulled earlier and fired a pulse barrage towards him. Only 8 of the 20-30 shots hit his shield and took out the tip of his left wing with it. Fire alarms started going off all over the cockpit.
“Scratched one” talon said over the comms as the 2nd high guard fighter was defeated.
“We have incoming! 12 contacts deep in the asteroid field” Yelled Lizardman as the radar lit up like a Father’s Day decoration. Echo managed to fire his remaining gun on the target in front of him as it turned away to accelerate. 6 hits were enough to take out its right engine and have the reactor go critical. “Scratch one! Red Wing, form up on me” he said while turning his fighter towards his wingmen. As he turned he noticed that they were getting swarmed by High Guard fighters that jumped in on top of them.
“We’re a bit busy here, Red one” said Lizardman. He could see his fighter easier because the scanner gave him a bit of a larger frame than most fighters. Immediately he noticed an enemy fighter starting spinning and crashing into an asteroid. “Woohoo!” cheered Lizardman “Did you see that?” as he accelerated behind the safety of another asteroid. As soon as he came into line of sight he reported “Looks like high guard ships have helmets integrated with their ships. I can target the head of the pilot if I manage to scan his ship”
“Check 6, Red 2!” Echo said when he noticed two of the enemy fighters circling Lizardman from the back. It dawned on to me that this mission was not what was reported over the newsnet. Something really bad was about to happen.
In a few seconds a barrage of missiles came from two of the heavier high guard fighters and hit near Lizardman’s asteroid. His ship was thrown-off like a toy through space along with huge chunks of asteroid.
“I’ve been hit! I’m ejecting!” Yelled Lizardman as his fighter exploded and disappeared from the contact list.
Next episode