The captured base bustled with activity as technicians, engineers, and scientists from The Fury and The Black Wave, led by Doctor Hirsch and Gordy, swarmed over it. They had orders to strip down anything useful: computers, weapons, armor, ammunition, and most importantly, any intel that would let them find out where the Guan Yu was, so they could blow her away and be done with the mission. To that end, Hawke found Tasha hard at work in the base’s server room, overseeing several analysts as they worked with intense concentration. Looking up as he walked in, Tasha favored Hawke with a faint smile and a furtive wave of her hand before turning her attention back to her work. Hawke turned to go, but then hesitated, allowing his gaze to linger a moment more on Tasha before shaking himself out of it and leaving, hoping that no one had noticed his stare. She was, Hawke decided, quite beautiful despite bruises gained from her being held captive on board the Choyo.

Wandering the halls of the third floor where they had found the server room, Hawke found himself heading to the stairwell to climb the stairs to the first floor and the makeshift command post. The elevators were running again, but they made him feel uneasy for some reason. He knew it was a little caution mixed with a little superstition, but the Rejaians had this crazy way of leaving behind traps for the unwary, so he opted for the stairs. A short time later, he arrived at the makeshift command post, which was still set up in that front office that was suspended from the ceiling at the base entrance, to find Second Lieutenant Raijan conversing with Sergeant Carroway. Upon seeing Hawke’s arrival, Raijan stopped speaking, and respectfully bowed at his hips to the Colonel, who nodded in return.

"You did well, Second Lieutenant. I knew my confidence in you was not misplaced." Hawke said formally. Again, Raijan bowed, this time with a look of relief and gratitude on his face.

"The honor is mine, Colonel Bakore." Raijan replied. Sergeant Carroway, unaccustomed to Rejaian culture merely looked confusedly from Hawke, to Raijan, and back again a couple of times before shrugging to himself and turning his attention back to the image the holoprojector was showing. Catching Sergeant Carroway’s gaze, Hawke turned his attention for the first time to the image being projected.

"What’s this?" Hawke asked, nodding towards the image. Raijan’s typically stern demeanor broke into one of his rare, tightly controlled smiles.

"We think it’s an image of the Guan Yu." Raijan replied, his gaze shifting to the mean-looking ship.  Hawke whistled appreciatively as his eyes took in every detail. The ship even looked like it was on the cutting edge of technology. It had a bulldog kind of look, with massive ’shoulders’ up front in the center of which was couched the bridge. From the front, the ship tapered towards the back, where thrusters were mounted to either side.  On either ’shoulder’ it supported a large barrel, though there didn’t seem to be any kind of data on what type of weapons they were.  If he had to guess, given the Rejaian penchant for lasers, he would bet they were a couple of well-endowed laser ports. He could see other, smaller turrets speckled about the body of the ship, and a few Laser Anti-Missile Turrets, otherwise known as LAMS. It was easily a battlecruiser class ship, nestled neatly between the cruiser and battleship classes in size. Hawke stared at the image a few moments longer, then clapped Raijan roughly on the shoulder, his way of saying ’good job’ before turning to leave, then paused.

"I’m going to hold a debriefing on The Fury, then retire to The Black Wave, Lieutenant Raijan. Keep Tasha pulling data, and we’ll review it then. Any additional data can be reviewed after we have all gotten a little rest. As soon as you can, get your marines back up to the ships." Hawke ordered. Raijan nodded his understanding, which Hawke saw out of the corner of his eye, then left for the shuttle that had brought him planetside and landed not far from the base entrance.

***

A few hours later found Hawke seated in the back of one of The Fury’s shuttles with Nathan. They were secure in their safety harnesses and quietly discussing the debriefing they had just completed with Major Kinney and Captain Yost via coms. They were doing their best to ignore their nervous boatswain piloting the shuttle. He was fairly new to the company, and had never flown the commander and CEO of his company, a task usually entrusted to shuttle pilots with combat experience. Hawke could feel the rumble of the shuttle as its thrusters pushed them towards The Black Wave, pressing him firmly into the seat as it shot out of the shuttle bay of The Fury. Shuttling from ship to ship, or from ship to planet, was one of the necessities of present day space flight, and really, it was better than a capsule drop. 

A capsule drop was the equivalent of stuffing a Marine in power armor in an armored capsule that resembled something more reminiscent of a huge artillery shell, called “suicide pills” by those Marines who used them, with built in thrusters to handle deceleration and to cushion their landing.  The Marines were then shot down to the planet from the ship.  Those kinds of drops were usually one of extremes.  That is, it was either a covert operation in which a small squad was dropped, or an ongoing firefight in the middle of which they ‘hot dropped’ Marines, who – if they survived the drop and landing – had to come out firing. Hawke had made a few drops like that as a Marine for the Gadari Republic, back before the PMC Accord. It was not an experience he would care to repeat. Then again it was not an experience for someone of his upper-middle age to endure, either.

Hawke chuckled deprecatingly at himself and shook his head. Why didn’t he just say it? He was getting old. Sure, humans lived, on average, well into their mid-one hundreds now, sometimes closer to two hundred, but he was in his 60’s now. He only had about forty years left before he probably couldn’t endure the rigors of combat any longer, assuming he lived that long, and maybe only twenty years after that before he would probably have to retire altogether to live out his remaining days on some planet, somewhere. Hopefully, those days would be in a tropical paradise, but who knows? He surely didn’t. Hawke was snapped out of his introspection by the voice of his nervous pilot, the boatswain.

“Sir, I’m getting some strange readings.”  The boatswain reported.  Hawke caught Nathan’s eye, who was sitting next to him, and nodded towards the nervous boatswain.  He thought maybe Nathan attending to the problem might make the man a little less nervous.  Nathan sighed and unbuckled his safety harness as he leaned forward to stand, but then was thrown roughly back in his seat when the boatswain yelled in sudden surprise and yanked back on the controls, sending the shuttle veering sharply upwards on its Z-axis.  Nathan roared in protest, trying to grab the harness he had just took off, and slip it back over his shoulders before the shuttle, having reversed its heading, did a barrel roll to reorient itself while its thrusters kicked on at full thrust sending them shooting back towards The Fury.

“What was it?  What happened?” Hawke demanded, not being able to see clearly out of the pilot’s viewport. His nervousness forgotten, the boatswain shook his head, then looked apologetically back at Nathan, who had managed to regain both his seat and his harness.

“A ship, sir. A big one, and it is uncloaking. I don’t know how, but she’s making an attack run on The Fury.” The boatswain reported. Having reversed their direction, Hawke could see The Fury large in the shuttle’s viewport, for they had not gone far at all.  Hawke understood the pilot’s confusion, for a ship that size normally could never muster up enough power to cloak, let alone attack a ship. The power transfer to the cloaking device would have to be absolute, and it took time to transfer power from place to place, which made performing attack runs impossible, for it took time to transfer the power to engines, weapons, and shields. Hawke shielded his eyes when a bright ruby light filled the shuttle as thick lasers lanced into The Fury’s unshielded hull. The boatswain made as if to thrust right into the shuttle bay and land again, but Hawke grasped the man’s shoulder to get his attention and shook his head.

“Get us to The Black Wave. We need to get to where we can do the most good. Captain Yost has this.” Hawke ordered. The boatswain nodded, and maneuvered the shuttle once more, pointing its nose towards the heavy assault cruiser and opening up the engines to full thrust. This time, the boatswain observed combat protocols, and did not let off on the thrust until they had covered roughly half the distance to the ship. Several minutes later, he reoriented the shuttle, pointing his nose away from The Black wave, and back towards The Fury as he opened up the thrust again to begin slowing them down enough to be ‘scooped’ by the shuttle bay of the heavy assault cruiser. He hoped Gordy, who had returned to The Black Wave some time ago with Doctor Hirsch and was once again acting as captain, would be ready to come to the assistance of The Fury as soon as they were aboard.

As they decelerated, Hawke was treated to the view of the fight between the strange ship and The Fury. He recognized it from the image he had seen earlier. It was the Guan Yu. He could see sparks inside a gaping hole in the front dorsal section of The Fury, and smoke roiling out, dirtying up the space around it, but she was a battleship. Her armor was thick, and her weapons were large. She would not so easily be dispatched. Large lasers lanced out again from the ship, but this time met with sturdy shields as the battleship’s cruise missile launchers and rocket launchers were brought online and began tracking their prey. One rocket battery fired a quick barrage point-blank against the attacking ship, peppering its shields with eighty plasma warheads that detonated like eighty pins of light. The attacking ship pulled up from its attack run, seemingly surprised by the hit, and passed over The Fury. A couple of small, ventral laser turrets from the Guan Yu took shots as they passed, but merely caused the battleship’s shields to flare brightly with no real damage done.

Then The Fury moved, though slowly, for battleships never did anything quickly except destroy things, and it nosed towards the retreating aft sections of the attacking ship. Six cruise missile launchers, now fully locked, each belched forth a battery of eight cruise missiles filling the space with smoke, propellant, and forty-eight cruise missiles - enough to easily destroy four or five city blocks, perhaps more. The missiles sped towards the attacking ship as it gained some distance between it and the battleship to line up for another attack run. Then, the Guan Yu inexplicably disappeared.

“Look at that…” Hawke said, awe in his voice, “That’s impossible!” Nathan, for a wonder, didn’t say anything, so transfixed was he on the battle unfolding before him. The cruise missiles, having lost a fix on their target, continued on for about another thirty seconds then detonated automatically, having reached its maximum range. In space combat, when using missiles, each barrage of missiles will be set with a maximum range upon which the missile detonates, else they would have continued on their flight indefinitely with live warheads until it had hit something, which could have tragic consequences. As they detonated, Hawke noted the outline of the attacking ship, a shadow against the backdrop of plasma before the vacuum of space snuffed it out.

“It’s let the missiles pass her!” Nathan yelled, his voice a mix of admiration and concern. “After she cloaked, she turned right around and bypassed the missiles before they were detonated!” Hawke nodded grimly, and watched as the Guan Yu once again uncloaked and fired its large lasers, and then they were in the shuttle bay, its doors closing. Muttering a curse, Hawke threw off his harness even before they had come to a stop, and slapped the button next to the back exit to open the rear door. Nathan followed as they both made a running leap, though Nathan’s ankle rolled, and he went down. Hawke hesitated a moment, but seeing Nathan waving him on, took off at a dead run for the lift to take him to the bridge. Alarms were blaring throughout the ship, and Hawke felt the cruiser’s mighty engines rumble to life as he stepped into the lift and hit the button for the bridge. Absently, he hoped that Nathan was okay, and would soon get himself secured, because things were about to get bumpy.

Two minutes later, which was a full twenty minutes since the first attack run on The Fury, found Hawke striding onto the bridge of The Black Wave. “What’s going on, Gordy.” Hawke asked as he walked in. Gordy unbuckled his harness from where he sat in the captain’s chair and seemed grateful to see Hawke. He was an engineer, after all, and not a captain. His place was elsewhere.

“The Fury is holding her own, but it’s not looking good. That other ship keeps disappearing on her, and her cruise missiles lose their lock.”  Gordy reported. Hawke nodded, and looked through the Carbonsteel windows on the bridge to see the ongoing battle. The Fury’s shields were strong, so it would take the Guan Yu quite a few passes before the shields would weaken, but the fact that she couldn’t hit back was telling.

“Thank you, Gordy. You might want to get engineering locked down tight and be ready for damage control.” Hawke said. Gordy gave Hawke a nod, and headed towards the lift. They both knew he could be needed very shortly.

“Alright ladies and gentlemen, let’s get our missile and rocket batteries online. Helm, bring us to full combat thrust. Let’s give the Guan Yu something else to worry about.” Hawke ordered as he sat in the captain’s chair and buckled himself into his restraining harness. Turning towards the communications station Hawke absently wished Tasha was here rather than planetside to finish overseeing the efforts to recover intel from the base servers, but then dismissed the thought and focused on the task at hand as he brought up a holographic representation of the conflict, giving him a better picture of what was going on than he would have had by looking out the view ports. The Guan Yu had changed tactics, changing its combat runs from running at The Fury’s sides to running from its bow to aft sections, and then back again.  Hawke nodded knowingly, as The Fury’s weapons arcs were more limited there.  The Guan Yu’s captain was very, very good. Even so, Hawke noted with satisfaction that Captain Yost, realizing her cruise missiles were ineffective, was pouring rocket fire at the Guan Yu at a very high rate.  Usually reserved as anti-missile batteries, rocket batteries were only semi-guided, but if there were no missiles to defend against, could be used as a point-blank weapon, which she was doing now. It was then Hawke realized that his guidance systems on his assault missile launchers would be equally as ineffective.

“Gordy, our guidance systems won’t work for this fight. Can you give me an alternative?” Hawke asked through the ship’s coms channel to engineering.

“I don’t know. Give me a few minutes and I’ll have an answer. I’ll need to take the missile batteries offline for now.” A winded Gordy responded. Hawke mused in thought a moment as he considered his options before responding.

“Do it.”  Hawke ordered. Bringing up some preliminary data collected by the sensors of both The Fury, and The Black wave, he permitted himself a small smile before turning towards the helm station. “Helm, take us on a combat run right at the aft section of The Fury.” The helmswoman gulped, but complied, used to orders that may not make sense to her, but trusting that Hawke knew what he was doing.

“Talon one to Fury, give me five seconds of combat thrust in two minutes. Change your fore rocket batteries to chaff rockets.” Hawke ordered. He hoped Captain Yost would trust his judgment on this, or else both ships might very well be spread out over several kilometers of space.

***

The spacious bridge of The Fury was a scene of controlled calamity.  Captain Yost sat in her captain’s chair with her eyes riveted to the  steady stream of data showing on the holoprojector as well mentally processing the verbal reports from the various stations about the bridge that were coming at her. This was one of the skills required of captains, the ability to process a lot of information concurrently, and then make intelligent decisions, and Captain Yost had the experience of nearly ten years on the bridge of various combat ships, five of which was with the Talons. She absently drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair as she scowled at the holoprojector. Her second battery of cruise missiles had the same results as the first, having no effect other than to use up forty-eight more costly cruise missiles, with the exception that she noticed the silhouette of the attacking ship outlined against the backdrop plasma created from the detonating warheads. Maybe she could pick that silhouette up long enough on sensors to…yes. Trajectory and inertia data.  There it was.

“Aim our dorsal rocket batteries to these coordinates and fire.” She ordered, sending the data to the two gunnery stations responsible for targeting the rocket batteries. A few seconds later, the familiar sound of rocket batteries being fired could be heard throughout the ship while her stabilizing thrusters fired to keep the ship’s attitude and heading constant. Captain Yost watched the rockets depart on her holoprojector, most of which peppered the shields of the attacking ship with little effect, and sighed in frustration. She felt like she had brought a shotgun to a sniper duel. She had given up trying to keep her weapon arcs facing the Guan Yu, and instead ordered that The Fury initiate a slow roll that would help relieve stressed shield generators by spreading out the location of the attacks. The Guan Yu had tried to compensate for the roll, but was not able to do so completely, which had the desired effect. Instead of being able to focus on their stressed dorsal shield generators, the damage now periodically hit aft, starboard, or even ventral shield generators. This bought them time while they tried to figure out a way to actually fight, and hurt the Guan Yu rather than just give their shields a workout.

"Ma’am. The black Wave’s shields and weapons are powering up." One of the bridge crew reported. The verbal stream of data paused, and Captain Yost lifted her eyes from the three dimensional representation of the battlefield to glance at the officer that had reported that, and nodded, the only sign she had heard any of the verbal data coming her way. With that, the verbal data stream recovered, haltingly at first, until it found its normal cadence. Captain Yost smiled grimly. While she would never admit it, she held ’the Colonel’ in high regard. He was one of the best tacticians she had ever met, and that was saying a lot, in her estimation, because she thought quite a lot of her own abilities. Just then, the ship’s encrypted command channel crackled to life.

"Talon one to Fury, give me five seconds of combat thrust in two minutes. Change your fore rocket batteries to chaff rockets."  Came the Colonel’s command. Captain Yost shook her head. What did chaff rockets have to do with anything?  Captain Yost thought for a moment, then sighed to herself as she gave the order. This had better be good.

***

The Guan Yu had just finished a combat pass on The Fury, starting from the aft of the ship and passing to the bow of it. With a bright blue flare, The Fury’s shields resisted the attempt, but this time there was bleed-through, and her hull flared bright red as the bleed-through superheated her armor. Hawke knew that The Fury could not take but maybe two more passes before some of her shield generators blew from the stress being imposed upon them, which meant that portions of her armored hull would be unprotected.

"Sir, the ship’s batteries are back online. It’s not pretty, but I jerry rigged breaching charges on one battery of missiles, creating a cone-like proximity charge. If we set them to blow in front of the ship, the directional blast might be enough to punch through her shields."  Gordy’s voice said over the coms. Hawke couldn’t help but smile.  It was the craziest idea he had ever heard, and yet...

"How many missiles were you able to do that to?"  Hawke asked. After a moment of silence, Gordy replied, "Just one barrage on all the launchers, sir. You get one shot at this." 

Hawke nodded in approval, and then asked, "How did you do manage to jerry rig them so quick?"

"Duct tape, sir." Replied Gordy. Hawke looked confused at Gordy’s answer.

"Duct...tape?" He prompted.

"It’s an old earth expression, sir...never mind." Gordy said. Dismissing the thought, Hawke leaned forward in his chair as he glanced out the bridge’s windows at The Fury, which now filled the viewport. It was now or never. Hawke quietly held his breath and nonchalantly white-knuckled the armrests on his captain’s chair as The Black Wave roared in towards The Fury’s aft section. Moments before impact, The Fury’s thrusters suddenly roared to life, pushing the battleship forward just far enough to avoid being rammed by The Black Wave, and its fore rocket batteries spit out chaff rockets, creating a cloud of chaff in front of The Fury just as the Guan Yu had uncloaked. The Guan Yu’s lasers stabbed down at The Fury, but one missed entirely, having his sensors suddenly scrambled by the chaff, nor could he detect The Black Wave, which was now passing directly behind The Fury, with her missile batteries facing in the direction where the Guan Yu would soon be as it passed above them.

"Fire!" Hawke yelled. The Black Wave shuddered as all of its missile batteries fired, sending a total of twenty-four warheads flying towards the passing Guan Yu. Though the Black Wave had only standard warheads, which were about half as powerful than the cruise missiles fired by The Fury, these missiles were faster to the target, and its assault launchers could quickly reload, delivering three missile barrages to two barrages from The Fury. Hawke watched as the Guan Yu began to fade from view, presumably to try and outmaneuver the missiles once again, but just as it disappeared from view, the missiles detonated, a cone of shrapnel created a glittering cloud in space, engulfing the invisible ship.  There was a bright flash in the direction the ship had disappeared in, and suddenly the Guan Yu was visible again, its thrusters on full as it leapt away from the site of battle, trying to reach escape velocity.

"Lock on and fire!"Hawke ordered.For just a moment it looked as if they would succeed in defeating the Guan Yu here and now, but it continued to pick up speed as it retreated towards one of the two jump gates in the system, and even as Hawke considered giving the order to give chase, he realized that it would be impossible, for many of the crew were still down on the planet. With a sigh, Hawke sat back down in his seat, realizing for the first time how close he had come to losing both The Fury. It had been far too close, and against only one ship!  They would have to be ready next time.  He sure hoped Gordy had some ideas.

Next Chapter: Chapter 16