CH. 7 [pt. 2]
“Shuttle Burton,” Commander Davenport’s voice came through the open comm channel. “Be advised that Jobian radar has detected your approach. Eight craft are on an intersect vector.”
Johnathan cursed slightly as he lowered his ship to hug the flowing terrain more closely. He was over two hundred kilometers from the town the landing party showed to be within. He could already tell from the flashes in the day sky that the town had been nuked. He glanced to his sensor panel to ensure that Ford and Surall’s transponders were still transmitting. Thus far, they showed intact.
The pilot’s mind slued back to the current problem.
“Armament and disposition of fighters?”
“They are supersonic interceptors, armed with conventional missiles and automatic cannon. Neither present a danger to your shields, but I want you to evade contact if possible.”
Bronstien glanced aside to his tactical monitor. Eight blips were approaching from his one o’clock. Evading these interceptors would be nigh impossible if he were to maintain his drive toward the commodore. He’d have to turn about completely and lose them, then return and hope no one else got wind of him. All of this would leave members of his crew exposed to radiation and further attack. They may not be alive by the time he got to them. Orders be damned, he was going to get them home.
“Understood,” He answered simply. It would be better to beg forgiveness than to beg permission. He pushed the throttle past the atmospheric limit.
The Burton was a Type I shuttle, grand for space maneuvering. He was decent in atmosphere and among the most lithe in Endeavour’s hangers. But any boxy space courier was ill made for any kind of high-speed planetary flight. The best Bronstien could hope for while in atmo would be Mach 1.2. Those approaching fighters showed to be coming in on him at well over Mach 1.3 Primitive they may have been, but the Jobians held the advantage in speed for the time being.
Could they maintain it, though? Ancient Earth fighters were rated for supersonic speeds as well, but were only capable of maintaining them for a matter of minutes till fuel exhaustion. The Burton was under no such restraint. John watched the fighters move steadily closer.
“Shuttle Burton, you are close to being sighted!” Ronald’s voice projected loudly. Bronstien grimaced despite himself.
“Understood, Endeavour. Was hoping a low profile would confuse their radar. Any other path is gonna endanger the Skipper.” He explained back, choosing his words carefully to disarm the Commander.
There was a pause from the other end. The helm officer could only imagine the hell he’d pay upon return to the ship. “Understood, Burton. Continue on course.”
Momentarily pleased that he’d allayed the ire of his XO, Bronstien looked back to the sensor screens. The alien craft were almost within view. They’d be ducking beneath the clouds any second now…
An alarm system began to blare for attention. Two missiles shot out from beneath a cloudbank and angled in on a direct course for his vessel. The helmsman’s first instinct was to ignore them. He was already beginning a maneuver to bank clear of the primitive weapons, then he noticed their size and warhead details on his monitor. A tiny weapon with rudimentary tracking control and abysmal range capabilities. Its warhead massed only twenty pounds...
Johnathan pressed on along his course. The fighters continued in on him, following the paths of their missiles. The weapons themselves slashed in and struck almost at once on the Burton’s starboard quarter.
The shuttle bucked twice in quick succession with the impact and small detonations of the missiles. Small drain alarms sounded from the deflector control panel, followed by green indicators. No damage. Bronstien smirked and looked out ahead, paying little further attention to his pursuers.
Another volley of missiles was forthcoming as the aliens loosed nearly their entire armament upon the seemingly invulnerable machine plowing across their skies. More than ten new weapons roared straight in on the shuttle and angled in on him. John watched them with a wary eye, hands hovering over the RCS controls in case he lost helm control.
This time, the Burton was nearly knocked clean out of the sky by the detonations, one after another, of eleven striking weapons. A few of the missiles missed entirely and sped on past. The Burton bobbled and dropped low. Tree limbs cracked and scraped by against the shields. But the hearty little ship kept on flying at his full atmospheric velocity.
John angled the bow back up over the horizon and groped for altitude. The primitive fighter vessels fell into line behind the still moving, undamaged craft and began to fire short bursts of heavy caliber cannon shells into his after shields. The shielding flared and contorted under the concussive hits, but still showed no strain. The fighters were staying hot on his tail. He glanced down at the topographical display near his helm control.
The Burton was less than fifty KM from the town bearing his crewmates. Those fighters would still be on him by the time he got there. He’d have to lower his shields when he reached the area, to get his passengers aboard. Those ships would be able to strafe him with impunity. The landing party would be vulnerable. In his hurry to reach them, John may well have further endangered his people…
“Endeavour, Burton! Those fighters are gonna be all over me when I make planet fall.” Perhaps, John admitted, he should have heeded Ron’s call and avoided those craft.
“It’s going to get worse, son.” Davenport returned. “More aircraft are inbound to your position. They were already heading in to intercept the bombers, so I looks like you were in for a fight any way you handled it. You need to evade those fighters and get the Skipper’s team out ASAP!”
“Copy that, Endeavour. Request weapons free.”
Bronstien didn’t believe he could outrun these ships and lead them away in time to evade another flight of interceptors. He’d have to make short work of them. This ship could do it.
“Negative on that, Burton!” Ron sounded vehement. “Weapons safe, repeat, weapons safe! Do not open fire. Those craft cannot hurt you!”
“But they can hurt our people!”
“Weapons safe, Lieutenant! Or I’ll order you back to the ship!”
Johnathan inwardly cursed. He had to bring those planes down. If he couldn’t drop them, what could he do to knock them out of the sky? He searched his frantic mind for a way. The incessant rattle of machine gun fire tattled at the aft shields. He could imagine what those guns could do to the CO and science officer if they were caught in the open.
John’s eye caught sight of a red outlined craft on his sensor board, which was suddenly beginning to lose altitude above him. One of the fighters had edged lethally close. Now it was dropping like a rock... What the hell was the pilot planning?
John realized only too late how far these men were willing to go to protect their land and peoples. The fighter crashed directly into the aft quarter of the shuttle and exploded with at least half its fuel capacity intact. Burton plunged like a stone into the forest below and tore through the boughs of thirty odd trees as Bronstien fought near-futilely against inertia and his controls to keep his ship up. A hard hit cracked the edge of his view port.
The shields were down!
“Endeavour! Endeavour! Shields down, I have damage!” Bronstien piped off like an alarm klaxon once he brought the shuttle up over the canopy of green once more. “Generator blown!”
Struggling like a heavyweight contender, John strove for every meter of altitude he could gain. His hands flew about the panels arrayed about him. He tried to restore his defenses, but only received banks of red flashers in response. More alarms began to call as cannon rounded pinged off his naked hull.
“Endeavour! I’m taking more fire!”
“Weapons free, Shuttle Burton!” Ron’s decision was like an avenging voice from heaven. “Defend yourself and retrieve the landing party!”
John banked the shuttle back the way he’d come, swinging his bow port to starboard randomly as he fought his way clear. His right hand tapped in commands, activating phasers and targeting systems. He set the phasers for pulse fire. Hopefully the aliens would recount his gunnery as tracer fire after the fact.
Johnathan killed his velocity, putting his craft into a full hover mode, and checked over his status indicators. Damage was minimal, but there would be little chance of restoring shields. The generator had blown two circuits, and even if he though he could reroute the power flow, it would take him an hour. Burton’s thrusters were undamaged. He was still in adequate fighting condition.
A roar passed close by the shuttle, and the lieutenant winced at the flash of aircraft blasting past him overhead. John watched their trajectory and refired his engines. As he bore on once more for the Jobian town, the fighter aircraft banked in two groups and turned to come back at him. He began to lock his phasers on the leader of the larger group.
The Burton surged ahead just over the tops of green oaks. The group of four planes cut their afterburners and began to spit drooping chains of machinegun fire toward Bronstien. The shots went mostly astray, their unassisted targeting poor and inefficient. John bore toward them, coming left in a nimble turn, just as the pilots might expect. Another chatter of gunfire bounded off the hull and the main viewport before the pilot. John flinched at the impact. It cracked his port, but could not penetrate.
John returned fire.
A short burst of phaser fire lashed out, spitting from one emitter, then another in intermittent pattern. Four lances of energy pierced the onrushing fighter jet and slit it in two. The pilot tumbled from the larger portion and deployed his parachute.
The remaining three ships maintained their course, still firing long bursts of cannon fire. Alarms began to cry out as the more sensitive sensor modules and RCS thruster quads took a couple of hits. Bronstien cursed and lashed out at his aggressors once again, dropping another whom fell on fire into the forest below. The Burton slashed by the remaining two fighter vehicles and kept on toward the landing party.
The smaller group of three fighters that had split off to Johnathan’s right had circled back and were even now closing on the shuttle’s aft. More gunfire rattled across the reinforced alloy flesh of the auxiliary craft. Another thruster quad showed inoperative as the charging vessels passed by and banked away. John followed the two with split away to starboard. He drew a bead on them, one after another, and put a burst of fire into each. The first cracked into small portions and spun away in different directions. John didn’t see the pilot bail out. The second craft simply burst into flame and began to roll over and over. The pilot tried to make egress, but could only get his canopy open and fail ineffectually before his ship hit the dirt.
Bronstien rightened his bearing back for his destination. The fighters were keeping further behind now. There were only three left, two pacing him from a kilometer aft, and a single other who was still heading away. John increased speed to the highest velocity his maneuvering jets could maintain. With three quads now inoperative, his maximum safe speed was halved. He could solve this by engaging the impulse drive, but even the least power from the main engines this low in an atmosphere would likely send him plummeting to the deck. There were reasons one didn’t fly a craft with an irregular hull that fast while planetside.
John began to pass over the rural surroundings of the small town. Great, blossoming mushroom clouds grew skyward and a corona of expanding energy still flowed over the landscape, knocking down buildings. The Burton crashed through the pressure wave, bucking hard as he hit. The closing fightercraft turned away from the detonation. They’d done all they could and were unwilling to endure hard rads from ground zero.
John slowed to a crawl, trying not to look over the carnage spreading about his craft. He had a signal on the transponder frequency he was scanning. Tracking it amid the rads and the heavy EM interference however, would take him some time.
Chevis Ford tried to clamp his hands over his ears against the clamor of screaming within the small space he and the other survivors were crammed into. The electromagnetic surge from the two bursts had all but fried his personal equipment, including the UT circuit of his communicator. The babble of the Jobian family was as unintelligible as it was excruciating. Surall herself had closed her eyes and was tuning the world out.
The blasts had not injured the survivors huddled into the hillside shed. But the increasing radiation and heat were already taking their toll. The babble of the natives was quickly turning into fright fueled screams of pain. Ford’s flesh was crawling, burning and itching with the rads he’d already sustained. There was little light in the shed. He could not see much of the visible effects of their increasing injuries. He didn’t want to. Both he and Surall would need serious radiation treatment upon returning to the ship.
Another roar overtook the cringing survivors. Ford wondered in growing panic if yet another bomber had come for them. Were more bombs about to fall on them? He could still hear the blast of winds from the first two.
“Commodore Ford!” Came a thunderous voice from beyond the heavy wooden door. It was Bronstien! “I’m here to evacuate you! The Burton is landed just outside your cover. Six meters! I’ll open the hatch when I see you!”
Ford turned amid the pressing mass of bodies and looked to his science officer. She looked back at him, concern for their charges obvious on her normally impassive face. Her dark eyes looked back at him, wide but steady. She knew what he was asking her. And she did not argue with him over the point. The family had fallen silent at the sound of the booming, alien voice and unfamiliar language from outside.
“Let’s get ‘em on board, Lieutenant!”
Surall fought her way to the back of the family and spread her arms wide to compel them forward. Ford threw open the heavy door, showing the natives the spectacle of the destroyed visage of their homes and the large alien vessel sitting in the middle of it all. Ford grabbed the smallest of the walking children and charged out into the open, sure that the mother would follow the evil man bearing away with her child. She did. The rest bustled along, shoved unceremoniously out into the hellish scene and toward the shuttle. Even in his hurry, Ford could make out all the damage and scratches in the hull. The Burton had had to fight his way down here.
The main, aft hatch reeled down to the ground long enough for the two officers to pack the family of Jobians into the ship. Surprisingly, the elders were so amazed and dumbstruck they offered little more than confused resistance. Soon, the door was pulling back up into its mount. Johnathan, his human face making the natives shrink away, looked back from the cockpit section.
“Everyone okay?”
Surall looked the natives over and glanced back from her stooping position aft. “Radiation burns and severe absorption. The after effects will be showing soon.”
John turned back to his controls as he began to lift them away from the surface. “I’ll put sickbay on the alert.”
Ford, bleary eyed and now feeling sick to his stomach, struggled forward and bent beneath the low bulkhead separating the aft compartment from the fore section. His instinct told him to take the ops position at the pilot’s side. But practicality and common sense overrode this impression. He was soaked with hard radiation. He’d affect Bronstien, possibly causing injury. The amputee had been through enough in the last few months. He remained aft during the trip back to Endeavour.
***
--thu guv!!
Topic: #14: Relaunch (Read 16899 times)