Before Nathan could head to the lift, the wail of the general alarm sounded throughout the boat bay and there was a sudden rush of ordered chaos as everyone dashed to their respective battle stations.
The ship was in no position to fight the alien ship again, everyone knew it, but that didn’t stop anyone from acting as if it could.
Nathan made a decision and turned away from the lift, “Captain, I feel I’d be more use out in my Talon. If this is the alien ship again, at least we can try to keep it away from the Orion long enough for you to get a message away to Earth.”
“Understood Commander.” There was a pause before Gordon continued, “Good luck, Nathan. Just do what you can, don’t throw anyone’s life away needlessly.”
“I have no intention of throwing any one’s life away captain,” Nathan said, “Needlessly or otherwise.”
Nathan and Beth ran towards their Talon’s which were still sitting where they’d left them and leaped up into their cockpit.
Firing up the engine, he pressed the comms, “Control, this is Talon gold Alpha, requesting launch.”
“Acknowledged, Gold Alpha, we’ll get you out as soon as we can.”
Nathan quickly ran through the preflight checks as he watched as the other pilots rushed into their Talons and they were then moved to their launch positions and rocketed out into space.
Finally his comms sounded, “Talon Gold Alpha, you are cleared for launch.”
Nathan activated the anti-grav and his Talon swung towards the launch bay. The internal tractor beams positioned his fighter and he slammed the throttle to full power and roared out into space.
Once free of the carrier, he span his Talon in a roll, thrilling in the feel of his fighter at his fingertips.
He flicked his comms to broadcast to all the other Talon pilots, “This is Commander Scott to Talons. Who do we have out here? How many flights do we have left?”
“Commander, this is Blue Alpha, we have a full flight of six ships.”
“Sir, this is Red Beta. We’re down two and our flight leader is out of action.”
“Green Alpha reporting, we have three available fighters.”
As the reports came in, Nathan made quick calculations in his head, “Red Beta, you’re now acting flight leader for Red flight. Take Green four and Green five. Green Alpha, you’re part of Gold flight now, as we’re down two. Lt Fletcher, you’re part of Gold flight now as well.”
All flights acknowledged the order and Nathan then turned his attention to the approaching threat.
“Orion, this is Commander Scott. Please update me on the status of the incoming hyperspace contact.”
“Commander, we’re sending you the co-ordinates of the contact. Please stand by for emergence in twenty seconds.”
“Acknowledged, standing by.”
“Nathan,” Beth’s voice cut into his comm circuit, “The enemy mother ship used jump gates to attack, so they never registered on our hyperspace alarms. Unless they’re being very careless this time, I don’t think this is them returning.”
Nathan thought for a moment, “I suppose it could be the Bristol, Covington and Endeavour returning, although I’d expect them to have sent word first.”
“Well, we’ll find out soon enough. Here they come.” Beth muttered.
The Talons had positioned themselves between the hyperspace co-ordinates and the Orion so as to be a screen and Nathan took a deep breath as the usual ripple of an emerging hyperspace ship appeared, then with a shocking suddenness four ships appeared.
Alarms sounded in the cockpit as the Talon’s computers recognised the ships as T’hissis destroyers.
“Shit!” Beth muttered over the comms, “How the hell did they know we were here?”
“I don’t know but at least we know we can fight them.” Nathan answered and then switched his comms to ship wide, “All Talon’s you are free to engage the T’hissis ships. We must keep them away from the Orion, so let’s close the gap.”
Nathan activated his tracking system and his heads up display targeted the four destroyers in an order of priority and then locked onto the lead one.
He pressed the thumb button and a pair of missiles streaked away from his Talon’s launchers. More followed from the other Talons and they tore towards the enemy. Lasers fired from the Point defences as the T’hissis ships turned towards the crippled carrier, but the Confederation missiles were using their own counter measures and many got through the first destroyer’s defences.
Explosions erupted along the entire length of the ship as the missiles detonated and it suddenly veered downwards and clearly out of the fight.
Not so many missiles had been targeted at the other three destroyers and two of them appeared unscathed, and the fourth had only minor damage.
Then however the Talon’s were within energy range. The fighters were extremely manoeuvrable and they dodged and twisted around the three capital ships in a deadly dance. Lasers ripped at the destroyers flanks as the big ships answered with laser fire of their own. Talon’s exploded in silent flares of light as they were caught by the T’hissis fire, but they were doing a lot of damage themselves. One of the three remaining destroyers was spewing air from its side and explosions could be seen rippling the outer hull of the ship.
Nathan spotted a rent in the side of the ship near where the confederation ships would have had their engine room, so he took a gamble and spun his Talon around and raced towards it. He dodged frantically to avoid the fire from the wounded destroyer and when he judged he was close enough he fired a pair of missiles into the rent.
He only just managed to pull the Talon up to avoid slamming into the destroyer before a massive explosion ripped the rear of the ship apart. His Talon was caught in the explosion and it was sent spinning away.
It took a few moments for him to regain control, but when he did Nathan turned to see the capital ship spinning slowly away secondary explosions ripping through the interior.
He quietened the blaring damage alarms from his fighter and checked the scanner.
Two of the enemy destroyers were out of the fight, but he’d lost nearly a quarter of his Talons. Of the rest another quarter were showing up as damaged, some extremely. More worryingly was the fact that the destroyers had been racing towards the Orion for the entire battle and were nearly entering energy range of the carrier.
Nathan thanked the stars that the T’hissis had always spurned the use of missiles; apparently they thought that they were somehow cowardly and that battles should always be fought up close and personal. Hence their general tactic was to charge as fast as possible into energy range and then pound the enemy before they destroyed them.
“Commander Scott to Orion. T’hissis ships are nearly in energy range. Do you have any defences at all?”
“This is Orion, we see the T’hissis ships.” Richard said, “Be aware that we currently have no shields and no energy weapons of our own. If those ships get into range, we are unable to defend ourselves.”
“Shit!” Nathan muttered and then pressed his comms, “Acknowledged Orion, we’ll keep them off you… somehow.”
He turned his Talon and targeted one of the remaining destroyers and sent two missiles screaming off towards the enemy. He dodged to the left to avoid a stream of returned fire.
He couldn’t see any way to stop the two ships before they reached range and destroyed the Orion, so he just kept firing until he’d used up all his missiles and was left with lasers.
Both T’hissis ships were battered and streaming air, but they were still coming and over half the Talons were now either destroyed or too damaged to continue.
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Nathan swore, within thirty seconds the destroyers would be in range and nothing they were doing could stop them.
Suddenly there was a flash of light and the two T’hissis destroyers started to turn away. Nathan checked his scanners and spotted three more contacts. Heavy capital missiles tore past him and slammed into the enemy, ripping huge holes in their armour. One exploded in an eye watering flash and the other broke in half and then a series of explosions tore the two halves apart.
A voice broadcast across the comms, “Orion, this is the Bristol. Are we glad to see you still in one piece? We weren’t expecting to see T’hissis ships here, where did they come from?”
“Bristol, this is the Orion. Thanks for arriving when you did. We very nearly weren’t in one piece.
The two Confed capital ships and destroyer positioned themselves around the Orion and Nathan sat back in his Talon’s seat and grinned, breathing a huge sigh of relief.
“That was a close one wasn’t it?” Beth sounded as relieved as Nathan felt. “I think we owe those crews a rather large drink.”
Nathan chuckled, “I would imagine that they’ll tell us they were just returning the favour. After all, we saved them first.”
“In that case, I think we should all buy each other a drink then!”
“Sounds like a good idea.” Nathan switched to the system wide comms, “All Talons, let’s scan for survivors from those T’hissis ships. Tag them and send co-ordinates to the Orion for pick up. We don’t leave anyone to die out here, even the T’hissis.”
The Talon flights all acknowledged the order and Nathan switched to the Orion comms frequency, “Orion this is Commander Scott. My Talons are scouting for T’hissis survivors. Do you have the facilities to hold them, or shall I direct them to one of the other Confed ships?”
Richard answered after a moment, “Commander, we don’t have anywhere here for them to be held. However, the Bristol has agreed to take them. I’m despatching what shuttles we have available, as are the Bristol and Covington.”
“Acknowledged Orion. As soon as we’re done here, I’ll order the Talons to return to the hanger. Please ask Mike to contact me with an update on the status of the boat bays.”
A few minutes passed before Mike spoke, “Nathan, we’re back in not so full working order down here. We can probably manage three Talons at once. Please be aware that not all the racks are working, so it’ll be slow.”
“Do you want me to divert any Talons to the Bristol or Covington?” Nathan asked.
“Negative.” Mike answered. “We can house all our Talons. It’ll just take a bit longer. I’m sure you fighter jocks won’t mind being out there a bit longer.”
Nathan chuckled, “Not at all. There’s nothing better that looking out into the blackness of space and pretending you’re all alone out here.”
“You’re all strange. I’d much rather be in a nice warm, well lit capital ship, thank you! There’s much more between me and the perils of space.”
“If you two have finished, we’ve tagged all the T’hissis escape pods.” Beth said, “Are we heading home now?”
Nathan switched to the all flights comms, “All Talon pilots, the Orion can cope with three Talons at a time. Red Flight, you dock first, followed by Blue, Green, Yellow, and then Gold. I’ll be the last one in, so don’t leave me hanging around out here for too long!”
Half an hour later, Nathan guided his Talon in through the hanger doors and landed gently on the deck. He gratefully pulled off his flight helmet and climbed from his fighter.
He stretched as he stood on the floor and groaned as his aching muscles told him how unhappy they were with their treatment.
Beth joined him as he headed to the lift.
“Are you heading to the bridge?” she asked.
“Yes, I need to check in with Captain Walker.”
“I’ll go with you as far as the quarters. I’m going to be in the shower for about a week.”
Nathan smiled, “I’ll be doing just the same when I’m done.”
The bridge was a mess when Nathan finally entered. Wires were still sparking, although someone had got the air circulation system working again so the smoke had gone. All the bodies had been removed as well, although there were still spots of blood on the deck.
Gordon was standing at the central console with Sam, Richard and Karl and he waved when he saw Nathan enter.
As Nathan walked over he saw that the central console was showing a 3D representation of the ship rather than the usual system scan.
“Richard’s managed to get the NSpace engines back on line again, although they’re running at about forty percent, which doesn’t give us much, but it means we’re not draining the batteries any more. He was explaining what else is wrong.”
The chief engineer motioned to the display which was flashing parts of the ship red. “These are the critical areas of the ship which we haven’t yet been able to access. Mostly due to hull breaches or blocked access. I’ve got teams trying to access these areas now, and they’ll hopefully be in soon.” He pressed a button on the console and all but one area stopped flashing. “This is the most critical area. This is where the main navigation array is held. Without it, we can’t link the navigation console to the engines. We could move, but not tell the ship where to go. It’s going to take a couple more hours to access and then I can give you an update on how long it’ll take to fix.”
Gordon nodded, “What about the Hyperspace engines? Are they working?”
Richard shook his head, “No sir. They’re completely offline. As far as we can tell, they were hit by a feedback spike, so they’re burnt out. There’s no way we’re going to be getting them working without a complete repair team.”
Gordon stared down at the central display for a few moments, “How long would it take to get back to earth in NSpace?”
“About six months.” Sam answered after a moment’s thought, “However the Remina binary system’s the closest system with a jump gate but it’d take us nearly a month to get there.”
Gordon scratched his chin and sighed, “Thank you all. Richard, I’ll let you get back to your repairs. As soon as you have any more information, please let me know.”
Richard smiled grimly, walked to the doors and vanished through them.
The captain turned to his weapons officer, “Karl, what state are our weapons systems in? Can we defend ourselves?”
Karl shook his head, “No sir. The Wedge ship’s energy weapons penetrated the ship far further than anyone ever imagined, and they completely cut through the data relays. Orion’s been able to reroute the critical systems via other pathways, but she can’t access the tactical arrays at all. We have basic scanners, but that’s about it. We have no weapons, and no tactical system to target those weapons with anyway. The lasers can be fired manually, but there’s no way to co-ordinate them centrally. Not until we can get back to Central Star Base and get a full repair team on it.”
“Sam, please tell me you’ve got some good news.” Gordon almost pleaded.
“Sorry sir, but I’ve not really got anything good to tell you. Orion’s been unable to do any research since the battle, she’s been too busy keeping the ship in one piece, once we get home we can do more.”
Gordon turned as Robert walked over with a grin on his face, “Well, I have some good news at least sir. It appears that we’ve captured nearly a hundred T’hissis, including one of the captains.”
Gordon grinned back, “Finally! Get him and the next two officers in seniority brought over here for questioning. We’ve got some questions for them, including how they knew where to find us.”
