FTL-22...Faster Than Life.

Chapter 22

*Before…

Our launch alert goes off as our fighters take to the skies and while not very faithful after my past and home I cross myself, kiss two fingers and touch the bottom of my screens.

“Godspeed everyone.”

*And Now…

It happened in a blink of an eye some of them got through as we were launching the fighters and chaos ensued…

Three that tried to slip in didn’t and hit our shields hard and detonated with ship shaking micro-fusion explosions.

One I think made it into a hangar and it’s firing at personnel.

I don’t pay attention to that…we have people in the hangars in heavy combat exo-suits and battle turrets for that…hopefully they will shoot it down before it self-destructs.

I’m focused on what I’m doing but there are two that are skimming under the surface of our shields and are staffing away at things…antennae but worse shield emitters and weapon turrets.

I don’t know who gunner 66 is but they spun their turret around with these things bearing down on them and used the roto-cannons to take both of them out and it was close enough that some of the flaming debris went past our armor glassed windows.

In space that’s very close.

The watch-commander just says. “McMillan close the blast windows, everyone keep focused we need your eyes on those drones.”

There’s a carousal of “Yessirs!”

I get three more remotes as the watch commander switches control protocols to me and he sets them up to start from scratch and I’m doing my best to keep up the feeds and keep everyone in the loop and that includes a lot of stuff to signal for when I spot it. Like rendering when some of those beetle-tekker things are coming in on one of the fighters or on a gunship or even one of the regular ships.

Part of me is really impressed with the fighters…and the pilots.

Our standard is a plasma driven tri thruster thing that’s called a Shrike it’s named after some bird but not one of the standard bird of prey things which is one of the things I like best too many eagles and hawks and falcons and such. They’re sleek almost like an arrowhead and use anti-gravity systems to do all the maneuvering and stuff which is three points of maneuvering really and they do it so well…I mean the pilots and they’re so fast.

It’s that you can just about feel the thrust when you get to watch them in person from like one of the observation decks while their doing their thing. I know they have some sort of inertia dampening or compensating cage but it only dampens and the things that pilots do would make me lose my lunch.

I was never even a casual admirer of aero-space fighters before joining up and now after being on ship there is something about them even if I’m not a pilot that I can’t help but to love.

It’s bad enough getting that feeling while giving maneuver commands to my remotes and keeping track of all nine of them and trying not to take the kinds of risks that will get in the way of our fighters or our guns and not lose any more of my remotes than I absolutely have to.

Time seems to slow when you’re like this too. It’s an adrenaline reaction but where most of this is taking minutes to pass it feels like I’ve been doing this for an hour or more. There’s this very real thing of calming yourself down…especially when you see ours going down and you can feel your muscles get tight from sitting tensely your eyes and hands moving so much more than your body because you’re so invested in it and the slow trickle of sweat down your spine.

Slowly bug by bug we start to make head way here thinning them out and taking out more and that’s when it really gets harder.

Space is big, really big and these things are small comparatively so as they thin out they get reduced in size and that means the ships weapons are a lot less effective unless they’re right on top of us and it gets reduced now to dogfighting and with these things having a penchant for kamikaze attacks…things are desperate and not just for us but if we let them slip through to get to a planet and the set off one of those micro-fusion detonations…say in a hydrogen fusion power plant…refinery…the list goes on the death tolls could be staggering.

It’s so nerve wracking keeping that kind of concentration going, the waiting too the waiting is horrible really so much could still happen.

I try to do something a little different.

I have nine remotes and they’re by and large mostly sensor drones used for all sorts of things but if I remember things about when we pick up getting targeted that weapons lock is a laser lock followed by a radar pink right after it for confirmation. Getting hit by both of those will usually indicate weapons lock.

My drones have both.

Now I just have to program the shape of these scarabs into the logs as debris…more specifically mines and my remotes will follow/track them on their sensors.

I assign this to only three of my nine remotes and send then after the strays I’m seeing that are evading the fighters from sheer virtue of so much space in space.

I go for three of the scarabs and get lock and they freak out…well maybe not but their flying gets definitely erratic and evasive but I keep long enough to get a ink to tactical.

“Cadet Stone from Sense-Nav to tactical, I’ve solid lock on three bogies I’m shipping you the love.”

I got that from a movie.

The first response is seen on the screens as our ship’s roto-cannons start trap shooting them right into torpedo strikes.

“Many thanks, Commander if you can have the young lady do that again if you please.”

The Tac-Com’s voice.

“Stone, can you do this again?”

“Yessir.”

“If you please then.”

I don’t know but there’s a bit of a grim smile on my face. I know logically that I should feel pity for these things that I shouldn’t be smiling but at the same time part of me is there at the shuttle where they tried to kill us all and at the funerals afterwards and I’m doing something.

And it feels good to be doing it.

It’s fishing so to speak like using my other two triple sets to make a sensory net and when I get a fish my three other remotes set the hooks into them.

I’m just getting lock, painting targets and letting the real fighters do the work the tactical teams and the gunners and our pilots.

There’s a cheer even as things are as tense as they are as they report the hostile in the hangar is taken out.

“Incursion bogie down, Incursion Bogie down, fire and med teams to hangar twenty-eight.”

No breach, and it’s down, no micro-fusion explosion….

So yes in the middle of this we cheer.

And it makes a difference.

It made the difference here on ship with us as they just seem to start popping out of the sky as we get lock after lock or use lock and fire to chase them into the paths of our pilots who are now going from the dogfighting to devastating formation sweeps.

Then it’s over and The Commander…the ships commander comes on screens and over coms.

“Clear people, we’re clear….Get rescue and damage control teams running. Three of those things tried to get to the planet’s surface we stopped them all. Lives were saved, we did our jobs. Good work all of you.”

There’s this lump in my throat of just…hearing it, knowing it…

I’m what they say…feeling my colors, really wearing my uniform.

It’s that really getting why moment. That bit of clear where I actually know my place in the universe. I’m supposed to be here, saving people. People that I’ll never really know. And it’s enough.

I do a few sweeps looking for survivors and escape pods.

The watch commander comes over. “Stone you can switch out if you need to, the second shift is coming in early.”

“Yessir but until then I’d like to keep looking. We were out here when we saw some of the ships get hit. It’s still fresh…besides I’ve been out there and floating and scared.”

I side-eye see him nod. “Keep keeping on then.”

“Yessir.”

***………… I float my remote to the pod, it’s a civilian model from one of the trade ships and I check it for breaches and finding none I carefully pull up and plug into the outer utility ports. The EMP from the scarab’s micro fusion has caused basic coms to fail leaving whoever’s inside to silence, and in this case damage to the power supply. Air only and very little heat it’s negative six centigrade by the sensors and I divert power from my remote to the pod. And use direct link coms.

“Remote to pod, are you injured.”

“Uhm…no…who…who is this?”

“C.U.H. Brevet PFC Erin Stone.”

“Colonial Union?”

“Yes sir, did you launch with any one else sir?”

“My sons and two crewman were ejecting at the same time I don’t know if they got clear though.”

“I’ll see what I can find out sir do you have scanable I.D.?”

“Yes, I’ll input it in now.”

“Good, now you’re going to move and that’s me guiding you to the recovery ships.”

“Okay…uhm…Private?”

“Yes sir?”

“Can you stay linked to the line?”

“Don’t worry, I’m right here I’m not letting go until you’re with people again.”

I ask him where he’s from. New Ithaca…and what he does…he’s a planktonics engineer…and we do small talk as I use the sampler arms to hold the pod and float him to the recovery ship and I’m running trough the com-logs for the I.D.’s of his sons.

“Antonio, I’ve located your boys I’m putting their coms through to you.”

“They’re okay?”

“They’re alive and eager to talk to you too. I’ll let you get to it then.”

“Miss…uhm…Private?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

I smile. “You’re welcome Antonio, hug those sons for me okay? Stone…out.’

***………… It’s a few hours after that when we’ve got all accounted for that we know of and I finally switch out of my chair for Sofia Anderson who’s looking at me oddly and I’m getting that from the others logging on there too.

And from the other staff on shift with me this look of together, we just did something together.

The watch commander’s talking to his relief then he looks at us. “Alright you a have the next three shifts off, reports to be filed though by 09 tomorrow. Stone I want to see a paper explaining what you did with the drones both running the three and your combat adjustments by the time you return to duty.”

“Yessir.”

He actually smiles at us all and there’s a OBC message saying there’ll be a dessert option for us from the officers mess next dinner or lunch meal.

“Good work everyone, the pie’s on me.”

We head out and aside from most of us heading to the head a shower’s definitely on my mind.

I’ll think about the rest of this and what it means later.