“86th Delta wing, you are cleared for takeoff.” came the digitised voice of the bridge traffic controller, distorted slightly due to the heavy encryption over the official UEE channels. Snowy’s Hornet lifted a few feet off the deck and he started moving down along the hangar as the enormous front doors lifted open. Dizzie lifted off next, following the lead ship. Eva eased up the vertical thrust of her controls lifting her ship from the deck and then eased forwards on her main thruster just a little, nudging her ship along to trail behind Dizzie.

 

She hadn’t even recognised her ship at first when it was brought out from storage for her patrol. It wasn’t until she spotted Aisling nearby, her grin huge and proud inside her helmet that Eva had realised that Aisling had really come through on her earlier promise.

 

In the time it had taken the fleet to get to Ellis, Aisling had apparently put many hours of work into Eva’s Hornet. The new welds had been ground down flush with the hull, re-welded in some places with a practiced and skillful hand. The welds, which had originally been merely painted with sealer and left to look like ugly scars running over the hull, were now pained so that they were only really visible by a faint shimmer in the surface when the light glanced off it.

 

As they cleared the main doors, which immediately began to slide down behind them, they formed on Snowy’s wing. Dizzie eased up alongside his left side and Eva to his right.

 

Snowy’s voice came over the comms, “Delta wing, form for cruising speed. I’m transmitting mission waypoints now. Recent traffic reports show the system as quiet so this should be a milk run, but I always assume trouble. Stay alert.”

 

Dizzie and Eva both pulled back a little from the lead ship and widened the formation to put more space between the ships for the higher cruising speed. They synchronised their nav consoles with Snowy’s and all three ships accelerated to cruising speed smoothly, leaving the fleet behind.

 

Eva’s fingers danced across her consoles, setting up her systems for scouting. She left enough power to her engines to maintain cruise speed and balanced the remaining power between weapons and shields. At Snowy’s signal, she turned her sensor array at full active.

 

The wing passed through the first two waypoints without incident with only a few small trading groups and escort fighters being spotted. Quick scans of these ships showed nothing out of the ordinary, just honest pilots trying to make a living. Delta wing continued on without incident.

 

As they approached the third waypoint near the Nexus jump point when Dizzie’s voice came across the comms, “Sir, I’m picking up a faint signature on my port side on the far side of the jump point.”

 

Eva checked her console, but she was on the wrong side of the formation and the other two ships in the wing were in the way of her sensors leaving two large black spots.

 

“Roger Diz, I see it now.” Snowy said, “Delta wing, turn port seventy degrees and we will take a slow path around the jump point to investigate.

 

As the three ships executed the turn, Eva’s sensor blind spots moved and the signature showed up on her scanners. It was weak and glitchy, shifting positions on her display and disappearing for a few seconds before coming back. It was a long way out on the far side of the jump point, outside of the solar system on the edges of dark space.

 

The three Hornets scouted the outer edge of the jump point in a curving vector that both brought them closer to the signature but also could be interpreted as simply a wing of scouts checking the jump point’s location and stability. As they passed closer to the estimated locations of the signatures they became to jump around even more erratically, glitching in and out faster. For a moment Eva couldn’t make heads or tails of it but as she watched the signals it became clearer to her. There wasn’t one signature jumping all over the place, there were two, close to each other, both glitching the same way but out of sync.

 

“This is the 86th Delta wing hailing unidentified vessels on the dark side of the Nexus jump point, identify yourselves and your intentions.” Snowy’s voice came through clearly on an open hailing frequency, his tone more stern and official than Eva had yet heard from him.

 

The response was almost immediate. The signatures suddenly solidified on Eva’s consoles as the systems on the target ships came up to full power. Contact specs read out in fine text next to each dot showing increasing velocity in the opposite direction.

 

“They’re running, rig for pursuit!” Snowy ordered. Eva’s fingers worked at her consoles, setting full power to engines and the rest of the power biased towards shields, with just enough power to weapons to allow her to fire in reasonable bursts.

 

The three Hornets accelerated rapidly towards the contacts and started gaining. As they closed on the contacts Snowy said, “Our primary goal is to disable the ships and wait for the fleet to catch up. Kill only as a last resort.”

 

“Understood, Sir” Dizzie replied.

 

“Acknowledged, Sir” Eva said.

 

Eva’s contact console flashed with more information. Optical sensors had locked onto the contacts now and more information was filling in alongside the contacts. They were Avenger class ships, civilian fitted. The Avenger ships had smooth sweeping curves with excellent cockpit visibility. They were once military ships and had a deadly canon hardpoint in the nose.

 

“Unidentified Avenger craft, you will be within firing range within seconds. Bring your engines to idle and your shields down or you will be fired upon.” Snowy commanded over the open comms. The two Avengers peeled off from one another, turning in hard arcs to each side.

 

Across the encrypted channel Snowy issued orders, “Dizzie, Valkyrie, break right and take the second target, I’ll take the first.”

 

Skillfully, Dizzie pulled her ship up slightly, executing a barrel roll while simultaneously increasing thrust so that when she levelled out on Eva’s plane again she was a little ahead of her and slightly to her right. Eva couldn’t help but let out a low whistle at the manoeuvre.

 

They turned hard and followed their target’s vector, their Hornets easily out-turning the older, heavier craft. Eva initiated target lock on the Avenger and her systems read out a scan of the ship, a report of its systems and shields showing up on her targeting console.

 

“Valkyrie sweep left, I’ll sweep right. Use your ball turret only. Bring down the shields and aim for the main thrusters. Use short controlled bursts. We need to bring them in alive.” Dizzie said across the encrypted channel. Eva tapped at her weapons console, selecting her ball turret and enabled head tracking.

 

She nudged on her lateral thrusters, edging her ship to slide smoothly left while maintaining the same orientation to the target. She turned her head towards the Avenger and the ball turret on top of the ship turned to match. Squeezing her trigger she sent a barrage of fire towards the Avenger.

 

The shields around the target ship flared with brilliant light as Eva’s burst of fire struck them, and then again as Dizzie sent in a follow-up barrage. The Avenger suddenly veered down, trying to get onto the underside of the two Hornets to get out of the firing arc of the ball turrets.

 

Eva responded by rolling her ship over to bring her turret into line again, her head never losing track of the target. Dizzie performed a sickeningly steep downwards turn, following the arc of the Avenger and turning back in follow its new vector. Eva fired again, a steady burst of fire that struck hard on the Avenger’s rear shields. Dizzie lined herself up again and unloaded another stream of fire into the top of the craft and with a shimmer the shields failed.

 

Eva wasted no time, sending burst after burst into the ship, grouping the fire as tightly as she could, pummelling the rear armour over and around the thrusters. Dizzie swooped in from above and unleashed a heavy stream of fire from above, cutting through the armour and decimating the rear thruster. Eva immediately pulled back on her main thruster power as she saw the Avenger’s main thruster flare out, it’s manoeuvring  thrusters firing frantically to try to maintain control. Dizzie peeled off her vector to avoid collision and as she did, the stricken Avenger turned on the spot, pointing its weapons into the path Dizzie would cross through.

 

“Dizzie! Hard port!” Eva called across the encrypted comms and almost immediately Dizzie’s Hornet performed a left turn that would have made most pilots black out just as the nose canon of the Avenger fired and a missile launched from its wing. The canon fire narrowly missed Dizzie’s ship and as she accelerated out of her turn she released countermeasures causing the missile to spiral harmlessly away and detonate in empty space. Eva turned her ball turret towards the Avenger and fired into the underside of the nose until the nose turret broke away from the hull and floated off into space as useless scrap metal.

 

“Unidentified Avenger!” Eva yelled over the open comms, “Power down now or you will be destroyed!” To prove her point she enabled all of her weapons, powering her engines down most of the way to give the weapons full power while maintaining full shields. She let a one second burst go just beside the cockpit window of the Avenger and then lowered her nose a little to aim all of her guns directly at the hull.

 

In response, Eva’s sensors reported the remaining weapons systems of the Avenger going offline.

 

Her target disabled and docile, Eva checked her sensors just in time to see the readouts report that Snowy’s target was sitting stationary in space s well, Snowy’s ship circling it at a careful distance. He opened up a long range encrypted transmission.

 

“Retribution, this is Delta One. Your path to the jump point is clear. We have encountered and disabled two hostile craft on the dark side of jump point. We will remain here and await your arrival and retrieval.

 

NEXT ENTRY: A Great Team