29. Defeat is not an option
William was throttling the turbo on and off in small fast steps to keep the speed up and close with the Atlas. He was almost there with 1004 metres to go when he detected the very distinct energy spike of a battery being emptied into the warp drive generator. He throttled to maximum and tried to close before the Atlas jumped out. His HUD indicator lighted up.
"Targeted ship jumping to D-2. Activate warp drive to follow."
William grinned fiercely and hit the warp drive immediately, looking down at his battery read-out when he didn't jump at once. He cursed loudly and checked his rear facing radar to see where that chasing SVG was; almost two klicks behind but closing fast. As soon as the engine had trickled the required 25% power into the battery he hit the warp drive again, feeding the power into exotic material that made up the jump core and forcing the IBG through the small rift in space into sector D-2.
The Atlas was 832 metres away in open space and getting ready to jump again. William resisted the temptation to close and fire instead using the power plant to feed the battery with power.
"Targeted ship jumping to M-12. Activate warp drive to follow."
This time William was ready and engaged the warp drive immediately jumping at the same time as the Atlas. He exited 493 metres away from the Atlas in a small roid field. Several red radar echoes flooded his screen but he chose to ignore it focusing on the Atlas. He hit the turbo, closed to 240 metres and aligned his guns. The SVG that had followed him before had jumped in previously along with a set of Proms and were closing on his ship so he needed to make it fast. He fired his guns into the Atlas, tearing the remaining armour plating off and punching into the vitals. The ship exploded violently with two part ejecting, one large than the other; life buoys. He sprayed the large buoy with neutron beams and tore it completely apart slagging it violently into an expanding ball of plasma.
His ship lurched violently as neutrons peeled armour off on his rear; the SVG had closed with him. He started a random dodge that took him over towards the remaining buoy but had to swerve out of the way as the SVG pilot had anticipated that and was covering that direction with a torrent of fire. William hit the turbo and boosted outwards, the SVG hot on his tail.
The two Proms guarded the remaining buoy and the rapidly cooling ball of plasma. He grinned and made a long and wide turn back towards the roidfield at maximum speed. The twin Proms opened fire with their Gatling turrets but were apparently out of flares as William had hoped and calculated with. He dodged the turrets easily and went directly for the buoy. For no more than a split second he had a clear shot and took it. The buoy exploded as had the other buoy and William shouted a victory scream across the ether.
The single flare remaining on the rear most Prom almost took him out at that time reducing his ship to 2% effective armour and tossed him around almost colliding with a particularly nasty looking roid. The SVG hammered circular holes into the roid all around him but he managed to dodge the lethal beams. He once more boosted for open space with all warnings blaring inside the smashed up IBG. As he hit the 3k mark he had more than three hundred metres to the SVG and decided to chance it. He hit the jump switch and felt rather than saw the neutrons from the SVG hammer through space all around his ship but missing.
He entered the Tellus control sector and kept on going as fast as possible for a docking bay. He needed a new ship and come out to fight the remaining Serco.
###
Cat cursed as she saw the IBG dodge her streams of neutrons and jump safely out of the sector. That had been one seriously gutsy pilot and he had known how to fly as well but it still annoyed her that she had missed him. She kept flying out and opened a channel to the two Proms.
"Any survivors from the Atlas?"
"Nothing larger than a grains of sand in the two clouds. He smashed it up completely."
"Roger, wait for the medic Atlas and secure that. Let him scoop whatever we can salvage up if he can. I am jumping after him, I'm gonna nail that Tani good."
"Wilco Cat, good hunting."
"Yeah."
She closed the channel and jumped for the rendezvous point finding it a complete mess of red and green echoes. She went for the closest red echo and boosted within fighting range engaging the unsuspecting Valkyrie from the beneath the rear hammering a well placed set of shots into the thinner armour around the engines. The Valkyrie, already weakened by the fight with the Prometheus took the safe choice and broke combat running towards the main Itani force. Cat grinned and followed the faster ship intent on killing it. After all, she had not been hit once today and most of the enemy were in the red.
###
Yarina felt the familiar sinking feeling in her stomach when the Atlas jumped out of the sector and then again and again. The heavy vibrations from the engines ceased and gave way to the relative silence of an active ship. None of her Serco captors said anything to her or among themselves. She focused on the slow and regular breathing of Utia II and tried to recognise any features, the small twitch he usually made in with his left eye, the slight downturn of his lips in the left side or anything really. She looked around the Atlas but was careful to keep her eyes no higher than at knee level of the marines. A hard sound of metal against metal shocked her and she peeked up at the sound. One of the marines had punched his hand into the wall, looked like it was in anger. She almost smiled but kept it from spreading to her features. The marine leaned closer to Yarina and grasped her chin in his armoured hand forcing her face upwards.
"Don't get your hopes up wench. We still have you and the pilot and that will be enough. The Lady will triumph after all."
He pushed her away with such force that she fell backwards and hit her head on the bulkhead. The pain almost made her faint and she had lights flashing on the backside of her eyelids. She kept her eyes closed and touched her neck gingerly. She brought her hand in front of her eyes and opened them. The fingers were bloody. The marine on the other side saw the blood as well and smiled broadly at the damage he had done. She realised that that she didn't count in this equation and that they would eliminate her as soon as they had qualified medical personal on hand. She smiled a sad smile at the marine and nodded slowly. She extended her hand to touch Utia II's ever so softly. She couldn't quite say it but formed the words with her lips.
"I love you unknown soldier. Another life."
She looked back up at the marine that had observed her pain with glee. She smiled a sad smile again.
"For Akan."
The small device she had inserted detected her vocal command, detected that it was her voice and fulfilled its parameters. The miniaturised containment field that was the main bulk of the device and was storing zero point nine grams of anti-protons, stopped the power feed. Within a millisecond the remains of the containment field had malfunctioned catastrophically and the device detonated with about as much force as two hundred kilo's of high explosives. The effect on the Atlas was devastating; the innards of the ship were torn completely to shreds with multiple secondary explosions melting the remains to a cloud of mixed elements. The remaining part of the Omega project ceased existing.
###
Janice twisted her Valkyrie away from the incoming fire and boosted for the main group of Itani fighters. That Vult had appeared from out of nowhere and hammered her engine section into the red. The Itani were winning slowly but surely. The elite Swift Wind squad had already evened the odds and the Serco pilots were outnumbered slightly now. The turning point had come when the last Prom had used all of its flare ammunition and was at that point reduced to a Gatling turret for weaponry. Not really a challenge to a halfway decent Valkyrie pilot, and these were the very best. She held off for a minute and tried to see who needed her help. That Vult from before seemed to be deciding for her, going at top speed towards her own Valkyrie. She grinned and started her dance of death with the Serco pilot the intended victim.
###
The wormhole streamed exotic particles, the indication that something was defying normal space and transcending the vastness into Deneb. The Itani Battle Commander sighed and moved his icons on the command screen. The twenty or so triangles that were shown in red around the wormhole were quickly swarmed by his triangles of blue assisted by the blue squares and pentagons from further away, eliminating them one by on. It took maybe two minutes and the red triangles had all disappeared. He had lost a couple of triangles himself and a single square. He counted his geometric shapes and decided that he could still fulfil his mission parameters. As he had done nine times now.
In real space the twenty Serco fighters piloted by new pilots recruited by SCAR had entered the wormhole with not much other than patriotism for help. Given a barely adequate training that allowed them to fire their weapons and hit training bots while piloting out-dated ship models, they were expected to do precisely what they achieved. Buy time for the Serco defence forces to mount a credible assault force and take the wormhole back. The twenty fighters exploded one by one in a gesture of futility, destroyed by the Itani pilots almost as derived of feelings as the Itani Battle Commander; it could just as well have been bots.
Some of the Itani pilots had been flying Combat Space Patrol (COSP) for more than 70 hours now with the aid of combat drugs and could look forward to another 40 hours of COSP at least. A large assault force was being assembled to take the fight to the Serco by invading Geira Rutilus and destroying the station on the wormhole exit. It had been debated in high command whether to try and take the station with marines but since the Serco marines outfought the Itani by a factor of five to one; the complete destruction had been seen as the rational choice.
