9. Over my dead rotting corpse
Vaso disengaged the semi-sentient neural network from the ship's mainframe and packed it into his backpack. He nodded to Arhem to indicate that he was finished and grabbed his things. Arhem engaged the timer on the incendiary device and put it against the pilot's seat. The Serco special operatives walked calmly out of the mining Behemoth and continued towards their pick up point. It would not do to go directly to the safe house, but Silia would have taken care of that; so far she had been extremely efficient. They reached their pick-up point and waited for a moment. The fire alarms went off with instructions to go to the nearest secure area and wait for rescue personnel. Vaso nodded to Arhem, they had succeeded so far.
###
Cat finished packing her things and boarded the unmarked Warthog Mk II. Not one to question orders, she had merely shrugged when she received the summons to Helios. She raised an eyebrow when her commander told her that she would have to go through Itani space alone as well as traverse UIT space as well before entering Helios from grey space, but orders were orders. She closed the canopy and checked her systems methodically as always when the alarm klaxons went off. Opening a direct connection to command was a matter of flicking a switch.
"Boss, I am ready for launch now. Send bogey update and I'll engage."
She started going through the engine start up sequence at double speed.
"Cat, belay that. You will go on with your orders. Acknowledge."
She frowned at that. With a general alert on, meaning an imminent attack or a critical situation, why wasn't she allowed to participate?
"Sir, I urge you to reconsider."
"Cat, I didn't want to tell you this. I have received orders from the GESTEBO. They want you, and I won't give you up. Now go to Helios as I said and make me proud."
"I did nothing wrong Sir, shouldn't I just return?"
"No, they wanted you for questioning. Nobody comes back from questioning Cat. Now go and do as you were told. Hail Lady Serco."
Cat mumbled a reply and killed the connection. So that was why she wasn't allowed to go through Serco space. It made sense somehow, but that didn't mean that she liked it. She launched and set a course for Helios.
###
She had been right, the moment the three remaining Prometheus's had left their overwatch position, a squadron of Itani heavy bombers engaged at full speed towards the trio of capitol ships. Keria ignored her orders to engage the Valkyrie and kept boosting for the frigate in front of her, hopefully she would be in time to kill at least some of the bombers before they could release their deadly cargo. The three Prometheus's fired a full barrage of flares at their top speed, ramming them down onto the vector of the Valkyrie. She shuddered as it emerged unscathed from the fireball and mentally wrote the Prometheus's off as dead. She kept moving at full speed and was rewarded with seeing the Itani bombers accelerating towards the Serco capitol ships. Shouting a combat cry she unleashed everything she had at the bombers taking them unaware and head on. One practically disintegrated in flight as the onboard munitions detonated under the fusillade of Gatling fire, another dropped the armaments to evade the incoming flares, skirting the damage envelope and managing to escape, limping back to the main Itani battle line. The remaining four bombers ignored her Atlas X and continued for the frigates, unleashing full sets of swarm missiles before turning back to re-arm. The missiles impacted and collapsed the shield generator on the frigate with one or two missiles hitting the ship below.
Now lighter by 50%, the bombers’ manoeuvrability were enhanced significantly but that was not a factor for an accomplished pilot as Keria. Aligning her turret's auto targeting reticule on the closest bomber, she depressed the trigger and allowed the Gatling to spit death upon the ship. Knowing that the Gatling would destroy the ship she twisted the front slightly further to the right and fired her remaining flares indiscriminately into the other bombers. A satisfying explosion meant one less bomber, and she moved her reticule onto a new target. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the Itani capitol ships fire a full broadside at the now defenceless frigate and cursed the Itani for the deaths they were about to inflict. She ground her teeth and fired into another bomber, probably the last one she was going to get.
A squadron of IBG's were moving to intercept her now and she decided to make a run for it. Leaving the three bombers to fly back, she took evasive manoeuvres and bolted for the Nemesis. The Heavy Assault Cruiser was momentarily lit by the destructive fire from the now exploding frigate, the damage from the explosions enough to weaken the shields on the Nemesis but not powerful enough to burn the generator out. Slowly, ever so slowly the shields were regaining potency. Keria's heart took an extra beat in pure joy they could still make it. Her joy was however short-lived, another set of bombers had moved around in the cover of the scattered roid field and could now disgorge their full complement of swarm missiles and flares towards the Nemesis. The shield generator, already under immense strain from the splash, disintegrated under the immense bombardment and the combined heavy gauss canons and plasma launchers on the Itani cruiser crushed the armour on the Serco Flagship. The burning hulk lost controls and started tumbling slowly towards the roid field. Keria cursed an oath that was illegal in most systems and moved to the last frigate to protect it. She scanned the sector and found only herself and the frigate in-system, outnumbered at least five to one. The phantom Valkyrie was sitting still in the middle of nothing, apparently undamaged but with no movement. The route to the Geira Rutilus station was open, only the frigate and her to stop them.
"Delta 4 anyone, this is SCAR rep WiIllenium, report."
"SCAR rep Willenium this is Delta 4 Charlie fully combat functional. 80% stores remaining."
"Roger Delta 4 Charlie. Suggest full frontal on the Itani cruiser. May force her to break off."
"SCAR rep Willenium for Delta 4 Charlie, if you can keep the bombers occupied for a couple of seconds we can take her."
"Wilco Delta 4 Charlie. It was good knowing you."
"Delta 4 Charlie inbound. Glory to Lady Serco."
The frigate turned and faced the Itani cruiser with about as much grace as a hippopotamus in a giant glue-ball. Meter long plasma streaks flamed out the engines as they were fired on 120% power, causing the frigate to accelerate slowly, ever so slowly. Keria went under the cumbersome ship and moved to engage the bombers as they returned to the melee. This time they were defended by the remaining IBG's, with a set of six Valkyries hanging back. Odds of twelve to one, this is what she lived for. Screaming her battle cry at the top of her lungs, she hit the turbo and engaged the bombers with her Gatling turret.
###
The command post at Geira Rutilus was silent as they watched the large red pentagon that signified the remaining Serco frigate meld together with the even larger blue hexagon that was the Itani cruiser. The hexagon remained after the impact, probably damaged but not destroyed. The secondary defences had been activated with twelve Monitor class defence drones launched and circling the wormhole. Still, the mood was pretty bad with the loss of the last frigate.
Riddik Willenium, Duty officer of SCAR never noticed the death of the remaining frigate, he was busy staring at the small triangle that signified the only person that he absolutely could not bear to lose, his wife Keria. The twelve blue triangles and ten blue squares denominating fighters and bombers respectively closed on the lonely red triangle that eventually after removing two blue squares, faded out. Riddik waited one second before punching his fist directly through the radiation prepared screen burying his arm in the console.
"She is still alive, I am going in."
He stood and looked around, daring anybody to say anything, almost hoping that it would happen so he could get a quick target to vent his aggression on. It was in vain, not even a Serco serviceman wanted to take on the 280-pound bundle of cyberneticaly enhanced raw power. Snorting his contempt, he turned and ran down to get his Marauder fitted with auxiliary life support and launch for Deneb. He was going to find her no matter what.
