Part 37: ERIC

I broke formation and gunned the accelerator to max, arming all weapon systems. Wolfcraft fighters had a deadly array of weapons: two Translocator Gatling cannons, eight faster than light Forced Energy cannons (FTL-FE’s) and 4 Loki torpedoes and a forward mounted heavy caliber plasma accelerator.

In the corner of my eye a red signal and flashing data announced the quasi space signature of another Nul-Nul carrier dropping into Planck- Space coming in from the Z plane. I couldn’t allow it to launch its fighters.” Viking here, I got another carrier on my board I am going for it.”

“Alright. Try it, more fighters would be very bad news for us but be careful.” Wildcat replied.

I programmed a micro jump, the Computronic refused to execute so close to a star. I had to manually over write the lock out.

My Wolfcraft came dangerously close to the local star, 800,000 clicks closer than I wanted to be and my fighters engines screamed to get out of the gravitational pull, my shields where bombarded with heat and radiation as I passed through a protuberance of superheated stellar plasma, the system warned.” Shields at forty percent.”

Instead of fighting the stars gravitational force I changed course slightly and used it to accelerate me even more and I became so fast approaching the second carrier that its target systems recognized me too late. It had just dropped into real space was opening its launch bay. I was glad the Nul did not use Revolving starters. The carrier had to drop shields to launch its fighters and I released all four Loki torpedoes right at the open launch doors and pulled my fighter away.

Again my engines pushed past red line and the inertia damper alert beeped in a frantic rhythm some of the gees came through and pressed me deep into the seat and for a second I saw a narrow tunnel before my eyes and tasted blood. The Auto doc of my suit reacted and injected Stimuli- and pain drugs. The Carrier exploded behind me but two of its fighters escaped the anti-matter explosions that obliterated their mother ship and were hot on my tail. My shields still recovering and could not handle a direct hit.

One of them did manage to pepper my aft shields almost collapsing it. The main weapon system I had was my Translocator Gatling guns. While neither the Nul-Nul nor any other known species had a direct defense against the Translocator weapon system, the Nul were able to distort the sensor locks of my target acquiring system. While this was not very problematic with large targets, Nul Fighters where nimble and fast enough to make the targeting process required more difficult.

I had missed twice already; my shields would not be able to deflect more than one or two shots before I had to shut them down to reset. Resetting shields took only 5 seconds, but five seconds in a fight fought at these speeds was a life time.

I reversed thrust and decelerated so fast that my suit auto doc warned of organ damage. I didn’t feel any pain because of the drugs the Auto Doc pumped in me. This time they couldn’t evade or jam targeting enough and screamed past me directly into my main fire cone, and I squeezed the trigger of the PAC destroying one completely. The second Nul Fighter had moved already outside the range of the plasma accelerator, but a short burst of five TL loads, one detonating right inside the cockpit took it out of the equation

The threat board showed there were no bandits in my immediate vicinity and I had time to check the squadron status. There were 18 Wolfcrafts left. One showed as complete loss and one was severely damaged. One of the freighters was also damaged and it’s aft burning with the greenish glow of atomic fire consuming higher alloys.

Of the 100 original Nul fighters I still counted 50.

The fight was intense. Translocator bombs exploding like mini stars and the faint bluish shimmer of Nul Grav bomb funnels flickering everywhere.

Damage control of my fighter showed that my shields where still recovering and just barely above 40%, my left engine showed stress damage and my repair nanites where busy weaving structural bonds to fix that.

I was almost 12 seconds away from the main fight, so I shut down my shields to reset them, but could not fly very fast for 5 seconds because of the micro matter damage that would occur moving at high speeds without any shield protection. So I was able to take my time and aim the Translocators carefully for long-range sniper shots and destroying six Nul fighters. Three Nul fighters abandoned their attack run on the other freighter and turned to take care of me. I managed to damage one more with a full barrage of all FTL’s and it exploded moments later. My shields literally came on in the last micro second as two long range shots came close to my starboard side.