OIC (17)
MegaZone23
"Against boredom even the gods themselves struggle in
vain."
--Friedrich Nietzche
A YEAR AND A HALF LATER
The Wayward Son cruised through space at a leisurely
.8C, ticking over the powerplant on an aimless trip to
nowhere. Their mission to Earth over, the crew had very
little to do, for though they were supposed to be a defense
force, defending the universe from great evil, there didn't
seem to be a hell of a lot of great evil around.
In the year and a half since leaving their homebase
shipyard again, the Wedge Defense Force hadn't seen much
action. Oh, there were rumors of this great evil or that
great evil, but nothing had ever really materialized. A
couple of interventions by the SDF-17 in naval battles of the
Salusia-Zardon War, to pay the Princess back for the 101st
Cav, maybe a police action or two.
Of all the Wedge Defense Force's personnel, Kei and Yuri
were the only people to really get any interesting action,
with the formation of the Worlds Welfare Work Association as
a department of the WDF in June of '92. The 3WA provided
smaller-scale service than the WDF proper, befitting its
model organization--so they tended to get more business.
The crew of the SDF-17 was well-trained and everyone
knew their jobs, so it wasn't a question of competence; it
was just that, contrary to popular belief, space fortresses
have very little to do with their time when not part of an
active military force. For that reason, boredom had built
among the crew until they demanded a vacation.
Captain's Log, Terran Synchronized Date 25 August 1993.
Captain MegaZone recording. The crew has demanded a
vacation. I don't know where the hell we are, so I've
ordered an immediate advance at .8C in some random direction.
Eventually, we'll reach some place fun.
Fifteen levels below the bridge, down in the body of the
vessel proper, the door to M-Level Cabin Suite 401 hissed
open and the SDF-17's XO emerged.
Commander Benjamin D. Hutchins left his room. It had
been almost a month since Kei and Yuri had left the area in
Lovely Angel on assignment; unable to go with them because of
the pressures of command, he and Zoner were stuck on The Most
Boring Super Dimensional Fortress In The Universe for no
short period of time. During that time, Zoner had become
increasingly manic and Ben increasingly morose.
Today he had finally sublimated all that nervous energy
that usually built up to make him lethargic (go figure) into
a calm, restrained feeling of energy. He walked with an
easy, measured stride to the elevator, entered, and keyed it
for the bridge. (He refused to talk to the elevators.)
Moments later, the door opened with an annoying SCHNUK noise
onto the bridge.
The bridge was a purpose-designed room, professionally
engineered so that only three or four things were wrong with
it and it was a tolerable place to work.
Ben walked out onto the bridge and settled into his seat
on the captain's right.
"Yo Gryph," said MegaZone with a sidelong glance at his
XO. "What's up?"
"Less than nothing," Ben replied shortly. He reached
into the fridge under his seat and got himself out a ginger
beer, then opened up a book and started reading.
Over in the right-hand corner, Communications Officer
Macquivr snapped his fingers for attention. "Like yo,
Captain, you've got a message coming in."
"On screen," Zoner ordered. He really enjoyed being
captain, although the crew had forced him to promise not to
point at the viewscreen and say "Engage" any more.
The forward windows' view of space dissolved into a comm
screen image. The cockpit of a smallish spacecraft, two-seat
with lots and lots of switches, knobs, buttons, dials, and
levers. Lovely Angel, SDF-17's Wasp class corvette. At the
controls was Yuri. Kei was nowhere to be found.
"Hi, Yuri--" Zoner began.
"Wayward Son, this is Lovely Angel," Yuri cut him off in
a most uncharacteristic way. "We are coming in hot, repeat,
hot to Prometheus, bay four. We are damaged and carrying
wounded--be advised, Lovely Angel is declaring an emergency."
"What is the nature of your emergency?" Ben asked, his
brain snicking into business mode.
"We have moderate thruster damage and severe powerplant
damage; velocity control is negative. We're at one-quarter c
and that's where we're staying until we cut engines. Have
the emergency nets ready. We are carrying one wounded
personnel in stable but poor condition. Have medical
assistance standing by. I am beginning final approach.
Lovely Angel out."
"Shit--Yuri, wait--" Too late; she had already cut the
connection. She needed all of her concentration to land the
ship.
"I have visual contact with the Angel," Q reported. The
windows zoomed in to show the sleek red needle heading for
the Wayward Son, the entire rear left quarter of the ship
smashed and mangled. The engine core was in one place
exposed and trailing a strange glow.
Zoner slammed a hand down on the intercom controls on
his chair arm. "Attention Prometheus! Prepare to attend
emergency crash situation."
Meanwhile, Ben was fulfilling his XO position by
advising sick bay.
"Q, you have the conn," Zoner declared, getting up and
heading for the elevator. "Come on, Ben."
They ran, as fast as they could, to the portside docking
bay. By the time they arrived, it was all over; Lovely Angel
was a tattered heap against the rear wall, wrapped in
shredded nets, and Yuri and Mughi were standing to the side,
behind the fire control 'bots putting out the fire and
shutting down the fusion core.
Medical personnel were attending Kei, who was laid out
on a gravstretcher.
"Kei!" Ben shouted, taking off across the docking bay at
a full panic run. Yuri caught him halfway there, blocking
his charge with a strong arm across his chest.
"Stay away," she told him forcefully. "There's nothing
you can do."
"Let me go!" Frantic as he was, he might have gotten
past Yuri, but when MegaZone grabbed him, well...
The fight drained away from him; his shoulders under
Zoner's hands stopped trembling. He let himself slump.
"Right. Nothing I can do. I'd just get in the way."
He laughed mirthlessly. "I hate feeling useless."
"What happened?" Zoner asked Yuri.
"We were attacked on our return route here. We had just
come out of warp when a squadron of them attacked us--I have
no idea what they were flying. They were good--too good.
The Angel was damaged anyway, from the course of the mission-
-we were out of missiles and half the laser banks were down.
Maneuver power was at 78% and shields iffy at best. They
knew. Somehow they knew. They kept hitting us on the left,
where the shields were weakest."
"What happened to Kei?" asked Ben.
"We took a missile hit to the port nose," Yuri told him.
"Her panel blew in her face."
"Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Gryphon spun around and
punched the wall.
"Take it easy, she'll be all right," Zoner said.
"Do you know that? Do you? No. And neither do I."
"In fact I do. Her Detian physiology will have her up
and about in no time."
Gryphon scowled and turned away from Zoner. He hated it
when he was right. Fortunately, it didn't happen often. He
tabbed the intercom on the wall on and dialed it for fighter
command. "This is Hutchins. Get my fighter ready. Full
booster pods, the works. I'm going hunting."
"Are you crazy? They tore us apart!" Yuri shouted.
"They were fighting a ship four times their size,
weakened, undergunned, and half crippled. They were briefed
on your damage status and probably your fighting style too.
I'll be flying a fully-prepped, perfect-condition Veritech
VF-1FS Hyper Valkyrie, the most flexible, powerful
starfighter ever produced. I'm rested and I'm pissed off.
I'll never be sharper. I just hope they haven't left the
sector yet." He took one last look at the crowd of medtechs
around Kei, then turned and started running full-tilt toward
the fighter bay, stripping off and discarding bits of his
shipboard uniform as he went.
Thirty seconds later, he jumped into the cockpit of his
VF-1S, buckling his left boot and sealing the last clasp on
his CVR-3 chestplate; he pulled on his gloves and clamped
down his helmet as he began running prelaunch checks. The
cockpit canopy came down and sealed as all the missile lights
lighted once and went out. GU-11 loaded and locked, firing
relays in place. Transformation systems were reading green.
All modular systems were on line. He got final clearance
from q and hit full burner. The Valkyrie was catapulted out
of its launch tube in three seconds, accelerating across
Prometheus' foredeck and streaking into space, gear going up.
Something smallish and red appeared in his peripheral
vision. He glanced at it; it was MegaZone's ridiculously
red Daytona, minus its Beta unit and fitted for space combat.
He opened a frequency.
"Zoner, what are you doing?"
"Flying your wing, why?"
"I could ask you the same question."
"Making sure you don't get yourself killed."
"Just make sure the same applies to you." Gryphon
started searching his scope for other targets, which were
indeed forthcoming; on the other side of a nearby asteroid
field, in fact. Five blips, high energy--very likely
starfighters. And five makes a squadron.
Of course they would be hiding; anyone knew that
attacking the Wayward Son was pure suicide with only a
squadron of fighters. Her armor was proof against most
fighter-size weapons, except possibly Mauler anti-ship
missiles; her sheer size rendered her incredibly hard to
kill; and her own defensive weapons were formidable, not even
counting the Reflex cannon.
Also, she was known to carry a full wing of Valkyries;
several modified wings of Legios units; a Salusian Special
Forces Shadow Legios/Vindicator "commando squad"; a company
of Garland X-2's; a division of space marines, most of them
hand-picked Salusian specialists, equipped with Cyclones; and
of course the elite Hammers, all of whom had Cyclones of
their own. That wasn't even counting the Destroids and the
rest of the 101st Salusian FTL Cavalry, including their wing
of Raptors. And, of course, she had a WWWA Wasp-class
corvette and its accompanying troubleshooter team assigned to
her as a homebase port.
Not a ship to be messed with. These guys had signed
their death warrant when they attacked the Angel.
Gryphon checked their location again and kicked in his
boosterpacks, vectoring straight into the asteroid field.
"Gryphon, I can't keep up with you at that speed!" Zoner
shouted.
"So catch up and pick up the pieces," Gryphon replied,
opening the Valkyrie's wings a little more to use more of the
vector control surfaces. He went diving into the asteroid
field at full speed, dodging asteroids as if he were flying a
normal jet in an atmosphere. The way Veritech fighters flew
wasted a lot of power, but then again, it wasn't as if they
were in desperate need of conservation, and besides, it made
pilots feel better.
Zoner spat out a vile curse before heading in at his own
top speed, ducking around flying chunks of rock and having an
easier time of it because of his slower speed and smaller
size.
Gryphon cleared the field; his lock was still firm on
his five targets. Grinning, he pulled the wings all the way
back and aimed straight at them, pushing the Valkyrie to its
absolute maximum speed. And suddenly, there they were.
Black, almost invisible against the starfield, and
absolutely unmarked, five attack fighters and a warp tender
of uncertain origin and vintage. The tender sported a simple
construction; spindly power core, bridge, quarters ring,
docking bay for the fighters. Gryphon tagged one of the
fighters with his targeting system and had a closer look. A
medium fighter by WDF standards, with apparently moderate
armor and surprisingly good shielding.
Their shape was dramatic and strange, a flattened discus
with a cut in front for the cockpit windows and two big
thrusters in the rear. Gryphon locked one into his target
tracking system and watched the small screen; it lit up with
the words "LOCKED TARGET --DRALTHI" and a small schematic of
the Kilrathi fighter in question.
"What the--?" Gryphon wondered, then shrugged and
decided some tech with a warped sense of humor had done it.
Better to concentrate on the job at hand; it appeared that
the fighters had just relaunched after having their weapons
stores replenished.
Gryphon smiled. Good. Wouldn't do to go beating up an
undergunned opponent, would it?
The five fighters scattered like startled pigeons as he
came barreling out of nowhere into their midst; the targeting
reticule inside his visor swung onto the locked one and
sang a missile lock. As the fingers of his right hand
selected missile racks, his left thumb flipped open the
safety cover over a trigger and clamped said trigger down,
launching three AIM-6-XL Reaper missiles from their pylon
under the left wing. They blossomed the way Reapers tend to
do, spreading outward to confused anti-missile systems before
diving back in and plunging one after the other into one of
the Dralthi, converting it to a rapidly expanding cloud of
glowing yellow and orange bits.
The Valkyrie's wings extended fully as Gryphon throttled
back, cut out the boosters, and performed a wide duck to the
left; missiles from the four remaining Dralthi passed around
him or blew up behind him. One clipped the left rear engine
pod, shattering some of the modular armor but doing nothing
of consequence. Nine Reapers left, and just the thing to do
with them too. Gryphon dove straight "down" in relation to
the tender, doing a neat Immelmann around it, and then
emerged on the other side to launch all his remaining wing
missiles.
The Dralthi broke and fled, scattering again, as
missiles corkscrewed toward them. Two escaped. One took
four hits and died a horribly messy death. The other lost a
wing and went spinning off into the asteroid field out of
control, vanishing from the battle zone.
"Hmm...that was unproductive," Gryphon muttered. "Oh
well." The two remaining Dralthi regrouped and began a
concerted attack, unleashing all of their remaining missiles
as well. Deceleration almost threw Gryphon's head into the
instrument panel as he yanked back the throttle and slammed
the Valkyrie into Gerwalk configuration. The GU-11 dropped
into his left hand as the arms extended; the wings flared out
and a strange sense of balance appeared, even in deep space.
ANTI-MISSILE SYSTEM ENGAGED, his HUD informed him. He
raised the GU-11 and fired off a rapid burst, letting his arm
track with the reticule; most of the missiles got hosed, but
a couple got through to blast off armor and vaporize one of
the snap-on arm missile pods. Growling, he swung his arm
around, cut the AMS, and opened fire with the GU-11 again,
raking one of the Dralthi. Its own armor withstood the
barrage, but he had screwed its vector grav control surfaces
up a bit. Gryphon dove into the open again.
The Valkyrie converted fully to battroid mode, rapidly
slowing and curling into a ball as the undamaged Dralthi
screamed by, its twin lasers chattering a neon burst across
the sky. Bolts tracked black scars up the Valkyrie's right
leg, side, and arm as it came out of the tuck and opened fire
with the remaining snap-on pod, putting its two AIM-105-3X
General Hosement missiles right into the glowing throat of
the Dralthi's engine. It stuttered, flared, faltered, and
then, slowly banking to the right, exploded.
The remaining Dralthi came up from beneath the
Battloid's orientation, lining up for its own pass; Gryphon
dropped the Valkyrie back into fighter mode and opened up all
the stops, accelerating out of the Dralthi's line of fire
almost instantly. He banked to the right so hard that the
lateral acceleration flattened him into his seat, coming
around on the Dralthi's right flank before the unfortunate
pilot even realized what was going on. The Dralthi hadn't
finished firing his burst at nothing before Gryphon's
Valkyrie was back and at a near-standstill in battroid mode.
"Eat this, asshole!" Gryphon shouted, emptying the GU-11
into the small silver-black square that was the Dralthi's
cockpit window. The craft heeled to the left and exploded.
The battroid stood there for a short time, not moving,
surveying the tender and not knowing quite what to make of
it. Then the tender did something rather silly; it fired a
laser cannon at him. Gryphon dodged to the left; the laser
bolt shredded the remaining snap-on armor on the left leg.
Snarling, he put the Valkyrie back in fighter mode again and
streaked out in a sweeping arc, then approached from the
front and opened up with all his remaining weapons; nose
lasers, side lasers, and head lasers, strafing right up the
beam. The first thing to go was the bridge dome, holed and
then blown out from within by pressure; then lots of nasty
but probably inconsequential hull damage on the way down to
the other end.
Just as he cleared the end of the ship, Gryphon slammed
the Valkyrie into Gerwalk mode again and ducked it down and
under, putting it "upside down" and facing right into the
tender's drive thruster's exhaust. He popped the thumb
covers off the other two thumb triggers and then fired away.
The booster pods shed their small pop-off plates on the
fore-sections and spewed out their entire collection of
AIM-105-3X missiles, all twenty of them--right into the
throat of the sublight fusion drive. The Valkyrie jetted
back a good hundred yards, converted to fighter mode, flipped
neatly over, and headed at a good healthy clip back toward
the asteroid field, jettisoning the now-useless snap-on stuff
and extending the ruddervators. A couple of seconds later,
the tender exploded in a rather Death Star-ish manner.
Gryphon found MegaZone in the asteroid field, hovering
off the bow of the crippled Dralthi, his every weapon to bear
on its cockpit.
"Problems?" Zoner said.
"None. You?"
"Yeah...this asshole doesn't seem to want to come back
to the SDF-17. On the other hand, he doesn't seem
particularly eager to die, either."
"I see. Gimme his frequency."
"Done."
"Thanks. Hey, you! Yeah, you! You hear me? This is
Commander Benjamin D. Hutchins of the Wedge Defense Force,
executive officer of the WDF Wayward Son and commander of the
VVF-261 Valkyrie Squadron. Your buddies are all dead and
that last big explosion you saw over there was your tender."
"No! You lie!" a human-sounding voice shouted back.
"Would I lie to you? If you like I can show you the
dust cloud. Now listen carefully. You're coming back to the
ship whether you like it or not." He cut the channel closed
before the pilot could respond, then shifted to Gerwalk mode.
"Keep him covered, Zoner," said Gryphon, and clamped a hand
onto the Dralthi's remaining wing, the metal fingers digging
into the armor and making grooves. The rear thrusters flared
and they were off.
After dropping the Dralthi off at Repair Two, Gryphon
made a circle around the Wayward Son, as was standard, before
carrying out a normal arrester-hook landing on Prometheus.
Zoner had, by this time, docked on Daedalus. Climbing out of
his cockpit, Gryphon noted that the cleanup crews had already
removed the wreckage of what had once been the Lovely Angel.
"Enjoy yourself?" asked Yuri from the doorway to the
ready room.
"As a matter of fact, yes," Ben replied as he took off
his helmet. "How's Kei?"
"She's awake. She's been asking to see you."
"Great." He tossed his helmet into his locker. "I'll
head down now, then."
About halfway to the turbolift they encountered ReRob,
who said simply, "I understand we had some excitement today."
"You might say that." Zoner rounded the corner and
called out for them to wait. "Zoner--any word on that
asshole we captured?"
"He's in the brig; we've got Archon and Daver working on
him, so it shouldn't take him too long to crack. If that
doesn't work, we can always send in Wheels. He's not human,
by the way."
"No? What then?"
"I hate to say it, but he's Kilrathi."
"Oh gaaah. I hate it when I'm right."
"And Perry has informed me that the Kilrathi are
ancestral enemies of the Salusians..."
"Which explains why my computer knew what a Dralthi was.
Oh marvelous..."
They piled into the turbolift and headed for sick bay.
Kei was in one of the monitor beds, swathed in bandages,
her right forearm in a green plastic Gel-O-Seal cast; instead
of her characteristic ribbon she was wearing a head dressing,
and small squares of gauze covered most of her face,
including an eye. Nonetheless, she smiled when Ben came in.
"Hi, Ben--I'm glad to see you. I must look like hell--"
"You?" Ben replied with a cockeyed grin. "Look like
hell? Impossible!"
"Flattery will get you nowhere, but keep trying, love."
"The damage was mostly superficial, caused by bits of
flying, hot metal and the like--she's lucky she didn't lose
an eye," said Jenna. "Of course it probably would've grown
back. I still don't understand everything about Detian
physiology."
"That's me," Kei said wryly. "Always the lucky one."
"So, partner, how're you doing?" Yuri asked as she
entered the room.
"I've been better, but I'll be ok. How are you?"
"Other than a bit pissed off, I'm fine, but I'm glad to
see that you're ok."
"Of course she's ok," Edison observed from the doorway.
"What is this? Some kind of convention?" Gryphon
snapped.
"I heard of her injuries and I thought it would be
prudent of me to check in on her," answered Edison.
"Besides, I was concerned."
"Sorry. Guess I'm just a bit pissy at the moment,"
Gryphon apologized. "Can't imagine why."
"No problem. But as I was saying, her injuries, albeit
painful, are nothing to worry about for a Detian."
"So she'll fully recover?" Jenna asked.
"Of course. It takes quite a bit to keep a Detian down.
But as Kei has had the misfortune of discovering, a Detian
still feels pain, since the nerves heal fully too."
"Oh great, so we get to recover and don't get any
benefits from toughening in the process," Gryphon observed.
"Yes, but you will develop a tolerance for pain over
time. Remember, you have only recently entered the Detian
way of life. You still have to reevaluate your concept of
time. What you formerly felt was a long time will be nothing
eventually. When you don't age time can become irrelevant...
It will take a long time by your old way of thinking for you
to develop pain resistance, but for a Detian it is a very
short time indeed."
"So the more we get hurt the more we will be able to
take?" Yuri asked. "That makes some sort of sense..."
"What are we supposed to do, try and get hit?" Kei
inquired.
"No, nothing so drastic. As you have shown, you will
have plenty of opportunities during your normal duties. Give
it time."
"Time, that's what it all comes down to, isn't it?"
Jenna observed.
"Yes...in the end the passage of time provides all the
answers," Edison answered.