Beauty and the Fleet (Intergalactic Fairy Tales Book 2) (3 page)

"Come on, Sting, you still asleep?" asked Hands, pulling Beatrix out of the mire that were her thoughts. "Get your suit on."

"I may be asleep, but you know I'll outshoot you anyway," quipped Beatrix, grabbing her flight suit. The rubbery feel of the material sent a shudder through her body and by the time she had the first leg of her suit on she was completely in the zone.

"You wish," said Hands. "They don't call me Hands for nothing." He waggled his fingers at her provocatively.

"Yeah, from what I hear, you really know how to handle your stick." She made a vulgar motion in front of her crotch. "Must be from all the solo practice."

Hands put his fist over his heart. "Oh, now you wound me."

Despite his "wound" he went back to dressing his tall, muscled frame. As much as she liked to tease him, Hands was just as good as she was, and if she was pushed to say it, she might even say he was better some days. Their rivalry for most kills was known across the Fleet. The only thing that was more hotly debated than who was the better shot was where Hands' call sign had come from. Most people assumed it was because he really did have amazing shooting hands. Beatrix thought it had something to do with the antique pocket watch that he carried with him at all times. Nobody ever got a straight answer from him and nobody knew who gave him the name, not even Torch, his best friend.

Within a few minutes all forty pilots of Flight 1230 were dressed and on the starboard flight deck, waiting for the deckhands to clear them for flight and for Torch to fill them in on the situation. The other five Flights would be doing the same on the main and port flight decks. Beatrix danced lightly back and forth on the balls of her feet, unable to contain her nervous energy. She was only ever nervous while she was waiting on the deck. Once she was in her Talon, nothing could stop her. It was like an extension of her own body. The controls were just as familiar to her as the freckles on the back of her hand. The inside of her Talon was the closest thing she had left to a home. Much more than her bunk, or anywhere back on the whole planet of Nedra. It made sense. She logged way more flight time than she did anything else.

"Captain on deck," someone shouted, and the Flight snapped to attention.

Torch was worried. It wouldn't be apparent to anyone other than Beatrix and Hands. They shared a look. Hands rubbed his upper lip, signaling that he saw it too. Torch curled his upper lip when he was nervous. To most people it looked like a snarl. He did tend to bite off more than a few heads to cover how he felt. Always appearing calm was one of the many things that made him a great Captain.

"This is an all hands on deck situation. Every available pilot is to be ready and in line for the launch tubes within fifteen minutes. That does not mean you cut corners. Make sure you hit every item on the pre-flight checklist, even if you have to do it sitting in the launch tube. I don't need you killing yourselves with stupidity, but I do need you out there as quickly as humanly possible. Faster than that would be better.

"Now that I've impressed upon you the need for urgency, let me tell you what you're up against. It appears we have stumbled upon what could only be considered a Colarian invasion fleet. Approaching us are five of the largest ships we have ever seen. Each one of them could land five of the Harbinger on their main flight deck."

Torch continued from there, but Beatrix caught very little of it. She knew that individual assignments would be given once they were out in the air and in formation. All she could focus on was the sheer size of the ships they were talking about. Their ship, the Harbinger, was massive, even by Crown Fleet standards. It housed some five thousand crew members to run and maintain its various systems and weapons complements. It could hold a few hundred Talons, each a single person fighter six meters long. To think of a ship that could hold five of the Harbinger, just on its main flight deck, was mind-boggling. If those ships were packed with Raptors, the Colarian equivalent to the Talon, there could be thousands of them. If that were the case they didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell, and that wasn't even taking into account the battleships themselves. This wasn't a fight they were going to win. They would only be trying to slow them down to give Nedra more time to prepare. Time to prepare for its likely demise.

CHAPTER FIVE

Beatrix hurdled down the launch tube, the black of open space drawing closer at blinding speed. She readied herself for the initial vertigo of being thrust into space where the concepts of up and down had little meaning. Her fellow Talon pilots swarmed around her and formed into their flight formations, each one led by a Captain. Torch was in his position in front of her, and Hands was just to her right.

"Alright everyone, stay tight to Harbinger. We don't stand a chance without her artillery fire. If you venture out too far, you're liable to get hit yourself. Hands, Sting, I want you working the perimeter to keep them from getting through the artillery zone. I want Gadget and Pickle with me circling the main body of the Flight, watching for missiles aimed at Harbinger. The rest of you, keep standard dogfight formation as best you can. Shoot everything that's not a Talon out of the sky. This is going to get damned hairy. Keep an eye out for wreckage. If you get low on ammunition, sound off."

The radio was silent for a moment and Beatrix could imagine Torch running his hand over his face, trying to find the right words of encouragement.

Hands broke the radio silence. "And try not to get your asses shot off!" Beatrix could almost here the wink in his voice.

"Close enough," said Torch, a genuine laugh coloring his tone. "Weapons hot and fire at will."

They didn't have to wait long. The five massive warships were upon them almost immediately. Beatrix glanced at the other Flights visible around the impressive bulk of Harbinger. She could only see the occasional glimpse of a Talon on her far side. The enemy ships were surrounding them, so everyone would get a pretty equal taste of the action. The battleships were staying outside of artillery range, as expected. Strangely, though, they hadn't launched their Raptors before approaching.

"Hold steady," said Torch over the radio. "We lose every advantage we have if we go outside of Harbinger's range before we take care of their Raptors."

Beatrix shook her head at his feigned optimism. She knew he was laughing at himself as soon as he let go of the broadcast button. She didn't buy it, but she was a realist. The majority of the pilots she knew were optimists, feeling like the war was already won in their minds. They just had to do their best and see it through. It was for them that Torch was speaking. If he talked to them like they had a chance, they would believe it and by some miracle, they might survive. As for the pessimists, they were fucked either way. If you went into war with that kind of mindset, nothing would save you. Sooner or later you would find some way to prove yourself right and die horribly.

"I've got dibs on the grey one!" shouted Hands over the radio as he edged up next to Beatrix and gave her his biggest grin.

"They're all grey, you moron," said Beatrix, rolling her eyes.

Then there were the delusional; to them, the war wasn't really happening. They were just out playing a really crazy game of make-believe where anything that wasn't them was a blip inside a computer's hard drive. Nothing could ever harm them. They had as many lives as they could buy game tokens. Or something like that. She was never really sure which one Hands was, but she preferred to call him a silly optimist rather than believing the alternative.

"I called dibs, so I guess the rest of you will have to find something else to shoot at."

There had been a lot of conjecture over the years as to the lack of deviation in the enemy's ships. Every single one of them was a uniform slate grey with no external markings to differentiate them. The Talons were mostly uniform in shape, but they all had a different number on the tail to mark them, making repairs easier to track. There were also slight variations in models. Some older pilots preferred to keep their original Talon as long as command would allow, eschewing the latest technology for absolute familiarity. They firmly believed in the mentality that you don't mess with success. Then there were the paint jobs. Each Flight of Talons was painted differently so that communications channels could be color coded to make inter-Flight communication easier. The dominant color of Beatrix's Flight was blue with little yellow accents on the wings and tail.

The fact that none of the Colarians' ships had any of these things was baffling. It was one of the questions that was always asked in interrogations of the few prisoners Nedra had managed to take over the years. The Colarians never answered. They never answered a single question, even when they watched their fellow captives executed before them. It was clear they understood. Some of them even leaned their head toward the gun that was going to be used to execute them. They just refused to answer.

While the Colarians as a whole were one big series of question marks, they'd been pretty consistent in their methods of battle. They fought hard, fast, and recklessly, with little consideration for self preservation. Not to say that they were stupid. Far from it. They just seemed more than willing to sacrifice themselves to gain small strategic advantages. But this time, Beatrix couldn't puzzle out their play. They were just sitting there.

Beatrix unconsciously started to edge toward them, to be quickly chided by Torch. "Sorry, Cap, this is just too damned eerie," she said. "Why in the hell are they just staring at us?"

As if on queue, the bay doors to the two nearest battleships' flight decks opened. The four ships that heaved out were very different than anything seen before. They didn't so much look like ships as they did strange four-legged animals. They were still uniformly grey, but hanging on the underside of each of the massive ships, easily as large as the Harbinger, were four large arms that bowed out and formed a semicircle. Adding to the animal-like appearance were the huge cables, wires, and hoses wrapped around each arm, resembling muscles and sinews. Flying beside each of the new ships was a full complement of Raptors, but it was hard to even pay them attention. "What the hell are those things? How would they even land?"

"Focus on the big dogs," said Torch, obviously seeing the same resemblance that Beatrix did. "We know what the Raptors can do. I'm sure those things will be worse. Newer is always worse."

"Except for me," chimed Beatrix, her battle grin sliding into place.

"How many kills do you figure each one of those beasts is worth?" asked Hands.

"One, you greedy son-of-a-bitch," replied Beatrix. "But if we both are tagging it, we'll both get a kill unless the other concedes."

"You two need to stop squabbling over your hypothetical kills and get ready for some actual killing," said Torch. "Forget the perimeter circling you were going to be doing. You're joining me, Gadget, and Pickle on Hound patrol. It looks like each battleship has four of those damned legs. Stay clear of the things. I don't know what they do, but I don't like the looks of them."

While Torch gave out orders, the Hounds and their Raptors drew closer to the artillery line. The Raptors made a defensive shield around each of the Hounds and headed resolutely into the slaughter of Harbinger's artillery, seeming content with their roles as meat shields for the Hounds. Not one of them broke formation. Harbinger's artillery was completely devastating the Raptors, but the Hounds were another story. They were hardly phased. There were five of the Colarian battleships, each probably carrying two Hounds. That meant there were likely a total of ten Hounds. That left six Hounds for the other four Flights stationed around Harbinger. Beatrix's Flight had yet to take out one of the four they faced. Things were looking grim.

The Talons swooped in to fire on the Hounds, taking out stray Raptors as they came across them. Each of the Hounds had taken several direct hits from Harbringer's heavy artillery rounds and were still moving. It didn't seem likely that the energy rounds from their Talons would do much. Still, Beatrix and the rest of her Flight fired intermittently, hunting for any weakness to exploit.

Finally, one of the Hounds went down in blazing, silent glory, felled by a hellacious bout of Harbinger's shell fire. There were even more Raptors concealed behind its bulk. They spread to hide behind the remaining three Hounds as they plowed through the exploding artillery, their Raptor shields disintegrating around them. Beatrix linked up with Torch, Pickle and a few others to take on the Hound that had suffered the least damage. A group including Hands and Gadget took the next best looking one. That left one more to the rest of the Flight if it made it through the artillery.

They all hunted for good places to tag the Hounds, but it was hard to concentrate with the remaining shield Raptors still buzzing around. Just when Beatrix thought she saw a potential weak spot, she would have to dodge fire and spend the next few minutes shooting down the smaller ships.

"How about I mop up the rest of the meat shields?" said Beatrix. "The rest of you find a weakness on the Hounds before they get all the way through the artillery line. Then we can regroup and take on the Raptors hiding behind them."

"Sounds like a plan, Sting," said Torch.

Beatrix studied the Raptors, weaving around them in tight patterns. They only seemed to react when she was on a certain angle of approach. A theory blossomed in her mind, and she bolted for the edge of the artillery field. She flipped a quick one-eighty to come at the Raptors from their rear, hoping to catch them off guard. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. The ones that saw her on the way in shot plenty, but they showed no compulsion to break formation once she was behind them. Absolutely confounding. "Just stay behind the shield Raptors! They won't turn to get at you!" she shouted on all channels, to give her comrades in the other Flights their best odds.

"I'm lighting this Hound up everywhere I can and it isn't flinching," said Pickle.