War of Alien Aggression 4 Taipan
Read War of Alien Aggression 4 Taipan Online
Authors: A.D. Bloom
Taipan
A.D. Bloom
© 2014
Many thanks to Tom Robidoux for his editorial input.
Thanks to 'Blue Scar' D. for his consulting role.
Thank you to Jimmy Robidoux and the 182nd Airborne.
Cover images and custom models by Whayler.
The author would like to express his appreciation to the New England Air Museum, USS Nautilus (SSN-571), and USS Massachusetts (BB-59), F-15.net, /r/WarshipPorn and her sister subreddit, /r/Warships.
Table of Contents
2165
The War of Alien Aggression has raged for almost a year. The Staas Privateers and the recovering UN fleet have won a handful of victories at Sirius. The tide may finally be turning in Humanity's favor.
Chapter One
The 133rd Fighter Test Squadron flew as far ahead of
Hardway
as they could without losing comms. It wasn't emissions from Groomsbridge 1618 causing the disruptions. Beyond the Sirius Line, in enemy space, the whole spectrum buzzed with alien jamming. Wherever the Squidies went, they left tiny drones behind them to fill the comms channels with noise.
Jordo was certain the enemy had been here recently. Maybe they were still here, hiding amongst the dozen moons of the banded, fourth planet, waiting to ambush the carrier. He wiped some of the ice crystals from the inside of his cockpit canopy and searched the starry black with the F-151 Bitzer's passive arrays. "
Hardway
, this is Lancer 1-1. No sign of SCS
Taipan
. Negative enemy contacts. We're continuing our recon of the fourth planet and its moons." It felt like every malformed hunk of rock and chunk of ice orbiting the gas giant was eyeballing his squadron.
Lancer 1-5, Lt. Telly Lyons, a.k.a. 'Dirty', spiked her maneuvering jets in opposition and rolled her fighter to the other side of the formation. The Staas F-151 exo-atmo interceptor was already an aggressive craft, studded with 140mm cannon and packed with thrusters, but Dirty's white-knuckled hand on the stick made it a piece of pure, flying malice.
Hard and scarred as her little fists were, her voice was smooth like liquor. "If we're here to rendezvous with
Taipan
then why the hell are they hiding from us?" She fell in beside Lancer 1-3, flying inverted so that their offset cockpits were separated by only a few meters of vacuum.
"If
Taipan
was easy to find," Holdout said, "she wouldn't last long behind the bloody lines."
"Cut the chatter." They knew better or at least Jordo thought they did. "Maybe Squidy isn't home right now, but you can bet he's listening."
"I kinda' doubt Squidy speaks the English," Paladin added.
"Yeah," Gush said, "Paladin is from Perth and he can barely speak it."
The back of Jordo's neck itched the moment before weapons fire streaked close past the canopy of his F-151, brilliant orange and blindingly bright. He jinked the fighter away from it and called out, "Break, break, break!"
Even more galling than being successfully ambushed was the fact that it wasn't alien fire chasing him and his wingman. Those flashing, vermillion streaks weren't particle streams; they were 140mm autocannon shells. That was
friendly fire
. "Friendlies! Friendlies! Cease fire!" Jordo shouted it repeatedly on the emergency channel as he spun his fighter around 180 degrees on its maneuvering jets to face the planes shooting at him.
No less than eight Staas F-151 exo-atmospheric interceptors hung on his six o'clock. They loosed rapid-fire shells like a sheet of burning rain that corralled Jordo and his wingman. Holdout and Gusher had picked up a tail as well. Eight more Staas Company fighters herded them with live rounds. "Cease fire!" he shouted. "Cease fire!"
The squadron of Privateer 151s that had ambushed the Lancers all flew with properly coded Staas Company IFF transponders that marked them as the 55th Squadron of the
Taipan
Air Group. The Hellcats. These were new pilots from the all-volunteer, 90-day-wonder squadrons. It had been barely that long since these nuggets had graduated from Burn's flight school.
The female voice that came over the emergency channel had a lunar drawl for an accent and a raspy texture like fine-grit sandpaper. "Unknown squadron, identify yourselves or we will turn you to Squidy-chow."
"This is Lancer 1-1 of the 133rd Fighter Test Squadron,
Hardway
Air Group! You can read our transponders so why the hell are you capping off live rounds at my pilots?" He was still flying backwards so that he could see the idiots shooting at them, and as he spat rage into his mic, the owner of the sandpaper voice flew towards him slowly, using only little bursts from her maneuvering jets. The Hellcats' flight leader came closer and closer until she and Jordo faced each other in their cockpits with less than ten meters between them. She squinted at him through her flight helmet's visor. "What the
hell
are you doing?"
"Right now?" she said. "Right now, this second, I'm getting an up close and personal look at
famous J. 'Jordo' Colt
." She snorted into her mic and it sounded like static on comms. "I honestly didn't think it would be that easy to cap the storied Lancers. And we had you. No question about it. That was a kill." She sounded just like Burn from the flight school when she said that. "Lancers, you are advised to turn on your six and RTB. Any Squidy bandits at Groomsbridge belong to the Hellcats.
Our
kills, get it? Go home, Lancers."
Jordo stared down Hellcat 1-1, less than ten meters away and pictured giving his rear thrusters a quick tap. With a little z-axis twist from the maneuvering jets, he'd smash the starboard, bow edge of his hull against the side of her cockpit before she could react and send her spinning. He began to rationalize it. She could use a good scare. His blood got so hot thinking about it that he barely heard the next, surprisingly clear, transmissions from SCS
Taipan
.
"Hellcats, this is
Taipan
Control. All 55th Squadron flight elements, RTB immediately. 55th Hellcats, return to base." The call came over the emergency channel, maybe to make sure the Lancers heard it, too.
Hellcat 1-1 kept her eyes locked on Jordo as she spoke. "Copy your last,
Taipan.
Wilco. 55th will comply." She flipped him off. "Next time, Lancers," she said as her squadron peeled away and blasted off for the limb of the ice moon.
Dirty said, "What the hell was that all about?"
"Save it for later," he told her. "There's
Taipan
and her four carriers."
"I hope all the new pilots are that much fun." Paladin meant exactly what he said.
The Hellcats made for the battlegroup now breaking the limb of the ice moon, hiding low in the glare. As
Taipan
and her carriers came out from hiding, a dozen interceptor flights were currently launching or landing. Each of her four carriers were almost 500 meters long, only half as long as
Hardway
, but with the exception of the engines at the stern and the stubby command towers set over the bow, there wasn't anything on those carriers
but
launch bays. Not a single railgun battery or main gun of any kind appeared anywhere on them. They didn't even have defensive batteries. The four, fat hulls looked completely unarmored as well.
"Those are converted Pangzi Class ore haulers," Gusher said. "They made 'em into cheap-ass box carriers."
Jordo counted thirty-two, 90m-wide launch bays on each ship. "Each one of those bays look like they could hold two dozen fighters. More." The lack of armor made the carriers appear expendable. Between them and well-protected by swarms of fighters was
Taipan
's fragile breaching ship, SCS
Malibu
. They couldn't afford to lose her. Without
Malibu
to breach space and open a hypermass transit,
Taipan
would be stuck here with no way to travel between star systems. Its 375-meter, wonder-wheel frame looked like all the other breaching ships Jordo had seen: just one alien bomb away from total destruction.
The value placed on the survival of the command ship,
Taipan,
was evidenced by the sheer volume of armor that had been welded on her. They'd added so much belt-iron steel plate to that little, 160m hull that the defensive cannon towers were now half their original height. The launch bay doors that were once flush with the hull now sat recessed almost two-meters.
The next voice on comms from
Taipan
wasn't the air controller who'd ordered the Hellcats home. It was a woman and she spoke with an accent that wasn't regional. Not unless money was a place. "133rd Lancers, this is Matilda Witt speaking. We didn't expect to see any
Hardway
flight elements for at least another hour."
"Lancer 1-1 to
Taipan
.
Hardway
is early to the rendezvous. You should have line of sight on her in less than fi-"
Matilda Witt cut him off. "Lancer 1-1, just kindly return to that rust-bucket of yours and tell Harry Cozen that I will expect him and his senior officers aboard my ship at eighteen-hundred hours. Tell him a two-star Privateer Admiral said so. And
do
make sure you tell him it's an order."
*****
Commander Ram Devlin stood right next to Harry Cozen on
Hardway's
bridge as the call came in from Lancer 1-1. The pilot relayed Matilda Witt's message verbatim. Harry Cozen heard it. Everyone on the bridge heard it. Ram knew she could have sent that message a hundred different ways, but she wanted to give Harry Cozen an order as publicly as possible.
Dana Sellis said, "It's an order?" The question hung over
Hardway's
bridge. She looked up from the NAV console to Harry Cozen in the command chair and said, "I didn't know there was anyone outside of fleet command who outranked you."
Cozen said, "Matilda only had one star like me until recently – until she got back from her first adventure behind the Sirius Line. She probably got the Board of Directors to give her a second star
just
so she'd outrank me. And they gave it to her, the ingrates. Taking control of my flight school and
all
my new fighter squadrons wasn't enough for her. Now, she's here to lord her new rank over me as well."
"Scuttlebutt says her squadrons' casualty rates are unusually high," Biko said.
"Higher than they would have been under
my
command."
"She managed to survive for three months behind the Sirius Line on her own," Ram said. "Of course she had casualties."
"I imagine that's exactly what the Board of Directors thought, Mr. Devlin. Because once she
did
make it home, they gave her 1200 more planes and 1200 new flight school graduates...all of them." Cozen turned away and looked out the front of the bridge before he clapped his hands loudly to clear the air, rubbed his palms together fast, and rose from the command chair. "Mr. Devlin, you will arrange a relief watch to take the bridge at 1745 hours. You, along with Mr. Biko and Ms. Sellis, will accompany me to
Taipan
. And strap on your sidearm, Mr. Devlin."