:: 29/12/2000 ::
Captain Naabal stood in front of the nine pilots and took a deep breath. When he did so, I noticed that all of us were young; except for the Captain and Lt. Cm. Liir Hra, everyone was under 30. "Welcome," he said, a speech he must have given to several squadrons long dead. "As you all know, you are here because you were accepted into Angel Squadron. This squadron has no official history, but in the days of the Exodus were similar flight groups that caused key victories like those in the Great Nebula, and the final skirmish against the Emperor's Mothership. It is primarily known as a special operations squadron, and we will be tasked with jobs like escort of important trade convoys and deep space intelligence.
"During the Exodus (Alia groaned, "Here it comes,") we had Fighter battles concentrated in the first half of our journey. The second half, due to more powerful starships and weapons, was very much based on Capital Ship battles. This in regard, and due to the advent of such ships like the Multi-Gun Corvette and the Missile Destroyer, would lead most people to believe that Fighters are lost, obsolete weapons that have no more use. Our second job is to prove these people wrong.
"Even a handful of Scouts can destroy a lone Ion Cannon Frigate given enough time. Even before the Mothership left the Kharak system, a few dozen Fighters and Corvettes, yours truly among one of the pilots, were able to destroy four Assault Frigates. Many died, but those who survived went on to become the elite of the elite in starfighters, which is what we are hoping to do with you.
"Two questions are probably in your mind right now. First of all, why Interceptors? Other fighters have obvious advantages; the Bomber is stronger, the Defender has a better spread of firepower, even the Scout is faster. And as for the Cloaked Fighter," and everyone looked at Jacyn. "We all know what sets them apart. While the Fighters all have their merits, the Interceptor is the best all around dogfighter. It has no strong advantages, but no disadvantages either. Though two of our pilots, and everyone knows who they are, think otherwise, we are going to be using Interceptors all throughout our missions unless otherwise ordered.
"Second question is, why so few pilots? A wing of 45 Defenders, however good you guys think you are, could slaughter all of us in seconds. And for the most part, we will be flying solo missions. Sure, we aren't as mighty as a fully functional Battle Fleet, but we will be used for precision, small missions. We are going to be the scalpel of the Kushan fleet. Blowing up minefields and small dogfights are jobs only suitable for a squadron of our size. Also, it keeps us on a low profile as we travel through space. Small Turanic fleets, poorly defended Taiidan Imperialist bases and the occasional planet strafing will be our targets."
Everyone chewed on this for a while. He then continued, but not before he gestured for Liir Hra to rise. "We report to Commander Paktu for every mission briefing; she has supreme power as she controls the Angel Base. After her, you report to me, especially during missions. If I am detained, you report to Lieutenant Commander Liir Hra; he is Angel 3, or Lieutenant Jude Soran, Angel 2." He beamed at this praise, but everyone booed him to silence. The Captain proceeded.
"Many of you have already faced combat experience before, others have not. Nolan Hiilar, Angel 4, is a Major, which some of you may not know." No one was too surprised at this, since he has obviously faced combat before. "And our friend Jacyn Naabal back there, possibly to the greater surprise of you, is a Flight Officer." At this, everyone turned and looked at the person in the back. He stared with unbearable neutrality. "Yes, my fellow kiith member had served for a limited time during the Exodus. He was young, but he was, and I have to say still is, experienced.
"The rest of you," Alia and I blushed, "have barely faced combat. That also goes for you 1R units back there. You are cadets now, but with the help from your colleagues, you will be able to rise to perfection, and perhaps even become a great Fleet Admiral in the Kushan navy. Today, you will be faced with your first mission, but it will only be a primary training mission. I will be passing the briefing over to Commander Paktu."
He walked off the podium, sat down next to Liir Hra, and the commander stood up. She turned to face the viewport, which led all of our gazes to it (except, of course, for the robots.) There was merely the sight of Hiigara at first, but it quickly moved past the transparisteel, and the view then shifted to a spiralling, blue corridor. She turned (or maybe pivoted, given the calculated look of the process) to the squadron, and began. "Good morning." She pressed a few buttons on the black podium, and a holographic representation of the Hiigaran system and Angel Base. The Angel Base was shown as inside a purple "ping," indicating a hyperspace jump. "We have just departed from the system, and in about two hours we will reach this point." The display zoomed out to a radius of four light-years, then a purple ping showed up at the very edge of this circle. It zoomed in on that point, and displayed a holo-image of a small debris field.
"This is a class 2 asteroid field, designated as SDC 238. The density of the field is far from enough to be harvested, so we are going to use it as a training field for basic weapons usage and targeting practice. You all know that your Interceptors are fully loaded with five million standard issue armor piercing bullets. Try not to shoot each other. You would be wasting valuable resources, and we would have to fill out death forms for you." There was some light laughter, but with a quick slash of her hand we stopped.
"Seriously, you better get to your ships. Preparation for the mission should keep you busy until we exit hyperspace." We all got up and filed out of the room in a proper fashion. We moved to the outer part of the ship, towards the docking pads. They were only circular airlocks that bonded to identical holes on the bellies of Fighter-class vessels.
The lock mechanism was three-fold: first of all, I turned a dial in the center of the circle, with a gear-like cranking coming out of it. When I cranked it twice around clockwise, I heard a sort of hydraulic unlocking. Then I pulled at the dial until a larger portion of the circle slid out of the casing. When it was out its furthest, I could see that the circumference of it looked like a cogwheel, with several large pits where I could wrap my hand around. I pushed it around counter-clockwise until I heard another unlocking sound. Finally, after pulling the entire circle out, I squeezed between the circle mechanism and the wall to place my eye in a retinal scanner. There was something like a magnetic clap, and the final section opened up very artificially.
I crawled through this gateway and into the cockpit of my Interceptor, the whole lock automatically closing behind him. When it finally closed, my ship computer concluded, "Cockpit pressurized." I punched in a sequence on the control panel, and the computer said, "Identify." I cleared my throat and said, "Cadet Jake Sjet." All the lights in my cockpit turned on. Looking through my canopy, I could see myself looking up the stretch of the Troop Transport's hull. The background behind it was still blue; we were still in transit.
Suddenly, I heard a warning signal emerge from my computer. A green wire frame representation of every ship in the squadron came up on the screen. The fourth one, Angel 4's Interceptor, was flashing red. Napalm's ship! I touched his ship's image and it brought up a set of schematics, and a red sign flashing the words Atmosphere Regulators Compromised!
I patched in a comlink to his ship, and said alarmed, "Nolan! Are you OK?" His coughing voice returned my call. "Yeah, I'm fine. I lit up one of my cigars and the computer started flipping out." I took a long breath of relief, and then I heard Captain Naabal tell him, "This is Angel One, cut out that smoking during flights, alright?" With contempt in his voice, he replied, "Yes, sir."
When we got out of hyperspace, all of us cut off the mag-locks and broke off of the base. The Captain immediately addressed us, and I could see the debris field in front of us. "Alright, Angels. Lets move into X formation. Cut throttle to 65% thrust and keep it that way. I don't want you running into an asteroid on our first mission." I turned my ship into the formation, with Angel One's ship at the center and 1RF's ship as the extra person on one of the "lines."
Jude's voice cut through the silence, while his blond hair and youngish face appeared on the surface of my canopy. "Sir, are we going to do this auto-form, or are we going to break into flight pairs?" By auto-form, he meant that our ships would be locked in our present formation and the flight leader controlled the direction we headed in. All we as pilots could do was to pivot our ships within a limited demisphere to attack targets. This limited maneuverability and synergy, but it kept the entire squadron together. "We'll be using flight pairs today. Any other days you will be broken into four tri-ship formations in Delta formation."
As the debris field grew in my canopy, I could feel my trigger finger shaking. I took off the weapons safety systems and the ammunition display lit up, with all five million rounds accounted for. "Alright, break up! Try to get the highest score." Jacyn and I flew off from the already dissolving formation while I targeted one of the smaller rocks.
It rotated in my targeting window, but without any specifications I would have gotten had I targeted a ship. The range grew less and I waited for my crosshairs to give me the go. When my proximity sensors and targeting lasers confirmed a hit, my crosshairs lit up and I fired a few dozen bullets at the thing. The first few only riddled it with holes, but the others hit the micro fractures I'd created and the thing broke apart.
I targeted another one, but before I realised it had broken up by Jacyn. "Nice shooting." He didn't answer, but I saw him do several complex braking and sharp turns to vaporise two more rocks before my eyes. Wow, I thought. I blew up one that was in front of me, and then I dove down into the denser portions of the field. I juked left and right a few times to barely miss some rocks, and I fired off a few more times.
I targeted another one, but Nolan's ship flew in front of me and wasted it. "Ha!" he said. He cut all thrust and circled his ship around everywhere and shot several rocks on his way, laughing giddily as he did so. "What the hell are you doing, Napalm?" yelled Jude, whom he had hit on one of the "wings." "Relax, man. Just trying to get that high score."
I was getting pretty good after five minutes. I had taken out about five small rocks and was currently working on a large one. "Captain," I asked. "Why doesn't the fleet set up training fields with Probes as targets? After all, you can build about twenty of them for just one Shipment." (Shipments are a measurement used for interstellar mining, where the amount of minerals a Resource Collector can relay to its command ship in one trip is one Shipment.) "Well, you know that there are some such training fields orbiting the Angel Moon, and we use them to test out combat performance of new ships; I think they're checking out the new Acolyte ship there now. The thing is, however, for the same price of building twenty Probes you can build an Ion Cannon Frigate. War machines are the things on priority right now, and we have to economise. These such fields are gold mines in a sense, because micro-asteroids are about the same thing as Probes, but they're naturally occurring. The cost to send a resource team out to this place outweighs the amount of resources they would get from it, so they're rented out as combat training facilities."
This seemed quite logical to me, and I had just nuked my target asteroid when a klaxon sounded in the cockpit. The Captain's shaken voice played over the comm. as he said, "Red Alert! Repeat, Red Alert! All ships on Evasive patterns. The Angel Base is under attack, repeat, the Angel Base is under attack!"
