“Franco is taking heavy damage,” Farley reported. “Her drives are being targeted specifically.”
Ted winced as he peered down at the display. The alien starfighters had converged to the rear of the frigate and were pouring fire into her, shattering her armour piece by piece. There was no escape, he saw; even as his starfighters raced desperately towards the frigate the aliens finally succeeded. A series of explosions blew the frigate into a ball of radioactive plasma. Her tormentors slipped away and vanished into the distance, then turned and zoomed back towards another frigate. The human starfighters moved to block them.
“Beta Squadron needs to reload,” Fitzwilliam said. “Alpha Squadron is running dry too.”
“Call them back,” Ted ordered.
Gritting his teeth, he mentally cursed the aliens for having such effective weapons — and for not needing to reload in the middle of an engagement. If Ark Royal had been a modern carrier, recalling her fighters to reload would have been disastrous. Even with her heavy armour and heavier weapons, it still wasn't particularly safe for Ark Royal to have a quarter of her remaining starfighters out of the battle. But there was no alternative…
“Hit,” Farley exulted, suddenly. “We got one of the bastards!”
Ted felt a desperate flash of hope as he saw one of the alien carriers staggering out of formation, having taken a bomb-pumped laser to her main hull. He found himself torn in two as the aliens struggled to save their ship, torn between praying for them to succeed and praying for them to fail. There was a brotherhood between human spacers, no matter what interstellar power they served, but did that brotherhood include the aliens? For all he knew, they didn't even have the concept of brotherhood. But he couldn't help feeling torn in two…
The display blinked, then replaced the icon representing the alien carrier with an expanding sphere marking a cloud of debris. “Target destroyed,” Farley reported. “I say again, target destroyed.”
“Good,” Ted said. The aliens had to feel the loss of a carrier… although God knew they’d killed almost ten alien carriers since they’d gone to war. But would it be enough to force them to take a step backwards and let Ark Royal escape? “Target the other carrier and continue firing.”
On the display, the alien craft converged, then flashed back towards Ark Royal with murderous intent.
Kurt was finding it hard to keep track of everything that was going on in the combat zone, despite his best efforts. His carefully-planned formations had fallen apart as soon as the battle had begun, forcing pilots to fly with whatever wingmen they could find. The aliens seemed to have definitely learnt from experience, filling space with thousands upon thousands of plasma bolts that threatened to wipe the human starfighters from existence. At least one of his pilots, he’d noted savagely, had died because he’d flown right into the path of one of the plasma bolts, his craft exploding before he'd even recognised his mistake.
He took a shot at an alien fighter, then gave chase… but the alien pilot rapidly outpaced him, then flipped around and came darting back. Kurt braced himself, allowed the computers to take the shot as soon as it became possible, then yanked his starfighter to one side. Warning lights blinked up as plasma blasts flashed past his position, but none of them managed to score a hit. The alien pilot wasn't so lucky. A direct hit smashed his starfighter to atoms.
“Good shot, boss,” Gladys called. “A little help over here, perhaps?”
Kurt nodded, barking orders as he flipped his starfighter around and moved to her assistance. The aliens were taking ruthless advantage of their numerical superiority, ganging up on the human pilots and forcing them to scatter. Kurt drove at one alien craft and had the satisfaction of seeing its pilot jumping out of the way, then broke through to cover Gladys as she turned to make the run back to the carrier.
Clever bastards, he thought, sourly. The aliens knew the human pilots needed to reload, so they were trying to make it impossible for them to return to the carrier. He ordered Beta Squadron to cover the incoming fighters, but he was rapidly running out of pilots with loaded weapons. The entire wing was running low on ammunition.
“Alpha and Gamma, prepare to return,” he ordered. Both squadrons were low, but most of the pilots still had some ammunition left. “Let them come close before you open fire.”
He felt a moment of unwilling admiration for the alien pilots as they streaked to block their path back to the human carrier. They’d already picked off the point defence weapons covering the landing deck, allowing themselves to lurk there and pick off human starfighters trying to land. It was clever, he admitted, although they weren't trying to fire into the carrier. The armour would prevent a series of explosions that would destroy the ship, but they could easily render the landing bay effectively useless. Or were they more interested in picking off the starfighters?
Kindred, he thought. Successful starfighter pilots were neither the wild untamed dogs the movies made them out to be or slavishly obedient servants of the military. It was strange to realise that they might have something in common with the alien pilots…
“Fire,” he ordered.
Caught by surprise, five alien starfighters were picked off before they even realised that their intended prey was far from toothless. The remainder scattered, just long enough to allow the human pilots to land and rush through the reloading cycle. Kurt slumped in his seat as the ground crew went to work, feeling utterly exhausted. They were in deep trouble and it was far from over. He’d have to go back out within moments…
He looked over at Rose’s starfighter, then cursed himself angrily. Whatever else happened, he wanted her to survive… and that was the kind of emotion he could not allow.
Moments later, the starfighter lurched as it was shoved back into the battle.
“The starfighters are down to three squadrons worth of starfighters,” Farley said, quietly.
Ted nodded. Only three frigates remained intact and largely undamaged, allowing the aliens to concentrate their efforts on Ark Royal herself. The repairs they’d carried out had made it harder for the alien pilots to get into range, but not impossible. Ted had deduced that the aliens had no tradition of actually repairing their ships outside a shipyard, as the alien pilots seemed to have assumed that weapons damaged or destroyed at New Russia hadn't been replaced. And they were still thirty minutes from Tramline Two.
“Understood,” he said. They needed time to recuperate, then reorganise their squadrons. The CAG had done an excellent job, but the pilots needed more guidance than could be provided in the middle of a battle. “And our mass drivers?”
“Down to one-third projectiles,” Farley said. “We haven’t scored a single hit.”
“I know,” Ted said. “But keep firing.”
He scowled. The aliens were aware of the danger now and were taking precautions, even if it meant withholding some of their starfighters from the swarms tearing the human fleet apart. They'd come close to scoring a hit on the other carrier, but there was no such thing as proximity damage where mass drivers and inert projectiles were concerned. They either scored a hit or they didn't. There was no middle ground. But, he told himself, if they kept spitting projectiles towards the carrier, the aliens would be forced to keep some of their starfighters back to cover their ship…