Well, ain’t that a thing? “They didn’t make ours,” Peters pointed out.
“I had forgotten that.” Keezer looked forward, a grim expression on her face. “They might be able to do something, if their weapons work and they can get out in time.”
“How long are we likely to have?”
“I don’t know. Right now they’re waiting for us to stop and open up for them. There’s no way to know how long it will take for them to get impatient and start really shooting.”
“Chief, Keezer says the planes might help if we can get them out in time, but there ain’t no way to know how long we’ve got.”
“It can’t hurt to try.” Pause. “Can we launch in High Phase?”
Keezer snarled when that was relayed. “Ssth. Didn’t you feel it? The ferassi brought us down. We can’t go to High Phase as long as they’re out there.” Flash. Thud.
“Understood.” Pictures of home! the music player sang. “Chief, the bad guys done turned off the zifthkakik an’ we’re not in High Phase any more. If we can get ‘em manned we can launch.”
“Roger that.” There was a pause, probably Joshua giving instructions on another channel. A sailor started toward the bow at a dead run, and officers in poopy suits and helmets were straggling out their quarters hatch and pounding toward the hangar accesses. After a minute the hatches started retracting, relatively quietly thanks to Warnocki and the maintenance crews, but the bow door would take longer; the sailor had half a kilometer to cover before he could reach the override control. Guys with M22s were popping out of the EM quarters hatch, some taking up guard stations there, others running across to cover the hangar accesses and elevator.
Flash flash thud thud!
“They are starting to get impatient,” Keezer noted. The Grallt complexion was duskier than the average for the humans, but she was a shade lighter than Todd.
“Yes… Don’t they have more effective weapons? All they’ve done so far is make noise.” Flash thud, as if to emphasise that.
Snarclass="underline" “Of course they do, and they could start using them any tle. They could destroy us in an antle or less, but what use would it be? They want to raid, not destroy.” Flash, brighter and yellow, wham, a more distinct shock. “They are starting to escalate now.”
First a Hornet, then a Tomcat, rolled out of the hangar access under their own power, a flat miracle in so little time. The armorers were walking—well, half running—alongside, trying to tinker with the HEL pods. A crackle, and Commander Collins’s throaty alto: “Hornet Two Zero One is rolling.” Flash flash wham! wham!
Keezer spun. “What the fuck was that?”
“It’s a radio, one of our communicators, salvaged from the damaged ship.” That had occasioned some debate, but it had been decided that the extra UHF radio would be most useful to control approaches and recovery. They now really needed an LSO, but Joshua had managed enough force to keep Lieutenant Carson out of the bay; Howell should have handled it.
Flash flash wham! WHAM! Howell wasn’t here. “Hornet Two Zero One, this is Green Three-Seven at the retarders. Read you five by,” Peters told the mike. Smoke on the water—fire in the sky blared from across the bay.
Crackle. “Roger, Green Three-Seven. Tomcat One Zero One is saddling up now.” Flash flash wham! wham! Debris drifted by the aft opening.
The bow door was grinding open, 201 and 207 were side by side with redshirts scrambling to get the pods closed, 102 was moving up, and things were starting to get confusing. Peters had no training as an Air Controller; nobody in the detachment did—repair and maintenance people had been considered more important, especially when they’d found out communications would be limited or nonexistent. That being the case, he shut up and let the pilots handle it among themselves.
The aft opening lit up in a yellow flash that half-blinded them and projected a wave of heat. “The field seems to be holding,” Peters remarked.
“For now,” Keezer agreed with a short nod. “If they crank up the power any more” FLASH “anything could happen.”
The Hornets launched without benefit of Warnocki’s theatrical gestures, and the first Tomcat followed, the access hatch of its HEL pod flopping. A sailor was down, a redshirt who’d been caught by the gear; a couple of others grabbed and dragged him clear before the next Tomcat finished the job. FLASH FLASH. This time the waves of heat were enough to make Peters glad of the helmet visor; Keezer winced aside, covering her face with her hands.
FLASH FLASH WHAM! WHAM! More debris spun by, but the planes were launching at such close intervals that one would still be short of the bow when another started rolling. Access hatches were flopping or absent, one Tomcat was entirely missing the lower rear panel that had once covered the engines, and more than one canopy wasn’t properly secured. It didn’t really matter—all the crews were in kathir suits—but Peters thought it sloppy. Hmph. Quick and dirty.
FLASH FLASH WHAM! WHAM! FLASH WHAM!
The UHF was crackling, the short clipped comments of pilots getting formed up and ready. The bad guys were getting more insistent, the flashes and shocks getting stronger and stronger, and more debris floated by. Some of it had arms and legs; Peters’s internal hope that it was all property damage was cut off in mid-thought. Six Hornets and four Tomcats were out, the later ones a lot more shipshape than the first few, two more of each were moving up, and the music screamed yeah, yeah, yeah, space truckin’, yeah, yeah, yeah, space truckin’.
FLASH! A bar of green light, looking solid enough to cut slices off, slammed across the bay, blinding everybody momentarily and glancing off the deck, catching one of the Tomcats square in the tail. The F-14 launched anyway, trailing bits of aluminum and composite that had once been aerodynamic control surfaces but weren’t exactly necessary in vacuum. A second beam caught a Hornet midships, and that one wasn’t going anywhere; the two halves went spinning up the bay, scattering people and airplane parts up the port side, where the prep crews waited. Maybe they were all behind the vertical beams. Maybe not.
The third one didn’t come, and Peters shook his head grimly and looked aft, just in time to see one of the panels he thought were windows on the front of the ferassi ship explode in a shower of bits and pieces. Another explosion chopped a chunk off the lower left corner, where one of the weapons was, and a pair of fleeting shapes—Hornets, from a subliminal impression—flashed from “overhead” and skimmed the enemy vessel, more shards flying off it as they did so.
The ship rotated in an eyeblink, trying to bring its guns to bear, but a couple of Tomcats approached from “high” and to the right as a trio of Hornets scissored in from the left. Big chunks went flying. “Gotcha, you son of a murdering bitch,” came from the UHF.
“Kill, don’t brag,” followed immediately; the voice sounded like Collins. The planes proceeded to do just that. They were tiny compared to the ferassi ship, but the enemy seemed to have weapons emitters only on its front face, and no matter how it turned the humans had two or three coming from the other way. More big chunks flew. The lasers didn’t make visible flashes, but they carved pieces off just fine, thank you.
At last it quit moving. The front face was again toward them, and the steady green light at lower center—now upper right—was out. A cloud of debris surrounded it, all made of its own substance; the humans had been too quick, and the ferassi too surprised, for any of the planes to get caught by its weapons. Some of the debris was human-shaped, and some of those were wiggling. Two Tomcats and a Hornet took up station between the ferassi ship and Llapaaloapalla, and the front face of the enemy started coming apart in methodical blasts, top left to lower right, two per second as if keeping march time.