Fire in the Heavens
02 Jun 2019Vallysa
The faint, burnt taste of ozone from the stale oxygen filled Vallysa's nose and the reverberating echo of her breath filled her head through the sealed helmet of the Remlock suit. The thin glass of her helmet was now the only thing between her and the vacuum of space as she stared through the naked panes of metal where her cockpit canopy used to be. She was racing, racing against time, as her reserve oxygen levels slowly depleted...and as she knew so much of the Legion's best pilots were still fighting for the very future of Khruttones just a few light seconds behind her.She dropped into realspace near the AEGIS ship Liberator and hurled her vessel towards an open landing pad. The AEGIS ships, rendered inoperable in the fight against the Thargoids by their size and obsolete technology, served as little more than emergency repair platforms for the private fleets of independent pilots who had taken upon themselves the defense of human space from the alien incursions. The ship had been prepped for her landing: a small army of emergency repair mechanics and technicians were ready in their zero-G suits for her to semi-crash onto the pad, their time and materials funded completely by her own pool of funds accrued through much more lucrative and innocuous trading, mining, and exploration activities. Had she had more time to think beyond the countdown timer of her own evaporating O2 levels, she would have twisted her lip at the inability of an inter-system "human defense" organization to ultimately amount to nothing more than a vehicle to provide her "at cost" repairs while she and so many others risked their lives and fortunes to stop the insectoid tide.
The beefy landing gear of her Assault Ship absorbed the energy of her impact and the hive of human workers surrounded her in an unbelievable flurry of singularly focused activity; there was no time for the usual art and precision of the repairs she preferred to keep her personal fleet in pristine order. Hundreds of tons of raw, unrefined armor plates were stripped from her hull and replaced with irregular sheet metal, hasty welds, and temporary rivets. These fixes wouldn't stand the test of long term space travel, but they would buy her precious seconds of protection against the inevitable next wave of caustic globules in her immediate future. Mechanics hurriedly rushed into her cabin, spot welding canopy glass back in place and refreshing her Remlock's O2 canisters in anticipation of the next breach. Robotic monsters rushed Guardian gauss ammo back into her bays, heedless of the danger posed by the still-super-heated weapon barrels far exceeding their operating specs.
In a matter of minutes she was free of the docking pad and slammed her afterburners to get far enough away from the mass of the AEGIS ship to engage her FTL drive. Hurtling in in the opposite direction back towards the Liberator was CDR Tarror, a fellow Legionnaire somehow holding the twisted wreckage of her ship together on her own way to the likewise self-funded repair crew she had waiting. Tarror screamed onto the docking pad and the human crew swarmed her ship, plates, welds, and rivets being hastily applied even before her Krait's engines had finished shutting down. Tarror, like all the other Legionnaires, had sacrificed just as much--if not more--than Vallysa in their desperate attempts to repel the invading tide.
Vallysa's COVAS launched her ship into supercruise and she anxiously plotted the fastest route around the planet's rings back to the rest of her squadron. The squadron, led by the prominent AX commander Legate St Michael, was keeping the massive Thardoid Hydra in the space above Khruttones 9 from escaping and wreaking destruction upon the rest of the human inhabitants in system. Through the terse, staccato comms channel she was keyed into, she knew that he and the rest of the Legion commanders were in a battle for their very survival and depending on the elements of the squadron sent for emergency repairs to return and relieve them in order to allow everybody a chance to cycle through to the AEGIS ship. Upon the sudden appearance of the Thargoid interceptors, the local Federal defense forces had found themselves dramatically outclassed, and only through Michael's immediate assumption of command of the combined forces was the rest of the defense fleet still intact. Coordinating the independent Legion commanders and federal ships in the face of such a monumental threat was an almost inhuman effort.
Dropping into realspace, her vision immediately ignited with the alien fire of Guardian and Thargoid weapons intersecting each other, perhaps reflecting the unknowable battles that had happened millennia before between those two races. The hot afterburners of CDR Neverim's Cutter streaked above her, the roar audible in her cabin even through the tenuous particles and debris of space. His shard cannons unloaded into the wailing, furious flower that was the Hydra, pouring megajoules of pure destructive energy into its deceptively beautiful organic petals. Just as its attention turned to him in a furious rage--its raw emotion visible through its unworldly pulsating lights--CDR Voltis hurled himself in its line of sight, absorbing the brunt of its retaliation in his FDL's highly optimized shields. Meanwhile, CDR Emerius, a true battle-hardened veteran of the Thargoid conflict, called out continuous status updates of the battlefield in his calm, unflappable manner, belying the tension behind his deliberate and focused decimation of the screaming Thargon swarm that would have chewed through the human defenders if left unchecked.
Finally, after hours of the grueling cyclical battle of attrition against the beast, St. Michael's voice--paralleled with adrenaline and exhaustion--rang through the comms, confirming the destruction of the last energy petal only known as a "heart" of the giant monstrosity that was the Hydra ship. The end in sight, the human vessels surrounded the the alien vessel orbiting in an furious ball of light and death, silencing all remaining safety warnings in their own systems, pouring every last reserve into the vessel's husk. A wail broke though the void of space--perhaps carried through the ambient debris or through their own comms circuits, nobody could know--a fundamental and universal cry of ultimate defeat. Green blooms cascaded across the Hydra's broken body, then quickly converged and enveloped its shell before exploding in a fiery crescendo.
Vallysa finally paused and took inventory of her surroundings. The brave commanders remaining, Legion and Federal, slowly formed and triaged themselves into echelons of criticality. She looked down at her knee, mangled from a spray of caustic energy at some point during the fight, and realized that after the Remlock-administered painkillers wore off her leg would be useless and probably have to be replaced with a clone limb. Imperial rankings, fortunately, carried more benefits than just access to glamorous Gutamaya ships. St Michael reformed the remaining Legion ships. Tarror, Neverim, Voltis, Emerius...these were the ones that remained. Countless others had lost their lives in defense of the system. For a few hours, here in the orbit of Khruttones 9, there was briefly no Empire, no Federation. Only people, banding together to desperately fight against an existential threat, determined to keep the candle of humanity burning long into the infinite future.