THE ADVENTUROUS LIFE OF A LOUSY COWBOY, ISSUE #5: DEVILS RIDE
04 Jun 2016Mike Syron
[ ongoing story, go back: ISSUE #4 ]Swearwords went through the distorted aether. Sudden moves were pushing Mike in different directions, screaming alarm sounds stunned his ears. The formation broke apart, the Rocinante rushed away, the hell knew, what happened to the others. Stars and the nearby gas giant were dancing all around him.
„Interdiction attempt detected.“ stated Lady Obvious.
An erratically moving graphical symbol in Mike’s view field pointed to an escape vector, like some obsessed gambler he tried to keep the ship’s nose right in its direction. Pitch - pitch - pitch - roll’n'yaw - pitch - pitch - roll'n'yaw. The g-forces were dragging keenly on his body, he almost lost orientation.
Tango’s distant voice, „Submit! Submit! Submit!“
Alright, fuck it!
He pulled the throttle control back to zero, but it was to late already. Mikes Viper got spit out from the FSD cruise with high pace and wildly spinning around. Fuses burnt out, the abrupt breakup caused a massive energy backslash and critical temperatures in the drives, triggering different alert sounds. Demanding everything from the thrusters, he tried to stabilize the flight course, but the ship appeared bitchy to him, the systems were overheating. It all took way to much time.
„What the …“ The shields were already busy withstanding heavy weapon fire, Mike shouted „Shields on full! Pick closest threat!“
Finally he got his Viper under control again. The scanner showed an Eagle like fighter right behind him, shooting with everything it got at him. Hellish fast unguided missiles and multi-cannon shelling hit him hard, giving his defense a lot to suck up.
Assist off - countermeasures - boost - turn - reverse thrust - assist on. A beer can flew across the cockpit, the view outside was suddenly full of tiny glowing particles. There your are - with fixed weapons, the chaffs helped nothing, even Mike’s point defense had trouble stopping the missiles. Yikes. How much ammunition did this fucker got for shit's sake?
Mikes shields were going down rapidly, he opened fire. Two gimbaled burst lasers began to test the shields of the enemy, the targeting systems locked on and Mike pushed the trigger. Two of his own missiles rushed and hit instantly. The pilot on the other side lost pace, was trying to get some distance. Mike let him for a couple of seconds then he engaged the forward gear again, screaming "Engines on full!", pushing the main engines and downside thrusters to the limits, while keeping the target on the cross. The fighter moved its nose as expected, following Mikes arc motion till he was close enough again.
"Pick his engines!" he ordered the computer. Boost - assist off - hard turn around - assist on - full throttle.
"Weapons on full!" The fighter passed him closely and Mike was now just right behind him, still firing. But that fucker was fast, incredible fast, his pitch rate forced him to put all energy to the engines again. This wasn't your standard combat equipped Eagle, this thing was something different and its pilot was nowhere near being some clueless rookie. He managed almost with no effort to let Mike look like an asshole. An incredible slow moving asshole, that is.
Where the hell did he come from? And where were the others?
"Shields down.“ The bullets that hit his enforced hull now made da-da-da-da-da, punching and scratching the steel between him and the certain death. His pulse went through the roof, it scared the crap out of him.
"Hey!" shouted Mike into the mic, his voice had became very throaty. "Anybody out there? Could use some help with this tedious shithead here!“
There. Another dot on the scanner was coming closer, Mike desperately hoped that it wasn't just another enemy fighter. It wasn't, it was Tango's Eagle which signature now looked eerily similar to the one of the enemy. Mike was about to get shot into pieces, when Tango let him know, “Beware! These are highly specialized black op’s interceptors! Forget everything you know, this is dead serious combat! - Your Viper’s not prepared, whatever you try!"
Holy shit. Tango still managed to be calm and professional though you could clearly hear the adrenaline rushing in his veins. He opened fire while doing a maneuver that seemed almost impossible to put him right into position. Mike guessed it was some awesome way to say „hello“ to another ace pilot. The enemy fighter reacted immediately and left his Viper alone. Feeling a cold shower Mike watched the wild dance those two pilots began to fly. Physics was for rookies, this was the real shit looking pretty much surreal. Like two guys in jump suits falling down to the surface and giving each other a fight for their lives with fists and teeth.
„Give me fire support, Jackass!“ roared the radio.
„Yeah, yeah! Trying my best here!“ Mike put all energy to the weapons systems and was very tempted to fire another load of missiles but Tango kept being awfully close to the enemy, the last thing he could use now would be friendly fire.
Under concentrated fire the enemy finally lost his shields and suddenly was very vulnerable, Mike’s lasers were still targeting his engines and doing a lot of damage to them now. In a matter of seconds only they popped, ripping the entire fighter apart into two pieces. Tango showed absolutely no mercy and finished him off for good. „Nice one, Jackass.“ he lauded Mike heavily breathing.
„Nice one? - That asshole killed me almost! Did you really say black op’s? What the hell was he doing here? “
„They, pilot. They’re simply executing political moves the hard way. Watching what was going on here in LTT for a while, their appearance surprises me by no means. - Although I had hoped to not run into them as we just did. - Follow me now, we need to catch up with Rosinante and Bulls as fast as we can! They’re about ninety clicks away!“
„This means some serious big force is involved … Fuck, Tango, this is getting better and better! What’s next? A massive Thargoid invasion? - Nobody can ever pay me properly for this bullshit!“
„Thargoids are gone, pilot. I guess because they finally got what we’re doing to ourselves already all the time and decided to sit back and just watch the show. But who knows they might have some black op’s running themselves to push it in a direction they like.“
„Yeah, you’re not the first saying this. - But what force are we talking about?“
„I can’t say, in fact they all tend to look pretty much the same to hide their origin, even imitating each other as much as they can. But Fed’s tend to be a little more chatty while in fight, executing the ABC of psychology warfare at the same time.“
Mike shook his head, he just didn’t want to know all this stuff. „Enough of it, really! A universe full of assholes, that it is. I’m so fed up with this shit, it just makes my mind go berserk!“
Tange chuckled, that was surprising. „You don’t know nothing, pilot.“
They put all juice to the engines and were boosting as much as they could. Rosinante’s scanner echo appeared on the projection as well as three other fast moving echoes. Myung-Dae was swearing like some grunty trooper, her breathless voice came through the radio again, Bulls was giving some awfully scary war cry while pushing her Cobra beyond any limits. This was just a fucking nightmare, Mike thought, it was the worst possible scenario he could ever had imagined.
Tango just pushed forward like a damn rocket with a nuclear warhead on it, Mike couldn’t keep up his pace. „Go, go, go, Rosinante! Charge your hyperdrives now! You have to leave! They won’t follow you, they don’t care about you, they just want you to have gone!“
Myung-Dae’s Keelback got at least some very effective weapons it seemed, the black op’s interceptors eagerly tried to avoid getting near its firing range while Bulls was challenging them again and again. The Cobra’s left main engine was already showing some dark smoke and all of the sudden it zigzagged and set some unintentional looking course away from Rocinante.
Way to get toasted very fast and one of the fighters just went for it.
Before Mike could even think about it he made a far-reaching decision at this very moment. All what he was seeing right now was some kid having big troubles, and he absolutely had no chance to resist the feelings this was triggering. His own voice sounded unknown to him when he heard himself saying: „Tango, take care about Rocinante. Go and leave.“
Tange disagreed, „You won’t make it, Jackass! Better keep in Rocinante’s range, everything else is suicide! - Bulls is lost even I can’t stand a chance against two of them!“
„Jackasses are pretty stubborn pricks. Get the fuck out of here.“
„Mike!“ Myung-Dae interfered. „That’s not your fight, you idiot! You never have been hired for this! Better stay alive and kick Lambert’s ass later!“
Bulls still was yowling her war cry, but it began to sound really desperate. Mike’s heart was stamping like an old huge jack-hammer. Ba-boom - ba-boom - ba-boom - ba-boom. A lot of confusing thoughts and memories tried to lead him astray from what he was about to do, but all his will was already sharply focussed at the scene in front of him. It was just the right thing to do now, nothing could stop him anymore.
„Leave him, Rocinante!“ said Tango, realizing what happened. „He’s got some serious hero’s syndrome, we can’t do anything about it, believe me. I’ve seen to much of them. - Jump already!“
„Nooo, Mike! No, no, no! Please!“
He didn’t listen, instead he fired all he’d got at the target, shouting: „Bulls, get your fucking jump drive ready! I say this only once!“
She cursed and insulted him as an answer. The enemy fighter took notice of the sudden shelling and aborted shooting at her, breaking out from the pursuit. „Bulls, charge your fucking jump drive, now!“
„Shields online.“ - „All Energy to shields!“
Boost. Assist off. Turn around. Reverse thrust. Assist on. Countermeasures. And Fire! Fire! Fire!
Mike felt nothing but glowing wrath. „Come one, you fucking black op’s shithead asshole! Get some! Kitty-kitty-kitty! You soulless piece of thargoid shit! LEMME SEE WHAT YOU GOT!“
He’d got lots of missiles and some infernal armor-piercing military grade bullets - but almost no shields left. Damn capacitors, always running out - here, catch some missiles! The enemy showed him how to fly like an ace, drawing circles while rolling like some moron. Mike swore to himself that he would show him how to fight with a strong, pumping heart in the breast.
„Bulls, I say it only one more time! …“
„It’s alright, daaad! Gottit! I’m charging like fuck you see?“
„Good girl.“
His shields failed at the same time as those from the enemy. The unknown pilot tried immediately to break out again, looking for distance. But Mike knew now that his machine was pretty fragile with almost no armor at all. He targeted his engines and made the decision to give all juice to the engines, otherwise the enemy would be out of his range soon. The main drives blared out loudly pressing him deep into his seat.
In the corner of his eye he saw the flash when Bulls entered hyperspace. The scanner showed that all were gone by now, the Rocinante, Tango and last but not least - Bulls.
„Good girl.“
The engines exploded, the black op’s interceptor broke apart. Mike heard something like „Son of a gun!“ coming from the radio but it must be imagined he was certain. He didn't forgot the other interceptor and knew that he had won nothing and in fact was lost, with no shields, a pretty damaged hull and pretty much drained capacitors. This fact let woke him up again, giving him no chance to make peace with himself or such thing. Something deep in his brain just didn’t want to die. Not yet, not under these circumstances.
Regardless what his chances were. Life always loved to stay alive.
It took the other fighter only a few seconds to blow his Viper into smithereens.