Duty, 5: The Watch
28 Apr 2022Meowers
There's one rule... Or a way of thinking? However, it never lets me down. The more subsequent good days I see, the higher my chances to meet a wave of shit next day. I can't say it's a good thing to think about, but hey... As if I have something else. So... It was a long day. Literally. I'm recording it and spending my last bits of energy left, I need a sleep. Shit... It's going to be long, as long as this day was.
It was a routine patrol near Alcyone, waypoints were HIP-17-something and a few unnamed systems. Keeping miners and cartographers safe or just floating around and looking at the sensors. An ordinary start of an ordinary day, turned some Cyclopes into an oozy jelly and even one Basilisk... Damn that scum is fast! And the cannons are far more deadly than what Cyclopes have. When it reaches its full speed, it becomes only a bit slower than Marshmallow on a boost, and faster than the rest of the wing. You have to use its momentum against it, turning around and then boosting past it, or doing sharp manoeuvres, or forcing it to turn and lose speed. Tricky bastard.
Finishing off another pair of unlucky Cyclopes, we stopped to take a look at each other's ships and assess the damage before we proceed with our patrol; it was, like, two hours left or so. We all had some breaches and scratches already, personally I was awarded with two holes in the left wing, HUD was flickering and one heatsink was refusing to operate from time to time. Far from being seriously damaged however.
We were about to finish our coffee to keep ourselves sharp, and then that message on the long-range comms. From the Atlas. Shit.
"All wings, remain on duty, increased Thargoid activity detected."
What kind of?.. Ah, the sensors were clear, nothing, not a one blip. Hours and hours, on a high orbit of a blinding blue-white star. Time was... So sickeningly slow. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Joseph gave a status report and requested a permission to return only to hear 'negative'. However... When was the last time I was concentrated like that? I can't even remember. Like a coiled spring, waiting for a signal and ready to strike, to scatter that piece of green crap all over the system, just give me one... Just give me one damn Thargoid right now and I'll rip it apart! Now! Nothing.
Fourteen hours. Six hours of patrolling and then eight of looking at damn nothing.
Got it. Non-human signal, threat level 6. Yeah, it was a Basilisk. Drop in, spread out, open fire, making it rush frantically from side to side, two ships were getting past it, and two another were hitting it hard right in the back when it was turning around. Everything was quite normal, we did well despite the damage, and then a Cyclops showed up. Joseph sent two other pilots at it, while we were dealing with the Basilisk... And another Cyclops. Received an order to attack it when Basilisk was about to go down, only to see two more emerging from the black right in front of me. Shit. One, two is okay, but it was a pack of them.
Christine and David were doing okay two-on-one, but going one-on-one with the Cyclopes was still risky for them, and Joseph and I were busy with our own targets. My four Gauss cannons were thundering when I heard that faint radio signal, and it wasn't coming from the ship... It was a suit comm device. I wasn't able to recognise the words well through the noise but Joseph left his barely breathing Cyclops to me and immediately turned around and boosted. Shit. Two-on-one. Joseph's target was almost dead and limping towards me with all four hearts destroyed, so I finished it off first. Took some hits in the back from the second one, lost a heatsink launcher and one manoeuvring thruster, but I was ready to strike back. Deploying a pair of heatsinks, I turned around and started hammering it with cannons until it cracked in half.
Christine's Chieftain was badly damaged, she lost both engines on the right, also had a broad hull breach and debris were scattered all around the vessel. Left engines were shut down and the ship was unpowered, just floating away in space. But the worst part... She had a fuel leak. That trail of evaporating and freezing hydrogen fuel that could ignite and turn her crippled ship into a fireball if anyone gets too close and touches it with the thruster exhaust.
I was almost out of ammo already and requested a permission to help her while Joseph and David were pulling two remaining Thargoids away and dealing with them. Reaching an optimal range of her suit comms, I could even hear the heavy breath and magboots clanking, she was walking quickly towards the airlock to evacuate. Turning around and using my frontal thrusters to equalise the speed and prevent the fuel ignition, I set Marshmallow floating, then left the pilot seat and went to the main airlock in the back of the ship as well.
Safety harness. Cord. Jetpack. Keep away from the fuel. Go!
When I grabbed Christine by the hand and activated the rollback... More of them showed up. Just a... Damn swarm. Ten, maybe, or even more, they were just... Everywhere. Goddamn everywhere. It was just too much. Finally reaching the pilot seat... Shit, those seconds were like hours, I had to carefully move sidewards from the fuel trail before boosting away, or that Chieftain will become a bomb. Then... Joseph's voice on the comms.
"Muir, Willett, do not engage, repeat, do not engage the Thargoids, pull them away!"
David joined me. He got some serious damage too, his ship was leaving a trail of sparks, cockpit was cracked, but still holding together, several hull breaches, two cannons were just ripped off along with the hardpoints. And he told me his sensors were out. That was just... Crap! Having no chance to see where the Thargoids were, he had to stick to me, and we were running away from them together... Eight. Damn eight... Couldn't scan them to see the type. And Joseph was pulling away a bunch of similar size, heading into the opposite direction.
Caught myself saying "crap!" audibly when I lost his signal, but then I realised that he was just out of the sensor range, but still on the comms, hah. He was doing okay too, with the half of the swarm trying to catch him without any success. He was requesting assistance from the Atlas, we didn't stand a chance on our own.
And then the cavalry arrived. Three AXDF wings, fresh and angry. And we made their job a lot easier by separating the pack. So, when they began to beat all the crap out of the Thargoids, we gathered together and headed back... At last. Jump, another jump, another... So... Wingmates were chatting about something not exactly important to calm their nerves down, guys on their ships and Christine in my co-pilot seat, and I was silent and... Happy? Perhaps. What is 'happiness' for me? What does it mean? What I will be thinking about, being happy? I guess I don't even know. Maybe I'm still yet to know. Still searching for answers. But... I did well. I played my part. I was needed there today. They needed my actions, my effort, me. And we were going back safe and sound.
What more could I ask for?..
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Christine Holbrook