The Demise

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

-----CHAPTER FIVE: CHASE-----

“Second Wing, left flank, fire all torpedoes! Third Wing, form up, right flank, fire all flak lasers!”
“Second Wing copies! Torpedoes away! Half of ‘em have hit all these rocks!”
“Third Wing! She’s hiding behind some large asteroids! We can’t get a clear shot!”
“That’s why I hate fighting in an asteroid field..... Third Wing to left flank, fire! Fourth Wing, vertical echelon, pursue!”
“Fourth Wing! She’s dropping seismic charges! She’s drop–”
“Fourth Wing lost! Second Wing, scatter cone, pursue!”
“She’s launching cluster torpedoes! Breaking off! Repeat, breaking off!”
“Third Wing, take down those torps, then form up behind me!”
“No can do, sir! Torps’ve already split up, we can’t stop ‘em anymore! Forming up!”
“Second Wing taking losses!”
“First Wing calling base, come in base!”
“First Wing, this is base. Pull back, repeat pull back. We’re sending Hunter squadrons after her. Pull back!”

Tamarillho had found a way to monitor the military comms frequencies without being noticed. This proved to be very handy.

Though she didn’t know what Hunter squadrons were, she knew, regarding her situation of being in an asteroid belt, having just destroyed several high-quality fighters and forcing the rest to break off their attack, it would spell trouble.

Big trouble.

A squadron of fifteen small fighters appeared on her scanner viewscreen. The speed with which they moved and the uncanny maneuverability of the fighters in the rather dense asteroid belt caused a slight hint of sheer terror to appear in Tamarillho.

She struggled to find the frequency these fighters communicated on. She found it. Robotic computer sounds. Not good.

The pack of fighters soon caught up with her. Risking a look backwards, Tamarillho saw a sleek black fighter with an approximate conical shape and a sleek bluish engine trail. As it easily flew past a largish asteroid, it performed a barrel roll. No cockpit window. No pilot hatch. Just two sleek weapons mounted on what seemed to be the underside of the nose of the fighter.

She was being chased by a squadron of robotic fighters designed specifically for work inside asteroid belts.

“OK, so you may be built for work in these bloody rock-infested regions, but can you handle a few tricks of a human mind?”

She still had three of her five seismic charges left, and eighteen of her twenty cluster torpedoes. Weighing in at ten small torpedoes per cluster torp, this was quite an arsenal, though she knew not to waste it unless there was a very good reason to. For all she knew, there might be hundreds more Hunters coming her way, out of her scanner range.

However, losing the squadron of fighters was hard. They hadn’t fired yet, but that was probably because they were still in an area with a rather high asteroid density. The fighters were clearly trying to drive her to open space, like a group of cowboys chasing a cow into an enclosure. Spotting this threat, Tamarillho took her chances and ducked straight down, away from the ecliptic plane. The fighters, after a moment’s consideration, followed her. Now, they seemed to be simply hanging on to her, following her until a new opportunity arose for them to drive her into a clear space. She wouldn’t give them that opportunity. Not if it was up to her.

However, she soon noticed a lightly dense dust cloud in an otherwise empty region, probably the site where a large asteroid had been mined to dust. The fighters went into a tighter formation and started closing in. There was no clear way to evade flying into the dust cloud, so Tamarillho had to take action.

The fighters pulled closer together and prepared for the kill.
“Come on, come on, just a little bit closer..... GOTCHA!”
Just at the edge of the dust cloud, Tamarillho dropped one of her three remaining seismic charges at almost point-blank range. The fighters had little or no time to evade. Ten of the fifteen fighters perished in the explosion, the remaining five scattered in all directions. The shockwave of the blast sent Tamarillho’s fighter spinning straight in the direction of a large asteroid. She stabilized her fighter with the nose pointing approximately downward regarding her previous course. She fired up her afterburners and narrowly avoided scraping the asteroid. She needed a new trap, a new place where she could easily take out her pursuers.

Four more squadrons suddenly appeared on her scanner viewscreen, closing in fast. The five remaining fighters of the first squadron pulled back together and resumed their chase.

Tamarillho spot her chance. A large asteroid which had a tunnel running through it, a rather wide tunnel with an S-turn in the middle. Probably the result of the miner droids following the path of a metal vein and hollowing out the asteroid as they harvested the materials.

“Ok, so you can perform some nice astrobatics. But can you handle the dirty tricks of a human mind?”

She slowed down to 20% of normal maximum speed and let the fighters close in. When the four squadrons and five fighters – totalling sixty-five pursuers – were arrayed behind her, she kicked in the afterburners again and sped for the asteroid. Making a tight turn, Tamarillho ducked into the tunnel. The fighters followed in single file. Leading them towards the S-turn, Tamarillho couldn’t stop grinning.

As she predicted, the fighters closed their ranks so as not to lose her in the turn. When all sixty-five robotic menaces were arrayed in the S-turn, Tamarillho pressed the button hard and dropped her remaining two seismic charges.

She pushed her afterburners to overload to escape the shockwave and massive cloud of debris chasing her through the tunnel after the detonation immediately vaporised her pursuers.

Making a sharp turn upwards, Tamarillho spotted two more squadrons closing in on her from “above”. Noticing the big empty space in front of her, she took her chances and launched three cluster torpedoes. She tracked the small dots on her scanner and saw them closing in on the thirty blips, splitting up into thirty tiny dots as they got close. None of the fighters managed to escape; all thirty were hit head-on by a micro-torp.

Thinking she was safe, Tamarillho relaxed and loosened her grip on her control stick. She didn’t really notice the cloud of blips that assembled on the edge of her scanner viewscreen.

When she did, she panicked.

She spot twelve squadrons of fifteen fighters each assembling not so far from her location.

One hundred and eighty fighters. No more seismic charges. Hey! Fifteen cluster torpedoes..... One hundred and fifty micro-torps!

She turned around sharply and headed straight for the cloud of blips, ignoring the fact that every single atom of her instincts told her to run like hell. Closing in on the fighters, she launched all of her remaining cluster torpedoes and pulled the control stick back hard.

Even though the explosion was directly behind her, she was blinded momentarily by the flash. The chain reaction of one hundred and fifty fighters exploding almost simultaneously was so powerful, that the other thirty fighters also perished – the explosion even generated a shockwave, and a powerful one at that.

Rejoicing her victory, Tamarillho set a course for the Devonshire warp point and kicked in her afterburners.

-----END OF CHAPTER FIVE-----