Disclaimer: I do not own the Steller Federation or Starfleet. They all belong to their perspective owners. All other concepts and characters in this story belong to me. The disclaimer for real world entities is on my main profile page. If you're having any trouble understanding some of the 'gadgets' or pop culture references in this story Wikipeadea is always a good source of info (I should know since I use it for this very reason so much).So please sit back and enjoy, and when your done reading leave a review, anyone can.
0325 hours, aboard the U.S.S. Intent of Redemption, periphery of Milky Way galaxy in AU Charlie-Uniform 16.567, July 5, 2008 TST (Typuran Standard Time)
Captain John "Switchback" Enderson strode across one of the massive, and at the moment very active, hanger decks inside the Atlantis-class Aerospacecraft Carrier U.S.S. Intent of Redemption toward his waiting plane. The elongated shield-shaped class of warship he was in was almost 3 miles long, and still wasn't the biggest ship in the Neo American fleet by far. It was designed to provide a mobile airbase to support USAF fleets and ground forces without the need for the old Dauntless and Ecclamator-class ships that were widely considered to be 'jacks of all trades and masters of none'.
His plane was a Boeing/Northrop Grumman F/A-18H Star Hornet. It was, in his very humble opinion, one of the best combat aerospacecraft ever developed. It was armed with 12 500lb HEAP (High-Explosive Armor-Piercing) guided bombs, and 4 AIM-130 ALRAAM II air-air missiles under the wings, 2 Python-9 heat-seeking missiles on the wing tips, and the M-207 .80 MAG (Magnetic Accelerator Gun) in the nose.
John ran his gloved hand along the underside of the sleek fighter. His canine-like mouth quirked a dark smile when his hand over the 15 Starfleet icons with paw prints in them painted on the side. Take that, you racist bastards, he thought to himself. John's eyes narrowed as he started to climb the ladder to the cockpit. You kill our people, you poison our land, you experiment on our children, and all we ever did was take out the dictator that was bombing your planets. To say that there was no love lost between humanity and the Steller Federation was a gross understatement to say the least.
John himself was a zoomorphic human, a Typuran Wolf to be precise. He was covered head to toe in light brown fur, and had the fluffy stub of a tail that was common amongst his race, cobalt blue eyes, and dark-brown hair that couldn't have been more then 0.5 inches long. He also was relatively young at 146 years of age.
John climbed into the cockpit of his fighter and put on the helmet that he'd been holding. He liked the new G-Suits a lot more then the old ones, because now not only did he not have to put an air mask over his very large jaw, but also because he could now survive out in space without, you know, exploding. Even if they did look like something out of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing.
As soon as John finished the pre-flight checkup and closed the cockpit, he contacted the 'island'. "Redemption control: Switchback. Requesting permission to taxi to runway elevators."
"Switchback: Redemption control. You are cleared to taxi to elevator 2, and prepare for takeoff," he heard over the comm as he began to taxi to the elevator that would take him to the top of the ship.
As John taxied onto the B-52-sized elevator that would take him to the runways on top of the ship, he took some time to reflect on his reasons for his being here. You know the answer to that, he thought to himself as his hand touched a picture of a smiling black haired Middle Eastern woman who was three months pregnant. The StelFeds killed your wife and child. Them and 130 million other people on Kiev . . . I'm sorry Janan. Oh Lord, please forgive me for the death and destruction I am going to cause this day, and have mercy on my soul and the souls of my enemies, he prayed silently as the elevator started to climb.
"Switchback: Shego. You all right in there?" a Cuban accented female voice asked over the comm.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm all right Shego," he said as he darkened his helmet's visor, both to keep out sun glare, and hide the tears welling up in his eyes from the young Cuban woman in the fighter to his right. While he considered 1st Lt. Izabella Gonzales a valuable member of his squadron (his 2nd in command in fact), he really did not want to 'talk about it', now or ever. "Lets just focus on getting the job done here, all right?" he said as the elevator started to rise.
"All right sir," Izabella said as she cut the channel. She had joined the Armed Forces shortly after the USNA had taken over Earth, it was her way of saying 'Hey thanks for kicking Castro's ass'. She had gained the callsign Shego after a rather embarrassing mishap while working on the plasma engine on her 'Two-Sader' during flight school, next thing anybody knew she was running into decon, her hands covered in burning green plasma. Needless to say she didn't often talk about how she got her callsign.
"Redemption control: Switchback. Requesting permission for take-off," John said as the elevator reached the top deck of the ship. He took a quick look to is left and saw is 3rd in command 1st Lt. Kaori "Avalanche" Goldstein and his wingman 2nd Lt. James "M" Wentmore in their Star Hornets. He nodded to them, and then flashed several hand signals that loosely translated to 'Let kick some ass'.
He then started to look around the deck, and surrounding space. Truth be told the top didn't look all that different from one of the flight decks on the old Nimitz-class carriers, except for the fact that the island was at the back of the ship, and it was a hell of a lot bigger. The space in front of him was filled with stars, to his sides were several FDR and Olympus-class destroyers, and behind him was the mile long from of the Dreadnaught-class Battleship U.S.S. Albany. Of course the only reason he could 'see' the ships was because of his helmet's HUD, almost all Neo American military equipment used a special nano-tech coating that gave their 'stuff', for lack of a better term, the ability to change colors in such complex ways that it would put a cephalopod to shame. That combined with the fact that Neo American ships 'coasted' most of the time made them virtually invisible.
"Switchback: Redemption control. You are cleared for launch. We are charging the magnetic accelerator rails now. Sic Semper Tyrannus; good hunting."
John settled back into his seat and steeled himself against then intense G-forces that would, thanks to the inertial dampeners, only slam him back into his seat, and not crush him as the fighter accelerated to 0.0001 Lightspeed.
Well, into the breach once more John thought to himself as his squadron's Star Hornets were shot off the deck of the carrier.
A/N: Well I said that I'd be willing update this story didn't I? The entire plot has been reworked, and will now be done in the style of the Battlestar Galactica: Razor flashbacks, short chapters designed to get a point across quickly. Also keep an eye on what the characters are saying and thinking, since it will be how I get most of my ideas across (in other words no more of this in the chapter). Keep a look out for more updates, coming soon. And will somebody please think of a better name for the Op.?
Sic Semper Tyrannus
Carry on.