CAVALIER:
The Last Patrol
A Homeworld story
by Ion_Fury
In 15 AHL, the Beast, a bio-mechanical plague that consumed ship and crew alike, rampaged across the galaxy bent on devouring everything in its path. Led by the valiant crew of the Somtaaw warship Kuun-Lan, an unlikely alliance of Kushan, Taiidan, and Bentusi finally defeated the monster... but at a sickening cost in manpower and materiel. Hardest hit were the strike craft squadrons of the Kushan carrier groups that stood against the menace for months while scientists and strategists tried desperately to find a weapon against the creature. Thousands of fighters, bombers, and corvettes were infected, subverted, and turned against their fellows—every attempt to hold the line only added to the Beast's power.
In response, Hiigaran Defense Command was forced to send even outclassed and outmoded ships forward into battle. First-generation fighters like the Arrow and the Shield Mk.1—and Cavaliers, the venerable but hopelessly obsolete light corvettes that had been a nascent Kushan Fleet's first foray into building crewed warships. These were thrown headlong into the whirling maelstrom of the Beast War, and although their crews fought bravely, they were killed whole squadrons at a time. They flew into battle knowing that their chances of survival were virtually nonexistent—but they refused to buckle, and they bought the time for Kiith Somtaaw to deploy the superweapon that finally brought the monster down.
The conflict was, in its own way, as bloody as the Homeworld War. The men and women who should have founded the second generation of Kushan repopulation on Hiigara instead went to their deaths among the stars. Resource stockpiles were drained, shipyards destroyed—no major galactic power escaped unscathed, and what ensued was an unprecedented interval of peace as all involved nursed their wounds and slowly rebuilt.
For obsolete pre-landfall ships like the Cavalier, the reconstruction offered a second lease on life. While Hiigaran Defense Command concentrated on turning out modern ships and training up new crews to replace the horrific losses incurred by the Beast, these underarmed, underarmored first-generation strike craft took over second-line patrols—it was to be their last duty to the people they had fought so long and so hard to protect. Finally, a decade and a half after their reactivation, the last remaining squadron of Cavaliers prepared for retirement...
HNS Daalis Manaan, PL-28, 0340 hrs, 32 AHL
Somewhere in the Knarvon system...
Lieutenant (Senior Grade) Kalan Luus-Naabal felt something strike his arm. He rolled over and pretended to be asleep, but moments later a poke in the gut told him that he wasn't convincing anyone. He grabbed the pillow and hurled it over his shoulder at the irritant.
"For the last time, Mera, no!"
Kalan steeled himself for the inevitable "pity-me" display his too-cute-for-her-own-good gunner was about to put on for him. He wasn't going to give in. Not this time. Mera Dur-Sjet was a fine shot, but her real talent lay in stealing her commanding officer's pay with card tricks. On the longer patrol runs, some amount of honest thievery was bound to happen out of sheer boredom, but Pherd had the watch and Kalan hadn't won a single game against his red-haired weapons officer since she'd transferred into the unit two months ago.
She was only the latest in a long succession of freshly-minted officers to cycle through the 308th Border Patrol Squadron- indeed, Personnel had been using their sleepy outpost as a sort of a final exam for Academy graduates—but it already felt as if she'd always been assigned to the Daalis Manaan. That was unusual on a ship that boasted only a three-man crew, but Mera had a terribly infectious personality and a face that looked like it belonged to somebody's sixteen-year-old daughter, and she knew how to use both to her advantage. She'd be gone in another few months, reassigned to one of the new Tempest II or Warhammer squadrons, but as much as he hated losing money to the kid Kalan admitted—at least privately—that he'd be sad to see her go.
He'd be sad to see the Dolly go, too, but the old girl deserved nothing more than comfortable retirement after all these years. As one of the last remaining Cavalier-class light corvettes still in service, retirement was long overdue. Designed before the Mothership ever left Kharak orbit, the Cavalier class was the first multi-crew ship the Kushan people had ever used in war, and even though it was easily outclassed by the later Tempest-class multigun units it had still served with distinction until the end of the Homeworld War. Following the Battle of Hiigara, the Cavaliers were taken out of front-line service and reassigned as reserve and training units, but the Beast War had seen them thrown once more into the fire of battle—at terrible cost. Of the fifty-three Cavaliers sent into action, only sixteen returned. That they were still in service was as much a testament to Hiigaran Defense Command's lack of sufficient modern units as it was a testament to the venerable Cavaliers' simple yet elegant design.
Kalan Luus-Naabal had served with Dolly for twenty years now, first as a training officer overseeing raw recruits as the old corvette put them through their paces, then as her pilot and commanding officer when she was attached to the 282nd and thrown into battle against the Beast. He'd declined three promotions to stay with his little ship—when she left service at last, so would he. Officers like his copilot, Pherd Soban, and—yes—like his endearingly annoying gunner, were destined to fly and fight Hiigara's next generation of corvettes, but Kalan was a man stuck in the past. He liked it that way.
He also liked his peace and quiet, his paycheck, and the occasional wink or two of sleep. The Dolly had more crew space than the no-nonsense Hammer-class ships, which allowed her to be assigned extended patrol missions, but it wasn't all that difficult to have more crew space than a craft that simply had no crew space at all. In the case of Kalan's beloved Cavaliers, this meant that there was a minuscule table, kitchenette, and toilet, with a single bunk crammed against the overhead. It was his turn for rack time, dammit, and little miss dinnerplate-eyes was not going to interrupt his nap.
"C'mon, Skip! Just one round? I'm so booooored!"
That was unavoidable. Boredom was one of the things that Cavalier crews took for granted and adapted to- or went nuts. The newer Tempest models had a vidscreen and could be stocked with an extensive library for entertainment on exactly these sorts of missions, but the Admiralty saw no need to upgrade their soon-to-be-retired (again) Cavaliers with such unnecessary luxuries. Kalan could care less; when he wasn't racked out he spent most of his time stargazing in the cockpit, but Mera got stir-crazy easily.
"No means no, Ensign!"
She grumbled a bit then plopped into one of the chairs. She knew better than to press any further; prior experience with polishing every inch of the Dolly's crew cabin had taught her that the Skipper was not to be messed with once he started using ranks. Especially since most of the thirty-two year old light corvette's interior surfaces stubbornly refused to be polished. It was one of the advantages, Kalan found, to being informal most of the time—that way, when he decided not to be, people paid attention. He rolled over again and went back to sleep.
He awoke four hours later, by his watch, and slid down from the bunk to find Pherd conked out in one of the chairs. He tapped his copilot's shoulder to let him know that the rack was available; the Sobani grunted once and didn't climb so much as ooze upwards into the still—warm sheets. Kalan chuckled and shook his head at this; though Pherd was dedicated utterly to his job as any of the Red, the man turned sleep into a veritable art form. Before meeting his copilot, Kalan had thought himself a bit of a nap connoisseur, but Pherd made his CO look like a rank amateur.
After freshening up he headed forward into the cockpit where he found Mera, sitting back in the command pilot's seat and sipping from a large mug of strong-smelling tea. Though her station was in the gunnery position, set below and forward of the pilots' stations, she had received mandatory cross-training just like every officer candidate did, and sat in the command chair when it was her watch. That same cross-training meant that Kalan or Pherd could have dropped into her turret controls in a pinch, or that he or Mera could have doubled as flight engineer if the necessity arose, although each of them had their specializations. The Cavalier was a tiny ship, and if one of them were to be incapacitated the Dolly would have lost a third of her crew. That was why the pilots' stations each possessed a rudimentary targeting system, and why the gunnery station had a control stick and throttle cleverly concealed in its armrests.
Still, Mera was no more Kalan's equal at flying than he was hers at shooting, and both of them knew it. The moment he appeared, she slid effortlessly aside and took the copilot's station instead, obviously relieved that someone else was awake to keep her company. Neither of them said anything; they just enjoyed the view—and it was quite a view from where Kalan sat.
Knarvon, the system's dwarf primary, was barely massive enough to even be considered a star, and glowed so dimly that none of the thirteen or so small planetoids orbiting it could have supported life even if they had atmospheres. Indeed, the only reason the Navy had an interest in Knarvon at all was that it was the outermost system in the Exclusion Zone along the Southern periphery, which left it facing a few pockets of Turanic activity from time to time. That HDC had only assigned a 'short' picket of six twenty-year-old frigates—three of which were the 308th squadron's Matriarch base ships—to it was a testament to how long it had been since any activity was reported along this frontier. A single deep-scan sensor array sat somewhere above the plane of the ecliptic feeding data to all the ships in the system, and the 308th maintained a regular patrol around the resupply depot, but everything else hung in low orbit around the rocky mass of Knarvon II and waited patiently for the alert that nobody really thought would ever come.
Still, given a choice of boring assignments, Knarvon was about as beautiful as they came. Even though the system itself was utterly uninteresting aside from its value in raw materials to be fed through the picket's resupply ship PDA, the very fact that its primary was so dim allowed for a truly spectacular view of everywhere else. With no bright local star to blot out the light from more distant stellar phenomenon, Kalan could see even the incredibly distant Great Nebula from his little ship—Knarvon II was silhouetted against the majestic reddish cloud, barely a speck slowly traversing the galaxy's grandest stellar nursery. The galactic core lay behind him right now, but the spiral arms of the galaxy twisted outward in a huge embrace that covered all the millions of stars in the sky, and it was a view that he knew he would never tire of.
With no appreciable amount of light coming from the primary, it was also the only reason for there to be a forward viewport at all. In a battle, tactical information would have been projected all over it, but everything that was needed for the present displayed just fine on any of the consoles surrounding the pilot's seat. With so little ambient light, even a brightly colored ship would have been impossible to see aside from its drive flare, which wasn't much help apart from determining whether one was facing a strike craft or a capital ship—even against the standard (and somewhat antiquated) designs the Turanic and Imperialist raiders had been using since Sajuuk-only-knew-when, which everybody in the Navy was supposed to know at the slightest glance. The bare fact was that the exhaust plume from a light interceptor looked exactly the same as that of a heavy corvette unless the hull that went with it was visible as well. Capital ships were easier to ID, but only if their COs were dumb enough to fly into combat in a dark system with their running lights on.
Hyperspace windows, however, were very easy to spot. The one that had just caught Kalan's attention would have been extremely obvious even if the Dolly's own sensors hadn't started screaming bloody murder the instant it appeared. It was also close enough that his well—trained eyes had no problems whatsoever identifying the Turanic Lord-class carrier exiting from—and illuminated by—the dazzling blue rectangular breach.
A smaller ship, such as an Assassin frigate, might have jumped into the system farther out and avoided detection by the local sensor array, but this ship was entirely too huge to not leave a massive footprint. Larger even than the already massive Imperator carriers employed by his own Navy and boasting a pair of high-powered capital class ion beams, the Lord was—in Kalan's professional opinion—the single most dangerous capital ship a pirate had ever operated. Its cavernous bays could support more than a hundred fighters and about half that many corvettes—roughly a third of which would usually be of the missile-toting variety, and they were even scarier than the carrier.
Each one of those little bastards—dubbed "Brigands" by Fleet Intel back during the Homeworld War—carried a pair of disproportionately huge box launchers which could produce a nearly continuous stream of lightweight Imperial-designed missiles... or belch out a volley of some three and a half dozen which could punch through even a capital ship's armor from well outside the range of any other weapons platform. Somehow, the little raider bastards had crammed a manufacturing unit into the back of them, too, so they could go right on launching missile after missile until they exhausted their ample supply of reaction mass. It was nothing short of an inspired design, which had in turn inspired the crash development of the Hammer line of heavy corvettes in the terrible aftermath of First Contact.
One outmoded Cavalier and its lonely little turret weren't going to be nearly enough to deal with this problem, and the boys and girls at Knarvon II already knew it was here, so Kalan did the only sensible thing he could and threw the Dolly into full shutdown before the raider carrier could clear its exit window and bring its sensors fully online. Part of him chafed at the idea of hiding from the enemy, but the larger and wiser part knew that courting action would only result in his retiring somewhat earlier and somewhat more permanently than planned... in an uncomfortably large fireball. As the Dolly went to sleep around him, he nudged her around on reaction control to keep the intruder centered in his viewport and hoped like hell his tiny ship would look like an unappetizing chunk of space rock too small to be worth harvesting.
"Mera," he hissed, unconsciously lowering his voice even though he could have yelled without drawing any more attention through the vacuum of space, "go pull His Majesty out of bed."
His gunner nodded, the shadow of her head bobbing and contorting under the low-intensity emergency lights. She levered herself out of the copilot's seat and ducked aft. Kalan kept his eyes fixed on the carrier—its cavernous and well-lit launch bay made it possible to keep track of, but he knew from experience that losing even an illuminated starship against the background of space was disturbingly easy. If that happened, the big bastard would be irritatingly hard to re-acquire without powering back up and giving away his position.
The effective sensor range on a Lord, if the last known figures were trustworthy, ought to have been marginally shorter aft owing to the fact that the entire aft of the vessel consisted of the drive array and the gaping maw of the hangar. There was a noticeable flare as the drive lit off and the gargantuan warship headed for the planet. Given what Kalan thought he knew about the monster's capabilities, he wouldn't have to wait more than fifteen minutes before powering back up... at which point the system array's incredibly powerful FTL sensor relay would allow him to keep track of and follow the big ship at a distance. He could relay back constant status reports via the nifty Somtaaw-designed phased telemetry link that was now standard issue throughout the Fleet. Meanwhile, he could intercept all of the raider's communications with its strike wings without any effort at all, even with the Cavalier's badly out of date passive systems.
No, he mused as Pherd and Mera emerged from the crew compartment and slid into their respective stations, I can't take that sucker in any fight... but I sure as hell can help the rest of the picket make life miserable for him.
Kalan gave the carrier a twenty-minute head start, just to be on the safe side. He'd been on the sharp end of the stick far too many times and believed strongly in keeping wide safety margins, and he wasn't about to bet against a ship that out-massed his several thousand times over even without her strike wings. There wouldn't have been much point in powering up outside the carrier's sensor range only to find out that it had launched a patrol or two to watch the back door—Dolly wasn't fast enough to outrun the lighter Turanic ships, and although Kalan would give her good odds in a scrap with three or even four of their fighters he knew that they wouldn't come at him piecemeal like some goons in an action flick. When he was moderately certain that nobody was going to be looking his way, he cautiously powered back up and queried the sensor array for a tactical update.
The good news was that eight of the 308th's twelve Cavaliers were also out on patrol, covering other sectors. Unfortunately, that was just about the only good news. The 1042nd was already formed up and ready but their fighters, though all relatively modern Blade marks, were horrifically outnumbered. The remaining three Cavaliers, two of which were meant to be strictly reserve ships in case something should happen to Dolly or one of her sisters, were stacked in a pathetically understrength claw formation behind the fighters, but Kalan knew that twenty fighters and three corvettes weren't likely to last long against the hundred-fifty or so enemy strike craft heading for Knarvon Station. Without their fighter and corvette cover, the assault frigates— otherwise could have outmaneuvered the Lord for long enough to force it into retreat—would be overwhelmed. The Matriarchs were just plain screwed. Any sane commander would have pulled out and come back later with a stronger fleet in tow, but Captain Jande-Kaalel didn't seem to like the idea of retreat.
To his credit, though, he wasn't issuing orders to recall the patrols, which meant that Dolly and most of her sisters might just have a chance of surviving until reinforcements could be summoned. There wasn't much time to get them organized, however, and three of them were already turning back towards Knarvon II—intending to go boldly, and suicidally, to the rescue. Kalan jabbed one leathery finger into the squadron-wide comms key.
"308th, Daalis Manaan. All patrol units rendezvous at my location immediately. Repeat, break off and regroup, over."
There was a long moment of silence as the other corvette skippers considered what to do. Technically, most of them were senior-grade lieutenants and thus equal in rank to Kalan, but he had seniority by date of rank... and he was about ready to point that out when the first replies came in.
"Arlis Naabal, acknowledged."
"Leykab Jaraci, copy that."
"Nadua Ferriil, acknowledged."
"Majiir Paktu, acknowledged."
"Soban the Red, acknowledged..."
"Fliir Sjet-Sa, breaking off..."
"Mata Riif, standing by."
One ship kept her heading. Kalan recognized her- the Naadin Soban. He sighed heavily and bent over closer to the comm pickup to talk his old friend down.
"Udin, buddy, you can't win this."
"I know," came the reply. His voice was low and level, without so much as a hint of fear. Kalan winced. Udin LiirHra was the only pilot in the 308th with a veteran crew, and if they had any intention of turning around they would have made it known. Worse, Udin himself had been serving on Cavaliers since Kharak burned; there was no one in the unit more committed to the all-or-nothing mentality of the past two wars. Kalan was certain that his friend knew this was not one of those situations—that at least one of the frigates would be sent to summon reinforcements—and yet he insisted on adding his weight to a hopeless battle, and his crew apparently shared in his determination. And Udin was also one of the few officers in the unit senior to Kalan himself.
When the enemy picked him up, they would realize that there were active patrols outsystem and begin searching for the rest of the 308th, which would do very bad things to their chance of living to greet reinforcements from home.
"C'mon, man," he pleaded, "back off. You won't do any good in there."
"I know," Udin said again just as levelly; Kalan switched off his pickup and swore. That stubborn, suicidal drive to fight every hopeless battle, that grim sense of purpose that had saved the Mothership time and time again—along with Kalan and the half-million other colonists resting, oblivious to the danger, in suspended animation—was about to get the whole squadron killed. He had to see it, yet the Naadin Soban continued to pick up speed, diving towards the awaiting battle at max acceleration. If anyone had been close enough, Kalan would have ordered them disabled... or shot down. It would have haunted him for the rest of his life, but he would have done it to save the rest of the squadron. His feelings fought each other over whether to be dismayed that it wasn't possible or relieved that he wouldn't have to be the one to give that order.
The system array dutifully reported the first casualties of the battle as the 1042nd tore into their pirate adversaries. They were keeping tight and mobile—divided into five-ship claws, they swept through the pirate strike wings over and over again, and each time they made an attack pass another few enemy fighters died. The reserve element of the 308th held back, using their turrets to pick off individual fighters that were too confused by the antics of the 1042nd to deal with a second threat. Still, the pirates were here in force... they broke through the defensive line in scores and began strafing runs on the frigates, whose turrets could not hope to keep up with the nimble little raiders.
The Turanic CO, whoever he was, was no idiot. He held back his corvettes at first, waiting for all of the fighters to engage before committing them. It was a ruthless tactic, but had the corvettes moved in immediately the 1042nd would have ignored all else to take out as many as they could—the fighters' light energy cannons were murder against other strike craft, and aside from the carrier the corvettes were the greatest threat to Knarvon Station's frigates. A Brigand corvette could, with repeated missile attacks, punch a hole through even a Vengeance-class ship's thick armor, and the Thief corvettes were even more dangerous with their magnetic grapples and boarding teams. They would take losses doing it, but they had the numbers.
The enemy's timing was perfect—the moment the 1042nd took its first casualty, the Brigands moved in and added their missiles to the furball. In a few brief moments, the entire defending squadron was forced to go completely evasive and abandon their devastating tactics to buy a few more minutes of survival. That accomplished, half the Brigands broke off and headed for the three supporting Cavaliers. No matter the pilots' skill, ten-to-one odds were impossible to overcome—and the enemy never game them a chance to engage. Each of thirty corvettes belched forth a pair of high-velocity missiles, and an instant later there were no Cavaliers.
Kalan's fist dented the face of the console; Mera whispered a prayer. Pherd glared at the tactical plot as if he could kill the enemies just by looking at them. The Naadin Soban ran headlong into the maelstrom which had just consumed three of her sisters.
It was an impressive, if doomed, performance. The little ship bobbed and wove with a grace born of thirty-two years of experience, entering the fray from below. The enemy corvette wall, slaved to the controls of its lead ship, was slow to turn—a fatal weakness of the wall formation that was drilled into the head of every strike pilot. Broad and two-dimensional, a wall offered the greatest concentration of raw firepower, yet managing a large formation required such delicate throttle and maneuvering control that it would fall apart but for the command handoff that went with it. Thus, the entire formation flew as a single ship—but always suffered in turning fights. Udin had seen that weakness, one which he knew instinctively to look for, and now he exploited it mercilessly as the less-experienced pirate crews scrambled to turn about and face him.
The outer edge swung wide, pivoting the wall ponderously around—and exposed the formation leader as the Brigands' inferior command links slowly distributed updates so that the rest of the formation could automatically adjust course and speed. Naadin's crew spotted that one ship and poured fire into it... and the Turanic formation fell apart. The ensuing confusion cost them dearly; Udin's veteran gunner picked his targets with lethal precision, sending hyper-vee slugs through engine housings and cockpits and quickly taking his opponents out of the fight. It wasn't enough, however—one by one, the enemy ships regained their balance and came back around. A missile caught up with Udin's little ship, then another... and another. The flashing red of critical damage encircled Naadin Soban's indicator on the tactical plot... and vanished a moment later as another Brigand finished her off. The entire encounter had taken less than a minute. Kalan squeezed his eyes shut for a moment- the most he could allow for the passing of an old friend. Then he looked back at the plot and saw the last few ships of the 1042nd blotted out of existence—and silently watched as the tides of hell bore down on Knarvon Station and the frigate group.
Despite being massively outgunned, the frigates were tough—but Vengeance-class ships had always been built for that. While their turrets had difficulty tracking fighters, they picked off the slower Thieves and Brigands with contemptuous ease and the trio of elderly assault frigates actually pushed forward into the Turanic formation. The Matriarchs held their ground until the heavier strike craft reached them—their single turrets were useful in support of the more capable ships' guns, but their lack of coverage and armor made them easy prey for nimble strike craft that could stay out of the turret's arc.
Fortunately, it was never their intention to stand and fight. With their own fighter and corvette groups destroyed or otherwise cut off, they winked into hyperspace and were gone. Kalan hadn't realized that he was holding his breath until he saw them go; now he sighed in relief. One way or another, those three ships at least would make it home... and they would bring the full fury of a cruiser task force along when they returned.
The assault frigates, however, weren't even trying to stay alive. Kalan couldn't understand what they were driving at when their first plasma salvoes went home on the Lord—they were too badly damaged to have any hope of actually killing that monster, nevermind its whole strike wing. Gradually, however, it dawned on him that they weren't trying to kill the carrier at all, and he finally understood why the Vengeance frigates hadn't cut and run with the Matriarchs. Salvo after salvo of searing fusion plasma slammed into the carrier's keel amidships, boring through its thick armor and burrowing deep into the sensitive equipment within... and the Turanic warship lost its hyperdrive in a blinding flash of quantum discharge as its containment was breached. The module was only partially charged—had it been ready for a jump, the release would have vaporized half the ship. Instead it merely gouged a hundred-meter-wide crater in the belly of the massive vessel.
One of the frigates managed to escape despite all the enemy had thrown at it; it vanished into hyperspace little more than a broken hulk with a barely-functional drive, bleeding atmosphere from dozens of wounds. The other two were not so lucky as their sister—wave after wave of missiles finally disabled them and the lamed carrier took its time cutting them to pieces with its still-functional ion cannons.
Knarvon Station now lay defenseless, and Kalan's conscience again screamed at him to do something—anything other than hiding in the shadows while his fellow Kushan died before him. Yet there was nothing he could do, and he knew it; if he so much as tried then the rest of his crews might do the same. Their lives were in his hands; he was the leader of the 308th now. It was his duty to see that they survived until the now-inevitable reinforcements came. Then he would lead them into battle—gladly, eagerly. Then he could avenge his dead and quiet his mutinous emotions. In the meantime, the sacrifice of his fellow warriors had ensured that the enemy would still be there when that time came. In the meantime, they had only to stay alive long enough to make a difference—and Udin's brave but foolish last stand had put all of that at risk. They—all of the survivors—had to move quickly if the squadron was to pull through at all.
47 hours later, orbiting the Knarvon II-c planetoid...
Kalan rubbed his eyes and looked at his tactical plot again. He hadn't racked out in the last two days since that damned raider carrier showed up, but at least he had something to show for his comrades' deaths. In the final moments after the Lord was crippled, the picket's Matriarchs had dropped back out of hyperspace behind the closest planetoid and, unable to recover the squadron in the brief time they were able to remain there undetected, left a small 'present' instead for the survivors of the 308th.
Whatever nasty things he may or may not have said in the past about capital ship crews, they sure as hell knew how to give gifts—when the Cavaliers had, over the next day, arrived in orbit around Knarvon II-c, they'd found both of the picket's SAR birds floating in its shadow with supply pods full of ammo and food clamped beneath their bellies. That, on reflection, had to have been why the frigates had delayed their departure for so long—and Kalan had personally given his most profound thanks to Sajuuk and all of the frigates' COs for their foresight.
The SAR birds in and of themselves would have been enough to give the 308th hope. Both were Mk. VII series Mercy corvettes, outfitted exclusively for search-and-rescue duties. While the new models sacrificed the refueling and rearming gear of their predecessors, they gained more powerful PDAs and small medical bays. They'd taken no further casualties since the initial attack—indeed, there was no sign the pirates even suspected that there were surviving Kushan ships in the system—but just knowing those two broad-winged beauties were there had reassured everyone that they stood a much better chance of survival should they be discovered.
Right now, the Daalis Maanan was docked with one of the Mercies while Pherd and Mera re-stocked the corvette's food and water supply. They'd only been two days out when the attack came, but not even Sajuuk himself knew if their luck would hold, and Kalan wanted every single ship topped off on everything at all times. Accordingly, he'd ordered a resupply schedule that had each of the 308th's surviving eight Cavaliers dock for six hours at a time with one of the Mercies, rotating so that no ship went for more than a day without resupply... and to ensure that every crew got at least some mandatory down-time in the newer ships' more spacious lounges.
Kalan would have allowed for some personal down-time, but he'd simply had too much to do in the past two days to even think about sleep. For one, he was absolutely certain that if he did sleep he wouldn't wake up for at least eight or nine hours, and there was one key responsibility that he couldn't hand off to anyone else: the precious sensor array floating high above Knarvon's dim primary. It had been in 'listen' mode since the last frigate hyperspaced away, and he sincerely hoped that the pirates believed it to be destroyed, but he wasn't counting on them not sending a salvage team out to investigate. If they did, someone had to command the array to self-destruct, lest it fall into enemy hands with all of its advanced technology. As the senior officer in the system, a mere lieutenant—albeit one with twenty-seven years of seniority—held that responsibility, and the self-destruct protocol did not allow for automatic detonation.
It was nearly time for the Dolly to decouple and switch places with the Mata Riif when the moment Kalan had been waiting for arrived. A lone Thief corvette, obviously trying—and failing—to conceal its emissions approached the array, and Kalan sullenly pressed the "transmit" key on his console, shutting down his system-wide tactical display as the feed abruptly terminated.
Exactly two hundred and twenty-five minutes later, the light from the detonation reached Knarvon II-c and the survivors of the 308th squadron knew that their single remaining advantage was gone.
Kalan sighed heavily and laid out a death row hand on the card table. He wasn't entirely sure why he hadn't just let Pherd play and taken another full sleep cycle instead; a death row was the single lowest possible combination in the game and Mera was grinning like an idiot at him.
"You lose again, Skipper."
Mera brushed a loose hair out of her face as Kalan scribbled another IOU and flipped it across the table at her. There was a small pile of them accumulating on the deck under her chair, about equal numbers in Kalan's and Pherd's handwriting. So far, between the two of them, they'd lost more than two months' pay... not including hazard pay, of course. Kalan had stopped caring about his pay three days ago. Pherd, on the other hand, was just about ready to invent another game if that was what it took to beat their gunner at cards.
Just for the pure hell of it, Pherd had set up a bulletin over the squadron comm net, and a betting pool had formed almost as soon as he'd opened it. The Mercy crews, not knowing any better, had put their money on Pherd or Kalan winning. Every single man and woman of the Cavalier unit categorically refused to bet against Mera—even if there was a single man or woman among them who hadn't at some point lost a game to her, they almost certainly knew someone who had. By the time their last resupply cycle had rolled around, the vidscreen aboard the Mercy was 'mysteriously' not working and the Dolly's load of rations had contained a disproportionate amount of the utterly flavorless emergency protein paste that was usually reserved for use in EVA suits after ejecting.
Kalan was about as amused by this as the gravity of the squadron's predicament allowed; he'd gone entire months on that crap during the Beast War, when supplies had been so tight that the 282nd's base carrier had taken to synthesizing protein bars with its PDA straight from raw matter brought in by the harvester. He'd also learned, after that, to keep a private stash of sauces and seasonings in his locker at the expense of other things in his standard-issue survival equipment—like a flip-out tent and a water purifier—that he wasn't likely to ever need in deep space anyway.
"There goes my retirement," he said dryly, and levered himself out of his seat to make way for Pherd and his latest quick-win scheme. In truth, he was only too happy to let Pherd go a few extra rounds with Mera and steal another nap while he had the chance. Whenever Mera finally got tired of beating them at cards and went grab a snack, he had a much surer plan. She'd gladly trade him back his pay if she wanted her food to taste like anything.
Three days later, the raiders finally found the 308th's hiding place.
To say that the atmosphere in the Daalis Manaan's cockpit was tense would have been a horrific understatement. Eight hours earlier, a flight of pirate fighters had suddenly appeared on shipboard sensors heading straight for Knarvon II-c. Kalan had ordered full shutdown on all ships, and the pirates had flown around the far side of the planetoid without seeing a thing, clearly heading for Knarvon II-e farther outsystem on a fuel-efficient slingshot trajectory.
Now the pirates were coming back, and their approach had been blocked by Knarvon II-c's rocky mass. There hadn't been enough time for the 308th to shut down again. There was no doubt in Kalan's mind that they'd been spotted this time, and he had to assume that a report detailing their position and strength was already screaming towards the carrier and the waiting ears of the forces occupying the resupply depot on Knarvon II.
The pirate patrol, however, was still coming on instead of turning to flee. If the 308th had been a Tempest unit, he'd have ordered his ships to break away at max accel and fight on the run, but his Cavaliers' turrets couldn't fire dead aft—he had to have his people, or at least some of them, stand and fight. There wasn't much doubt that they'd win; this patrol was a small one, a trio of interceptors. However, any unit that stayed to fight might be delayed long enough for reinforcements to get underway, and if the fighters lasted long enough those reinforcements might just arrive in time to get revenge before the killers got far enough away from the planetoid to avoid being detected again.
In the end, it hadn't been much of a decision. True, Kalan was the acting squadron CO, and he'd been fourth in the chain of command by seniority alone even before the pirates showed up and killed his superiors, but he was not going to cut and run this time. Mera and Pherd had agreed—he'd offered to leave them with one of the Mercies and fly solo, and knew that he could still probably take the fighters down alone, but neither of the youngsters had been interested in self-preservation. Inexperienced or not, they were as much a part of the squadron as Kalan and his beloved Dolly were, and those had been their comrades who'd died as well. In his time with the Cavaliers Kalan had seen plenty of rookies, many of them more skilled or more ambitious, but never had he been prouder than he was of Mera and Pherd when they refused his offer.
He keyed up the squadron-wide comms as the pirate fighters swooped into orbit. As they shed their velocity under full burn, the distance between them and the Dolly plummeted. It wasn't long before their twin drive flares could be clearly seen, blazing trails of ionized gas shining against the darkness.
"All ships scatter and evade. On zero enemy contact, full shutdown and emcon until further orders. 308 lead, out."
It wasn't a particularly dazzling plan, but it offered the greatest chance of escape for the greatest number of ships. While the other seven Cavaliers and two Mercies headed outward from Knarvon II-c in nine different directions, the Dolly burned straight for the pirate fighters, forcing them to engage her and ignore her sisters. Kalan worried that they might split and pursue different ships, but all three chose to stay on course and engage the one ship that wasn't fleeing. It made sense, if not the sort of sense that was taught at the Naval Academy. Three pirate fighters stood a much better chance against one corvette than they did if they engaged three different corvettes individually—while a professional squadron might have ordered limited pursuit, using his ships' superior accelerations to stay out of the larger vessels' weapons range, raiders had a habit of going for the easy kill.
That suited Kalan just fine. He had a lot of blood to spill, and if these three wanted to play the odds he was happy to oblige. And, he thought as a predator's grin spread across his face, they're even coming straight on. How nice of them.
That fact in itself would have been enough to identify these pilots as the greenest of the green. Basic physics were a part of any decent training program; you simply didn't fly straight into the teeth of a railgun-armed enemy. Or any armed enemy, but especially not one with weapons that did their damage with kinetic energy alone. A railgun slug, even fired from a gun a small and as old as the Dolly's, reached a truly stupefying velocity before it left the barrel. Modern anti-kinetic armor, even fighter armor, could withstand a hit—two, if the pilot was either lucky or had a few gods looking out for him... but add the muzzle velocity to the closing velocity of two ships at max acceleration, one already traveling at a significant clip, and even the point-one-kilo slugs Dolly fired could punch straight through a corvette's frontal armor. What they did to the lead fighter of the pirate formation was as predictable as it was spectacular.
"Hell yes!" Mera growled as her shot went home. An instant later, the two remaining raider ships blazed past and Kalan swung the Dolly around, already seeking a good firing angle on the next target so that Mera could relieve it of the burden of existence. Somewhere out there in the vast nothingness of space, the Knarvon picket's dead were smiling.
Again the little corvette's railgun spoke, and her aim was true: the second fighter reeled from the impact, not dead but out of control and spinning down out of orbit. There was a puff of atmosphere from its cockpit, and Kalan saw the pilot emerge... but without an ejection seat, the raider would share the fate of his craft. He was almost pitiable—almost. The greater part of Kalan's soul glowed with satisfaction—the pirate bastard would know before the end what it was like to see death bearing down on him, inevitable and indifferent.
Dolly rocked sharply; warning tones screamed through the cockpit and telltales winked out across Kalan's console. He yanked the control yoke over hard and shot Pherd a quick glance, but his flight engineer was already on the damage. It didn't matter unless they finished the fight, and that was just what Kalan intended to do. He trimmed his RCS to compensate for steadily diminishing main drive output and swung around in pursuit of the last pirate.
"Don't give that bastard another shot, Mera," he growled. The fighter had changed its heading to flee back towards Knarvon II. They weren't fast enough to outrun the little bastard... not even before they'd taken damage. The window was closing fast.
Dolly's gunner took a wild shot as her turret swung around, missing wide—and then she found her mark. The gun hammered out one shot, then two; Kalan realized that she was holding down the firing stud as another slug flashed downrange. She needn't have; the first two connected solidly along the raider fighter's port side, shredding its engine and, as the offbalanced thrust sent it into a spin, the third slug went straight through the cockpit. Four more near misses ripped past, but were of no consequence.
Kalan lingered on that heading a moment longer before swinging back towards the planetoid. Any moment now, he'd be picking up whatever reinforcements the raider patrol had summoned, and Dolly couldn't hope to take them on. She was damaged, though; main power was still fluctuating and thruster output was way below nominal. That the pirate hadn't lived long enough to capitalize on his lucky hit didn't change the fact that the Cavalier he'd been fighting was now lamed badly enough that she couldn't run away like the rest of the squadron had.
He pushed the nose down until Knarvon II-c filled the viewport. There was really only one option left. Mera swiveled at her station and stared at him, wide-mouthed. He shrugged and returned a forced grin as the surface rushed up to meet them.
Kalan missed looking at the stars. He was happy to still be alive and uninjured, but he really missed looking at the stars. Unfortunately, the view was obscured by a the large quantity of dust that was resting against the cockpit. His fault, really; he'd been in a bit of a hurry when he landed. His ruse, however, seemed to be working.
Faced with an impossible battle above, Kalan had looked downward for salvation. Knarvon II-c was an airless, lifeless lump of misshapen rock with a fairly weak gravity well... weak enough for even a crippled corvette to make an emergency landing. It had been a bit of a rough landing, and the turret had been crushed beneath the ship when they came down, but the Dolly had come to rest with her hull—and her crew—intact. He was having some doubts about his ability to get her back off the surface, and judging by the number of functional-but-obstructed sensors they had to be mostly buried by the planetoid's loose, dusty surface material, but they were alive. Pherd was nursing a broken arm and Mera was nursing a broken ego from the loss of her gun, but they were alive.
More importantly, the rest of the squadron should be well clear of the enemy's sensors, hopefully making like nine corvette-sized chunks of uninteresting space rock as they floated around the system on ballistic courses with the minimal power settings he'd ordered. He knew they had to be safe because most of the enemy force was still circling around Knarvon II-c trying to find the ship that had killed their patrol.
Maybe they only reported "enemy contact" without dumping their sensor data, he mused. Wouldn't that be nice?
That, it seemed, was exactly what the inexperienced raider pilots had done. If the enemy suspected that there might be more Kushan units hiding in the area, the least they would have done was run an expanding ball search around the diminutive moon; they had more than enough ships for that. However, they seemed to be limiting their sweeps to local space and the surface... and for once, Kalan was glad for the bland grey-on-grey paint scheme all of the Cavaliers still wore as a tradition. Whatever small part of the Dolly was exposed, it must have looked from above like a rock against the background of the surface.
Either that or they spotted the impact site and figured we wouldn't be causing them any more problems...
Whatever the pirates thought had happened, every moment he continued to draw breath was a moment he intended to thank Sajuuk and the Cavalier design team for. If he lived through this, it would definitely be time for retirement.
The estimate for when re-enforcements should have arrived from home came... and passed. It had been another half a day since the Daalis Manaan's hasty landing on Knarvon II-c, and there hadn't been a peep from any of the little corvette's secure comm channels. The squadron was supposed to be running silent, but since Dolly's phased telemetry link had died when the turret did, he had no way of knowing. Kalan had expected that; the Somtaaw-designed FTL communications system, an invention of the Beast War, had only been added to the aging Cavaliers as an afterthought, and it had to have been the most half-assed "official" upgrade the corvettes had ever received.
When the Somtaaw invented the thing, they retrofitted it to all their ships... but they'd been careful to mount it in sensible places, or at least to armor the blister it was mounted in to the specs of the surrounding hull. When HDC ordered the equipment retrofitted to all other ships, front-line craft like the Tempests had been equipped the same way. The Cavaliers, however, hadn't been a priority; they'd only received the thing at all because it had become standard across the whole fleet. Nobody had taken the time to figure out where the optimal location for it would be, and they certainly hadn't considered how well it would hold up under stress.
Instead, the brilliant minds in charge of retrofitting older strike craft hulls had designed a bare-bones, unarmored, pod-on-a-pylon mount that could be fitted to any existing external power/datafeed hookup. There were two such ports on the Cavalier—a dorsal hookup by the topside airlock to attach a frigate umbilical to, and a ventral hookup behind the boarding hatch for cables when the corvette had a solid deck to land on. Since all of the Cavaliers that survived the Beast War were assigned to 308th, whose base ships were frigates, that left the ventral port open except when the ships were in-hangar for their bi-annual workovers. Then the pods could be easily detached by a deck crew.
Dolly's pod had been even more easily detached by the surface of Knarvon II-c as she bellied in and came to rest... and that had left Kalan, Mera, and Pherd both deaf and mute to squadron communications. He didn't even know if the rest of his crews knew they were still alive, and he didn't dare set off anything so obvious as a distress beacon when there could still be raider ships lurking just out of his very limited field of vision.
His normal comms were working perfectly, of course; that system had been in place and functional ever since Dolly came off the Mothership's production line more than three decades ago. If a relief force had arrived from Hiigara, they would have broadcast on all channels... and Kalan Luus-Naabal would have known about it, because he still had an exposed sensor/antenna cluster on the dorsal surface of his dust-covered ship.
The Hiigaran Navy was not a force that was typically slow to react. In fact, Kalan's original estimate had been extremely conservative for the sake of rationing supplies; at maximum power the undamaged Matriarchs should have arrived back at the Homeworld a mere three days after leaving the Knarvon system. The lone surviving Vengeance frigate, damaged though it was and allowing for a generous safety margin, should have arrived within six days... by which time a task force should have been underway en route back to Knarvon at maximum power.
He'd given them eight days. With the supply pods they'd been left with, the 308th had enough food and water to last a month. Ammo was a non-issue; they'd only use it if they were detected. That, however, was assuming that the squadron could rendezvous with the Mercies again somewhere—without those extra supplies, they'd be out of food in less than a week. The Mercies would then be able to last for as long as they needed to, but that wasn't really the best-case scenario... because all of Kalan's people would be dead. Not that he didn't appreciate the SAR crews for volunteering to remain behind in support, but they didn't do his pilots and crews much good if they couldn't deliver their services.
And that still left himself, Pherd, and Mera aboard the Dolly, and they were almost certainly beyond hope of resupply. Even if Kalan was sure he could get his damaged ship into space again, he couldn't be sure that the pirates wouldn't detect him as soon as he did so... and even if he managed to evade detection, he couldn't risk contacting the rest of the squadron without a functioning phased telemetry link.
All he could do—all any of the Dolly's three-man crew could do—was sit and wait.
Sixty-five hours later...
A tug on the arm roused Kalan from sleep. He opened his eyes and saw Mera, a look of urgent excitement in her eyes. He cautiously lowered himself out of the bunk—the deck was uneven; Dolly had come to rest at a fairly unusual angle and he'd shut down the artificial gravity along with the drive after they skidded to a stop. Pherd was nowhere to be seen, which meant he was already in the cockpit and not snoozing in the corner. Ever since the raiders had given up the search, they'd been a bit more relaxed with their watch rotation. That roused Kalan's interest; Mera couldn't have been excited about anything in the aft cabin, and if it was interesting enough for there to be two sets of eyes in the cockpit then it had to be interesting enough for three.
Without bothering to fasten the flap of his tunic, Kalan followed his gun-less gunner up front and settled into the pilot's seat, flipping on the main display with one hand as he reflexively fastened his crash webbing with the other—and bit off a chuckle as he realized the fact, because he was already about as crashed as he was likely to get short of having a carrier dropped on his head.
The readouts from his little ship's exposed sensor cluster instantly wiped the humor from his thoughts. There were raiders overhead again, but they weren't interested in the Dolly. They were forming battle formations, not search patterns. And the carrier that had borne all of the little bastards into Knarvon in the first place was sitting right there with them.
"Skipper," whispered Pherd as though the raiders could hear him through the vacuum between them, "they wouldn't be setting up like that for us, would they?"
Kalan shook his head, knowing that his copilot wasn't just talking about Dolly but about the entire squadron. There was no logical reason why a raider force with more than a hundred strike craft and a carrier would have concentrated like that to face down nine corvettes. Not even against Kushan pilots, and not even after losing a goodly chunk of their fighters—which they'd probably replaced at least some of by now—to the picket and the Dolly.
The only possible reason for the raiders to pull all of their patrols in—and it had to be all of them, because the Lord couldn't have carried very many more ships than were appearing on his sensors—was a significant threat from outside the system.
"Cavalry's here," said Mera cheerily as she drew the same conclusion. "Too bad we can't help, huh Skip?"
Yeah, he thought. Too bad we...
His brain ran mid-thought into a wall built of pure, solid obvious.
"Yes we can," he murmured, and started running the Dolly through the fastest cold start he'd ever tried. They were right under the raiders. Right under them. So close that he could have made an accurate count of numbers, types, and positions with a pair of good binoculars. If he could get a clear picture with the rest of Dolly's sensors, he could broadcast the data in the clear and give the relief force, wherever they were, every single detail. All he had to do was get off of this misshapen space rock, and he was sure that the Good Guys were on the other side. The raiders had to be hiding behind the planetoid to conceal their numbers—it made sense; he could see the system primary which meant that the raiders were massing on the insystem side of the rock.
He gave the reaction control a test, and dust puffed away from the sides of the corvette in every direction. Kalan smiled. This was going to work. Except...
"Suit up, Mera," he said.
"What?" She looked at him as if he'd slapped her.
"You're gonna sit this one out, kid. I don't have a gun. I don't need a gunner."
"I am not gonna sit on this stupid damned rock while you two go and get blown up!"
Kalan exhaled forcefully to choke off the tears. He'd have told Pherd to get his ass up, too, but he knew that just flying the Dolly in her present condition was going to be enough of a challenge... he needed his copilot to keep the ship together and make sure the transmission made it through.
But he didn't need a gunner.
"We don't have the time, Mera. You're sitting if I have to push you out the sand-cursed airlock..." he looked her square in the eye- "and that's an order," he finished softly. He knew she understood. If she hadn't, then she wouldn't have wanted to stay aboard. Kalan had seen too many of his people, of his friends die. He wasn't going to let even one more Kushan life be lost that didn't need to be—and he knew that his own chances of survival, and Pherd's, were slim. Mera did not need to die; her death would accomplish even less than Udin's had. For all Kalan knew, the rest of the 308th was already gone, scattered in bits and pieces and bodies across the system. If she lived... then it wouldn't all be for nothing. Some part of the squadron—some part of the Daalis Maanan—would still be alive.
And she knew it; she accepted it—went aft to put on her suit and climb out the airlock, just as she'd been told to. It hurt Kalan more than anything he could imagine to give that order. He knew all too well what he was asking her to do. In the last days of the Beast War, when the creature had given all it had left to avoid being wiped from the face of existence, his squadron had been one of the hardest hit. Only a single Cavalier of the 282nd—his—had survived the engagement. Kalan knew what it felt like to be the only survivor. He'd rather have died with his friends... but that wouldn't stop him from ordering another friend to save her own life because she simply didn't need to die.
He followed his gunner to the ladder, checked to make sure she'd sealed her helmet properly... and saluted. She returned his salute in kind, tears streaming down her grimy face behind the faceshield.
"You can keep my pay," he said, only half joking. She'd won it fair and square, after all.
She didn't answer... she just gave her Skipper a desperate last hug and climbed up the ladder into the airlock without another word. Kalan stared at the sealed hatch for a few moments before he finally turned, determined and ready, to the cockpit. Pherd looked him in the eye, nodded in silent approval, and went on with the preflight.
Kalan gave his gunner plenty of time to clear the hull before he redlined the throttle and burned for space. There was a slight bump when something fell off the ship and back towards the surface, but it didn't matter as long as she was still flying. His trajectory looked good; in another five minutes he'd crest the horizon and be able to transmit to the friendly ships he knew must be readying for battle on the other side. He tightened his grip on the control yoke as the damaged ship shuddered under her own power—as if she, too, knew that this was the end.
Been a Hell of a ride, old girl. Let's throw one more party for the boys and girls of the Fleet.
Three months later...
Ensign Mera Dur-Sjet touched the twisted wreckage gently, circling around it with a reverence born of fire and loss. It had taken the recovery crews and their Workers a while to find it, but her memory had proven accurate. She had seen something come back down as the Daalis Maanan lifted off on her final flight: the remains of the Cavalier's gun turret, barely recognizable after having fallen more than twenty kilometers into a rock formation... but all that remained of the little ship and her legacy.
Left behind... just like me. To make sure something survived.
Kalan's gamble had paid off. With the data he and Pherd transmitted, the relief force knew exactly where the raiders would be. The gigantic Somtaaw-built dreadnought at the head of the force had missiles spilling out of her tubes before she'd cleared the horizon, each filled with deadly purpose, aided by the targeting data provided by Dolly's sensors. The battle had lasted mere minutes as the destroyers and frigates in its company chewed the Lord and the remainder of its fighters to so much scrap. Mera had seen the whole battle, from where she stood on the surface of that lifeless planetoid—but the titanic firestorm of the Turanic invasion force dying was little more than justice due. The image burned into the back of her mind, the image that would haunt her for the rest of her days, was that of a single tiny flash. A candle, lit and extinguished in an instant, marking the passage of her ship and her crew.
But you saved them, Skipper... you saved them all.
The remaining seven Cavaliers, and both of the Mercies that had stayed in-system to support them, had appeared out of the blackness of space—alive, intact, and to a man angry that they hadn't been able to close the distance fast enough to fight. It was at their insistence that the recovery crews searched for whatever remained of the Dolly and the crew that had ridden her to the end.
The turret, and the gunner who'd been redundant without it, were all that they found. When Mera stepped off the SAR bird onto the hangar floor, they'd treated her with the same sort of reverence she felt for the hunk of ruined metal that had been her weapon. As though some part of the man who'd guided them through ten days of hell had survived with her—when all she felt was a great void where there should have been two friends standing beside her.
They were, all the survivors, the legacy he'd left. That they'd left, all of the Cavalier crews, every one since the first battle on the long and arduous road to Hiigara. That fateful routine patrol around a dim star called Knarvon was to be their last... and, Mera thought, a fitting end. The ships themselves had become sacred—all were to be retired now, but not for scrap. Those few that remained would be given places of honor in front of the Fleet museum at Asaam Kiith'Sid, and would stand forever more as a monument to the sacrifices of the brave men and women who'd given their lives to defend the Homeworld.
Front and center, leading the silent formation, would rest the shattered turret of the Daalis Maanan.