J.F. Kennedy Station in orbit of Trojan, Eta Cassiopeiae. 19th September 3349
"Would you look at that!"
I glanced out the port window of my canopy, and looked at the vista before me. Thousands of capital ships arranged into squadrons, surrounded by clouds of smaller fightercraft. Four huge megaships loomed over them all, three of them representing the various factions (the FNS Obama acting as the flagship for the Federation, the INV Victoria for the Empire, and the ADFV Novalis of the Alliance Defence Force) and the Canonn Interstellar Research Group's sole megaship the Gnosis acting as the representative for the Pilot's Federation, as well as the muster point for the various pilot wings like ours who had been roped into helping with the strike team by the Pilot's Federation.
"Yeah, it's certainly something," a voice said over my ship's communications. "Almost as wondrous as Johansen's cleavage!"
"Hey!" cried my co-pilot Scarlet Johansson in a mocking tone of voice. "I could have you reassigned for that!"
The person making the lewd comments about my co-pilot was one of my wingmates, Barry Lewis. He was the pilot of a orange and white Cobra Mk III flying to my left. Barry and Johansson were suspected by the rest of us to be in the early stages of a serious relationship, but all attempts to inquire or deduce any facts about said romance were doomed to failure. Both parties were notorious for having the best poker faces out of the ten men and woman who formed the Elite Wing.
The Elite Wing was the name for…well, us. Five ships, each crewed by two people. Over the years, we had amassed a reputation for getting the job done effectively, and for being one of the few permanent teams among the numerous independent pilots that hadn't formed a unit such as a squadron. While we could have done such a thing, it would have made our friendship into a business of sorts, and that was not something we were willing to do.
On my left was Lewis and his co-pilot Armin Sobotak. They flew the aforementioned Cobra painted with the Orange Rattler paintjob, the fourteenth mark III ever to come off the production line. While this technically wasn't something to brag about (the early Cobra III's being famous for defects in hull integrity and for glitchy navigational systems), Barry claimed it gave the aging ship 'character'. In reality, it just meant that Barry spent more income on keeping his ship running, and less on drinks at the pilot's lounge after long flights. Armin and Barry were very simular, if only in the fact that they were two of the most spirited people I had ever met. Armin was different to Barry in the fact that he had finished high school and got a degree, rather than getting a girl pregnant, before running away and joining the Federal Navy at age 17.
In the second ship to my left (a new-model Alliance Chieftain with a vibrant yellow paintjob) was Patricia Adams and her co-pilot Laurence. Pat was the only person I knew who would willingly fly a ship with as weak a hull as her beloved Chieftain. While the Alliance ship was well-known for its awesome manoeuvrability, and had some of the latest technology intergrated into it's core systems; the hull was about as strong as two tin-cans duct taped together. It's shields weren't much better, and the ship lacked a decent number of utility hardpoints to be useful. However, Pat loved it, and her co-pilot was willing to fly anything that she did, them being the only married couple of the two of us. I had met the two of them when me and the rest of the 'Wingers' (as we were known on Galnet) saved their wedding barge from a group of pirates we had been chasing. Pat and Laurence were both veteran pilots already, having flown in the Federal Navy as fighter pilots before retiring and becoming independents. Pat had taken one look at the destroyed robot pastor about to join her and Laurence in marriage, and asked me to marry the two. I accepted, and soon afterwards they joined me and my friends in the Elite Wing.
On my immediate right was Rufus Harrin and Wedge Daniels, piloting a modified Lakon Type-9 Heavy painted in Squadron Blue. Rufus and Wedge were our tech specialists, both of them hailing from industrialised systems where they had picked up engineering skills pretty quickly. Their ship acted as a mobile repair and resupply unit for the wing, carrying a hold full of limpets, three auxiliary fuel tanks as well as two external tanks for extra carrying capacity, as well as a variety of limpet controllers. Both of them were geeky as hell, and about as socially apt as a pile of small grey pebbles. They were still two of the finest men I have ever had the pleasure of flying alongside, and Rufus was well-trained in flying the ponderous vessel he and his best friend crewed.
To their left was the final pairing of pilot and co-pilot, namely Aaron Carrel and Mina Harris. Technically, only one of them flew the main ship, that being a grey federal gunship with a military green stripe. Mina was actually responsible for six Aegis F36-F Fighters that resided within the belly of the gunship, deploying to act as fast attack craft. Their vessel was a gift from one of the Federal Navy's highest ranking admirals, as a reward for saving his daughter and wife from a group of slavers who kidnapped them during a raid on a Federation colony. The ship carried the heaviest loadout of all our vessels, with two small hardpoint packing a pair of beam lasers, four medium hardpoints with Railguns and a single large hardpoint carrying a missile launcher. The fighters inside the small ship carried a twin plasma repeaters on each unit, as well as a point defence turret for defence. The two of them were the only members of our wing to carry a official and current rank with any of the factions we had been drafted to assist, both carrying the rank of ensign with the Federal Navy.
The ship I was piloting was a Fer-De-Lance heavy fighter, or rather MY Fer-De-Lance Heavy Fighter. Painted with a Red Razor paintjob and named the Stargazer, she was the second fastest ship in the wing (behind Lewis's Cobra) and the one with the heaviest weapons. She was equipped with a Class-4 Plasma Accelerator, designed to punch holes in the toughest of hull armour. Her four medium hardpoints carried a pair of turreted multicanons, as well as a pair of fixed pulse lasers. Her six utility hardpoints bore pairs of chaff launchers and point defence turrets, as well as a Xeno Scanner and a Shutdown Field Neutraliser for dealing with Thargoids. On her flanks, like those of all the other Winger ships, she bore the Elite logo, gifted by the pilots federation. On her snout however, she had a decal of a four-point star, done out in red with a pair of wings extending to the sides. That symbol was our one, the logo of the Wingers.
As our vessels flew towards the fleet, forming a 'V' shaped formation, the warships of the three factions arranged themselves into tight groups. As we docked with the Gnosis, I thought about the reasons for this temporary alliance of the superpowers….
Humanity had always theorised that there was other civilisations out there while we were trapped on our own planet. When we finally got out into the black, there was nothing. Zip. No alien races had survived long enough for humanity to encounter them and make first contact. Sure, there were ruins found of long-dead interstellar civilisations. But there were no other lifeforms to be found, other than some mould or some other non-sapient fauna and flora. That is, until we encountered the Thargoids. The Thargoids were first encountered by various pilots, who investigated areas of space where many, many ships had disappeared. The Federation and the other superpowers managed to cover the earliest encounters up behind a veil of secrecy and deception, but the rumours still persisted in the depths of shady bars and nightclubs of a powerful race of aliens who were responsible for the numerous disappearances of ships all around the galaxy. No one put too much faith into the stories, and soon the aliens were all but forgotten.
Then, two things happened one after the other. The first was the first series of encounters with the Thargoids, back in the 3100's. A brief war was fought between humanity and the aliens, before they disappeared, apparently for good. People soon forgot about the events, and by 3300, the war and the legend was simply a file in a long-neglected archive on some dustbowl of a world. the organisation leading the fight, INRA, dissolved soon after the war, leaving behind assets that would eventually be found by pilots in the 34th century, almost a century after INRA was shut down.
The reappearance of the Thargoids occurred after the second incident, which was the discovery of strange artefacts all over the galaxy. Named 'Unknown Artefacts', they were biomechanical in nature, and played havoc with ship systems and even the more resilient functions of space stations. They were soon discovered to be pointing towards a system called Meriope. In that system, we discovered the first Barnacle. The Barnacles were alien structures that seemed to grow out of the surface of planets. The structures were composed of a unique material that was soon dubbed 'Meta alloy', a metallic substance that could negate the effects of Unknown Artefacts on ships and stations. Before anyone could do anything about this, the Thargoids reappeared.
When me and the Wingers heard the news, it was quite surprising. Commander DP Sayre, a independent pilot like the rest of us, had been interdicted by a alien ship. The most surprising thing about this was that it had happened while in transit through hyperspace. Before that moment, we had been unaware that ships could be interdicted in hyperspace, as we ha only been able to remove ships from FTL speeds while using supercruise. The commander apparently was scanned by the alien ship resembling a petal with a weird shimmer behind it) before the ship flew off. New spread fast, and the word was that the Thargoids were back. Old reports were unearthed, and while the Federation attempted a cover up, they couldn't this time. It was too public and too widespread.
Soon, people discovered that the Thargoids were inexplicably linked to both the Unknown Artefacts (revealed to be Thargoid sensors) and the Barnacle sites that had been springing up all over the galaxy. To cut a longer story slightly shorter, the Thargoids appeared to be moving closer towards the bubble, until they finally entered it. They then began attacking stations and ships with a vengeance, crippling whole regions of space and stranding thousands inside burning stations. They began attacking naval convoys, first of the Federation, then of the Empire, and finally of the Alliance. Things were looking slightly grim for humanity as the frequency and intensity of the attacks increased. Then the really bad news hit.
The Thargoids were gathering on the edge of the bubble. A wing of pilots encountered them, and barely managed to get away. Over a million ships, including massive Thargoid Motherships. It was a invasion fleet, one which could easily overcome any force sent against it. The superpowers decided to unite, seeing the salvation of the galaxy as within their best interests.
And so that brings us to now, with me and the Wingers sitting in one of the lounges aboard the Gnosis, ready to jump to the Antares System to fight a hoard of alien vessels that this fleet was assembled to fight. As I looked out the window at the massive fleet, the technological might of humanity arrayed before me, I realised one thing. No matter how impressive our technology, we are still outmatched by the Thargoids. No matter how strong our numbers, the Thargoids can kill us all. In the coming conflict, skill will determine the fight, not numbers or power. As I mused on those thoughts, the fleet outside prepared to jump. That was, until the Thargoids arrived.