Decisions
Chameleon was lying facedown on Maestro's bed. She had on a pair of underwear and was naked from the waist up. Maestro came out of the head, moved over to the bed, and straddled Chameleon's hips. Slowly he began to massage her neck and shoulders. She let out a moan of pleasure at his touch. "Lower," she purred. Maestro just shifted downwards and began massaging the middle and lower portions of her back. "Oh, right there. Yes."
Maestro smiled and leaned forward to give her a kiss on the shoulder. It had been five days since the SWACS team had perished. Unfortunately, all five of those days since had been filled with seriously heavy real fighter combat. Besides the SWACS team, almost fifteen other pilots had been lost. From all perspectives, the Nephilim were throwing everything they had in this sector at the Palau. Drake and Maniac were busy trying to figure out a strategy in order to stay alive. The Palau had retreated, backtracked, and circumvented and still the Nephilim were coming. Some wings were flying almost around the clock. Omega Squadron was no exception. They would fly until their Cobras were empty of ordinance or fuel or both, dock, and then get into their secondary Cobras and go right back out to repeat the process. When that was over, they would get back into their primary Cobras and start all over again. This was the first moment of levity for them in about 36 hours. Maestro tickled Chameleon's ribs to get her to squirm.
"Stop," she said with a giggle.
"Make me," Maestro replied. He leaned forward again and kissed her on the lips.
"All pilots to the briefing room on the double!" squawked Anderson over the ship-wide intercom.
"Looks like Anderson just did," Chameleon said. "Please hand me my shirt."
Maestro gave her her shirt and turned his back to let her get dressed. He himself got back into his flightsuit and waited for her to do likewise. Once she had also gotten dressed they went out to the lift and headed for the Flight Deck. Chameleon was the last of the Omegas to arrive and Maestro moved to sit with the rest of Diamondback Squadron. Rapier turned a sideways glance to Zero in Diamondback section. Zero shrugged and rolled his eyes. It was clear that they both knew that Maestro and Chameleon had become an item. Drake walked in with Maniac and before anyone could stand Maniac said, "As you were."
Drake and Maniac both looked like they were shouldering the weight of the world. Drake stepped up to her podium and looked over all the faces of the pilots. She steeled herself and Maniac took a few steps away. "Before it was destroyed," she began. "The Listener sent us some crucial information. The first piece of information is on the new type of Nephilim fighter that engaged the pilots who were flying escort for the SWACS. It is a medium fighter with heavier armor than most fighters of its size. It sports a lot of firepower for a bug fighter of its size. One piece of note is that in addition to its energy weapons, it also seems to carry a projectile gun similar to our Stormfire guns. However, it has yet to fire this gun in combat as far as we can tell. This fighter is also very fast. Faster than just about everything we have. Our preliminary estimates show that only a Wasp or Cobra stands even a remote chance of keeping up with it. Also, due to the fact that the pilot of this fighter took out five Panthers in the Black Widow Squadron, we have sufficient reason to believe that the pilot is an Ace. I am not going to sugarcoat this ladies and gentlemen, this bug is lethal and if you meet him in a battle your odds of surviving are not good. The only successful hit scored on it was when it allowed itself to be hit."
A general murmur went up among the pilots. Drake sighed and continued. "You heard me correctly, when it allowed itself to be hit. Don't try to outrun it either, you will not get away, nor will you be able to chase it down. One final thing, if you eject from your fighters, pray that your wingman can keep him off of you because he has no problems targeting your escape pods and firing on them. He is like no bug we have ever seen in this war."
Drake allowed the pilots a few moments to let all this demoralizing information sink in. She looked at Maniac. He didn't look at her, he just stared at the floor. Once Drake felt that the information had been sufficiently absorbed and digested she proceeded, "The second piece of information is the news that two battle groups have been detected in the V'trelm system. They are not running together, but are in fact putting distance between themselves. Based on our projections, one battle group is headed for a civilian colony on the edge of the G'renll system. The other group appears to be headed for a military outpost in the G'atak system. Since we are the closest ConFed presence to these battle groups, we are going to maneuver the Palau to intercept. However, there is bad news that comes along with this. Both groups have fleet destroyers and we will only be able to stop one of those battle groups from reaching its destination. We have decided that it would be best if we stopped the battle group headed for the civilian target. Now, it will take the Palau two days to intercept this battle group and between now and then we will be on full alert at all times. If there are no questions, then you are all dismissed."
The assembly of pilots stood and saluted. While the rest of the pilots were filing out, Rapier and Midnight were discussing something. "I doubt we will be allowed to do that," said Midnight.
"Why?" asked Rapier.
"Where to begin?" said Midnight. "It's very risky, for one. And two, we'd be on our own for it."
"Is there a problem, gentlemen?" asked Drake. Rapier and Midnight turned to face her at attention.
"No, ma'am," said Rapier. "Midnight and I were just discussing the possibility of attacking the second battle group with the Omega Squadron."
"How would you plan on doing that, Lieutenant," Drake began. "When the Omega Squadron is going to be attacking the first battle group?"
"I just thought that…"
"No, Lieutenant, you didn't think. We've lost twenty good pilots on this tour already. We can't afford the risk of losing any more pilots on unnecessary missions. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Good, now get going. We all have a lot of work to do before our next mission."
Rapier and Midnight quietly saluted and turned to leave. Maniac was standing at the doorway as they left. Rapier briefly locked eyes with him as he left the room. Once they were gone, Maniac turned to Drake. "That was uncalled for," he said. "At least they were trying to think of a way to hit both battle groups."
"At ease, Commodore," said Drake. "We've been over this a dozen times. We don't have the resources to attack both groups. We both agreed that the outpost stands a better chance of surviving an attack than the colony does."
"No, you decided which target would stand a better chance for survival. You and I both know that if we don't take that battle group out then the outpost will fall. I say that if Omega Squadron wants to take a shot at them, let them."
"And lose our only pilots capable of taking on that new fighter?"
"You don't know that they'll fail. You are condemning them before they try."
"Yes, I know they would fail. Now, I think you should stop trying to tell me how to do my job and do your own. I am Commander Air Group, not you. I say how and when they will fly and what missions they will fly on, not you! Now, if you will please excuse me, Commodore, I have more pressing things to do than stand here and argue with you."
Maniac turned and stormed out of the briefing room and headed right for Pilot Country. He stormed in and marched right up to Rapier. "I want you and your whole squadron in my office in ten minutes," he ordered. Without another word he turned and marched back out, ignoring the salutes of other officers.
"Great," said Bitch. "He's going to chew us out."
"I don't think so," disagreed Rapier.
Ten minutes later, exactly, the entire assembly of the Omega Squadron arrived at Maniac's office. "At ease," he said. "I want to hear what you have planned."
"Permission to speak freely, sir?" asked Rapier.
"Of course," replied Maniac. "I wouldn't have brought you guys in here if we weren't going to discuss this matter off the record. So tell me what you are planning."
Rapier motioned to Midnight. Midnight stepped forward and looked directly at Maniac. "We initially thought that we could just go after the second battle group from the go," he said. "However, because we are under orders to go on the primary mission, that makes going after the second battle group more difficult, but not impossible."
"How do you mean?" asked Maniac.
"According to the ICIS," continued Midnight. "It should take roughly four hours to get the mission accomplished. But, by my calculations, if we can trim enough time off of that, we can still hit the second group."
"How much time?" asked Maniac.
"Ninety minutes," Midnight said after taking and releasing a deep breath. "If we can do that, it would give us a five-minute window to take out the capital ships of the second battle group. Anything less than ninety minutes, and we won't have enough time to get the job done before they make their jump."
"That cuts it close," said Maniac. "Are you sure it's worth it?"
"Sir," interrupted Rapier. "If we weren't sure it was worth it, we wouldn't be planning it."
"Do you all feel that way?" asked Maniac.
Every member of Omega Squadron nodded their heads.
"Alright," said Maniac. "Assuming I let you do this, how do you propose to get this accomplished? I do not want you to compromise the primary objective in order to get the secondary objective done."
"Of course not, sir," said Rapier. "Our plan is simple. We are flying fighter support for Black Widow Squadron. They take out the capital ships, we take out the fighters. Once the enemy fighters are all gone and Major Talvert gives us the go ahead, we will race back to the Palau. Once docked, we get out of our primary Cobras and jump into our secondary Cobras, which will conveniently be fueled and ready to launch with a booster pack variation and a wild weasel load. When we launch, we race towards the second battle group and beat them to the jump point."
"Where you take out as much of that battle group as you can to either give the outpost a better chance or convince the bugs to abort their mission," said Maniac.
"Exactly, sir," said Rapier.
"Let me ask you one more question, Lieutenant," said Maniac. "What makes you so certain that you will succeed at your primary mission and that all of you will come back from it?"
"We have no choice, sir," said Rapier. "We have to succeed. And I also have the utmost faith in the skills of the pilots under my command. If I didn't then I wouldn't even have thought about trying this."
Maniac nodded his head. "Tell you what," he said. "I'll see to it that those secondary Cobras are waiting for you and I'll handle the CAG. But you have to promise me that you'll succeed in either destroying that battle group or turn it back. Deal?"
The members of Omega Squadron looked at one another. Rapier could feel them all silently agree. He turned to face Maniac. "Deal," he said.
Maniac breathed in a sigh of relief. "Good," he said. "Very well, dismissed."
They all saluted him and proceeded to leave. "Rapier and Midnight stick around," Maniac said at the last moment. "We have an engagement to plan and bugs to kill."
"Yes, SIR!" Rapier and Midnight said at the same time.
The door to Maniac's office closed and the three of them sat down to plan the battle.
To be continued…
