For the second time in an hour, Arban Ferriil strapped himself into the cockpit of his interceptor and got ready for combat. Blade Squadron was now whole again, the ship lost at the Khar-Selim battle having being replaced, but no-one seemed particularly eager to talk about anything. They had all seen that one poignant image of the firestorms sweeping across the surface of their former world. Kharak was not their planet by birthright, but it was the home to millions of people. Millions of people, Arban corrected, that were now nothing more than ashes or constituent particles. Everyone in the squadron was supremely angry and desired nothing more than to bring their people back, but it was too late for that now. They had an opportunity for vengeance which no-one could deny them of. It was time to take back a little of what they had lost.
"Blade Six here, ready to go," he reported. The rest of the squadron reported in, then they were out of the hangar and into orbit, soaring over the carcass of Kharak. It took the targeting computer in the interceptor only a second or two to pick out the three large vessels that were firing upon the six cryo-trays nearby; the IFF transponders did not identify them as anything more than assault frigates. Each one was armed with a fearsome array of forward guns set on rotating bases which might pose a problem for anyone making a forward attack, but it seemed that they were undefended everywhere else. What was more interesting was that the third ship, the one closest to Kharak, was already heavily damaged. The orbital missile launchers must have caused some damage before they were taken out, Arban thought. These ships packed a significant amount of firepower, but they couldn't have done all the damage here. There must have been a large complement of fighters, as well as some kind of specialty weapons ship to attack the planet's surface.
He also noticed that they weren't the same alien ships from the edge of the Kharak system. Their architecture was less utilitarian, less pragmatic. It carried a deliberate malevolence and cruelty to it, combining function and sharp sadism into one vessel.
"So if they aren't the same ones," he asked himself, "then who the hell are they?"
"All fighters, this is Fleet Intelligence. Do not attack the heavily-damaged frigate; we are despatching salvage corvettes to bring it in for interrogation and dismantling. Destroy the other two ships as ordered." The leaders of both Arrows and Blades acknowledged the orders and altered their attack vectors.
The cryo-trays were large, rectangular structures that were nothing more than immense storage facilities. Each tray housed one hundred thousand Kharakid in cryogenic stasis for the long journey to Hiigara, and while they were self-contained, they were not permanent endpoints for the 'sleepers'. They were designed to hold the colonists in orbit until the mothership was complete, then they would be loaded and secured into the capital ship foundry on-board, where the Kharakid would be off-loaded and placed in the cryogenic vault while the trays were disassembled for resource reclamation. No shielding or weaponry had been built into them, and as such, they were large targets for the assault frigates and their guns. Arban saw that they were concentrating their fire on one single tray at a time. The Arrows were already making strafing runs on the first undamaged ship to weaken the shields, making room for the interceptors and their missile attacks.
Juriin's voice cut into his thoughts. "This is Blade Lead. Knock the shields down, then regroup at co-ordinates four-five-oh mark seven-nine."
The combined might of twelve interceptors and their mass driver cannons struck the shields of the first assault frigate. Being a large ship, the frigate had shields that were able to take fire from small fighter craft for a long time. However, Kharakid tacticians knew that by concentrating fire on one single point, even a small handful of fighters could cause serious problems with shielding. After the Arrows, it took the Blades a single run to punch a hole in the frigate's shields. Arban locked onto the shield and opened fire. The pinpoint projectiles of the mass drivers splashed across the energy field before causing it to flicker. Behind him, Blade Seven's shots penetrated into the hull, where they tore bits and pieces of metal loose. Arban soared over the back of the frigate, executed a rolling loop, and came back for a second run. He triggered a burst of fire that nibbled through another part of the shield, then he inverted and climbed away in a long spiral. The damaged frigate made a few shots at him, but they exploded by on either side harmlessly. Ferriil noticed that a pair of salvage corvettes, the Porter and the Another Day, had latched on to either side of the ship and were already beginning to pull it away. Salvage corvettes were a tactician's drawback plan: if a battle was going somewhat badly, they could deploy a series of salvage corvettes to steal some of the enemy ships. A data uplink in each of the stocky 'arms' downloaded a series of viruses and scrambler programs into the computer system, then a pair of high-power tractor beams was able to secure the opponent. Salvage corvettes possessed the greatest thrust-to-size ratio in the entire fleet, including the mothership, and it was this that allowed them to bring home vessels that were several times their own size. Arban smiled as he watched, imagining the alien crew as they tried and failed to regain control of their ship. They would be taken onto the mothership, questioned by InSec and Intel, and then detained or released.
His heads-up display showed that the shields on the frigate were down, so he punched the co-ordinates Juriin had given him into the navicomp and let the interceptor fly itself out. "Blades, this is Lead. Arm torpedoes, single shot, and lock onto the target I assign you. The enemy's armour is heavy from a front perspective, but it looks real thin towards the rear, particularly in the lateral segments. We should be able to cripple him in one run," Juriin said, voice cold and deadly.
A string of numbers appeared on the tactical screen before a targeting reticle appeared around a diagram of the frigate. Arban had been given orders to hit a long stretch of power transfer conduit that supplied the weapons turrets at the front. It was a small target, but the missile was computer-controlled, so he figured that it'd be a fairly easy shot. As he looped around, he felt his ship crunch and rattle heavily, and the lights on the controls went off. "What the…?" he muttered as everything came back on. The first frigate is firing on us! It's damaged partner gone and it's sister ship still focusing on the cryo-tray, the first vessel had decided to have a shot at the fighters. His shields were back up, but that had been a solid hit, and no doubt a few systems were burned out. The technicians weren't going to be happy.
Blades Lead through to Five made their attack runs. Missiles punched through the ship armour and detonated inside, boiling great holes in the hull. Gun turrets raked the surrounding space with frantic fire as it tried to fight off the now-deadly interceptors. Arban waited until his target reticle went red, and popped off a single torpedo. It hit the transfer conduit head on. Volatile energy streams ripped free of their cylindrical prison and cut into the battleship from all sides. Atmosphere vented, carrying with it debris and bodies, then subsidiary explosions rocketed more shrapnel and parts into the void. Lights went off along the length of the frigate as it began to lose power. Gouts of plasma fire escaped into the vacuum.
With no chance of survival, the assault frigate's captain did the one thing left open to him – the one thing that no-one expected. He rolled his ship forward to face the six cryo-trays and reset his forward guns to straight alignment. Arban swore as he watched the large cannons line up and fire one last desperate volley before the ship was consumed with fire. There was no escape from the Kharakid, only death, and the frigate died spectacularly.
It had a hull breach along one side that seemed to suck in everything around it. The large engine array exploded immediately, shredding the rear third of the ship and causing a roiling blue wave of incandescent gas to push the ship forward, but by then it was only the spasmodic jerking of a dead body. A final torpedo from Blade Eleven cored through the frigate's bridge module, melting everything into long, twisted threads that trailed from the wreck like streamers, or congealed blood. The hollow hull sagged in on itself and hung there in space.
"Good job, guys," Arban congratulated over the comm. "We showed – "
"Attention, all fighters! Cryo-tray one is about to melt down!"
The final shot from the assault frigate had reached its intended target. The Porter and Another Day had carted off two of the cryo-trays already, but the damaged one was still vulnerable. Those last hits seemed to push it over the edge – forks of lightning played across the hull before it erupted in a volcano of light and heat. Fragments of hull and cryogenic suspension pods hurtled away, and one hundred thousand Kharakid joined their planetside comrades in the icy sea of death.
Arban felt his heart ignite as the two fighter squadrons turned on the final frigate. They repeated the same tactic, and their final frigate detonated in as fiery a fashion as its partner, but each move was ingrained with anger and pain that now seemed a defining characteristic of the Kharakid fleet. As the last missiles hit, someone shouted, "For Kharak! For vengeance!" over the comm, and Arban Ferriil found he could only agree.
Blade Squadron returned to the mothership in silence.
* * *
