Chapter 8

Two days later…

Admiral Burton Hendrix stared out into the starfield from the bridge of the new Katinian carrier, the Archangel. She was the largest ship in the fleet, being the only fleet carrier in the Katinian Navy. She sported light defensive armament, a bridge at the rear of the vessel and a long, flat launch deck on top of the hangars.

She was also the only capital ship in the Navy completely designed and built in Katina; all the others were bought or 'acquired used' from the Cornerians.

Hendrix had just been promoted to Admiral when the catastrophic events heralding the beginning of the War took place. In the space of a day, he'd packed most of what he needed and said goodbye to his wife and children on Katina. The Archangel was to lead two escort carriers, four battleships, four battlecruisers, eight destroyers, eight frigates and two tenders, plus twelve freighters worth of military supplies to Macbeth. The fleet would leave behind the freighters, a battleship and two frigates, then continue on to Sector Z and await further orders.

"Sir, we read eight squadrons of fighters incoming. ID shows mostly LF-220, F-90, B-14 or F-155 fighters." The sensor operator glanced back at Admiral Hendrix. "That'd be our compliment."

"Transmission received." Said the Communications officer. "3rd Tactical fighter wing and 1st Tactical bomber wing are inbound and requesting landing clearance."

The Admiral glanced out the bridge windows, seeing the multitude of moving specks that were to be the Carrier's fighter compliment.

"Tell Commander Grey and Commander Warren to line their squadrons up on the approach vector we give them. Flight control…"

"Already on it sir." The flight control officer pressed a few keys. "Approach vector set. They should be receiving it on their navigation consoles now."

"Tell them the 3rd Tactical goes in bays 1 through to 48. the 1st lands in bays 49 through to 96. Squadron order is entirely up to them."

"Yessir."

Bill's fighter locked down as it landed on the yellow square assigned to it. A couple of thuds confirmed that his ship was secured to the carrier and was properly aligned.

"Archangel bridge, This is Husky leader, landed and locked."

"Confirmed. Remain in your ship until you are securely in the hangar."

The Archangel was revolutionary in that it did not make use of a long launch tunnel to accelerate the fighters to a good speed, but rather the deck space assigned to each fighter had a repeller built into it, allowing the entire fighter compliment to launch at once, if the need arose.

The small square of deck space assigned to Bill's fighter began to lower into the hangar areas. The repeller plates used to launch the fighters doubled as elevators when taking the fighters back into the hangar deck for storage. Bill watched a glow wash over his ship as it passed through the atmosphere containment field. When the elevator had finished lowering his fighter, a blast door closed above, filling the hole left by the lowering deck. Finally, the atmosphere containment field was shut off and Bill began unbuckling his seatbelt. Once loose, Bill pressed a button on the side of his cockpit and the canopy retracted.

Bill vaulted out of his cockpit and looked around. Maintenance workers were already rushing to his ship. Around him, other elevators were lowering the rest of his squadron into the hangar. A PA system was issuing orders to all aboard the ship and the sound of fighter engines powering down added to the cacophony of sounds filling the vast hangar.

"Welcome aboard sir." A short female squirrel ran up to him and saluted. "I'm Ensign Reeber. Please follow me."

Bill returned the salute. "Just a second. My things…" Bill said, pointing back at his cockpit.

"We'll take those to your room, sir. But Admiral Hendrix would like to see you and Commander Warren now."

"All right. Show me the way then."

As it happened, Ensign Reeber didn't know the way. She took Bill to the cafeteria, then past the reactor room ('Don't look at me, I only got assigned to the ship three days ago'), but they finally ended up on the bridge. Admiral Hendrix and Commander Warren were waiting.

"Commander Grey, good of you to finally join us."

"Sorry sir. We took a wrong turn."

Hendrix dismissed it with a wave of his paw. "Not to worry. I've received our orders, they're available in detail in your quarters. The short story is that we're locking down Sector Z, to make sure none of the hostiles slip through that way."

"Right." Commander Warren replied. "So what exactly are we up against?"

"Don't really know. From the accounts of survivors from Venom, they've got weird ships, unlike what we're used to."

"Descriptive." Said Bill.

"Yes, well nothing I can do about that." Replied the Admiral. "So how are your pilots gentlemen? Ready for the battles ahead?"

"More or less. I've got a few without any combat experience at all, but they'll hold up fine." Stated Bill. Matt Keeler's face flashed through Bill's mind as he remembered the rookie pilot's antics only days before.

"Mostly yes, but Lightning squadron is very green. They'll need to buddy up with our most experienced squadrons before we can do anything solo with them." Added Commander Warren.

"Good." The Admiral stared out at the stars again. A holographic display had highlighted one of them blue. "That's Macbeth. We're one day's travel from there. You pilots sure flew a long way from Katina, and I know 36-hour flights in a cramped cockpit are no fun. Tell your squadrons to get some exercise then some rest. That's all, dismissed."

It could be worse. Thought Bill.

His quarters were barely enough to stretch in. The roof was only four inches above Bill's head, the bed occupied a quarter of the floor space (and it was a tiny bed) and the only other furnishings were a chair, a desk with a computer terminal and a small wardrobe.

Still, everyone below the rank of Lieutenant have to share their rooms with three others. Ouch.

Suddenly there was a lurch and the whole ship shuddered, before everything went smooth again. The Archangel had just skipped into warp-space.

Matt Keeler threw his belongings into the small cargo space assigned to him. He was a golden Labrador who had graduated from the new KDF academy a mere month before the war started. As the youngest pilot in Husky, he was also the greenest, and he had no delusions that he'd end up being a hero. He had learned from endless simulator runs that if he tried heroics he'd probably end up dead.

The room was the kind used by common pilots with no commanding rank. It had four bunks set into the metal walls, and some cargo boxes for pilots to store their junk.

The other three pilots in the room were Husky Three, Husky Five and Husky Seven.

Don Mossini was Husky three, a humorous jackrabbit who had been the one to coin the phrase 'Look boys, he think's he's good!' He was best friends with Husky Four, Benny swipes. Benny was a Falcon, a sterling pilot, almost as good as Bill. He wasn't arrogant about it either.

Husky Seven was the one person in the squadron Matt couldn't remember the name of. He'd been around a while, apparently, though not as long as Bill and his veterans, yet no-one ever talked about him, and Matt had never actually spoken to him in person.

"Hey, Seven, What's your name, I don't think we've been introduced."

The creature looked back at him, and Matt realized he wasn't even sure what species this individual was. "Blaze Walters." He replied shortly, shaking Matt's hand. Then he closed his cargo box then walked out.

Matt Blinked. "What's with him?"

"Don't bother." Said Don. "You won't get more than a few words out of him. He's a mysterious bastard, that Blaze."

"Well what do you know about him?" Asked Matt.

Don reached for a cigar. "Well, he joined up around 2 years ago, that puts him now at around 20-25, from the way he looks, which mind you doesn't give away much about him at all.

"He don't talk to no-one, 'cept when it's necessary. What's the most we've gotten out of him, Benny?"

Then Don and Benny put on extremely stern faces and said in unison "If you two don't shut up then I'll fucking grace your mouths with my fist!" The duo laughed a moment, then Don sat down on his bunk. "No, seriously, the only ones who that Blaze ever talks to are Commander Grey and Lieutenant Bastion. And they won't tell you much about him either. I'm going to the smoking room." Then he hopped up and left the room. Benny checked his watch and a look of surprise crossed his face. "I forgot! I'm meeting Commander Grey now! Gotta go!" And he tore out of the room too. Now Matt was all alone. He decided to check his bunk.

Matt's bunk was on top of Blaze's, so he had to ascend a step to reach it. He threw aside the small curtain that provided darkness and privacy, looked down on the bunk and saw something that appeared to be a deflated balloon. In a split second it self-inflated and assumed the form of a naked female canine.

Matt's jaw dropped in astonishment, recognition and horror. At that moment Don walked back in and took a photo, then dashed off laughing hysterically. Matt heard Benny outside, laughing as well, asking "Did you get him? What'd he look like?"

Matt stood frozen on the ladder for a moment, caught between stuffing away the 'adult's toy' and giving immediate chase to the two pranksters. At that moment, Commander Grey stuck his head through the doorway with a funny look on his face. "Uh oh."

"Sir!" Matt twisted, fell off the step, landed face first on the floor, then stood up. "I can explain that!" He said, gesturing at his bunk.

"No worries." Said the commander, smiling. "Looks like the dynamic duo have struck again. Get back to me sometime when we're on R&R. I'll show you the album."

Keeler was dumbstruck.

"I said don't worry about it Keeler." Bill pointed at the inflatable canine. "But get rid of it." Then he walked off.

Keeler snorted. He grabbed the balloon, then crammed it into Mossini's unlocked cargo box.