High Orbit, Tharkad
Donegal Province
Lyran Alliance

Star-Commodore Ivan Leroux gripped the handrail so tightly that his knuckles went white: ever since arriving in orbit, the small flotilla of ship's under his command had remained on station with the bulk of the Lyran fleet, keeping the Blakist's from gaining control of the airspace over the Capital City.

This had ended when long-range sensors had picked-up the silowet of a WarShip making its way round the horizon towards them. Rather than activate the targeting sensors, thus giving away his ship's exact position, Leroux raised the alert status to General Quarters, then ordered one of the OmniFighters under his command to investigate.

Major Scot felt his body being pushed back into his padded seat as he pulled the throttle all the way back, his Sulla-C OmniFighter surging forward at a staggering 7-G's of acceleration. He had to keep the black spots from filling his vision as he rocketed forward at full speed. Angling the nose of his fighter towards the planet, Scot put her into a shallow dive.

Blazing through the outer atmosphere like a man-made meteorite, the Clan fighter picked up even more speed as its altitude fell. A shimmering corona of plasma sounded Scot's cockpit, and he switched over to his instruments: his long-range sensors where out, blinded by the electromagnetic build up created by the friction of his manoeuvre. Crossing over from the night side to the dayside, the fighter left a fiery trail thousands of kilometres in its wake.

Taking a tight grip of controls, Scot pulled back on the collective, raising the fighter's nose. The powerful engines, assisted by the gravitational effects of the slingshot manoeuvre, lifted the 45-tone craft out of its dive and back out into space, less than 1,000-km from the unknown WarShip.

Scot felt his body jolt as he ceased to accelerate; going from almost 10-G's to zero in a split-second. Rolling his fighter so that its bulk stood between him and the systems sun, Scot brought his active sensors online. His eyes went wide when the war-book programme identified the WarShip in a matter of seconds: McKenna class Battleship.

The warbling of his treat detector warned him that he had been targeted, just moments before a crimson-red laser beam flashed over his cockpit. He checked his radio, only to find that he was being jammed. Flipping the omni-fighter end over, Scot posed the throttle through the thin wire 'gate' that kept the engine output within sustainable levels. Blazing with the intensity of a supernova, the fighters' drive thought to overcome its inerter, Scot's eyes fixed on the relative speed readout.

More laser bolts passed by the fighter as Blakist pilots attempted to blast the Clan-built craft to shrapnel. Agonisingly slowly, the powerful engines countered their former effort, and the fighter slowly began to make headway. A wall of LRM's slammed into the back of the nimble Sulla, ripping gashes in the tail assembly as Scot bushed the craft forward with everything it had. The temperature and power-output gages where berried in the red. The status display screen flashing red around the reactor as the internal structure, already weakened by the high speed dive into the planet outer atmosphere, started to bend and melt.

The threat detector began to warble loudly when the McKenna fired a Barracuda anti-fighter missile from one or it's AR-10 missile ports. Scot pulled back on the stick, climbing out of the planets gravity well as maximum acceleration, but even his genetically engineered body was not able to match the resilience of the electronic seeker head attached to the deadly missile.

The explosion turned the metal casing of the missile into an expanding sphere of shrapnel that ripped into the already damaged tail of the fleeing fighter, knocking the engine out of alignment and shutting down the main power: dead in space, the Sulla slowly rotated end-over-end, apparently helpless.

From the confines of his cockpit, Scot was forced to watch as the McKenna drifted past his position and began to engage the defending fleet with it's array of capital-scale weapons. Missiles, Laser beams, PPC bolts and Naval Autocannon rounds flashed between the various ships, the larger Battleship easily taking everything the smaller ship's had to offer. Trapped in a lower orbit, the coalition fleet was hampered by the planets gravity well, forcing them to expend more fuel and time trying to bring their weapons to bar on the attacker.

His hands moving with speed born both of desperation and a lifetime-spent training, Scot began the process to bring his fighter back from the dead: he fed power from the life-support systems to the attitude-control thrusters, allowing him to stop the end-over spin. He looked at the weapons systems: shrapnel from the missile had cut the power connections to his wing mounted ER-PPC's. His aft-mounted ER Small Laser appeared to have been completely destroyed.

Shunting all the available power to he main engine and manoeuvring, turning his crippled fighter round to face the rear of the Blakist McKenna. Taking a sighting on a point between the drive and the aft super-structure, Scot slowly opened the throttle, careful not to stall the engine.

Leaking fuel and oxygen, the OmniFighter began to pick up speed as it headed back into the battle. His sudden movement caught the attention of one of the Blakist gunners, and a second Barracuda anti-fighter missile was sent his way. This one exploded directly in his path, the shrapnel smashing the Plexiglas canopy and ripping into his Kevlar flight suit.

Slowly dying, his oxygen tubes slash, Scot remember a line from a ancient book he had once read, and slowly repeated it to himself as the McKenna grew larger in his narrowing field of vision: "To the last, I grapple with thee; from hell's heart, I stab at thee; for hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee!" He finally blacked out seconds before impact.

The impact, and the explosion that followed where not that spectacular, and did little real damage. What it did do was short out the main targeting computer, forcing the crew to go over to manual. Suddenly unable to bring their ship's staggering firepower to bare effectively, the McKenna was forced to retreat back to the far side of the planet.

To Be Continued…