A/N: Sorry for the delays, but I've had a serious case of writer's block. I know where I want this to go, but I've been having problems figuring out how to get there. Anyway, It's back on track now, and I expect to get back to once-a-week updates. And thanks to everyone who has read and reviewed so far. I appreciate the feedback.
RedLion2: Sux about the F-14's. I think those are the greatest fighters since the Mustang. Definitely the best we've got out there now. As I understand it, the Navy wants to replace them with Super Hornets, but they've got less range, can carry less ordnance, are slower, and less maneuverable than the Tomcat. The only thing the F/A-18's got is a newer airframe. It doesn't make sense. Why not just make a new version of the Tomcat, the F-14E?
Anyway, on to the story.
Disclaimer: I don't own Voltron, Star Trek, or any other material that is copyrighted by either World Events Productions or Paramount. What are mine are the crew of the Berlin (except for Mordock and Scotty), the fighter, Thunderwing, as well as the story itself.
Star Tron: Escalations
Chapter 4: Shot Down, Shot Up
Coran was on duty in the Control Room, reading over a report from the crews working on the reconstruction of a small town to the east. As he was finishing a section on plans to rebuild the market square, a light on his panel came on, indicating a ship entering Arusian airspace. A moment later, the IFF interrogator gave the newcomer's identity.
Coran hailed the starship, and a raspy voice replied, "Berlin here. This is Commander Gredar."
"Commander, what news do you have of Tango Seven?"
"The base has been ransacked. The survivors were taken to Doom."
"Were you able to retrieve them?"
"Negative. The Captain will be down shortly. He will give you a full report then."
"Very well, Commander. Castle of Lions, out."
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The captain came in, wearing his customary flight suit with his leather jacket. He looked around at everyone, waiting for someone to say something. When no one did, he said simply, "We were too late."
"What happened?" Coran asked.
Driscoll told them about finding the base a wreck, and finding the lab and the soldiers. He talked about going to the central control room, and what they'd found, and tracking the slave ships.
"Then, we were intercepted by fifty enemy ships. At the same time, we lost the slave ships' trail. There was nothing more we could do, so we returned to base."
Keith looked at Adam, and anyone could see his displeasure. But he said nothing. Coran then told Adam about the fighter attack, and how Allura and Hunk had stopped the group that had tried to get through the wormhole.
A few more words were exchanged, and Driscoll excused himself so he could complete his mission report to Starfleet. As he left the chamber, though, he was not alone.
Keith followed the captain out of the Control Room, and asked him to come to his quarters. Once inside, Keith turned to Adam and said tensely, "So that's it? You just gave up on them?"
Driscoll was taken aback. He stood there in shocked silence for a minute before asking, "What else could I have done, Keith?"
"You could have followed through. You could have kept after them." Keith fixed Adam with a hard stare. He was serious.
"Through a flak barrage of missiles and lasers?" Driscoll asked skeptically.
"You had the speed."
Driscoll snorted. "Okay, all right. I'll bite. So we blow through, and if we're still in one piece, and in warp, they eat our dust. Great. Now how do we track them down without a warp trail to follow?"
"You knew their heading. You could have figured out where they were going."
"And who's to say they didn't dogleg off somewhere? How do we know they held that course, huh? We don't. Meanwhile, we're flying a steady course straight into Zarkon's toughest defenses. Is that what we should have done, Commander?" Adam spat the last word. He didn't like pulling rank, but he liked having people question his decisions, the way Keith was, even less. And it set him off. Especially considering that Keith had never commanded a starship himself, and had no right whatsoever to question him in the first place.
"You should have done something!"
"We did! Keith, the distress call was eleven hours old when we got it for Christ's sake! It'd have taken the Lions two days to get there. Would you have charged on even that far after flying for two days straight? I don't think so."
"What I would have done is irrelevant. I wasn't there." And even as he said it, he knew he'd just lost the argument.
"Exactly. You weren't there. You don't know what happened. So why the hell are you questioning me like this? What's going on?"
"Because I think you could have saved those scientists."
"Yeah, Keith, maybe we could have. It's a possibility. But I can't risk my ship and 450 crewmen on a maybe. I won't do that. We were outnumbered, outgunned, and had lost our only lead. It was a bad situation, and could only get worse."
The two leaders stood there silently, looking at each other for several, tense seconds. "Keith, what's really going on? What were they doing at Tango Seven? Why are those scientists so important?"
"I don't know. At least, not for sure. I've heard rumors, second-hand information."
"Like?"
Keith shook his head. "I can't tell you. Not yet. Because if I'm right, it's classified beyond my clearance."
Adam nodded. "That big?"
"Yeah."
"So maybe we did drop the ball," Adam wondered aloud.
"No, I'm sorry I said that. I never meant to question your decision, but I need to know that they were beyond our help."
"Keith, I don't know for sure," Adam replied with a shrug. "But at that time, the odds didn't justify the risk. If I'd had a trail, or had them on sensors, I'd have tried. But the way things were," he shook his head. "No."
"All right. Thanks, Adam. I'll let you know as soon as I know anything."
Driscoll nodded. "Okay." He turned and left the room, headed for his own. The Berlin was in station keeping at the wormhole, and he didn't feel like flying back tonight. Also, he wanted to be close if Keith found out anything about Tango Seven. There was something odd about that base. He'd known that the moment he'd materialized in that lab, and the exchange with Keith only confirmed his suspicions. Something weird was happening there, and whatever that was, it was big.
But that wasn't all. Keith's attitude about the issue hadn't been what Adam had come to expect. Something was wrong. If he'd just wanted to confirm Driscoll's thoughts during the mission, he'd have simply asked. He'd have been firm, definitely, but he'd been downright hostile. Keith had attacked him, and the captain had no idea why. What could disgruntle Keith - the acknowledged "Colonel Cool" of the team – so much that he'd interrogate Adam so harshly? The captain pondered the question as he sat down to write his report.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx The next morning, Driscoll awoke to realize he'd fallen asleep at his desk. He looked around his room in the castle, seeing his things scattered around where he'd dropped them. Looking down, he saw the half-written report to Starfleet. The small clock in the corner of the PADD read 0447.
Crap! Quarter to five! he thought. He got up and stretched, then gathered his flying gear and headed to the castle's hangar bay to collect his fighter.
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Keith looked around at his instruments as the rest of the Force formed up around him. Lance, Hunk, Allura, Pidge, good. All here, he thought. But no, they were still one short. As the Lions headed for the target range in the desert, Keith scanned the sky high above. Finally, between the intermittent clouds, he saw what he was looking for. A single, white contrail cutting across the sky like an arrow.
"Okay, Adam. Form up."
"Good morning to you, too, boss!" Driscoll replied sarcastically. He had taken to calling Keith "boss" due to the no-nonsense attitude he had for command. In the air, he was the boss, and everyone knew it. "Gee-ron-ee- mo!" the captain said as the old warbird dove and formed up on Allura's wing.
Once they reached the target range, the Force broke up and began practicing their attack maneuvers. When hitting ground targets or larger ships, it was often advantageous to use single-unit tactics, rather than breaking into pairs, which was better for a fighter battle.
Everyone made practice runs against various mock-ups of typical Doom targets, using electronic scoring rather than live ammunition to track hits and assess damage. This was due to several factors, but foremost was lack of resources. There was a shortage of people to maintain the range and replace destroyed targets. Most resources were committed to rebuilding towns, harbors, and spaceports.
Hunk swooped in low and landed, charging a set of dummy tanks and hitting them with a simulated missile barrage.
"Nice one, Hunk," said Adam. "But you didn't get low enough." Thunderwing zoomed in, skimming so close to the ground that the propeller threw up a cloud of sand and dust behind the fighter. Racing toward the targets at three-quarters the speed of sound, Driscoll lined up his gunsight and pulled the trigger, spraying the targets with light beams.
"Ha! I've got you both beat!" said Lance. Red Lion dove at the targets, pulling up just above the ground and incinerating the three dummy tanks with its flamethrower.
"Lance!" said Keith. "What part of 'simulated fire' do you not understand?"
"I think it's the 'simulated' part," Lance replied with a devilish grin.
"Well, let me explain . . ."
Just then, Pidge happened to glance at his sensor display, and didn't like what he saw. "Uh, Keith, the explanations are going to have to wait. We've got company."
Keith looked up as twenty Doom fighters dove out of the sun. "Everybody up! Get up higher!" He knew that if the fighters could keep the Lions low, they'd have an advantage. He faintly heard rock music playing on the open intercom channel, and knew at least one of them was taking action.
The Lions raced upward, shooting straight through the enemy formation, four of which fell prey to the robotic cats.
The remaining fighters came around and shot upwards as the Lions came down at them. Then the groups merged, and the furball began.
Lance saw one dead ahead of him. "Laser fangs!" he announced, and Red Lion bit down on the fighter, tearing away a chunk of the fuselage. "Scratch one," he announced.
"Lance, behind you!"
Lance glanced at his sensors and saw five Doom fighters on his tail. "Holy cats!" he exclaimed, guiding Red Lion into a loop. At the top, he jumped aside and dove on his pursuers, destroying two more.
Meanwhile, both Hunk and Pidge were trying to dislodge Stingers that had latched onto their tails. Hunk came around on Pidge's attackers and was about to fire when an alarm rang out, warning him of an incoming missile. Hunk waited until the last second, then Yellow Lion leapt upward as the missile shot past, locked onto one of the fighters on Pidge's tail, and destroyed it. The other broke off with Hunk in pursuit. With his tail clear, Pidge circled around to help Hunk, who still had two fighters behind him.
"I've got the leader, Pidge," said Keith.
"Right," Pidge replied.
Black Lion came up under the leader and dispatched it with a slash of its electro-claws, while Pidge used Green Lion's tail laser to get the other.
Coming out of an Immelmann turn, Discoll looked around. There were Lions and Stingers everywhere. Unfortunately, Driscoll had been able to do little more than evade attacks, and had not once made an attack himself. Glancing down and to the left, he watched as Blue Lion started an attack on a Doom fighter. But then he saw something else that Allura didn't. He saw a second fighter going after Blue Lion. It was a classic trap.
"Allura! Break right and climb!" he warned as he hauled his plane over into a dove. Allura tried to lose her attacker, but the fighter stayed on her tail. Adam had to act fast. Pushing the throttle to the wire, he raced in, phasers blazing. He saw hits on the fuselage and left stabilizer, and then the fighter erupted in flames.
Suddenly, Thunderwing lurched violently as an explosion boomed in the cockpit. Driscoll felt a searing pain in his shoulder as the fighter cartwheeled into a dive. His rock music cut off as alarms blared and smoke filled the cockpit.
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Allura was coming out of her turn as she heard Adam yell, "I'm hit!" She looked over and watched in horror as Thunderwing fell toward the ground trailing smoke, with a Doom fighter close behind.
Blue Lion made a jump-turn and went after the fighter. As it closed on Thunderwing, she locked onto it. "Ion darts!" she called, the weapon appearing on Blue Lion's shoulder and firing. The enemy fighter dropped away, burning.
But Thunderwing kept going down.
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His fighter diving at over 500 miles per hour, Adam closed the throttle and hauled back on the stick with both hands, gritting his teeth against the pain. He watched the altitude tick away as the altimeter unwound. 21,000...19,000...17,000.
"Adam, get out of there!" Allura yelled.
"Jump, man, jump!" said Lance.
Driscoll glanced from the altimeter to the red canopy release lever and back. If he was going to bail out, he only had a few more seconds to do it. Come on, baby, pull out. Pull out! He prayed.
Then, as he passed 8,000 feet, Thunderwing began to level out. Finally, at 2,600 feet, Driscoll was able to level off. He added power and adjusted his trim to stay aloft, then glanced at his damage indicator, projected on the right panel of the windscreen. On the fighter's silhouette, a red dot was blinking on the side of the plane, just aft of his seat, and a text message gave details. There was a hole in the fuselage, the starboard shields were out, and one of the main EPS couplings had been destroyed. On top of that, he was wounded. He didn't know how bad, but it wasn't minor, considering he could feel something scraping against his shoulder blade as he moved the stick.
"Adam, are you all right? Come in." Keith called.
"Yeah, Keith, I'm okay, but I'm shot up pretty bad. Returning to the ship." He pushed his drive selector, which on a normal Mustang would be the mixture control lever, to "impulse". But instead of the holographic interfaces activating and his prop shutting down and feathering as the impulse drive came online, all he got was a message from the computer. "Warning, impulse drive not available. Unable to initialize."
Well, so much for that, he thought.
Setting course for the Castle of Lions, he looked around, but he was alone in the sky with nothing but a trailing plume of smoke for company. Then, as he vented the smoke from the cockpit, he saw something coming up behind him. He prepared to take evasive action and call a mayday, when he heard Allura's voice say, "Are you okay?"
"I'll live." I hope, he added mentally. "What about the Doomies?"
"Gone. Keith and the boys took care of the last of them."
"Weren't you there?"
"No. I was following you. Never leave your wingman, remember?"
Driscoll smiled. "Yeah. I remember. Thanks."
Allura smiled back. "I'll stay with you until you land."
"Thanks, Allura."
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Ten minutes later, Thunderwing set down on the main road leading to the castle. Driscoll taxied up to the palace, then cut his engine as the other members of the Force returned their Lions to their hiding places.
Adam rolled back the canopy, and as he unstrapped himself, he heard someone climb onto the wing. "Don't move, Captain."
He looked up at who had spoken, and was surprised to see Dr. Saladin beside him, waving his tricorder over him. "I can get out of my own damn cockpit, Sheik," he replied. He started to get up, and suddenly felt light-headed. "Maybe not," he mumbled, as he fell back into the plane, unconscious.