"Shit! All fighters, engage all enemy ships! I see thirty-six Nomad Interceptors, and more decloaking by the second!" Trent screamed, and Psychotic shifted in his seat. Orillion killed his engines but did not move, Amelia backing up and charging her weapons. Bravo's wing manoeuvred around the left flank while Hunter's wing did the same on the right side.
"All fighters, engage! Hold nothing back!"
And then the fireworks began.
Fifty-two Nomad Interceptors, ten Gunboats, several battleships and a behemoth as well as three even newer ships, which Leta Ye labelled as "Nomad Destroyers" (again, Amelia thought this was very original) which looked like bent pitchforks started firing on the (in comparison) tiny group.
Amelia managed to pick up a couple unfriendly friends on her tail, which she promptly told off with help of a Ripper mine.
"Suck on that, bastard Nomads!"
A gunboat loomed ahead. It started shooting at her, but the clumsy oversized beast kept missing. Three Striker Torpedoes and a couple blasts later, it was nothing more than a bad memory and she had another Nomad weapon in her hold. This time it was an older weapon, a simple Nomad Energy Cannon, only worth a couple thousand.
Delta 2 (Bravo's second-in-command) was having a bit more trouble. Somehow he'd been hit by one of the Behemoth's weapons and had lost the wing that his striker torpedo mounts were on.
"Shields failed," the online computer spoke.
"Shut up!" he screamed and punched the mine launcher again.
"Wing lost," the online computer spoke again.
"Hull breach imminent," the computer spoke a third time.
"Hull breach imminent," Delta 2 copied in that annoying voice that he liked using, and punched the nanobot and shield battery buttons at the same time.
"Shield restored," the computer confirmed.
"Damned Nomads!" he screamed, and began shooting wildly at the nearest ship, which happened to be a battleship. Fifteen rounds from Delta's slag-7 and it was beginning to fall apart - and two Strike Torpedoes, not his own, finished it off.
"Thought you needed a hand, Delta 2!" Psychotic laughed, and went in pursuit of a gunboat.
"Thanks, I guess," Delta 2 responded.
Orillion and Hunter's wing were tearing through the nomads on the right flank like there was no tomorrow. Their weapons were especially designed to annihilate any and all solid matter, namely, fifteen Nomad Interceptors, two battleships, a Destroyer and three gunboats.
"Ach, Hunter! I'm out of nanobots and my shield just failed! Help me out here!" This came from his third wing member.
"Get to a safe distance, and I'll give you some when we get out of this mess!" he said, but too late. His third wing member's ship was destroyed seconds later, but the pilot had managed to get to his escape pod, which Hunter promptly tractored up.
The pod clattered into his cargo bay successfully. Hunter quickly checked the readings which showed that the occupant was alive and well, albeit shocked.
"You get him?" Orillion asked over the comm.
"Yeah, he's safe with me," Hunter responded, then opened a group channel. "All Order fighters, enter loose formation and target the Behemoth. The Errads are taking heavy fire from it"
"Formed," came the transmissions.
"Load your torpedoes. Five each on the Behemoth and then blast it to Kingdom come!"
"Roger," came the numerous transmissions again.
They decended upon the behemoth, fingers poised on the trigger...
Then it exploded.
"What?" Orillion was in shock - what had killed it?
"Hah, Daun Cavasche ARE good pilots!" Amelia was heard to say.
Leta Ye's ship was spiralling wildly all over the shop, twenty-two Nomad interceptors on his tail. He cut his engines and then performed an inside loop, and then annihilated seventeen of them. Suddenly, the hunters became the hunted.
Now all that was left were two destroyers and a battleship.
"Order vessels, take the right Destroyer, Errad take the left. All others take the battleship! Charge!" Trent barked another command.
Ten seconds passed and twenty-one ships were back out in open space. Order Three's ship had been repaired, and the jump hole was up ahead.
"Prepare to die, people," Psychotic joked, and punched in the docking sequences. "Form on me," he spoke as his ship began to move slowly forward into the jump hole...
And into the most stunning sight they had ever seen.
The system before them was incredible. A bright red nebula stretched from three hundred metres away all the way around the system, and a planet that could fit most of New York inside it dominiated the middle of the system. A green sun loomed hundreds of thousands of kilometres away, its light barely illumiating the planet's surface.
And then, to top it all off, ahead was the largest fight they'd ever seen.
Hundreds of Daun Cavasche ships, a similar number of Outcasts and Corsairs, and, funnily enough, some Erradicators.
"My Errads go wherever they please to find, hunt, and kill Nomads," Trent recalled Jun'ko saying to him a couple weeks ago.
What had happened after that, though, he didn't know. Jun'ko suddenly became reclusive and very quiet. Not only this but her commanding and piloting skills took a rather large dip as well.
As he was thinking about what she'd told him, he noticed something strange on the contacts list, but couldn't place it. For a start there were all the ships ahead. They were shooting at blank space, not each other like they might have been. Second, the planet just exploded. Third, the -- hang on, the planet just exploded?
Trent looked in amazement as the planet ahead of him shattered, particles of molten rock and ice jetting into space.
"Uhh... guys! What's going on?" he asked alarmedly. "Guys?"
He checked his contacts list.
Nothing. That was the third thing he noticed. The ships in front of him were not on the contacts list and nor were his wingmates who were right next to him.
The ships shattered in the same way the planet did, and, weirdly enough, so did the nebula.
And everything around him.
Including his ship.
And his body.
Trent sat up, gasping. He'd fallen asleep by the looks of things, and was probably woken up by Psychotic's annoyed voice screaming through the comm.
"Trent, you piece of lazy shit! Get up! We got unidentified contacts incoming, possibly Nomads!"
"What --?"
Then they appeared. Two ships. Two lonely intercepters. Nothing no-one couldn't handle. Since the nomad war, every single pilot in Sirius had been given instructions on how to fight a nomad should one appear.
Two was nothing for even the newest of LSF recruits. A lone Rheinlander had destroyed two battleships in his top-o'-the-morning Banshee. A semi-experienced freelancer in a Dromedary took out three. They were child's play nowadays.
But this seemed strange. Two ships? Surely the nomads could do better than that. There were no cloaked ships nearby. These two were alone.
Not only that, they weren't even firing. Just on a straight course. A cruise disrupter cut both of their dead engines. No response.
"This is strange. I say we blast them out of the sky," suggested Psychotic.
What happened next would likely stick in the minds of just about all twenty-one pilots. The closest Nomad fighter imploded in a ball of blue fire, leaving a small metal box in its wake; the second did the same.
"Psychotic, tractor them up and see what they've got inside. It's not nomad or explosive, I'll give you that," Trent suggested.
"OK, I got them. Let's see. They're in deep freeze, that's for sure. By the looks of things on the scan, it's..." Psychotic paused.
"Yes, Psy?" Amelia asked.
"Human life. Only thing is, it's been mangled. The limbs are separate," Psychotic moaned - almost whimpered. "I'll see what's inside."
Psychotic rose from his pilot's seat and entered the hold. Sure enough, in the corner were, apart from his nomad weapons he'd found, two metal boxes about two metres long by half a metre wide. To the touch they were cold, and obviously freeze-packed.
He lifted the lid, and screamed.