Thirteen
Chapter Forty-One
We Interrupt This Training Program
Whitestar 525 jumped into normal space and entered the Durka system in Sector 431. No sentient life resided here, and it made the perfect place for Kara "Starbuck" Thrace and Karl "Helo" Agathon to train on the Minbari fighters. They were very different than the Vipers and Starfuries they were used to, and both Colonial pilots were having some trouble adapting to them.
So the captain of the ship, Shival, decided to let them get a feel for their fighters by taking them to this sector of space to "play". He had a hunch that they would be better able to get a feel for them if they just flew around on their own course for a while. As he heard the chatter from the two pilots when they got their fighters out into space, this was the perfect solution to the problem.
Helo was more of a technical pilot than Starbuck was, but Starbuck had more of a feel for flying. The cockpit had the pilots laying down on their bellies instead of sitting up, which had been part of the problem of adapting to them. The two had struggled in the regular fighter training back on Minbar, so Shival decided to improvise.
"Helo, Starbuck, this is Boomer, copy?" said Sharon "Boomer" Valerii, who was assigned to the communications console for this mission. She was getting more noticeably pregnant with each passing day, and it would not be long until she would be sent back to the Ranger compound at Tuzinor to see her pregnancy to term.
"Boomer, this is Starbuck! Everything's ok! I'm really getting a feel for this baby!"
"Boomer, this is Helo! I've finally figured this thing out. Ready for some training exercises at your discretion."
Shival was just about to do that when the jump point formed behind their ship and several Drakh fighters jumped out, along with a Drakh carrier. A blast from a particle beam slammed into the back of the bridge and lurched the Whitestar forward.
"Kara!" Helo screamed as he saw their ship get nailed by the oncoming Drakh ships.
Starbuck whipped her fighter around and headed back towards the enemy. "Computer, activate weapons systems! Lock onto oncoming fighters and engage!" Her fighter complied and she targeted one of the Drakh fighters, pitching up and rolling right to avoid the beam fired at her. "Fire!" she called to the computer, and the fighter's three particle beams opened up on the Drakh fighter, slicing it to sizeable chunks.
Back on Whitestar 525, Boomer got up slowly, rubbing her head. She had glanced against the console when she fell, which had saved her from the ceiling on the bridge collapsing onto the bridge crew. Shival was dead, as was the rest of the bridge crew. She looked towards the doorway to see if she could escape if the need to abandon ship came about, only to find that it had been blocked as well.
She made her way to the command chair where Shival sat. After checking his pulse and finding that he was dead, she slid him onto the floor and took his place. "God, I hope I know what I'm doing!" she said uneasily as she began to check the ship's systems. Surprisingly, she still had engines and weapons systems, and communications were still up. Boomer then noticed that the carrier was going to pass over the Whitestar, but had not locked weapons onto the ship. She decided to wait until it was over her to do what she was planning, knowing she was risking the ship being hit with a tractor beam and possibly being boarded.
Meanwhile, Starbuck and Helo were doing well despite being outnumbered five to one. She smashed another ship to pieces with her weapons, then went after another one, which was turning away from her and heading back to the carrier. "Helo! They're over the Whitestar! Head on back! They look like their trying to board her!" Starbuck said as she kicked in he engines and raced towards the carrier.
"Confirmed, Starbuck!" Helo said as he splashed another fighter and flipped around to make his way back to the Whitestar. "Starbuck! I'm not picking up any energy coming from the ship! Do you think…?"
"Wait! Hang on a second!" Starbuck said as she noticed something. The Whitestar was in the shadow of the Drakh carrier when it suddenly flipped up and thrusters pushed the ship back. The quantum-gravitic discharge beam cannon on the front nose of the ship sliced into the Drakh carrier's fighter bays as well as the engines. The ship righted itself and proceeded to head towards the back of the ship where the engines were. It performed an up-and-over maneuver, allowing the Whitestar to fly down towards the engines. Pulses from the neutron and fusion cannons on each side of the ship put paid to the engines.
The fighters from the Drakh carrier tried to fend off the Whitestar, but Starbuck and Helo dispatched each of them from behind with relative ease. Boomer backed up the Whitestar from the carrier and used the front nose cannon to slice the carrier apart, hitting the reactor and blowing it up. Starbuck took out the last fighter and managed to swing out of the way of a chunk of debris flying towards her.
Starbuck and Helo managed to board the fighter bay, but had to keep their flight suits on because the bay had been breached and was still exposed to the vacuum of space. They cycled the airlock and made their way into the ship. It took them a while to get to the bridge, as damage control teams had to cut through fallen bulkheads. When they got to the bridge, they found that Boomer was the only one left alive on the bridge.
"Oh thank the Gods!" Helo said as he embraced Boomer, not caring for proper protocol at that particular moment. "How did you survive?"
"I was knocked down from the initial blow to the bridge, which saved me from the ceiling collapse. The auto-repair systems kicked in to seal the breach, thank God!" Boomer replied. "I managed to get to the command chair and found that Shival was dead. So I slid him out and took over, and somehow figured out what to do!"
Starbuck looked over to the deceased Minbari captain and said, "Damn!" out of frustration. "So what do we do now?"
Before she could answer, the computer beeped a signal denoting jump points, then beeped another signal recognizing transponder signals from the other Whitestars. "Sanchez to Whitestar 525! Sanchez to Whitestar 525! Do you receive?"
"Boomer here! We read you Whitestar 333!"
"What's your status?"
"We're heavily damaged and have causalities. We need med teams over here ASAP."
On board Whitestar 525, Denise Sanchez walked around the bridge to the command chair. Most of the debris from the fall of the ceiling had been cleared and most of the repair work had been completed, but the bridge was still heavily damaged. "Shival!" she said silently as he was taken from the bridge by the medical team from her ship. "We were tracking a fleet of Drakh ships when we picked up the distress signal from the carrier you destroyed. Apparently they didn't want to break off from where they were going, so I came with a few ships to investigate. Do you think this ship can function?"
Boomer, Starbuck, and Helo all nodded, and Sanchez said, "We'll jump back and catch up with the rest of the fleet shortly. Right now, we need all the ships we can get, because chances are we'll have to fight them in the near future."
"Where are they going?" Boomer asked.
Sanchez sighed and said, "I'm not sure, but my best guess is Babylon 5."