Chapter Four
Nicky Hammond
100 Kilometres above Shakuras
Arkbird
1745 Hours Local
I pushed off against one of the 'walls' of the Arkbird and aimed myself for the control room. My aim was a bit off, and I wound up having to put my hands in front of my face so I wouldn't slam into the wall. I hit the wall, and sort of bounced off. Damn… that was the third time today… moving in a Zero-G environment is always a bit of a challenge, especially when you're fresh out of the training pipeline like I was.
The Zero Gravity training I had wasn't as good as it could have been either, so I kept moving in the wrong ways. I supposed I'd get used to it eventually, but in the meantime, I was like a slow motion pinball. The more experience astronauts chucked at my performance, but I knew they wouldn't do that for long. I was the only one on board qualified to operate the heavy laser cannon, and in the Arkbird, that was considered a high honour.
I managed to drift into the control room just as our orders for the day came through. Fairly simple enough: fins the main Zerg base on this planet, do some photoreconnaissance, and if possible blast the area to smithereens with our laser cannon and out fighters. I grinned when I saw that. The poor Zerg bastards would never know what hit them.
The Arkbird's laser cannon was so precise that it could actually be used as an Anti-Ballistic Missile defence system. Combine that with the 'Excalibur' class ground-based laser cannon, and you had one REALLY deadly weapons package. One of the reasons as to why the laser cannon was so advanced was because of the extremely powerful tracking systems one of which was the SPY-2 Search-and-Track radar.
It was based off the AEGIS ship's SPY-1, only this was infinitely more sophisticated because this radar could track several thousand targets simultaneously and guide the laser cannon onto them. The machines, I thought are getting more sophisticated and powerful then the people that use them… pretty soon, we'll be outta work.
I shook my head, and passed the order onto the astronauts who each read it. Once the Chief Military Officer on board read it, he said: "well, if the Supreme Commander of the Soviet Union says so, we'd better get on with it. Set course for the main Zerg base at the coordinates that are given, and take you positions."
We all went to our assigned stations, and waited as the helmsman put our course to descend into the upper atmosphere, where we'd use air friction to lower our speed and adjust our course. This was the most risky part of the Arkbird's existence. The previous one had been destroyed by the same means when the four Demons of Razgriz attacked it, and shot it down.
Through the decent, I found myself holding my breath as the re-entry process began. The Arkbird had no windows or view ports to see out, only a few airlocks that went outside so we could work on the ship if it got damaged, but I knew what was going on outside. The exterior of the ship was glowing red-hot as the air heated up due to our speed and as the rumbling increased, the air itself had caught fire as we fell, but seconds later, we were clear, and slowing down.
Once we had slowed down enough, the helmsman reengaged the rocket boosters again, and we climbed back up into space, now on course for the Zerg main base. Arriving over it soon after, I selected the primary laser canon controls and set it to manual aim so I could see what was going on, and so I could pinpoint the places where I'd be able to inflict the maximum amount of damage in the shortest possible time.
We settled into a geosynchronous orbit –meaning that we'd be flying above them at all times, and not move away unexpectedly—and started to gather information. I saw that several giant worm-like things must have been doing SOMETHING because a fair number of the Zerg were surrounding them on the ground, and in the air, but that wouldn't stop me from getting a clear shot at them.
Taking careful aim after the reconnaissance mission was complete, I fired and the laser cannon reacted instantly, shooting a bright blue beam of light directly onto one of the worm-things. It hit, and burned a hole right through what I guessed to be its head, and the Zerg surrounding the thing went into chaos. Seeing another one of the worm-things, I fired again, this time even more of the forces went berserk, and some even started to attack each other. Firing again and again, I eventually saw that the worm-things were coming back to life as if by magic or something, when I psionic voice entered my brain.
Those are Zerg Cerebrates, Terran. You cannot kill them with your weapons. Leave the extermination of these foul creatures to us as only WE can kill them.
I decided to obey, not sure if hearing voices or not was a good thing, but I instead switched firing to almost everything else. Eventually, after a while of pummelling, the Zerg enventually realised where the attacks where coming from, and their flies started to climb up to meet us. Another one of the astronauts noticed this, and armed the small laser and AAM sites as well launching the drone fighters we had.
The drones, properly called R-310 'Remoras' were EXTREAMLY fast, small, unmanned aerial drones that could not only operate well in space, but EXCELLED in doing so because there was nothing to slow them down at high speeds. Their weapons consisted of missiles and a small laser cannon that was originally a scaled-down model of the ADF-01's laser, but it became less powerful as it was fitted onto the Remora's airframe. There was talk about modifying the airframe so that it could actually become a manned fighter, but I doubted that would ever happen. The Remora was simply too small to hold any conventional cockpit.
Anyways, the Remoras blasted away on their single rocket booster and went to engage the enemy fliers. The Arkbird could carry twelve Remoras in all, although it could control up to twenty at one time if the need came. But because we weren't supposed to actually be going in an air battle, we only had twelve on our side, plus me, and the secondary gunner who controlled the small laser and AAMs against an armada of well over one thousand enemies… not good odds. Not good odds at all.
I aimed the heavy laser cannon at the incoming fliers and fired of several beams, each one slicing though masses of the things like a hot knife through butter, but still more of them kept coming. The Chief Military Officer had called in for reinforcements, but the radio operator had said that the only thing that could reach us would be the SOLG, but even then there was the danger to ourselves, and the Dark Templars down there on the ground if that thing fired.
The SOLG was the exact opposite of what the Arkbird was. It was a gigantic unmanned orbital Attack Satellite that was most often equipped with nuclear weapons. Because of this, it wasn't very accurate because it simple didn't NEED to be. Once fired, the nuclear warhead would do the work, and even then, well… it's a NUKE it doesn't HAVE to be accurate, it just has to be close.
The Chief authorised the use of the SOLG, but we'd have to wait about three minutes before it got to within effective firing position. Three minutes, against an aerial armada of well over a thousand enemies with one powerful laser, a smaller laser, four AAM sites, and twelve Remora drones. things weren't looking good.