Battle: Jacob, You Still Breathing?

Posted on Sun Aug 4th, 2019 @ 9:39pm by Lieutenant Commander Jacob "Jack" Devine

Mission: Preludes
Location: Space; USS Achilles
Timeline: 2376
Tags: Battle

In the cockpit of his stolen F180, Jacob felt a shadow fall across him before his mind actually registered the presence of the larger vessel. When he finally looked up, he saw the underbelly of a Prometheus class starship with the name "USS Achilles" stretched along the engineering hull. Just great! Obviously he was running out of options, not just fuel. It seemed everyone was verbally and physically closing in on him. Jacob opened his mouth to utter a profane epithet, when a bright blue shaft arched across space, nearly blinding him.

*WHAT the-.* Jacob's mouth dropped open as his eyes followed the glare of a quantum torpedo to it's target a distance beyond. A flurry of enemy fighters streamed out of the approaching ship and fanned out in an obvious attack pattern. Bursts of light flashed across the closing distance, searing fighters in a white hot blast that quickly winked out, leaving debris or crippled ships in its path. Jacob barely remembered to breathe as the battle ensued.

Above Jacob's F180 the Achilles loomed like an overprotective older brother. A fiery streak cut across the distance from the opposing side and slammed into the Achilles' forward shields. Jacob bit his lower lip as he watched the radiation play across the ship's hull. Too many shots like that and... the other kids...

A brilliant flare caught Jacob's attention as a small fighter somewhere off his port side was hit by enemy fire. He could just make out the ball of flame over the top of a nearby F180. "Go out, go out!" Jacob screamed, unable to understand how a fire could exist in the vacuum of space. It lasted all of a minute or two, but it seemed to stretch for an eternity as the agonized shriek of the pilot echoed over the comm.

Jacob was snapped out of his petrified shock by the combination of his concern for the safety of the other orphans and the horror of the pilot who had literally burned alive before his very eyes. Flicking the comm. he said through clenched teeth. "If you guys don't lay off the escort mode and defend your ship, I'll blow every one of you out of space!"

Abruptly and without warning, Jacob dropped his spacecraft down below the surrounding fighters and rolled to his port side, bringing his fighter right into the middle of the battle. He was pretty sure without looking that the other F180s from the Achilles were dogging his six.

Jacob's hand still gripped the stick with his thumb resting over the open trigger for the F180s arsenal. Several different voices echoed over the comm at him, but he ignored them all as he focused on his first target. The other ship was headed straight for him and Jacob had no doubt that it was targeting him as well. Without veering off, he continued on a straight path towards the enemy craft. When the other fighter fired, Jacob rolled starboard to escape the shot, then rolled back, firing as the other ship crossed his target sites. The flash of an explosion barely registered as he followed through with the roll and out of the oncoming fighter's path.

No sooner had Jacob cleared the debris field, than an F180 streaked by, drawing off an enemy fighter that had Jacob in its sites. A slight gasp of surprise escaped the boy's lips as he realized how close he'd come to being toast. There was no time to dwell on it, though, as there were other fighters heading towards him. Three, Eight, Twelve! Too many. They scattered the sky like stars burning brightly against the night. Jacob tried not to think about their dwindling odds as he watched the F180 that saved him trying to outmaneuver the bogie on his six.

Figuring one good turn deserved another, Jacob followed the F180 and its pursuing bogie. As he attempted to lock on the enemy `craft, he caught on his sensors that another enemy `craft was tailing him. Jacob waited patiently, his eyes following fore and aft as he maneuvered between the two enemy fighters. Keeping his ship steady, Jacob watched for the spacecraft behind him to fire. When it did, Jacob pulled up, letting the shots intended for him slam into the enemy fighter in front. Whooping a cry of victory, Jacob swooped up over the top of the crippled bogie, forcing the oncoming bogie to crash into it's crippled comrade. The resulting explosion was just as much a surprise to Jacob as it was to the enemy within the two annihilated crafts. His plan had simply been for one to shoot the other...

"Ghost, return to the Achilles!"

"Great shot, little dude!"

"Don't encourage him!"

"Ghost, I order you, return to the Achilles NOW!"

Jacob reached up and flipped off the comm. Charged up, adrenalin pumping, he surveyed the battlefield in blessed silence. Two red fighters caught his eye. Directly in front of his craft one of the reds was dogging an F180. Jacob fired up the thrusters, pouring on the speed as he fell into position on the red fighter's six. Behind Jacob a second bogie dropped into place like a shadow.

The sensors on Jacob's console couldn't be reading right. According to it, there was another fighter coming head on towards the F180 in front of him and yet another bogie following behind the oncoming one. Jacob saw the F180 pull up and registered the other oncoming fighter dropping below him as the red bogie in front of Jacob looped downward to follow the fighter that went beneath. Quite suddenly the bogie that had been following the oncoming fighter performed a mirror-like move to his red twin and looped upward, cutting across Jacob's path in an attempt to follow the F180. Jacob yelled in surprise as the red fighter crossed his path and fired rapidly on the intersecting bogie. He watched in amazement as the red bogie veered off course in a blaze of sparks. As Jacob exhaled in relief, the shadowing enemy fighter behind him clipped his wing, spinning him off into space.

Inertia spun Jacob's F180 around like a top. He bit his lower lip fighting the fluttery sensation building in his stomach. Had it been a carnival ride, it might have been fun. But Jacob knew that an uncontrolled ship was dangerous to more than itself and he also knew enough about physics to know that in space he'd simply keep spinning until something stopped him. The thought was not a comforting one. He reached up and turned on the comm. If he didn't figure out how to pull out of this spin soon, he'd be tossing his cookies for sure. The giddy fun of a carnival ride was quickly turning into nausea. But deeper than the fear of embarrassing himself, was the fear of being picked off like a sitting duck.

"Someone mind telling me how to stop this thing?" Jacob squeaked. He bit down on his bottom lip as he considered the direction of his spin. If he was rotating clockwise, it seemed firing up just the port thruster or was it the starboard thruster? No, rotating to starboard, fire the starboard thruster? Jacob gave up trying to figure it out and fired the port thruster...nothing. He fired the starboard thruster...nothing.

In the continued spin of his F180, Jacob had no idea what was coming at him. Frantically, he tried to restore power to his thrusters. Leaning towards the console pushed his body against the restraining harness, reminding Jacob of his bruised up insides; while any movement inside the spinning fighter only served to intensify his feeling of nausea. Jacob inhaled slowly, gasping as the air he took into his lungs pressed painfully against his ribcage. He released the harness, yanked off his helmet, and gave in to the bitter taste of bile.

------------

Matching “Ghost” move for move Donovan lead the chase to the center of the battle. Watching as tight formations disintegrated from incoming fire on both sides of the spectrum, it became a free for all as remnants of wings tried to pull together.

To his left he spotted Freely with a Red Fighter on his six. Watching as Freely seemed to make his Fighter Dance on the battlefield a damaged fighter streaked across his view.

"Donovan to Freely, Look up I'm coming at you, remember the simulator. Let's play chicken."

"Bearing 94 mark 3, over," Freely confirmed, his voice solid and thick with raw determination.

"That's a good copy" as Donovan began to fly his fighter straight at Freely's F180, his heart began to pound. The pressure was building up. He knew that one wrong move, or even just an error in his timing would mean certain death for the both of them.

As he increased his speed, Fire from both the bogies behind him and Freely was going past them. Feeling a tight knot in his stomach from the pressure Donovan shouted out, "You go upsie's and I'm going downsie's."

"Mark!" Freely blurted over the comm channel.

As the 2 pilots came upon colliding, the skill they both demonstrated as they timed this crazy maneuver just right was insane.

Simultaneously moving as if they were one in mind, Freely sharply pulled his fighter up, just as Donovan executed a half barrel roll and pulled down while upside down.

Fighting the urge to black out from the pressure, Donovan snapped back into it when he noticed a blip on his screen all of a sudden drift into an awkward direction.

As Donovan tried to level off incoming fire hit the top rear of his fighter, the impact pulling his front upward, he increased to full velocity as the red enemy fighter continued to pour on an onslaught of fire to his rear.

-C- Deflectors at 60% -C- , as Donovan pulled up he witnessed the rogue fighter get tagged from behind. With Jacob's bogie in sight Donovan fired a dumbfire missile as he took another hit to his rear.

As Jacob's bogie burst into flames, the pressure began to build as the interior of the Executioner became bright red from the warning lights.

-C- Deflectors at 30% -C- with this bogie still on his six and chaos all amidst him Donovan began to feel the pressure of certain death building up. Scanning around he noticed the rogue fighter still intact, spinning in space.

Feeling helpless Donovan continued to evade the ace hunting his six. Doubt began to cloud his mind, *Is he just that good that he's having fun stalking me?* Noticing the fire coming from behind him getting closer, he realized that it was the best the other ace could do.

Now the confidence began to grow like a fire within him. "Matakai ape, you will die," came a voice over the comm. Infuriated Donovan's eyes began to burn bright as he lead the chase closer towards the Achilles.

***

Silently, as Freely moved away from the attackers with Jacob following his direction, he thanked Donovan for his tactics. True, he felt a reserved feeling of confusion still settling over him, but Freely knew that at least now he could be trusted.

HUD matrix zero screens showed him a variety of pressure tactics used by the Luminai fighters to try and squeeze his defenses away from the primary assault. By redirecting fighters from the Achilles’s main attack squadrons, he was able to draw them nearer to the capital ships, and focused his own F180 squad on the Destroyers. War also meant that the destroyers would have self contained defenses within; a squad of elite fighters that attempted on more than one occasion to circumvent a counter-offence. Any major war veteran knew that the more skilled a pilot was in combat, the longer he usually managed to live, and that presented difficulties.

At first, taking on the normal backwater fighter squadrons these Luminai threw at him were problematic, until he began to understand their basic tactics. Freely very quickly discerned evasive maneuvers, superior light-fire weaponry, and stealthy speed, but he began to use their weapons against them, thanks to a certain 16-year old bandit.

One after another, Starfleet would lose a fighter, but at the cost of four or five fighters in the Luminai party. Achilles herself provided considerable aid, by firing phaser blasts to scramble fighter squadrons, firing torpedoes to blind fire towards the Destroyer, and often could be used as a giant wall against the enemy’s weapons, not that he liked this option; as powerful as a Prometheus class vessel was, it wasn’t a Sovereign by any means, and wasn’t designed for massive strikes against her hull.

Freely often took several sweeps past her hull, and made scans himself to see how she was doing: Micro-hull fractures, occasional hull breeches, and a power failure on most non-essential grids. The display bleeped at him more often than not, telling him of his own problems, but he couldn’t help but worry that she may eventually take a hit that would interfere with the warp containment systems, or its life support. Eventually, without starship support, he himself would be dead in the water, and that was the last thing he wanted.

Bringing himself back to the battle at hand, Freely recounted the soldiers he lost under his command: Five pilots were missing, seven dead, fourteen injured, but rescued, and a total of eight more were still drifting silently in their fighters, either awaiting death, or pretty damn near to it. Evacuation was moving slowly, because the runabout was only able to beam support long enough to capture a few, before being fired upon; it seemed the Luminai knew perfectly well what they were trying to do.

That was his primary task, when he wasn’t trying desperately to keep Jacob under his wing, figuratively. Protecting the runabout while his people were beamed away to safety remained a constant goal, but there was one catch: The more people that beamed away, the less he had to defend his starship.

“Jacob, you still breathing there?” Freely managed, dodging fire-light coming from a good seven Luminai fighters. He rolled into their attacks, scattering them long enough for him to bear onto them with his targeting retinas. Bringing up the advanced tracking system, he was able to create the vector and possible method of escape for a majority of the pilots he fought against, and with computer assisted help, he usually nailed the cockpits with a few well placed phaser cannon shots. Any he missed, usually got a labored torpedo shot.

“Yeah, I think so,” came a delayed response, once the boy’s fighter was back under his control; it wasn’t an easy task either. The main throttle assembly had taken a direct hit, his shields only able to absorb some of the impact. With a clipped wing (virtually useless in space anyway), and a damaged thruster, he only had impulse drive on his right wing to assist him in his vector corrections. But, much to Freely’s surprise, the kid was able to handle his own after he gave the boy a quick run-down of the controls.

Freely could see his next enemy in the distance, arcing and maneuvering around a series of phaser cuts from the Achilles. He pegged the HUD display, and continued to track the fighter while he drifted beside Jacob for a matter of a few seconds. “Alright, the computer isn’t damaged, which you can thank your blessings for. Basically, the retina’s display I told you about should be located on your forward helmet visor. Can you see that?”

“Yes,” came an excited reply.

“If you flick open the R-FRD support tab on your throttle, you’ll be able to gain access to the full HUD spectrum. This will increase your targeting capabilities by a good, well, a lot. Do that now,” Freely told him quickly, trying to keep a steady pace while his fighters in the distance were holding off the enemy. His sensor grid blinked a few times, identifying a break in their defensive lines.

Suddenly, almost all of the Luminai squadrons took to high speed, making direct courses for the Achilles, and her main batteries. Phaser fire lanced from the mighty starship near to Jacob’s right, the vessel arcing above them to come on a wide swing, in order to bring her rear weapons to bear. With Quantum torpedoes, the Achilles scattered the Fighters, and bore holes in the destroyers, ripping both shield and metal alike into huge gorges.

It took considerable effort to tune out the com chatter.

“Jacob, bearing down on your three o’clock,” Freely muttered, his fingers jamming into the impulse matrix. “Open fire with phaser cannons only, and keep them busy, you got it kid?”

“How do I keep them busy!?”

“The computer will set up a series of defensive courses you can take, in order to avoid weapons fire. Remember to drop, weave, and roll, with your impulse engines only. Your shields will hold if they happen to land a hit or two. Just move as quickly as possible. I’ll flank them,” Freely blurted frantically, his hand gliding his fighter on a right path that brought him around the flickering warp nacelle of the Achilles.

Three more squadrons of fighters launched from the rear bay, as the ship rolled underneath Freely. He continued his pace, out running the Achilles along a path that brought him nearer to the destroyer. Dodging fire, he rolled his fighter towards the shields of his starship, causing a few tracking fighters to slam into the massive forcefield. Sensors told him that the Achilles was beginning to lose starboard and fore-shields, but that was Yoda’s concern, not his.

“Come on kid, you can do it,” Freely muttered, sliding a hand down on the throttle and watching carefully as the kid made his advances on the tiny elite squadron.

Screams and panics echoed through his com net, and Freely glanced up in time to see a series of well placed strikes slam into the bridge. “No!” He yelled, placing a hand on the window. Several fighters dove into the hull, a few exploding before they could reach their target because of the F180’s slamming cannon fire into their engines. Fires erupted from the hull, the armor plating moaning under the intense pressure.

Shifting his sight to the HUD display again, Freely noticed Jacob had engaged the enemy. He couldn’t wait any longer, and he couldn’t save the ship anymore than Yates right now, if he was even alive.

“Tabalnac!” He screamed, his body being thrown deep into his seat as the impulse drive fired towards the boy he was ordered to save. “Once I’m done with saving you, I’m hitting that god damn destroyer myself. Leon! Prepare a final assault on the Luminai destroyers. Bring your squadrons to grid twelve, on a diamond attack pattern! We’re taking this bird down!”

“Papa-bear, this is Sierra Blue Baby. Confirm orders, over. We’ve lost a pilot. Repeat, man down. Squad is down to six,” Leon said quickly, the battle raging just outside of his communications system.

“Confirmed. Proceed away from the Achilles. Give command over existing fighters to the new squadrons coming from her bays,” He ordered in return, flipping his weapons systems to full ready status.

“Papa-bear, that’s a green light, over.”

“Over.”

=*=

LtCmdr Jacob Devine
Squadron Leader
USS Andromeda

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Note: This post is actual character history pre-written. Contributions made by Jason, Patrick, and Jasvinder from Thunderfleet back in 2004.