Wings of Steele - Flight of Freedom (Book2) (25 page)

“
Aye, sir. An Obsidian Class light cruiser and a Drifter Class frigate... Both
not ours
.”

“
Hit the frigate, take that
bloody bastard
out!” Walt's hope was to take the frigate out quickly, leaving the lone cruiser against three larger ships. The Freedom rocked hard as she took hits from both the cruiser and the frigate.

“
Shields,
twenty-five percent...
”

■ ■ ■

Jack and Paul saw the gate event from their vantage point on the outside of their turn as they came back in on the melee surrounding the Freedom.
“Skipper...”

“
I see 'em,
let's go.
” Jack pulled up, abandoning his attack run, rolled over and looked at the fight upside down. Side by side, the two Vulcans arced over the task force to come down on top of the pirate newcomers. “Yellow Flight, engage that cruiser!”

“
Yellow Leader, copy that. Engaging the cruiser...” The two Lancias and Remaining Zulu broke free of their strafing attacks on the drone fighters and headed for the cruiser.

“
Skipper, the big boys are targeting the frigate...”

“
Copy, and her shields are almost down, Pappy. Let's finish her off.” Jack rolled his Vulcan and brought her nose to bear, Pappy dropping back and swinging wide to his right, both fighters jinking and weaving to avoid point defense fire.

“
Bridge to Green Flight... Captain, we have two-hundred more drones inbound, shields at five percent, we're taking hits...”

Fuck me...
“Copy, Freedom,” replied Jack through clenched teeth, “just keep firing. I'm about to
erase
one of those problems, now.” He came straight down on the frigate from the top, targeting the spine of the hull between the engines, calling up two of his four missiles, arming them as he dove in. The Vulcan's weapons lock hummed in his helmet.
“Guns, guns, guns...”
he growled as he squeezed the trigger and held it, purple streaks dancing across the frigate's shields. And suddenly, just before the guns' power pods ran dry, he was hitting unprotected hull plating. He flipped up the button cover on his flight stick and thumbed loose a missile, “Fox three. Fox three is away...” he switched to another, and thumbed again, “Fox three, fox three number two running hot...” he pulled up hard, corkscrewing, his Vulcan bucking from the shock wave following him up. Without looking back, he could see the glow around him reflecting off his canopy and his instruments.

“
Frigate down!” called Pappy, “frigate down! You blew her entire stern off, Skipper!”

■ ■ ■

The Freedom rocked hard, the impact sounded different, metallic, harder. “Shields down! Shields down! Port Engine damaged.”

“
Commander, another flight of two-hundred drones, contact in sixty seconds...”

“
Bloody lovely,” commented Walt, “keep the lads firing.”

The pirate cruiser was momentarily silhouetted against the blackness by the intense flash from the frigate behind her, a glowing shock halo swelling outward, slowly fading back to black. “The frigate is
down,
Commander!... The cruiser is altering course, taking hits from Yellow Flight and the Archer, her shields down to twenty-five percent.”

“
Let it go,” ordered Walt, “all guns and all flights to bear on these bloody flying bugs...” Their numbers shrinking, they continued to relentlessly circle the Freedom, their lasers scorching her naked, unshielded outer plating.

“
Redirecting assets, aye.”

The ship shuddered like a boxer taking a heavy hit. “Port engine is down, repeat port engine offline.”

“Drone contact in thirty seconds...”

Ringing alarm bells sounded throughout the ship signaling a fire on board. “
Fire!
Fire in the port engine room!”

“
Get the fire crews down there!” Walt grit his teeth, there were still more than fifty drones pounding on them now. In their present condition, the Freedom was not going survive a fresh fleet of two hundred more.

“
The cruiser is initiating a jump.”

“
Fine,” replied Walt, “let it go.”

“
Fire team reporting in... fire is out of control. They're initiating an emergency vent to space.” The members of the fire team blew a specially designed emergency hatch rigged with explosive bolts off the side of the ship, a hundred foot flame jetting out through the opening. And then it was gone. The port engine room would be off limits for at least an hour while the heat dissipated. Any entry might cause a flash re-ignition with fresh air entering a fuel-laden superheated area.

“
We have shields back up, ten percent.” The drone reinforcements descended on the Freedom with a vengeance, and the shields lasted but a few short minutes. The Vulcans, Lancias and Zulu swept in and out of the swarm, gunning automated fighters to pieces on each pass, risking fire from their own ships, jinking and zig-zagging to avoid collisions.

And then it all just...
stopped
. The unmanned fighters drifted lifelessly through space in the direction of their last heading, crashing into the Freedom's hull and disintegrating, crashing or bumping into each other, floating away. The Freedom ploughed through their waves of silver like a ship through water, pushing them away, leaving an open wake behind it of broken and shattered bodies.

Walt called up the weapons screen on his command chair, “As long as these blasted things are asleep, let's reroute all power from guns to shields. Get them back up.”

“Aye, Commander, rerouting power.”

“
Commander, we have an incoming signal from Red Leader,” Stacell shifted in her seat, “
and
we have an incoming signal from Blue Leader.”

“
It's bloody well time...”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

RESURRECTION STATION, IRUJEN SYSTEM:
FINDERS KEEPERS

It had never happened before. Ever. The UFW capturing a pirate station. It was one of those
minor
details the Directorate had never considered, much less anticipated. So with a little bit of trepidation, they embraced the success. And with a little bit of encouragement carefully mixed with some finely crafted direction, the Directorate saw the value in keeping it, dispatching two of their newest Comet Class, fast missile frigates. The ships were expected to arrive in about four days, which as far as Jack was concerned couldn't come soon enough. Two-thirds of the task force was rather battered, and he was feeling a little vulnerable babysitting an unarmed station.

Resurrection Station
, so named by the members of the task force, had, in its previous life, been enormous luxury liner. In fact, it was much like the nearly two mile long, Princess Hedonist, that spirited Jack and his group away from Earth. Of course, it had changed more than a little, converted by the pirates that had hijacked her, into a semi-mobile space station. Taking advantage of that mobility, it was agreed upon it would be best to relocate the station to another planet's orbit to reduce the likelihood of any pirate surprise visits.

The entire station had been evacuated by the time Red and White Flights converged on it, leaving the station and the drone fleet on automated control. The shuttles and small ships disappearing in the distance were no immediate threat. The Freedom's flight leaders' main priorities being to secure the station and stop the drone onslaught, so no pursuits were made, the fleeing ships disappearing unmolested. Upon finding the relay beacon carefully hidden in a slowly drifting asteroid debris field, Blue Flight was able to sever the communications between the automated fighters and the station. The relay signal had been so powerful, it had interfered with their own communications to their task force and they had no knowledge of the severity of the situation until after they'd destroyed the damn thing.

Under its own power, it took almost forty-eight hours to move the station to its new location, accompanied by the task force. While en-route to its new placement, the station came in range of the abandoned drones. A temporary skeleton crew had been assembled from the ships in the task force to run the station and they were able to call the surviving units back, recovering them. The pirates had not yet had time to equip the station with any other defenses than the unmanned fighters, but had stocked it well, with almost a thousand units. Including what had been recovered, there were somewhere in the neighborhood of five-hundred left. They wouldn't know for sure until they took an inventory, which Jack decided would be left to the new crew that would take over the station to staff it.

It was an obvious choice for Gantarro to move the station with his experience on similar ships. Once it was moved, positioned and set to orbit the new planet, his expertise was no longer needed on the bridge of the station and he was able to return to the Bowman to oversee the repairs. The station was freshly equipped with a brand new exterior repair bay and gantry setup suitable for anything under the size of a full carrier.

Examining the plans found in the control tower, it appeared they fully intended to install another repair bay on the opposite side of the station's hull. The blueprints also contained renovations to the flight and storage bays to house fighters and assault ships as well as a new automatic racking system for stowing the drone fleet. There were indications for an improved defensive shield system and gun turrets as well. All-in-all, the plans were pretty good, the UFW would do well to follow through with them. Stripping the pirate frigate they'd killed would be a good start for parts. Generators, power cell systems, gun turrets, many of those things could be reused. Of course, Jack's big curiosity lay in recovering the GOD drive system if it was still intact. The engines were a total loss, blown completely off the ship. But hopefully it was located farther forward within the ship's hull.

■ ■ ■

Gantarro poked his head through the control tower's open door. “OK, Jack, she's all set up. Three of my people will do shifts on the bridge until the staff arrives. There's not much to do but they will monitor the systems and make sure she stays in her orbit.”

“
Thanks my friend.” Jack rose from the control desk he'd adopted to oversee the work until the new crews arrived. “You heading back to the Bowman?”

Gant nodded,”I want to see how bad she is...”

“Well the station only has four Rhinos but we've got them working on her already,” he checked his watch. “They'll be out there for about another four hours before we have to pull them in for a recharge.”

“
I appreciate you handling the Bowman first.”

Jack waved it off, “We have our own Rhino...”

“Really? How did you manage that?”

“
Blackmount forgot one. The guys noticed it on our hull when they were coming back from that dustup in Klinghoffer. We were able to pull it into the bay and my Chief was able to recharge and reprogram it.”

Gant smiled, shaking his head, the familiar sparkle in his sapphire eyes, “A capti vita....”

Jack nodded,
a charmed life
.

■ ■ ■

The pirates had altered the interior flight tower of the ship to extend through the hull with a second level, standing fifty feet above the outer hull. This station-level alteration enabled the traffic controller on duty to view the approach and docking of ships entering the interior bay, as well as the external repair dock. It presented a pretty spectacular view and Jack had used it earlier to guide the Bowman into the repair dock. Lining her up with the stasis transmitters to capture her hull, he could easily remotely control and connect the extendable gangway tube, preparing her for the repair work she needed.

Moving back to the inner tower and securing the hatches to the upper tower, Jack settled in to study the plans and coordinate operations until the station had a proper staff. His earpiece chimed, “Freedom tower to Captain Steele.”