Holcum's Crisis

Chapter 9 - We are considering returning to active service

~~~ Battle part 5

The fighters and shuttles flew ahead of the fleet and went after the shuttles. They knew they'd lost one of their shuttles and nobody was happy. It had a crew of five which was barely a drop in the bucket, but they were still crew. The fleet had thousands of the military and losing five was almost nothing. It didn't matter since they were crew. They were going for blood.

"White Fire flight we've been tasked with hitting the ship. We are going to keep this neat and tidy. If anyone gets stupid, I'll deal with you. We're going in, strafe, and see what they have along the lines of shields, armor, and weapons. They are going to be prepared unlike the queen's ship. Form up in able status and we'll go in two by two. Cover your wing mate and shoot anything which looks interesting. I want big booms across the board. Little booms are okay but big are best. Now fall in and form up behind me." The fighters did as he ordered, and he and his wingman were in front followed by the others two by two and a single shuttle behind. The shuttle was to record as much information as possible.

As they were heading towards the ship, they were still keeping it slow to ensure their stealth was working as best possible. With the other fighters they were screaming into the shuttles at high speed. They weren't taking prisoners and were aiming at taking them out.

On the central ship the senior lizard was watching the developing battle and was forced to frown. The shuttles were fighting back but the damn stealth was making it hard to lock on and fire on. As the battle was going on shuttles were vanishing from his screens and he had no idea of how many of the other's ships were being destroyed. A number of explosions were almost merged which was making it hard to tell what was going on. He was getting a feed from the other ship, but it wasn't all that helpful.

Before anything else the small fighter shuttles appeared and strafed the other ship and it was brutal. They only made one pass but the weapons being used were leaving heavy damage even with the armor and shields.

"White Fire flight go to full speed, unload everything and then vanish into space again." He knew it was very possible they were going to lose people though he hated the idea. Once they were close enough to the other ship they dropped out of stealth since it couldn't cover them this close and at high speed. When they ripped past, they were barely a hundred miles away and unloaded everything they had. Of the missiles they only had five each, but the lasers and other energy weapons were charged from the engines.

The run past only gave them a certain amount of time to unload and it was messy. As the leader indicated the ship was waiting for them and the return fire was heavy thought nothing like what their ships could do. They knew their ships were overpowered and armed but right now it was what they needed.

The White Fire lead was keeping an eye on the other fighters and they did lose several of his teams which burned. It just encouraged them to fight harder. Once they were past and a reasonable distance away, they slowed down and dropped back into stealth, "Head back to the carrier. There are fuelers waiting for us. After that we'll debrief there and get some food and rest." It'd been a long day for everyone including the other fighters and shuttles.

Back on the carrier the captain was keeping an eye on all the feeds and felt the loss of every ship and pilot. The ships would eventually be replaced from stores, but the pilots couldn't be. He felt every loss and he was feeling rather pugnacious. Even with the exchange of 4 or so shuttles to a fighter it hurt losing people. It appeared the others had figured out some sort of signature for their fighters and were using it.

Aboard the one ship the senior lizard for the ship was calling out orders. The fighters had done damage, but nothing like to the queen's ship. The armor and shields had been breached but the damage had been minimized to an extent. Weapons mounts had been destroyed which was concerning since that portion of the ship was weakened. He called orders to roll the ship to expose new mounts and stronger shields. Repair teams were already working on the shield generators for the section damaged.