Strom was forced back in his seat as the Stinger
gave a throaty roar and did away with the bonds of gravity. The
titanic Crushers, more of them still moving towards the bridge,
seemed like ants; albeit ants that could fight back. Even the
skyscrapers did not look so imposing as Strom grew level with their
highest floors. Curtains were drawn in many that he could see, but
some buildings had had their entire top floor obliterated, yet few
were too much worse. One, Strom could see, was leaning to the left,
bricks and glass running down its underside as though it was crying.
To his side, Strom could see Olaf and Ilisa, each
piloting their own Stingers. Olaf caught Strom looking and saluted
mockingly. Strom chuckled; Olaf could never take anything seriously,
unlike his sister, who simply gave him a brief nod and a reassuring
smile.
And then they met the Reapers.
Larger than the Stingers, the black Reapers were
just as fast and twice as dangerous; even the black colouring helped
them disappear into the night. Thermo-locking missiles were mounted
on the wings of both craft, but the Reapers also had a chain-gun
under the nose-cone; these deadly weapon fired large, nail-like
bullets, which detonate their deadly interiors seconds after impact;
ideal for destroying aircraft. Reapers were not tools of defence,
only indiscriminate killing machines.
Strom swerved, two thermo-missiles narrowly
missing their target. Strom looked at the screen to his right; it
showed a view from the rear camera. The missiles stopped in mid-air,
before turning and darting back at Strom. As they drew closer, Strom
veered to the left. The missiles shot past, but Strom was on them
now, and fired his own. The four missiles collided and detonated
together, flames billowing backwards in the air. A Reaper darted past
Strom, its tail-fin scraping the Stinger's wing. Inside, Strom caught
a glimpse of the Xaosian inside, who glared back with black eyes.
A crackle of static came over the radio, before
Admiral Fairns's voice said, “All pilots, come in. We have orders
from President Yuki to engage The Dominion.
This attack is of paramount importance; the Xaosians have threatened
to ignite the Sea of Oil. Our ODS is near enough depleted and
destroyed. Forget Tapal, forget your families, forget your friends.
Here, we fight for our planet. Up there, I want you to fight for
yourselves; I want you to win, and if – I say if – we lose, we
lose kicking and screaming all the way. Forget honour now; we fight
for our lives. I will be taking to the air myself soon, leaving the
ground forces in the command of General Trexor. Begin your assault.”
In the Stinger's
cockpit, Strom pulled a lever, and the cockpit was airlocked; nothing
got out, and nothing got in. Instead, plant-based filters changed the
carbon dioxide he exhaled back into oxygen to be inhaled again;
perfect for space flight. Following Ilisa, Strom shot upwards. As he
got higher, the cockpit turned cold, so he flicked the switch which
activated the solar-powered heaters. The heat coming off of the small
pads on his seat relaxed his body, as if he was in a warm bath. But
his mind stayed resolute as the Stinger was slung into a higher form
of darkness.
For a moment, Strom
felt weightless before the gravity compensators adjusted themselves.
There were few Reapers up at this height; most were in Raan's skies.
Instead, twisted and burnt spirals of metal floated in front of him,
slowly turning like gears in a broken clock. Strom weaved in and out
of the ruins of the ODS until finally he saw it.
The Dominion.
Only visible by the
Solus's reflection in its solar panels, The Dominion was a
sight to behold. A wedge-shaped slice of pure darkness and, judging
by the number of gun emplacements, a machine of destruction. As the
Stingers converged on the Flagship, its hull was lit up with the
smallest of flashes; merely the impact of the missiles on the
behemoth's force field, which acted as an invisible, thicker hull; it
could be breached, eventually. Flashes illuminated the gun
emplacements as they fired; hulking, cylindrical constructions, there
were four smaller cylinders on both its left and right, with a
command centre at the top. Strom briefly saw three Xaosians in one
such command centre, as the smaller cylinders fired their deadly
cargo, recoil only affecting them slightly. The cannon-fire did not
cause the Stingers that were in its path to explode, or at least, not
in the conventional way; normally, explosions are associated with
flames and crashes, but in space, neither of those things can happen.
Instead, the Stingers are simply forced apart by the impact of the
explosive shell, before the explosion scatters them in every
direction. No sound, no flames, no collateral.
As the cannons fired
again, a Stinger near to him was caught in the missile's path. The
nosecone was forced back into the cockpit, before it shattered and
the remains of the pilot were ejected forcefully. The nosecone, still
being forced backwards, crushed into the back of the craft, which
began to disintegrate. The wings came apart, as did the tail fin. The
ammunition and cannons came loose from their riggings and floated
away from the ship, where the nosecone had finally emerged from the
rear of the Stinger. Then, the missile exploded, and the pieces were
scattered like shrapnel, which cut into the nearby Stingers. Strom
shoved the joystick to the left, and the Stinger rolled like a ball
to the left, narrowly avoiding a large chunk of what appeared to be
part of a the Stinger's wing.
Strom fired on The
Dominion, missiles storming towards it. But none hit the
flagship, detonating just meters from the hull; the forcefield still
wasn't down. Strom flew along the length of the flagship, peppering
it with the thermo-locking missiles. Small explosions flashed briefly
as they hit the forcefield, blending in with hundreds of others.
Stingers were forced apart all around him and he would see the pilots
float out, clutching their throats as their breath was stolen away.
Some, Strom recognised; most, he did not. Just nameless faces that he
may never forget, eyes begging for help and mercy from anyone who
could. But no-one could deliver.
Strom came across one
of the functioning cannons of the Orbital Defence System. The tubular
object had two solar panels jutting out of it, with an antenna-like
dish on the end of it. Poking out of the centre of the dish was a
long, slim cone with a rounded top; this was where the ammunition was
fired from. Hundreds of small explosives dwelled inside the
satellite, all on a chain-fire belt. Thanks to the belt, they were
shot at extremely high velocities and, due to their small size, were
excellent armour-penetrators. What struck Strom, however, was that it
wasn't firing. He stopped his Stinger next to it, engaging the
craft's gravity-locks. Pressing a button under his seat, a small
compartment behind the seat opened. Inside was a standard-issue
spacesuit, designed for short excursions into space. As it was
standard issue, it shrank or grew to fit any shape, size or species.
Strom wriggled into it and put the helmet on; it was too big for him
and his head seemed lost inside it, but the airlocks closed around
the suit's collar as he plugged the helmet into the Stinger's oxygen
supply.
He opened the cockpit.
Even through the
spacesuit, Strom felt a breeze as air was sucked from the craft. He
drifted off of the seat, and quickly grabbed the side of the cockpit
to steady himself. Closing his eyes, he tried to calm his breathing.
This won't be like before. The memory of before only made him
think of falling, drifting, dying. Olaf can't save me this time.
He remembered his friend's hand, grasping his own. At that point,
Strom could barely see, but he took the hand which flailed in front
of him before being crammed into a Stinger and passing out. Strom's
heart raced as he thought about it, but then he remembered Fairns's
words: “we fight for our planet”. Gulping, Strom rose from his
seat, going into a crouching position. His hand shook as it gripped
the edge of the seat. He noticed that, unconsciously, both hands were
gripping tight, and that the rubber supports on the seat had split
slightly. Breathing in, he pushed away from the seat. Drifting
forwards, Strom flailed to try and grab the satellite. His fingers
touched the side of it.
And slipped away.
Panicking, Strom
flailed once more, heart speeding up. This was just like before, just
as he feared. But with no-one to save him, he was as good as dead,
lost in space, just one of the corpses that he'd seen floating in the
endless void.
The oxygen cord snapped
taut and Strom stopped with an abrupt halt. He let out a deep breath,
which he didn't realise he had been holding in. He swam through
space, as if doing the breast-crawl. Drifting slowly back towards the
satellite, Strom realised that he had worried for nothing. Last time,
before, he remembered that the cord had snapped; he relied solely on
the backup oxygen supply in the small cannisters embedded in the
suit.
Approaching the
satellite once more, he put his hand out, slowly and carefully this
time. He felt the touch of cold metal through the spacesuit's gloves
as his hand clasped a ridge on the side of the Orbital Cannon. He
dragged himself closer, painfully slamming his body into the metal
surface, making him wince as his ribs erupted with pain again.
The satellite was
larger than he had expected when he had first seen it; it was close
to the size of a small house, obviously to house all of the
ammunition as they did not get serviced often. Clambering along it,
Strom searched for an access panel. The panel would not be large,
only big enough for an arm to fit in and fix any software faults; the
satellites were controlled completely by a special AI, which would
sort and fix any mechanical failures. With the solar panels powering
it, the AI would never go offline. Hence, the only reason for the
cannon not firing would be a failure within the AI, which should be
fixed by rebooting the system.
Strom barely felt the
groove of the access panel through his gloves, but he knew it was
there; perhaps the absence of sound heightened his sense of touch. He
considered this as he thought never would've been able to feel
that normally.... He wrapped his fingers around the edges and
slid the panel open. Inside was a small screen with a touchscreen
keypad. Strom entered the numbers 7719: the reboot code. The screen
went black, before some white text came up saying “REBOOTING”.
Beneath was a bar which was slowly lengthening. Strom nodded,
satisfied with the job he'd done. He pushed himself off of the
satellite, towards his Stinger. Pulling himself into the seat once
more, he closed the cockpit and sealed the airlocks again before
quickly stripping off the spacesuit. Disengaging the gravity-locks,
the craft began to move again and Strom steered it away from the
Orbital Cannon while he slowly counted down, nodding to each number.
Just before he reached
“one”, the cannon fired.
A barrage of missiles
tore into The Dominion's forcefield, flashes exploding like
miniature stars in the space around it. Strom veered towards the
flagship, as did many of the other Stingers, and they rained fire
down upon it. They flew the length of the ship again, and still more
and more Stingers were destroyed, but The Dominion was
untouched. Strom pulled up, ready for another swoop when he saw part
of The Dominion's hull splinter.
“The forcefield is
down!” yelled Admiral Fairns over the speaker. “Concentrate all
fire on The Dominion!”
A surge of adrenaline
rushed through Strom as he turned the Stinger around, ready for
another bombardment. A missile narrowly missed his ship and destroyed
the orbital cannon he had just fixed. Strom felt a pang of annoyance
at the fact that all of the effort he had gone to repair it was now
for naught; it had helped bring the forcefield down, but now it was
useless. He looked back at The Dominion just in time to see
two huge panels at the bottom of the ship slowly slide away from each
other. Out of the ravine that was left behind emerged a
semi-spherical device, with a cylindrical object in the centre. The
device was covered in solar panels, which slowly lit up one by one as
it absorbed the Solus's light. With a sudden panic, Strom knew what
was about to happen.
A deep growl came over
the speakers; a Xaosian voice. “You ignored my warning.”
The Dominion's
Earth-Scorcher fired on the Sea of Oil.
