Flying the Storm

36.





Visual Range

There it was: pale and grey, rising from the hazy horizon like the moon. The optics zoomed in on it as Solomon leaned forward, and through the shimmering air he thought he could see black smoke funnelling from its sides. He’d hit it, there was no question about that, but it hadn’t been enough.

The Gilgamesh was still coming, and now it could see him.

It was huge. He’d seen it before, a long time ago, but the size of it still terrified him. Even bow-on and at forty kilometres it was almost the size of his fingernail. And as he watched it hammering towards him, he knew that the air between them would soon be filled with slugs, shells and missiles, each one of which had the potential to knock his little warship out of the sky.

“Enkidu, how long till the secondary propulsion is ready?” Solomon was working hard to keep his voice steady, even though only the Enkidu could hear him.

“Five minutes and forty-seven seconds, Commodore.” A little yellow counter appeared on the display.

“Okay. After the next shot, accelerate for high-speed evasives.”

“Yes, Commodore. Firing.”

The Enkidu shuddered again as the twin railguns launched their one-tonne projectiles at seven kilometres per second towards the Gilgamesh. This time, Solomon hardly had time to register the two white dots racing away before the warship swerved, slamming him into his seat as it brought its electric jet engines to maximum thrust. He could feel the tens of tonnes of air being compressed, electrically super-heated and blasted from the tail nozzles to drive the heavy craft forwards. He could hear the fans and turbines even through the thick armour plating and sturdy structure of the warship.

The Enkidu was climbing now, banking wide to the north. The barrage of rail-shells had stopped, which Solomon did not think was a good thing. He could see the white trails of the fighters high above, though by now they had surely spent all of their missiles. Oddly, they weren’t returning to the Gilgamesh yet. The only real offensive move they had left would be suicidal gun-runs… The Enkidu had reduced the intensity of the anti-air fire, which suggested that the AI had reached the same conclusion. Lasers and missiles from the factory mountain fired from unseen positions, harassing the fighters above. The fighters were not, and really never had been, the true threat. The true threat was…

An alarm sounded to Solomon’s right. He saw a cluster of red dots marking a huge number of projectiles and missiles that had just been launched by the Gilgamesh. His pulse stepped up a notch as he watched the Enkidu track them. She’d seen them, and she would avoid them. He had to put his faith in that. She would keep him alive.

But his hand still twitched for the missing joystick.

The Enkidu was banking into a wide spiral, her lasers soundlessly picking off the rockets as they swarmed to confuse the targeting systems. There wasn’t much she could do about the slugs, though. They were coming at her much faster, spin- or fin-stabilised, twitching a little this way or that to correct for the Enkidu’s motion. As long as she kept moving, every missile with a tracking system would be constantly changing its heading, trying to stay on target. And that would spend their energy, meaning that when they reached the Enkidu they might just harmlessly slip by, unable to catch her.

Suddenly the segment of the display where the Gilgamesh was zoomed in, and Solomon saw the warship much larger than before. It was still shimmering, still trailing smoke, but this time there were two distinct white flashes just above its bow, gone as quick as they’d come.

“Shots have impacted,” said the Enkidu then. “Estimated heavy damage to the Gilgamesh’s forward energy storage, sensor arrays and communications. Penetration expected to be in the range of one hundred to three hundred metres. Possible damage to forward repulsor assembly.”

“Thank you, Enkidu. Keep firing.”

That wasn’t nearly enough damage. He needed one of those slugs to hit the reactor housing, or the primary repulsor, or even maybe…

“Target the bridge with your next shot,” he ordered.

“Yes, Commodore.”

The Enkidu pulled gracefully out of her spiral then, at around five kilometres altitude. Her guns were loaded and she lined up for the firing solutions. Three, said the little armament timer. Two. One.

“Firing.”

The warship juddered once more and the displays flickered, showing the two slugs screaming off towards their target.

But then Solomon noticed the red dots of the incoming fire. They were much closer. They were surely moments from impact.

“Enkidu, those shells are-”

“Yes, Commodore.” The warship’s engines whistled and howled as she twisted out of their path.

Then the dots seemed to leap forward out of the distance towards him. It was too late.

The air around the Enkidu and Solomon was suddenly torn apart as the salvo of rail-shells detonated. They’d missed, but not by much, and the shockwaves and shrapnel buffeted the warship. In front of the flames and smoke that had filled the air around his bubble flashed a series of red warnings, telling him that some of the shrapnel had penetrated the warship’s skin. It listed off the compartments that were compromised, the subsystems that were damaged.


But it was nothing critical. The Enkidu would fight on.

“Commodore, we are being hailed by the Gilgamesh,” announced the Enkidu.

He’d expected this much sooner. Now they would try to bargain with him.

“Vox only.”

“Yes, Commodore.”

There was a static hiss in the bridge. Then a voice spoke; an authoritative, female tone. “NAUS Enkidu, this is Admiral Rosalez of the NAUS Gilgamesh. Cease hostile activity immediately or you will be destroyed.”

Solomon had expected that. “Greetings Admiral Rosalez, you are speaking with Commodore Solomon Archer, naval special operations division. I’m afraid I must demand of you the same thing. Cease fire and come to a full stop no closer than twenty kilometres, and we will be on our way.”

“You presume to threaten the Gilgamesh, Commodore?” she said the word commodore mockingly. “Your guns may be powerful, but it will take more than-”

In the background, Solomon heard another voice. “Brace for impact, Admiral!”

The comms link cut out, replaced by static. The Enkidu showed Solomon a zoom of the Gilgamesh, where the two slugs had just hit the prominent bridge above the flight deck. The bridge seemed to disintegrate in a ripple of shock and flame, throwing out great bulbous glugs of black smoke. When the smoke parted a little, it revealed the decapitated stump of the command tower, sticking like a broken tooth from the upper decks of the warship.

“Better,” said Solomon, allowing himself to laugh aloud. They hadn’t seen the slugs coming. Their sensor arrays were either badly wrecked, or so obsolete they couldn’t make out the slugs.

Even though the bridge had been destroyed, the Gilgamesh was still coming. It didn’t even seem to be slowing down. A few seconds passed before it fired another volley at the spiralling Enkidu. The cluster of red dots appeared once again, closer this time.

Evasive manoeuvres with a craft the size and mass of the Gilgamesh just weren’t feasible. It was doing what Solomon would have done in its place; charging headlong at full speed until the weight of its guns could properly be brought to bear. Against any normal opponent, surface or otherwise, the Gilgamesh would have already won. But not against the Enkidu. She was in another class entirely.

“Here it comes…” muttered Solomon, gripping the glass arms of the chair.

“Yes, Commodore,” replied the Enkidu. Solomon hadn’t even realised he’d spoken aloud. “Incoming fighters above.”

Solomon leaned back and looked upwards then. He could see the little dark fighters peeling off, one by one, from different angles. They were all streaking down towards him, and he saw the little notifications that the lasers were firing flash before his eyes. The Enkidu released a salvo of missiles straight upwards, burning and arcing towards the fighters. He saw the fighters spiral evasively, shaking them, but all the while keeping their noses towards the Enkidu. Three were obliterated by the missiles, turning to dirty balls of burning fuel and black smoke, but the others were still diving down on him. Then the Enkidu opened fire with her autocannons, unleashing torrents of white-blue tracers up at the incoming fighters that were now supersonic. Solomon watched as they nosed up and down, diving and climbing over the streams of blue fire. He felt the warship accelerate under him, thrusting to make herself a harder target.

Come on. Hit them.

The fighters opened fire then. It started as little orange blobs, so slow at first, which broke into streaks and beams as they speared downwards. Some of it streaked past the hull, but most fell like hellish rain upon the upper skin of the warship. The shells punched hundreds of holes in the armour, the depleted uranium turning incendiary as it pierced. It sounded like a horrible steel drum roll, battering and banging all around him. The display shrieked warnings at him. The engines howled and the warship threw herself into another tight turn. Two more fighters disintegrated above him, shredded by the point defences. A third, hit and spinning, hurtled right at the warship. Its pilot ejected, flopping like a ragdoll in the supersonic winds.

“Stop that fighter!” screamed Solomon, pointing upwards. The point defence cannons hammered at it. It broke into a thousand pieces. Flaming wreckage smashed into the Enkidu, shunting the warship downwards with unbelievable force. Solomon was pitched upwards into his restraints. He gave a loud grunt as the air was thumped from his lungs.

“Repairs!” he shouted a moment later, clinging to the chair.

“Repair drones are active now, Commodore,” responded the Enkidu.

Solomon was furious. How dare they do this to his ship? The red mist had descended. He wanted blood.

“How many fighters left?”

“Three fighters remaining, Commodore. They seem to be returning to the Gilgamesh.”

“Missiles. I want missiles. Bring them down now.”

“Yes, Commodore.”

“The Gilgamesh is launching light aircraft now, Commodore.”

What does that matter? Light aircraft were little threat to him. It was the warship he needed dead.

“I am scrambling the factory’s defence drones to counter them, Commodore.”

“Thank you, Enkidu,” he managed through gritted teeth. He looked at the timer for the secondary propulsion. Just under three minutes.

He hoped the ship could survive that long.

Then the electronic battle began. Both warships deployed everything they had to dazzle and overload the other’s sensors; lasers, chaff, decoy drones, massed electromagnetic noise. It did little under the circumstances. Both warships could see each other as clear as day.

The new barrage arrived like a wall of fire and smoke. The Enkidu was weaving, but shrapnel battered it like a titanic shotgun blast. Hastily the lasers put down the few missiles that had made it through due to the distraction of the fighters, one getting far too close for Solomon’s comfort. He still flinched and ducked every time there was an explosion, the display was so real.

Then he started laughing. He realised he was actually enjoying himself. He was strapped into the best ride on Earth, watching a clash between two gods of the sky from a front-row seat. Not just watching. He was a sky-god. He was the sky-god.

The fear and anger and adrenaline in his blood had fused. The madness of battle was on him, and he welcomed it with laughter.