Okay. This is because of all of your reviews that said I did not have enough detail. (I actually agree with them... but...) Hahah. . As a result, I have rewritten it, and I sencerly hope that it is WAY better than the last one.
Comments are always appreciated, whether good, bad, harsh, judgmental, hateful, you get the point. Just let me know what you think. (Please be specific when critiquing.)
If you'd like to view the original chapter, it can be found on: http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/topic30863.html
Enjoy!
~Daniel
Chapter 1:
“Sir!” Lieutenant Justin Voltz shrieked, rotating his chair towards his commander, and running a hand through his curly red hair, “the weapons system is down, Alpha and Delta wings have been destroyed, and we’re deep in kimchi, sir!”
“Well,” Admiral Robert Kane raised his steady voice above the commotion of the bridge, being careful not to cause panic. As the leader of over three thousand military personal, it was his duty not to deteriorate their already demoralized spirits. “Tactics, how soon can we get Beta wing outta the hangar?”
“Hangars two, three, and four are completely blocked up with debris, and hangar one is getting power failure on half of the main floor,” Lieutenant Dustin Hawkins replied. “I’d say it’d be at least fifteen minutes ‘till all five of our fighters are launched.”
“Scramble them. Voltz, what is the status on repairs? Can we get the weapons back online?”
“That’s a negative, sir. Officer Fletcher and his ground crew are trying to clear up the breaches in levels sixteen, fifteen, and fourteen. Should I get them back to the weapons?”
“No, we need the breaches sealed first. Navigations, plot a course—” Admiral Kane’s heavy built body was thrust backward, onto the steel flooring of his Corvette’s bridge, as, what seemed to be an earthquake, shook the ship.
“Sir!” Justin yelled, his words quivering in fear of devastation. “Engines are down and we have a reactor breach in decks three, four, five, and six!”
“Get the ground crew to take care of the upper decks. We cannot afford to lose them. What is the status on Beta Wing? We need fighter coverage, now!”
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“Beta One, disengage your engines!” the launch captain’s voice screamed through Ryan Anderson’s communications system in his small fighter. “You do not have authorization to launch!”
Ryan smiled grimly, not bothering to reply to the launch captain. If there was one thing he could not understand about the AeroSpace Air Corps was the need to follow protocol. Sure, there were standard procedures, meant for basic safety, but dire situations required dire actions.
“Beta One, I repeat: disengage your engines. It’s too dangerous to launch, all power in the catapult and lights are offline, you cannot be allowed to launch.”
“Dangerous?” Ryan laughed grimly at the launch captain’s words, his deep brown eyes scanning the area in front of his space fighter, “With all due respect sir, I’m a fighter pilot. Everything I do is dangerous. But right now, we have three thousand lives aboard this ship with only four other fighters trying to protect her; I’m not about to stand around and watch her go down in flames.” He silenced the com-link, not wanting to hear the captain’s response.
Ryan gunned the engines, allowing his sleek, red and black fighter, the Flame, to barrel down the launch way. I sure hope the enemy took out our shielding system, he silently prayed, realizing he had overlooked one of the most important steps in a launch procedure: the lowering of the shield system.
To an untrained eye, it did not look like much, but any military personal would say the same thing: the thin, translucent-blue, eggshell-like bubble that surrounded a craft, whether big or small, was one of the most important aspects of a spacecraft. The shielding system allowed a ship to absorb damage, while protecting the delicate hull. Only until the shield system was overloaded, could the craft be destroyed.
Ryan closed his eyes as the Flame tore through the hangar bay’s exit and out into space. Had the shielding system been online, his ship would have disintegrated trying to pass through it.
“Beta Wing this is lead, what’s your status?” he questioned, activating his helmet’s transparent heads-up display and targeting the nearest enemy space fighter.
“All Cancer and Scorpio bomber wings have been neutralized, sir,” one of his pilots responded, her voice cracking with apprehension. “What took you so long?”
“The hangar’s back-up power systems failed,” Ryan responded, his voice lathered with sarcasm. “Then the launch captain decided I should stay behind and wait to be blown to bits.”
“Haven’t we every told you that patience is a virtue, sir?”
“Not here it ain’t. All right, you know the drill. Take out the fighters, but keep your eyes pealed for bombers.” Ryan wiggled the stick upwards, sending his craft into a steep climb towards an enemy fighter. The drone of the missile lock sounded as his targeting computer gained an aspect lock with the enemy fighter, and a pair of missiles shot out from under the Flame’s slanted right wing.
Not bothering to see whether or not the missiles would actually strike their target, Ryan switched targets on his heads-up display, and aimed another pair of missiles at the enemy. Before he could fire them off though, warning klaxons began to blare. Obviously, his other missile had not hit its assigned target. If it had, there would not be an enemy craft tailing him.
Shoving the flight stick downwards and hitting the afterburner, Ryan tried desperately to avoid a beating from the enemy, but to no avail. His ship shook as the rear shields took the majority of the blasts, only allowing a minimum amount of damage to his hull. Ryan swung the stick back around and jammed the left petal downwards, forcing his craft into a high arch. The attacking fighter could not follow his maneuver, so it banked off in the other direction, in hopes to regain the upper hand of the dogfight.
Ryan saw his chance and cut off all power to his engines, using the reverse thrust to slow his forward momentum. As the enemy came into the front view of his cockpit, Ryan let off a couple rounds from his laser cannons. The lasers impacted against the enemy’s shields, overloading them before the snub-nosed fighter could react with an evasive maneuver. “Time to face the firing squad,” he muttered, his leather gloved index finger hovering over the trigger.
Lasers pounded against the Flame, shattering Ryan’s concentration. He cursed silently, pulling away from his attack, and accelerated the craft. There was only a split-second time-frame in which a fighter could remain stationary in a dogfight. If a pilot took longer, the consequences were atrocious.
Ryan pulled away, dodging a dangerous volley of lasers, and shoved the stick across his body. His leg muscles contracted as he jammed the right petal in, causing the Flame to flip onto its wing and sidestep another round of energy from the enemy’s laser cannon. He clouted the stick to the right, and then rolled it to an upwards position, in hopes to throw the pursuit off his tail.
The enemy was unimpressed by Ryan’s evasive maneuvers, following his dips and turns with perfect ease. Again, the enemy fired off a round of lasers. This time, Ryan’s craft took a direct hit. Its aft shields dissipated, and the rest of the enemy’s lasers swarmed the metal craft, driving the fighter’s hull integrity below the critical mark.
Ryan relayed all power to his rear shields, and triggered the reverse thrust. He hoped that the sudden change in motion would surprise the enemy and cause him to overshoot his target. This was confirmed as the enemy flew overhead, just centimeters above the craft’s translucent acrylic canopy.
Suddenly, the tide of the battle had shifted in Ryan’s favor, as he was now tailing the enemy. Using a combination of dumb fire missiles and laser cannons, Ryan overloaded the enemy’s shields and punched holes in the hull, finally destroying the ship. “Whew,” Ryan exhaled for what seemed to be the first time in a couple minutes, and glanced at his damage report. His weapons and communications system had taken minor damage, and the Flame’s hull integrity had reached a low of twenty-four percent. I’ve had worse, he reminded himself, flipping his craft about face as another warning siren screamed in his ear, signaling the approach of another enemy.
Knowing that his damaged craft would not survive a head-on confrontation with the metallic, v-shaped interceptor, Ryan thumbed the afterburner and gently caressed his fighter into a defensive position. This meant that, even though the enemy interceptor had the upper hand of the dogfight, Ryan had a greater chance of survival.
“Sir!” a male voice sounded, crackling with static through the communications system, “they’re all over me! I can’t get off a decent shot.”
“Stay calm, Davin,” Ryan responded, trying to force his vocal cords to sound calmer than he actually felt. “If you can bring your fighter—” Ryan broke off his sentence, shoving his stick to the left, narrowly escaping a potentially deadly volley of dumb fire missiles. “Bring her around towards me, if you can. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Aye sir.”
Ryan inverted, his craft shooting upwards in the dark abyss of space. Just as suddenly as he entered the maneuver, Ryan drove the flight stick to the right, easing up on the throttle, and making his craft fly in a tight, horizontal loop, just behind the surprised enemy’s tail. “Gotcha!” Ryan hammered the stick’s trigger, pelting the enemy interceptor with yellow-orange laser blasts.
The enemy’s shields wavered, and then dissipated under the laser’s intense heat, leaving the craft vulnerable to the pair of missiles that strove towards its fragile hull. The pair of explosives impacted against the small fighter’s body, vaporizing it instantly, and leaving nothing in its wake save a bright, florescent-orange glow spot in Ryan’s vision.
Ryan pulled his craft back around, suddenly realizing how far the battle had taken him away from his Corvette.
“Beta wing, report in,” he said through the com-link as he hit the afterburner to close the distance between his petite fighter and the massive capital-class cruiser. Even with the blackish-gray smoke that poured out of the damaged systems, the Corvette Tranquility still looked dangerous. Its semi-block shaped hull was laden with missile, laser, and beam turrets that protruded out menacingly, as to deter any curious craft.
“Beta Three here, sir,” the voice of a comrade filled the silence of the comm. “Four and Five are moping up the last couple of fighters, and Two has just finished up with his last one.”
“Perfect,” Ryan replied, and then spoke lightly through the small, electronic-filled microphone inside of his flight helmet, “Beta Wing, after you’ve finished blowing the enemy to space dust, set up a patrol around Tranquility, I don’t want nothing getting past us.”
“I think you mean,” a female voice piped in, “you don’t want anything getting past us, sir.”
“Oh give me a break, Jade,” Ryan laughed, relaxing in the comfort of his leather chair. “I don’t have this job because I speak well. And let me remind you, if dad were still here he’d tell you to respect your elders.”
Though Ryan’s sister, Jade Anderson, was technically his twin, he still claimed to be older than her. It was a well-known fact that the rivalry between the two siblings went farther back than anyone could remember.
“By what?” Jade retorted, solemnly rejecting even the thought of it. “Two minutes?”
“Anderson!” Ryan belted his words into the com-link, trying desperately to keep himself from laughing. “You’re a veteran pilot, the communications system is not a toy! You should’ve known that by now.”
Laughs echoed across the comm. system, and Ryan, in turn, smiled. Nowadays, the small arguments between him and his sister were not just for show. They were meant to relieve the intense stress every single fighter pilot was exposed to during a battle situation. Not only were the battles a constant struggle between life and death, but also if the fighter pilots were defending their home base, it was their responsibility to protect it, or die trying.
“Corvette Tranquility, Wing Commander Anderson here, what’s your status?” Ryan turned his attention back towards a more sobering thought, the Corvette.
“Thanks for the assist lieutenant, we’ve got all breaches under control, and the ground crew has jury-rigged a quick fix to get our warp drives back online. Tranquility is beginning the jump cycle now, so you have clearance to land in hangar one. Don’t hit anything on your way in.”
“Perfect. We’ll see you in a bit Tranquility, all in one piece.”
*Laughs hysterically*
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