Your initial target contact is gone, your sensors don't have it and there's glowing debris spirally past you.

You acquire a new target, the same strange "X" shape and fire off a few volleys and those same sluggish particle burst, this time passing through your spike phase. You get two clean spreads hitting the cross section of the enemy fighter and ripping through it completely, causing it to break apart and disintegrate like a crystal goblet hurled against a stone wall.

And like that, it's all over.

The scope is clear for now and the local area of about 50k distance is a fresh debris field.

"Valkyrie, are you alright? I saw you take a hit..." Takedown has pulled back into formation with you and is back in narrowbeam comm.

You can see the rest of the squadron pulling back together. Looks like an even ten. No losses.

"I'm fine", she replied in a slightly vexed manner. "They didn't match any configuration nor envelope I've ever seen."

She cursed herself for letting some wet-behind-the-ears -pilot get a shot at her, but she estimated, the fighter would hold together for now, going through the internal diagnostics.

"Those weren't corsairs or seperatists..." Your wingwoman is breathing heavily in her cockpit, excited from the rush of combat.

"All fighters, return to Carrier Havenspire immediately. Repeat. All fighters, return to Carrier."

It was a short ranged pulse from your leader, encrypted channel, likely to be too weak to pick up from a distance.

"Acknowledged", Jayne said and spun her fighter around, heading back towards the carrier with the rest of the squadron.

You scrambled back to the carrier and made a series of combat landings on the flight deck. No sooner where you down on the deck than the flight crews were all over your ship, stripping out burned hardware and frayed wires, replacing scored armor panels and running a check on your weapons systems and spike drive.

The rest of the squadron is being rushed to a holoboard in the main hanger with a few collapsable chairs. There's a few items of food and Shen Torugawa is behind a small podium fiddling with some holoscreens and placing images on the main holoboard against the bulkhead.

Most of your squadron has already helped themself to food and are gathered losely around talking about the images on the display.

"...the fakk was that..."

"...did you see it pull that heisenner at 11g?"

"...never seen a spike drive like that before..."

"Almost had me there if..."

Jayne was going over her own flight data from the fight. She wanted to know, how the hell had that fighter gotten a shot at her with that kind of flying skills. Whatever those fighters were, she wanted one. Her standard issue Skyserpent was agile and packed a nice punch, but by the looks of it, it was only good training that had spared the Squadron from losing a few pilots and fighters.

She wasn't eating, not yet - she had things to figure out and she wanted to analyse the flight data to give her a better estimate of the envelope, the enemy fighter could fit in to, so she would be able to predict the movements better in the future.

Your wingmate taps you on the shoulder.

"Jayne, come on. Torugawa is going to go over the data we picked up in the fight. Command wants us back out there in only a few hours to escort the bomber jocks." She looks overly pleased "That's right! We have a target!"

"Yea, yea, I'm coming", she said a bit snappily. If she had had the choice, she would have preferred Amon on her wing, because him she could trust. The new wingman was far less reliable.

But regardless of her feelings towards her wingman, Jayne turned away from the display and headed over to the Squadron Leader to hear the briefing for the next mission. She wasn't really thrilled with the idea - they were being pushed too hard and with that kind of push, the pilots were forced to resort to taking uppers. That would make them skittish and unable to make decissions properly.

"You're welcome by the way - for vaping that hostile off your six." Salma Macthan looks at you with a smirk on her face as she seats herself in front of the ad hoc briefing room. Several other pilots clap her on the shoulder with jovial acclaimations of "Nice shot!" "How many kills is that now?" "Takedown scores again!"

The board flickers and shows a diagram of the previous engagement and Shen seems to want everyone's attention.

Jayne rolled her eyes. Yes, Macthan had shot the bandit off her six, but rubbing it in was just showing how much she wanted 'Crown' back on her side. She had far more kills than that idiot girl and she would not have even thought of rubbing in the kills, she had made off the tails of her wingmen.

"Everyone have a sit, get a bite to eat, drink. We're going right back out there as soon as we've gone over what we picked up from the new hostiles and break down our new mission."

He seems much calmer now and less irritable.

The holoscreen shows several 3dsnaps of the cruciform fighter craft from various angles and an analysis overlay shows likely thruster locations, weaponry, power output, drives, pilot location and estimated capabilities based on data. None of it is too amazing, but due to being designed for only space operation and not atmosphere like the Skyserpents, it has a bit of an manueverability advantage in the vacuum.

The primary weapon appears to be a slow "Reaper Battery" style particle projector that taps the spike drive for power. It's clumsy and better against anything bigger than a fighter or shuttle, but still powerful and could easily fry a fighter with two hits. It would be especially effective against something like a gunboat or a frieghter, big enough to hit easily but too small to shrug off the damage.

Next up, they show some hazy images and spectral scans of the sensor readings the Darksiders picked up. About a dozen ships between frigate and cruiser hull classes all of unknown configuration and origin. Spectral analysis reveals weaponry and military grade power grids.

"Right. Any questions before we get into our next op?"

Jayne noted Shen's more calm demeanor and made an educated guess of him having had his fix of uppers. She was more intrigued by the new opponent than anything else and brushed aside her thoughts about the annoying Squadron Commander in order to absorb as much information about the strange new fighter as she could. Everything would come in handy, if she had to fly against them again - and she would most probably have to.

The target for the bombers was another thing. It was a fleet and who could really tell, how many of those fighters would be there? Bigger ships meant anti-fighter batteries and that in turn meant the possibility of being fired upon. They had no knowledge about the capabilities of the enemy vessels and that made her worried. Were they going to go in blind? She might not have been the tactical genius, but even she knew, going in blind meant usually fewer craft limping back to the carrier than had left it.

"Right. Jocks, here's the next op. We're going up against a line ship, Cruiser-class. We've designated it XC-Belthezar, and it's located on the far side of this-" the display changes from the whole Apophis system and enlarges a section of the 4th planet until it fills the whole image "-planet. Apophis-u27. It's a rock, nothing but some iron and trace elements. Could be they're looking at mining it out, doesn't really matter. Point is we picked up a Cruiser-class hull here. The sensor return delay is about 4 hours and it's about 2 hours from the main fleet with a net response of 6 hours before they pick up our little battle and send word out to the XC-Belthezar, so we're cutting this pretty close. We're going to jump half the fleet to A-U27 and scramble both squadrons to make the attack run and get back before they can jump out."

He flicks to a couple of renders of what they think the target ship looks like based on scan impressions. No real details except the general shape, location of the engines and a guess as to where the weapon mounts are.

"This is all counting on them having roughly the same level as tech as we do, hopefully they can't pick out Spike Drill surges any better than we can, because that means they won't know if we left the system completely or moved elsewhere for about 4 hours. By the time they realize we split our fleet to force their hand, the target ship will be a burning wreck."

"Any questions?"
This message was last edited by the player at 06:37, Mon 11 Mar 2013.

"Any intel on the target composition and what we're up against here?" It was a legit question. "Or are we going in half-blind?" Then again, that was perhaps not as legit but a valid one. Jayne didn't like the way the whole thing felt - something felt amiss. It was a gut feeling, but she trusted her gut more than most people in the Squadron and even more than those higher up. Military intelligence was a contradiction in terms and she was well aware of that.
This message was last edited by the player at 13:11, Tue 12 Mar 2013.

"Half-blind, unfortunately. I know, I know. I don't like it any more than you do, but we're up against the chronometer here." He continued "Knocking out their recon squadron bought us some time, but only about 4 hours at best. Their fleet is scattered through out the system, with the bulk of it here-" He marks a spot on the system map -"about two light hours from the nearest ship. The rest of their fleet is spread out and they don't know what we're doing yet. The Novarch has decided a first-strike is the best option, we'll bloody their nose and drive them out of the system."

"I think we all know by now these aren't some pirates or fringe raiders. All analysis points to an organized astral force with hostile intent and the Novarch plans to catch them with their pants down and make them think twice about coming here again."

"No shit", she muttered under her breath. She wasn't at all thrilled about the odds, because they were, there was something the intelligence had missed and the reconnaissance squadron was not the only squadron in their roster. Sending the enemy away with their tails between their legs wasn't really as easy as they made it sound.

"Some of you are probably wondering if we'll see more fighters covering our target. I doubt it. We haven't seen any indication of a carrier out there, which indicates their fighters are probably being launched in ones or twos from their cruisers, most likely as recon or skirmish forces. We likely won't see any more than maybe another demi-squadron like we already encountered."

"That doesn't rule out larger gunboats or potentially a hidden carrier elsewhere in the system, but you already know how this works. We're limited by the speed of sight, the Hard C, so we have to leap before we look."

"Right, back to your ships. We're phasing to the target in 20 minutes."

He slides his helmet back on with the visor up and starts walking towards his personal fighter.

Jayne wasn't exactly pleased with the plans, but she didn't care to tell Shen that - it wouldn't have changed anything at all. She headed for her fighter, climbed in and sat down to wait for the launch.

A few hours later and you're experiencing that queezy rush that comes from a combat phase, shifting between invisible dimensional shears and the tension of imminent combat.

There's a customary jolt of your whole being, pilot and fighter as one shaking as you exit a higher plane of existence back to the mundane reality of the vast cold blackness.

You can hear shortrange broadwave chatter from your fellow pilot.
"-there about twenty-three two angle ninteen aught-"
"No birds yet, keep your eyes open for sharks and-"
"Move to attack spread eleven, cover the bombers."

And there she was:



In orbit around a dark rock, designated XC-Belthezar was quietly orbiting by herself as the two squadrons moved in to attack.

Jayne flew in the formation with the others, spreading out for the attack formation when the order came. Her eyes scanned the vastness of space for all and any signs of enemy fighters and kept the enemy cruiser under observation. This was it - now she just had to do what she didn't like. Rely on military intelligence.

The grainy image of Shen in his helmet flickered onto your Heads Up Display and his voice came from your earpiece.

"The Courier's leader just picked up a gunship in phase transit to the local one zero zero kay, Jackknife, Brickyard, Valkyrie and Takedown, form up on me. The rest of the squadron covers the Courier's. Break for Havenspire as soon as the Couriers do. Do not wait for us."

The commander's onboard computer pipes you data regarding the gunship-class hostile. ETA of five minutes. In interstellar warfare that was but a moment to traverse but years in combat range.

Shen fires retros and the metaenergy from his spike drive as he revs into a higher phase shear registers on your sensors. Jackknife and Brickyard are already following but Takedown stays on your wing, awaiting your move.

"Acknowledged", Jayne said and swung her fighter to follow the CO towards the gunship. She wasn't very thrilled - if this was something that they had missed until now, how close could the rest of the enemy fleet be, then?

The slab like gunship resolved on your screens closing on an intercept vector with the bomber group. Even so, the Skyserpents are faster and are already almost upon the gunship.

The computer tries to match it up with known configurations and fails after about 10 seconds. It then creates several speculative assumptions about the configuration.

Unknown Gunship-class
mass: 8000+
spike rating 1
15 cm layered composite plating, unknown composition
projectile battery (4 turrets)
ventral mounted weapon system, unknown type

"Start the attack run, weapons free, vary your Phase state!"

OOC: Combat as before, set phase 0 or 1, set target phase 0 or 1, roll to attack

Jayne prepared for the battle.

OOC: Phases 1, 0