Empire's Rift by Steve Rzasa

Author:Steve Rzasa
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science-fiction, space opera, military
Publisher: Word Fire Press
Published: 2016-06-24T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Three Days after the Naplian Invasion

Captain Tag Wester pulled back on the ripwave generator controls. Stars shrank back to their normal size, and ahead of him, a small, pasty gray moon filled his displays.

Those displays were a lot more compact than he was used to, set on a console that fit him like a tight glove rather than the roomy old boot of his Raider.

But the Raider was gone—sitting in a heap of dirt outside the Baedecker Four governor’s compound. Tag snorted. Probably blown to bits by the one-eyes.

Sensors altered him to the presence of eleven other fighters. Tag switched off the alter sounds. “Give me a range—” He stopped, the words caught in his throat.

He didn’t have a RIO anymore, either.

Instead he was wrapped up tight in the cockpit of an SF-107 Warhawk, a starfighter only 10 meters long and carrying far fewer bombs than his Raider. What he did have were two railguns, mounted along the centerline ventral fuselage, and a small defensive laser turret mounted aft of the cockpit. The Warhawk, shaped like an arrowhead with four small engines at the rear, carried six RS-18 anti-matter warhead missiles massing far less than the bombload of his raider.

“All fighters report in.” The voice over the intra-squadron comm was of Major Chok, squadron leader for the re-constituted Bronze Squadron.”

The announcements trickled in, more voices Tag hadn’t even heard until a few days ago. But one battlefield promotion by Captain Sobban Ram—check that, Commodore Ram, thanks to Speaker Zhatkowskii and the few Congressmen in exile—and Tag found himself the wingman for their new squadron’s new leader.

Everything was new. Except his flight suit, and the old Bronze Squadron insignia. The patch adorned with an inverted Raider amidst 12 explosions was discolored. Naplian blood.

Anyone wanted it off Tag’s uniform, they were going to have to try and cut it out themselves.

“Bronze Two, report.” Chok’s tone was calm, cool, far from the harsh snap of DeeDee’s snipes.

“Bronze Two, reporting in,” Tag said. “All systems good.”

“All right, ladies and gentlemen. Proceed to Checkpoint 1. Range, ten thousand kilometers. Coast in—no acceleration. Let’s get the lay of the land and proceed from there.”

Lay of the land, indeed. As the sensor data trickled in, and the gray lump expanded on Tag’s display, he saw for the first time why there was such a fuss about this raid.

Two squadrons of Naplian warships ringed Baedecker Two, barely visible around the curve of the moon. It was a dark, pitted planet, barren of all life. Way too close to the system’s stars, which blazed among the star field brighter than Tag had ever seen. His training and patrols never took him this deep in-system

The Naplian vessels were comprised of three different types of cruisers, the smallest 200 meters long and the largest 600 meters. All of them had the now familiar design—wide jump sails shaped like the fins of some seagoing leviathan, curved, sharp-edge hulls. Mixed among them were boxy transports of some kind. Those hadn’t been present during the invasion.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.