Alien Battalion by Brown Eric S

Author:Brown, Eric S. [Brown, Eric S.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Severed Press
Published: 2016-03-23T04:00:00+00:00

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Captain Pulliman’s feeling of triumph at stopping more of the creatures from getting aboard his ship was torn from him as Ensign Steph Anderson at the sensor station yelled, “Sir, we’ve got incoming!”

Pulliman clinched one of his hands into a fist and smashed it down on the arm of his command chair. “Kep’at?”

“Yes, sir,” Anderson replied. “Fighters. Several dozen of them, closing fast.”

“Take them with guns,” he snarled at his weapons officer. “Main batteries, fire at will.”

Sections of the Cerebus’s forward, upper hull parted and six barreled railguns rose up from them. They pivoted on their turrets, moving to engage the inbound Kep’at fighter craft.

The Kep’at fighters broke formation, swerving in the air, attempting to dodge the streams of death the Cerebus spit at them. A few of the fighter pilots were either lucky or skilled enough to do so but the bulk of the Kep’at fighters were reduced to exploding fragments of metal that slashed through the night sky like shooting stars.

Those that survived returned fire. Ship-killer missiles streaked from their wings towards the Banshee ship. The Cerebus met them with a strong pulse of EMCs and sent the bulk of them veering away wildly.

Electronic countermeasures were not the Cerebus’s only defense, however. Her railguns engaged the missiles as well and reducing the number that struck her to a single missile. It came in hard and fast, impacting against her shields. The ship rocked from the blast.

“Shields are holding, sir!” Anderson reported.

“Minor impact damage reported in a few forward sections, sir!” Lieutenant Waid added. “Nothing major.”

“The ten surviving fighters are coming around for another pass, sir!” Anderson yelled.

Gregory, the weapons officer, shouted, “Taking them with guns now, sir! They won’t get another chance to hit us!”

The Cerebus’s railguns spun to meet the fighters on their second approach. The sky flashed her batteries opened up on them. Explosion after explosion lit the sky as one by one the Kep’at fighter craft became balls of fire that popped off like a series of fireworks. Only two of the fighters managed another strike at the Cerebus before they were destroyed and her EMCs easily dealt with the missiles they were able to launch.

“The sky is clear!” Gregory informed Pulliman. “All enemy targets destroyed.”

Pulliman slumped deeper into his command chair in relief. The short, fierce battle had gone better than it had any right to have done and he was thankful for it. He knew though that the Kep’at weren’t going just give up. A few dozen fighters meant nothing to them considering the sheer amount of forces they had stationed on and above Ventari VII.

Colonel Hell had assigned two Valkyrie fighters to Pulliman’s command and he wanted nothing more than to launch them now. He couldn’t though, because his hangar bay was full of tentacle-covered monsters. Hell, he didn’t even know if the pilots for the two Valkyries were still alive. Odds were that they were among the personnel and soldiers who were in the hangar bay when it was breached. That

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