Augmentation by Aer-ki Jyr

Augmentation by Aer-ki Jyr

Author:Aer-ki Jyr [Jyr, Aer-ki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-03-13T16:00:00+00:00


7

August 4, 2397

Jartul System

Daka

Mark sat in the small passenger compartment directly behind the cockpit in the falcon-class dropship that was carrying him up to orbit, watching the ascent up through the atmosphere on a small datapad as he simultaneously ran through the latest batch of simulator tests. With the addition of a plasma-based scattergun to the skeets their kill power against the lizard fighters had increased considerably for their weaker pilots, but less so for Mark. His skill with the standard plasma cannons afforded him better accuracy, whereas the scattergun allowed a pilot to damage a target by simply shooting near to it like a fighter-sized shotgun.

‘Damage’ was the word though, because most of the time the simulated lizard ships wouldn’t go down because only a few plasma shards would hit their armored hulls. Put a square shot on one and it would shred the ship nicely, but the whole point of the weapon was to enable less accurate kill power, causing Mark to have mixed feelings about the upgrade, especially since they’d had to remove one of the standard cannons in order to make room for it, leaving him without the ability for linked or rapid fire.

The recycle time on the weapon was about half a second, which meant if you got on the tail of an enemy fighter, even for just a moment, you could pump loads of the tiny plasma pellets into the target, which in the case of the lizards would take them down, sometimes two at a time if they overlapped into the same firing cone during their massed assaults. But when Mark had tried out the weapon against other non-lizard craft the damage was not so spectacular. Even weak shields soaked up a lot of the plasma splinters, then regenerated if the target could get clear. The lizards had no shields, thus any hits were for keeps, but Mark knew Star Force couldn’t afford to make a permanent change to their weaponry because it’d leave them weak against other enemies.

What they really needed was a modular swap out, but the new weapon was tricky enough that his limited techs hadn’t been able to work out the dynamics of such a design, though he had sent the specs back home via a passing Hycre ship. It wasn’t a jumpship, so there was no way of knowing how long it would take to pass the data file back to Star Force territory, but since the Alliance communications network hadn’t been extended out to the Humans yet couriers were still the only way they could keep in contact, and with being so far away sending Star Force jumpships was out of the question, leaving the Hycre as their only link back home.

The communication delay was still monstrous, with no Star Force updates having reached Daka, which meant Mark was going to have to make modifications to their aircraft using his local resources only…that were about to be augmented, which was what had prompted this trip up to orbit.



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