Head of the Dragon - Frontiers Saga Ep. #6 by Brown Ryk

Author:Brown, Ryk [Brown, Ryk]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Ryk Brown
Published: 2013-02-04T06:00:00+00:00

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Nathan entered the main hangar bay and strode out across what little open deck there still was. He had never seen the bay so cramped. Even though the cargo deck directly below had been mostly emptied and turned into another hangar deck, there was still almost no room left through which to receive an incoming ship. Yet somehow, Senior Chief Taggart and his Corinari deck crews kept finding room for them, which was a feat unto itself.

As he walked down the only empty section of the main hangar deck—the center aisle—he surveyed the ships that were on board. Most of them were fighters configured for orbital and atmospheric missions. These were lined up in neat, compact rows on either side of the center aisle. They were as far forward as they could go without blocking the forward transfer airlocks that led into the side fighter allies which contained elevators that traveled from the cargo deck below up through the top of the hull to become a launch/landing pad. Under normal circumstances, these pads were not used for flight operations. They were originally designed to act as an alternate means of moving smaller ships in and out of the Aurora should something happen to disable her flight apron aft of the main hangar deck. Currently, while the hangar deck was too full to allow normal traffic in and out through the rear transfer airlocks, smaller craft were being launched and recovered via the elevator pads. Using this alternate path to and from the hangar deck, they were able to keep up with the smaller shuttles that were constantly coming and going to and from the Aurora despite the crowded nature of her main hangar deck. It was especially important that they were not in orbit over Corinair.

Behind the rows of atmospheric fighters were the two comm-drone platforms, each carrying eight of the fifteen-meter-long drones tightly packed against the platform framework in two rows of four. Technicians worked frantically on the last two drones on each platform as they made the final programming changes that would convert the drones from communication relay tools into deadly, faster-than-light kinetic-kill-vehicles that could destroy an imperial battleship in a single blow. Although they had not been designed for such a purpose, they had an ominous look to them, as if their designers had known all along what they were capable of doing if used with ill intent. Just looking at the things gave Nathan an eerie feeling, as if he knew he would someday be forced to use them for just that purpose.

Aft of the comm-drone platforms were a few of the OMUs or ‘space tugs’ as Nathan liked to call them. After tractors lifted the drone platforms and carried them out onto the flight apron, the OMUs would lift them off the deck and maneuver them into position where they would await a launch directive at some later time. Nathan knew that, if the devices ever received such orders, it would mean that the battle was not going well at all.

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