Existential Threat: Chapter 15 Part 1 of 2 (Patreon)

Chapter 15:

11/07/2242

Ichika breathed in deeply as the acceleration cradle wrapped around her hellcat, locked into The Defiant’s acceleration rail.

The red light snapped green as the hammer punched her back into her seat, a grin spreading into a full smile as the adrenaline hit her veins.

The acceleration snapped off as she activated her engines, threading flight-plan bxes denoting her entry path to Orkana.

Carver slid up on her left, Keno and Gloria on her right.

“Well looks like we’re all here.”

“Permission to call ourselves the canary flight?” Keno asked.

“Permission internally granted.”

“Aye Wing leader,” Keno smiled around the words.

“You know the mission, we go through the new airspace that the fleet so kindly smashed open for us. See if its good enough for the squeamish troopers. Diamond formation, offset by one hundred and fifty meters, that’s the normal size of the missiles they’re hurling around.”

She took the point of the diamond the others spread out with practised ease. The other wings were dropping towards the planet.

“Entering atmosphere. Lets show these bastards who owns the air.”

She hit the atmosphere like a belly flop she shuddered and jittered, pulling up her cross-word.

“What’s,” She counted out the spaces. “Thirteen letters, damn that’s long, uhh thirteen letters, era known for Pegasus and other winged stallions?”

“Hellenic?” Gloria said.

“Aren’t we dropping into an enemy planet.”

“First bit of re-entry is always the computers, and Hellenic is eight letters.”

“Pre-civilization?” Keno said.

“That’s like fifteen and you think we can use dashes?”

“Not sure,” Gloria said. “Does anyone know what an Era is?”

“Like it’s a period of time right?”

“Period of time with a distinct feature,” Keno read off.

Ichika jostled in her seat, putting the crossword away. “Five seconds.”

She checked on her sides, seeing other ships dropping through atmosphere, nuclear blooms sending turbulent winds against ships.

A ship came apart, too close to the blast.

Lasers raked craft, breaking their heat shedding armor, the atmosphere doing the rest.

The wind measurements were a mess.

“Going to have to fly this by the seat. Nothing is normal out there.”

“Winds angry today,” Carver said.

Flames stopped licking up the side of her canopy, the rush of plasma cutting to the sound of air rippling over her airframe.

Warnings snapped off of Ichika’s screen.

“Diving!”

She snapped her flaps, and gunned her engines, going from a belly-flop re-entry position to a nose to the ground dart with engines.

Blasts appeared where they had been, sensors going hay-wire picking up missile launches, catching the reflection of spitters moving and laser’s reorientating.

The wind was not her friend today, cutting in with random turbulence, not just up and down, but sideways and cross-wise.

“Nukes have superheated places that aren’t normally super-heated. Fucking soup.”

Her system’s lights went wiggly and her control over her bot shuddered.

“High levels of Electromagnetic interference.”

“Routing through hypernet node on the surface,” Sally said in her ear.

Ichika danced through the air, snapping fins and thrusters, passing through corridors where weapons fire was predicted to be, where nuclear blasts should reach. She was hurled around inside her cockpit.

Orbital impactors rained down past her, waging their own war of fire and counter-fire.

Keeping some of the heat off, laser!

She threw her stick to the side, cork- screwing, snapping it the other way and then back, coming out upside down.

She dove, spitter rounds exploding over her belly as she orientated belly to the ground, gathering more speed as she flattened and hit her burners. The sonic boom enveloped her, the ground streaming past and closer on her angle.

Exhaling and drawing back the thrust she leveled out, coming over hills, creating dust-wings in her passing vortex.

The rest of her wing moved into position.

“How is everyone?”

“That was a hell of a ride, got some pitting from a spitter,” Keno said.

“Laser nicked me, but showing green, nanites are fixing,” Carver said.

Ichika checked the map. “Hey Foster.”

“How’d the run go?”

“Ouu it’s a spicy one, but not as spicy as it used to be. Central corridor is looking good, especially if the fleet keeps up their fire, the Adraxi are having to split their fire to compensate.”

“Good for launch?”

Ichika ran through the color coded imagery, showing the different hellcats, where they’d dropped into atmosphere, where they were located now and their level of damage she reviewd their paths, outlining a path through the least damaged fighters.

“Yeah there’s a clear funnel, blindspot right now, but who know’s how long that’ll last.”

“Alright, I agree, third wave incoming.”

“Copy.”

Ichika closed the channel, glancing up. Shutters would be opened, newly made hellcats, dropships, bots and gear locked into cradles as she had been. Others powering engines as they woke up in the dark, called off or pre-launched to increase the number to drop on the planet.

Thousands of them ready to drive into the heart of the Adraxi.

She smirked at the map.

“Alright wing, arrowhead formation, lets see if we can dodge a harvester.”

“You thinking of jumping over that mountain range?” Carver asked, his bored-annoyed tone coming to life. Damn junkie lived for a challenge.

“Third Company are over there, and you know how Echo always gets themselves into the middle of shit.”

Harvester will have us clear in their sights.

“We’re going to have to cut between the peaks, dive for the deck and then snap back up before we hit it,” Jynx clicked her cheek. “It’s a tricky one.”  Her smirk spread into a chuckle.

“Hell to the yeah.”

The wind buffeted her craft again as she rolled through it working with it and threading through it instead of fighting it.

“Lets get to it.”

She increased her acceleration, the trees snapping back and forth in her path.

Tracers fired up at her, Her nose mounted Heavy machine gun unlocked, turning on a gimbal linked to her vision looking through the craft as she pulled the trigger, firing back at the outcropping, removing it from existence with a burst of V-3.

She tapped a button, the gun pulling back up and locking forward as the mountains came up, paths showed over the mountains between the peaks.

Ichika gripped the throttle, tempted to edge it forward, slam it ahead as she cruised forward. Over down, snap flaps, flare thrusters and engines. She ran through the actions, moving her hands and feet with minute pressure.

“Here we gooo.”

On go she crossed the mountain range, sensors read weapon systems locking onto her, warnings screamed somewhere behind her, her focus pulling her into a pond of calm, disconnected from the warnings, but acutely synced with her body and her ship.

The words pulled from her chest as she dropped down the side of the mountain, throwing up a trail of snow and dirt, diving above the tree-tops, rising in angle as she shot towards the valley.

Lasers detonated the ice pack of the mountain-tops, evaporating it in an instant, triggering avalanches. Spitter rounds half the size of her own hellcat cracked through the sky.

Now.

She squeezed her gut, feet and hands moving, thrusters scorched treetops, her flaps cutting the air. Angling her so her engines were level with the valley.

She snapped off the thrusters, leveled flaps and drove the throttle forward, slamming back in her seat her smiled filled with teeth as she left burning trees in her wake, just centimeters from the tops of the trees.

The relativistic spitter rounds crashed into the mountains in a fountain of stone, and water vapor.

The mountain tops crumbled under the impacts, raining boulders behind her formation as the others moved to line up off of her.

Fog lay heavy over the mountains from the laser hits, heavy space-grade spitter rounds continued to rake the mountain over their seconds long flight time.

“Well I’d say we don’t go too high, the ceiling is a bit deadly,” Gloria said.

“Heavy metal and stone up there,” Keno agreed.

Ichika could hear the rush and clipped adrenaline in their voices, the same jitters warming her.

“Keep tight, lets go see the locals,” She went through the local command chats, adding herself to local air support, she muted the others, clearing her throat and opening the channel, wiping the smile from her face.

“Local ground control, this is Wing One, Alpha Company, be aware we are in your area and ready to provide air support over.” Just imaging the look on Luke’s face brought a twitch to her lips.

“Wing One-Alpha, This is third company, acting commander, Echo squad leader. Nice of you to drop in. Was wondering what had our local harvester all riled up.” Luke drawled.

Ichika coughed, the last of the spitter rounds finished altering the mountain range behind her.

“We would appreciate the air support. We have one dropship currently and turrets to deal with air threats. You updated on the ‘divers?”

“We’re in the loop.”

“There were some spotted in the area earlier, I bet that there are more with the Harvester. We’re en-route to different known Orkaran settlements, sending you a copy of my map and markers.”

Ichika opened it up.

“If you could sweep from the mountain range to the mining facility, kill any Adraxi you see and pop their drop-pods. Roamers are our biggest issue.”

The area had been seeded with drop-pods from the drop carrier but was hard to reach on land due to its rugged terrain and rivers. The rivers led down into the delta where the Adraxi Harvester was nestled.

“Copy, we’ll clear towards you, resupply?”

“Limited but picking up at the mining facility. You loaded with ammunition nanites?”

“We got an update, though we were warned it’ll generate a lot of heat if we run it too fast.”

“Understood, we got plenty of materials to keep you in ingots, production is another thing.”

“Copy, happy hunting Luke.”

“You too Ichika, and thank you for dropping in, makes me feel better having some damn air-cover. We’ll call you if we’re in need of assistance.”

Ichika eyeballed the distances and terrain. “Should be there within three minutes if you need us on the double.”

“Appreciate it, Third Company out.”

Ichika unmuted the other.

“Search and destroy, by wings?” Carver asked.

“Lets go independent, don’t think we need to hold hands, just keep communicating and tagging targets. If Luke needs help, whoever is closest and not engaged,” Ichika moved in her seat loosening her muscles as she put down markers for their search areas, changing her map filters to pattern recognition.

“Copy,” All three called back nearly in-time, cutting away from the formation, spreading to their hunting grounds.

Here little Adraxi, Ichika got something for yah. She tapped the side of her trigger, unlocking her machine gun, the system tracking with her head movements.

Pattern recognition systems started throwing up possible points where drop-pods had landed. She banked towards the nearest target

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