| Beyond the Wall of Hope - Winger's Run |
Back to 'Dark Shadows'
Winger's Run (23/11/01 )
Winger, please report to flight airlock, your up for recon.
The Accipteron opened an eye, “Did someone just say recon?”
Affirmative Ensign Sunclaw, please report to your mech.
“All right! It’s about time, I’ve been getting tired of sitting around!”
Leaping off his hammock, the ensign grabbed his gear and headed for suit-up. He stopped at the engineering station and yelled through the bulkhead. “Karen! Preflight prep in 5 minutes, I’m up!”
A smiling head popped out in front of his on the other side of the bulkhead, “Sure thing Ensign, I heard you no need to yell.” The human grabbed her gear and headed for flight prep.
The hawk-humanoid rubbed the back of his head and smiled, “sorry Karen, I’m just anxious to get out there… anywhere but just sitting around. I’m going crazy!” His feathers were definitely ruffled, a sign of stress.
She smiled back at him and held up two fingers in a v-shape (peace sign), “No problem sir.” She ducked into the airlock.
Brightwing entered the suit up locker room and put on his environmental flight suit. He checked the ammo in his sidearm and entered the airlock for transition to zero-gee. The flight deck was fairly small for what its name usually connoted. An extremely form fitting and triple redundancy envroseal was fitted into the floor and shaped for the cockpit of his cypherhawk, the rest of the fighter rested on the Pheonix’s underside… in hard vacuum. Karen was busily checking diagnostics on the mech’s flight systems and weapons status.
“Time to get on wing, it seems like it’s been too long…” He reminisced as he climbed into the cockpit. He put his helmet on and began his preflight check… all systems were green.
“Ensign jack-in and let’s get the run-by-wire shell OS on line.”
“Jacking in, running start-up…” He could hear a slight click and his vision instantly resolved to digital overlay, command functions flashed before his eyes and he felt every servo, thruster and actuator as if the metal machine was his own body… he felt cold. “Brrr, everything seems o…ok.”
“All functions read normal.”
“Initiating start-up…” The engines hummed as the reactors engaged, the entire flight deck resounded with the noise of fusion turbines putting out 14,000 lbs. of jet thrust equivalent.
Even with her noise dampener headset, she could hear the hum of the engines. All systems checked out and she turned around and tapped Winger on the helmet. He looked up and she gave him the thumbs up. Sealing his cockpit, the Accipteron waited until Karen exited through the airlock. When his cockpit and the airlock were secured the bay depressurized.
“Command this is Brightwing on Alphawing, all systems are go!”
“Roger that Alphawing, you are to proceed on vector 3 and examine station perimeters. Report anything unusual.”
“Understood, Alphawing is…” he reached over to hit the release button, “releasing now!”
The enviroseals released and he vectored away from the ship using verneer thrusters. When at a safe distance he engaged main thrusters and sped off towards the space station. He headed for the underside of the station and the habitat rings. As he neared the station, he spied the luminous black mass near its center… he blinked and it appeared, at that instance, to flicker.
“That’s odd… Ship, did you register any fluctuation in the unidentified black mass?”
NEGATIVE SIR, NO CHANGES.
“Hmmm, must have been a trick of the light.”
When he reached his designated location, he began his examination of the station and surrounding perimeter. The sensors on his cypherhawk could not penetrate the station’s hull, the material was sensor absorbing.
“I’m getting negative sensor readings, the hull appears to absorb…”
BLEEP! A warning buzzed in the back of his mind, giving him that split second reaction time that Elite pilots envy… Run-by-Wire ©. He kicked on the verneer thrusters, rolled to the left and hit full thrust.
A bright white bolt of energy passed right through the spot he was last in… but there were no bogies on scanners. He maintained an erratic evasion pattern.
“Ship, switch to visual interface scanner.”
The sensor came to life and fed data right through his headjack at the base of his skull. He spotted it, a semi-luminous, black spider like ship… it belched white-hot energy at his mek, but his maneuvers were giving it trouble.
“That’s it! I’ve hand enough… You can’t possibly hit me with an aim like that! Sloppy soldiers shouldn’t be fighting… they only cause problems for true warriors!”
He hit his verneer thrusters and rolled into a high-speed turn… a very dangerous Hi-inertia maneuver. His reaction time was lightning fast; before his mysterious enemy could react his Photon Cannon sights were dead on. Rapid-fire bolts lanced out and winged the spider ship as it executed an impossibly tight and sharp maneuver.
“What the h*…. Whoa, that’s impossible…”
WEAPONS HAD NEGATIVE EFFECT
It took everything he had to keep on this thing’s tail; the inertia was getting to him.
NEGATIVE LOCK
“Damn, no missile lock… charge plasma cannon!”
Without changing its maneuvers, the black fighter began to accelerate to impossible speed. It sensed the heavy weapon power up.
“No! You will not get away… Ship, override hyper thruster locks!”
WARNING, THRUSTERS WILL CAU….
“Just do it!”
AFFIRMATIVE
The Thruster came to life and the inertia increase was extreme. He maneuvered and brought his sights on line… seconds flashed by as the target resolved. Red, red, red… green!
“Yaaa!”
The Plasma beam struck target and the rear fuselage area was red hot… with a flick of a switch he took the Photon cannons offline and redirected their power to the Plasma Cannon. The continuous plasma stream punched a hole right through the main fuselage and in a contained detonation the black fighter was no more.
BLEEP!
“What, no!”
Switching hyper thrusters offline he punched his veneer thrusters up to full. A bolt of energy grazed his fighter’s wing.
IMPACT IMMINENT
He hadn’t realized that the fight had drawn him back towards the station. His only chance was to switch to mek mode… he landed hard, but the servo actuators held. In a grim mockery of his transformation, the new black fighter shifted to a bipedal mode.
“Well, now it get’s interesting!”
The black mek began charging a massive energy blast.
“Bad move! I won’t let you live! Thrusters on!” Extending his plasma beam saber he charged for the enemy at full thrust. His sword met the black meks torso just as it discharged s white-hot fusion bolt. The bolt melted the shoulder armor plate as his sword cleaved through the enemy.
WARNING POWER SYSTEMS LOW
His vision spied two more enemies baring down from above.
“Damn… two more I’m not sure I can do this…”
Both of them landed and transformed… raised their cannons and charged. Then promptly exploded as Plasma Lasers sliced through them.
“Though we forgot about you didn’t you, Winger?” an amused Vulpine voice crackled to life on Winger’s comlink.
“No sir I just thought….” Brightwing’s eyes widened.
The place where the black meks were standing a large vortex stood and it began to pull Winger’s mek along.
“Thrusters on!”
POWER RESERVES DEPLETED
The vortex sucked him in, a swirling collection of lights and sounds then darkness…
“Ensign…” the voice was femine and familiar. “Hey bird come on wake up!”
“Karen…” He said weakly his vision was blurry and he felt like his body weighted a ton. “Where…?”
Karen Summers smiled, “hey Winger welcome back to the station… How was the coma?”
*More to Come*
| Winger's Run (Foxmage) - 23/11/01 |
|
|