CROSSFIRE - Atlantis DSV - New Cape Quest

“Twenty seconds!”
“Standby intercepts,” Banick replied coolly.
Ten torpedoes howled through the deep, rapidly closing with the UEO battlecruiser. It
was a futile gesture, with Commonwealth being able to track many times that number in
short order and dispatch them without much further action.
“Independent tracking, Captain,” Ainsley said simply. “Track IFFs and set systems to
auto-engagement. We don‟t have the time to do this by numbers.”
The tactical officer looked at Banick for a moment, the unspoken question hanging
for a bare split second before the Captain nodded his consent. “Do it.”
Over the next few seconds, Commonwealth‟s massive bank of computer AIs
calculated the positions of every non-friendly target for ten miles in every direction. A second
after that, and her batteries opened fire with a level of measured firepower and precision that
would have been all but impossible for her human crew. The ship‟s AI calculated intercept
vectors, speeds, evasion probabilities and flight times, cataloguing all of them in real time as
it chose how best to distribute the battlecruiser‟s considerable firepower.
Her batteries fired without abandon, targeting each individual torpedo and those
headed toward her badly outgunned sister ship that now slipped quietly through to
Commonwealth‟s rear guard.
The Alliance by now had reacted to the cruiser‟s arrival on the perimeter of the
engagement, and began moving to engage. Ainsley watched the massive flagships with
growing anticipation and curiosity. IFF returns on the board flagged the two Saracen class
carriers Alfred Deakin and Robert Menzies, which had been encountered only three times by
the UEO fleet over the course of the previous six months, and none of those occasions had
resulted in a battle such as this.
Indeed, the Alliance‟s record of battle against the UEO‟s largest class of battlecruiser
was not a gleaming account, yet tellingly as a change in tide, Deakin and Menzies dutifully
answered Commonwealth‟s challenge as they left their pincer holding positions that had so
tormented Reverence, and advanced to meet their new adversary. Like cats that had been
met with an invasion of their territory, the rumble of their engines coming to power was
audible through the hydrophones of Commonwealth‟s sonar operators. As the range
between them closed, the Saracens opened fire.
Roberts snapped her fighter up on to its wings as she tore down the long broadside
of the retreating Reverence. The wounded carrier listing heavily to starboard, she led her
trailing assailant straight through Commonwealth‟s defence screen without so much as a
thought for the torrents of point defence fire that lit up the sea around her.
The Alliance Shadowfire stealth fighter and its wingman ducked and weaved through
Robert‟s line, trying to draw a bead that could finish the UEO Raptor – a target that would
never easily present itself.
A few hundred yards behind them, Rapier Two closed the distance, his HUD tracking
the camouflage-deprived fighters with an ease that Lieutenant Commander Wilhelm
Schrader could only dream of every other day in his life. His finger eased over the trigger as
the Shadowfire neared the centre of the reticule, and a split second before it hit the ring,
squeezed down hard.
The twin Hades guns spun up, rattling the cockpit as they spewed dozens of 25millimetre
explosive slugs through the ocean to rip down the Macronesian fighter and rend it
wing from wing. Skilfully, he rolled through his own attack and peeled around the ailing
enemy subfighter, screaming past at better than two hundred knots. With his wingman gone,
decimated as he was pulled in to the huge cavitational wake of his killer, the leading fighter
finally decided it was time to admit defeat.
Schrader‟s head seemed to snap on its shoulders as he watched the fighter break off
its pursuit of Roberts and disappear in to the fog. “Run, asshole,” Schrader muttered to
himself. “Rapier leader, scratch one bandit. His friend‟s bugged out and your six is clear.”
“Understood, two, thanks for the save,”
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