CROSSFIRE - Atlantis DSV - New Cape Quest

Both pilots were interrupted by the sharp call of their SEWACS. Roulette was almost
panicked in his calling of the battle‟s shots, and Roberts quietly wished for the collected and
impossibly calm presence of the more-familiar Warseer.
“Rapiers, Dark Angels – those carriers have our number and are closing fast!
Estimate you‟ve got three minutes before they start hitting Commonwealth. Wrap this up
fast, because we‟re in for it.”
Roberts toggled her sonar to switch over to a battlefield view. She grimaced as she
saw what Roulette had been referring to. Two Saracen class carriers, accompanied by a
squadron of Octavian heavy cruisers were about to drive straight down Commonwealth‟s
throat, and more to the point, they had in tow over forty supporting subfighters. Roberts had
not seen an engagement of this scope in over twelve months.
“Rapiers two and three,” she ordered. “Form up at my three and nine, five hundred
yards dispersion. Track on my six.”
“Five by five.”
Roberts rolled around wide again to come back down on the Commonwealth‟s
heading. Five subfighters were breaking in and out of the sea floor‟s jutting rockscape,
making it all but impossible for the larger carrier to get a clean shot. Her own sonars suffered
the same problem, being unable to attain a torpedo shooting solution through the rocky
outcroppings of the island shelf. She swore to herself and threw the throttles forward. “Five
bandits, six O‟clock low. Padlocked, no joy on guidance. Guns, guns, guns.”
“This is four. I‟ve got your twenty, lead. Heads up on friendly intercept at zero-fourfive.”
Roberts didn‟t blink as she tracked the five enemy fighters through their approach on
Commonwealth. At the rate that the leader‟s wingmen were falling back, she knew the UEO
fighters had been spotted and would soon find themselves flanked by all four of the leader‟s
wingmen. That wasn‟t her concern. Somewhere ahead of her, Samuel Mason and his own
flight of fighters were coming in hard, and now she simply had to stay out of their way.
“One minute thirty!” Roulette reminded her sternly.
“Two and three, tag the stragglers, ignore the leader,” Roberts barked over Roulette‟s
impatience. “Give them something to think about.”
Roberts dove to the side of the island shelf, her fighter nearly skipping along its
embankment as her engines kicked up two massive plumes of sand in her wake. The first of
the Alliance fighters was far too slow in countering, and she blew it to pieces just half a
second later as it filled her gunsights. “Splash one.”
Her two wingmen, Rapiers Two and Three, made their own presence felt in similar
fashion. Given time by their leader‟s demise, two of the other fighters managed to evade the
initial barrage laid down by their assailants, only to pull straight in to the engagement zone of
the shadowing UEO battlecruiser.
Commonwealth punished them as two streaks of laser fire came out of the dark and
obliterated the Alliance fighters in a heartbeat. Only two remained, and having seen what
awaited them at the hands of the UEO flagship, were now making every possible effort to
stay in the cover of the reef. Two more laser shots ripped up coral and rock in their wake,
and Roberts pulled back on her throttles to give the carrier its space.
“Fuck. Commonwealth, check your fire! Friendlies!”
The moment that it had taken Roberts‟ fighter to decelerate had given the two
Alliance fighters all the room they needed. In the cover of the reef, the UEO Raptor‟s speed
meant nothing, and the Macronesians knew it.
Mason‟s Raptor shot past so quickly that Roberts didn‟t even have time to register its
livery, but the British pilot never fired.
Instead, two torpedoes – those of his wingmen – followed him through the
embankment - their guidance systems plugged in to his own targeting systems as he ran
over the reef and illuminated both of the Alliance subfighters with a single sonar buoy that
was dumped from his fighter‟s tail.
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