Chapter 7 Part 3

No further than thirty feet away, Highwayman and his crew had seen the Storm plow into the bridge of the gunboat. There had been no time to ponder the event, for they themselves were in dire straights.

After breaking formation with the Storm, the Bandit had driven straight at the onrushing fighters. They had flown through the midst of them with all weapons blazing. Almost ten fighters had been destroyed in that single pass, but a lucky shot from one of the Devil-Ray's pulse laser has ruptured a cooling unit for the VRAD's reactor. The backup unit came on line automatically, and the Bandit was spared any major problems.

The fighters did not give chase, and the Bandit found itself nose to nose with a heavy Scimitar class battle cruiser. This monster was more than a dozen times the size of the smaller gunboats, and was quite probably the command ship of the battle fleet. Next to the huge carrier ship, the cruiser was the largest ship and also the most heavily armed and armored.

Highwayman had immediately ordered his EW officer, a slim and graceful young woman of Hispanic ancestry, to augment their ECM with a powder charge.

The problem with more advanced weaponry like the SRAMs and HERCULES weapons, was that they were guided by imagery as well as active sensors. So even if they could jam the scanner frequencies, they were still vulnerable to attacks homing in on reflected light from their ship's hull. To combat that, the ship's surface contained s series of spray nozzles that could throw a shroud of black powder around the VRAD to hide it in the blackness of space. The drawback was that the powder reservoir only contained a single charge and the stuff tended to cause problems with external instruments and could not change direction with them if they needed to.

Highwayman ordered the powder used and kept the Bandit on a steady course that would take it over and behind the cruiser.

"At this range," Brigand, the EW officer warned, "they will be able to burn through our jamming."

"Sing out if they do," Highwayman instructed. "Burglar," he addressed the flight engineer, a tall black man, "give me all the power we have. If we get a clean shot, I want to unload both of those HERCULES at this tub."

Highwayman looked at his gunner. "All right, Thief, don't miss."

Thief, a stout and short young woman with a generously blessed chest, made some adjustments to the weapons systems.

"They have a lock!" Brigand warned excitedly.

Highwayman yanked the steering column back and drew the Bandit into a steep climb. He maintained the climb, but lessened the rate of turn so that the ship followed a long wide loop.

A jolt hit the ship and his screen flashed red and was followed by a moment of static. The image returned and he saw a bolt of energy flash outside the screen.

"We have broken the lock," Brigand reported.

"Bay coming open," Thief announced, them almost immediately the two large missiles were away. Thief closed the bay and Highwayman brought the VRAD about in a hard turn to put as much distance between them as he could.

"We lost the left wing," Burgular announced. Not that it mattered in space except that a proton cannon was at the tip of that wing.

"Our port deflectors are only operating at twenty percent," Brigand added.

"I don't plan to hang around long enough to let them get another shot at us," Highwayman said. "Lets unload those SRAMs and get the hell out of here.

"What about the Storm?"

"They are playing tag with one of the gunboats," Thief informed her crew mate.

"The cruiser's sensor power has dropped to almost nothing," Brigand noted. "Turn us around for a look."

Highwayman was not too keen on the idea of going back towards the cruiser, but it was somewhat important to know what they had done to it.

When the huge ship was again in view, they could see the scars of where the HERCULES missiles had peppered the outer hull wiping it clean of sensory instruments and weapons controls.

"Hey," Thief exclaimed. "We have a decent chance to make a dent in that thing." She manipulated a few controls and fired her rail gun. The projectile punctured the armor and produced a jet of air from within. She then launched the remaining eight missiles. The SRAMs were set for radar guidance since the cruiser was showing itself incapable of jamming their scans.

The eight missiles tore holes the size of fighter craft in the larger vessel's hull.

"Don't underestimate that thing," Brigand warned. As if to confirm her warning, the cruiser began to roll over. Suddenly a fresh set of gun emplacements began to appear.
Highwayman flipped the Bandit around and fired his thrusters at full power.

A multitude of flashes of light appeared outside the screen and again the screen flashed red. When the image reappeared, the damage was hardly worth mentioning. "We lost a rudder," Burgular told them. They had lost another useless component in space.

"We seem to be leading a charmed life," Brigand observed.

"Let's not push our luck," Highwayman urged. "Let's rejoin with the Storm and get out of here."

"It was about that time when Thunder's voice broke over the intercomm and informed Spectre that the Storm had been lost.

After a moment, Spectre called. "Wraith to Bandit. How are you holding up?"

Highwayman answered. "We have taken some heavy hits, but we dished out better than we took."

"Can you make it back to base?"

"That is affirmative," Highwayman confirmed as Burgular nodded.

"Then go ahead and disenguage. We are about to make our attack runs and even if they know we are here, they won't be able to get to us in time." Spectre sounded somewhat pleased.

"Do you want us to wait for you?" Highwayman offered.

"No, you get out of there. We and the Wildcard will hit our targets and then blast our way through their pickets. We will rejoin you en route to base."

"Wilco," Highwayman stated and lined his ship up on a course for the Andromeda. Then he kicked the thruster into full acceleration. The VRAD was capable of outrunning every other ship in the vicinity, and Highwayman planned to make good use of that statistic.