Chapter 7 Part 4

Blackjack followed Roulette's navigating instructions closely. The gunner was carefully weaving a course through the tumbling asteroid field in an attempt to maintain their concealment while at the same time keeping them from crashing into the huge planetesimals as they crept ever closer to their prey.

Blackjack concentrated of following the navigational cursor even as he listened to the various reports coming in over the com. Another advantage of the VRAD weapon system was that the other crews were no more than fifty feet away even though their ships were thousands of miles distant. It was the ultimate method to communicate with each other without the enemy intercepting the messages.

Roulette continued to work furiously. When they used terrain masking on the planets, the terrain was usually already mapped out and stationary. The asteroids, on the other hand, were in constant motion. Passing planets, and impacts from rogue debris easily set of chain reactions of bumping and reverberating solid bodies.

The only break in the gunner's concentration came when Thunder announced the destruction of the Storm. Then Roulette glanced up and briefly locked eyes with Blackjack. The reality that they could not be killed if their ship was lost had always been a comforter. The sudden realization that Thunder and his crew were without a ship was unsettling. Though they had all wondered at one time or another, no one had dared to ask what would happen if that should occur.

"Keep your mind on your jobs," Blackjack urged. The best way to keep the Wildcard from ending up a drifting cloud of scrap was to play the game the best they could.
When a few moments later, Highwayman relayed that they too were bugging out of the fight, no one took much note. Spectre's solid sounding voice and confidence was like a tonic.

"Blackjack?" Spectre's voice was calm as it drifted over the com.

"We're here." Blackjack assured him.

"We are about to emerge from the larger rocks into the area they have cleared out. When we do, they will pick us up and begin throwing everything they have at us. If you take too long, they will be waiting for you when you emerge."

Roulette keyed his own com, a slight breach of protocol, but generally overlooked. "We are about five seconds behind you," he said.

"Sounds good," Spectre decided. "Let's go get them."

"We'll make them fear the VRADs," Blackjack added.

"From the sound of things, Thunder and Highwayman have already done that," Spectre added.

After a few more moments, the Wildcard skirted around a particularly large asteroid and out into open space. There in front of them was the Syndicate base. The large solar array loomed to their left and the Wraith peeled off and made a bee-line towards it.

Roulette keyed in the final coordinate on his computer and the nav cursor in Blackjack's HUD changed from defensive red to attack blue. "Crew we are IP inbound at this time," Roulette announced. He immediately began programming the weapons load.

Lady Luck made a quick appraisal of their situation. "There is nothing between us and the primary at this time, but if that carrier held some of its fighters back, they could be in position to intercept us in ninety seconds."

"All systems are nominal," Longshot added.

Blackjack lined up the cursor and nudged the throttle to attack power. At the rear of the ship, the twin fusion fed drive thrusters burned a colorless energy, but the surrounding insulation glowed a blue-white with unimaginable heat.

"Primary release point in thirty seconds," Roulette announced.

Blackjack held the VRAD on course and watched the looming carrier. He was not altogether surprised when the tell tale flashes of light appeared heralding fighter launches.

"We have company," Lady Luck announced as her scan picked up the new readings.
"About thirty fighters. They are forming up on the Wraith. More than likely they will make a pass on her then come after us."

"If what we have seen is any indication," Longshot offered, we shouldn't have much trouble blasting our way through them."

"Wait," Lady Luck interrupted. "A second set of fighters just launched. I count five. They are different in configuration and are moving to intercept us."

"What configuration is this," Blackjack asked.

Lady Luck worked furiously at her database. "They aren't on record."

"Spectre to Wildcard, watch out for new bogeys." The other crew had picked the signals up as well.

"Roger, Spectre, do you have a make on these guys?" Blackjack asked.

"Negative," Spectre answered. "Poltergeist tells me that they are unknowns."

"Well then," Blackjack boasted, "let's find out what they are made of."

"The Wraith is making its attack run," Lady Luck noted.

Far off and ahead to their left, the other VRAD sliced through a swarm of fighters. Twin beams of azure cut a path through the midst of the pesky but otherwise harmless Devil-Rays. Three of the smaller craft exploded as the dorsal and belly laser turrets opened fire from the passing VRAD.

There was no time for Blackjack to make further observations as their own opponents were rapidly closing the distance.

"These guys are faster than the Devil-Rays," Lady Luck warned.

"Ten seconds to primary release point," Roulette stated.

"That is just great," Lady Luck swore. "We are going to be in our most vulnerable state just in time for those unknowns to commence their attack."

"Primary is priority," Longshot recited the VRAD attack policy. It was the command's directive that target destruction took precedent over VRAD defense.

"The jocks don't have that burden," Lady Luck muttered in reply.

"Bay coming open," Roulette announced. "Five, four, three, two, one, hack!"

"They have a lock on us," Lady Luck yelled.

"Bay closed, clear for evasive."

"ECM on line! Jink hard left!"

Blackjack complied immediately. He was aware of the severity of the situation since Lady Luck rarely raised her voice.

The evasive maneuver was only partly completed when the screen flashed red then blinked with static. The returned image showed them Wildcard spinning wildly.

Blackjack fought to get the ship under control while Longshot made a damage assessment. After a moment he breathed a sigh of relief. "That was a proximity blast," he said. "No physical damage."

"Not entirely true," Lady Luck disagreed. "That was a radiation blast. It is designed to radioactively kill all crew members of a lightly shielded ship. We knew that they were working on that, but we did not know they had it deployed."

"Come about to two seventy mark sixty," Roulette interrupted. "Let's get out of here. You can talk about that weapon later."

"Getting away may be harder than you thought," Lady Luck stammered. "Here they come again."

Blackjack did not even wait for the suggestion, he threw the throttle to full thrust. "Longshot give me one hundred percent on the reactor. We've done our bit for king and country, now let's get our ship home in one piece."

"Hunker!"

Lady Luck's shout caught them all by surprise, but Blackjack instantly reacted. He shoved the Wildcard's nose over so hard that he thought he had slammed his fist against the blank panel in the VR module.

As fate would have it, the reflexive reaction turned out to be both a life saver, and a stroke of tactical luck. The Wildcard performed a negative loop so tight, that she ended up less that one kilometer behind the quintet of enemy fighters.

"Roulette and Lady Luck wasted no time. While the EW officer activated her laser turrets, Roulette triggered the proton cannons. To everyone's surprise, Roulette's bolts glanced the underside of one of the fighters and bounced harmlessly away.

"Impossible!" Roulette exclaimed, "no ship that size has shielding."

"I beg to differ," Blackjack replied. "The proof is in the pudding.

Lady Luck's turret lasers had equal luck. "They are ray shielded," she cursed.

"Let's see if they are armored," Roulette hissed as his hand came down on the firing stud for the rail gun.

The KW-4 bucked and the center fighter disintegrated. The other four arced away in opposite directions.

"Returning to course," Blackjack stated as he lined back up on the nav cursor. "Lady Luck, keep an eye on those four."

She stayed glued to her scanner for several long minutes. "The don't seem to be much faster than the other fighters," she noted. "We can stay ahead of them at full thrust."

Blackjack did not get a chance to respond, for a brilliant flare erupted to the left of their flight path. "There goes the solar array," Roulette reported. "Five seconds to our own detonation."

"Assuming you hit the target," Longshot teased.

"Bets?" Roulette challenged.

"No," the flight engineer answered. He was not about to gamble against Roulette on a bombing run.

Right on schedule, a second flash erupted. This one was far off to the right and behind them. "That is a shack," Roulette announced triumphantly using the traditional phrase for a bulls-eye."

"The only thing between us and home is an attack cruiser," Lady Luck announced. "The Wraith just unloaded her SRAMs on it, and took only one hit in return. They won't have any problem getting back."

"Setting targets," Roulette said as he compared the data relayed from the Wraith in order to select strikes that would do the most damage.

He was intrigued to note that two of the other VRAD's missiles had hit in the same spot near where the ship's reactors were located. If they had weakened the armor enough, he might be able to take the cruiser totally out of commission.

"Boss," the gunner began, "line up on her dorsal midship and hold a straight and steady course.

"Hey, guns," Lady Luck warned, "the goulies didn't take out many of that thing's defenses," she said referring to the Wraith's crew by their collective nickname. Their sister ship had not scored enough hits to sufficiently hamper the cruiser's defenses.

"We have a chance to score big here folks. Let's take a chance."

"You mean gamble?" Longshot asked.

"Don't you believe in fate?"

Longshot remembered what he had gotten on the slot machine before they had left. "Go for it," he urged.

Roulette opened the weapons bay and launched all eight missiles. Then he lined up the rail gun and triggered it as rapidly as it could recycle. He managed to get of three shots before Blackjack pulled out of the dive.

As the VRAD streaked by, several of the heavy guns reached out yearningly to erase the craft from existence, but only one shot hit, and though it punctured the shield and severely scarred the right kinard, the Wildcard remained otherwise untouched.

Without a second thought, the crew burned their way back towards their base ship, and the safety of their own fighters.