The Last Defense
"All crew members to your battle stations!" ordered the captian over the intercom. Startled awake, Kevin rolled out of bed, threw on his pilot gear, and ran down to the hanger, wondering what could be going on. When he got there a view of complete chaos could be seen from the hanger platform. Maintanence and pilots were rushing around everywhere, bustling to get the ships in flying condition. And the new fleet seen through the deflector shield didn't look friendly.
"What's going on!?" Kevin yelled to a nearby pilot, after jumping down from the platform.
"We're being attacked by MERC!" the pilot shouted in reply.
This was not good, MERC was an intergalactic freelance mercinary organization. Who wanted them destroyed, he didn't know. But someone had bet BIG, the enemy fleet seen through the shimmering blue deflector shield was massive.
"All Pilots man your ships!" the intercom echoed through the hanger shrilly. "This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill!"
Kevin ran through the crowded hanger until he reached his huge ion bomber. He flew up the long ladder and hopped under the ship's canopy, into the cockpit. After strapping up he took it all in, feeling the power of the ship humming below him, the feeling of the ship's controls comfortably in his hands, he loved it all. With the empire putting extensive research into ion, his bomber was very powerful. "All systems check?" he questioned the plane's voice recognition system.
"All systems check," smoothly reported the AI after a 2 second pause.
He opened his com line and asked the status of his squadron.
"All systems check," reported Jake.
"All systems check," reported Max.
"All systems check," reported Zak.
"Then lets get going!" Kevin ordered.
Slowly, they lifted off and accelerated out of the hanger into outer space in formation. Outside the immediate prospect wasn't good. With the empire only having hanger units and a hand full of heavy cruisers, MERC had an easy time obliterating everything in their path.
Through their helmets the ion bomber pilots got their orders. The ion bombers actived their stealth fields and quickly did a sharp down turn away from the fleet carrier, leveling off and speeding below the mayhem. MERC slowly advanced through the quickly growing debris field. On all sides of the battle other friendly ion bomber squadrons were quickly, randomly, and isolatedly flanking their way to the enemy's behind to avoid detection. With the new stealth installments it was nearly impossible for the enemy ships to spot them by RADAR anyway, but a large group flying together could be easily spoted by heat signatures, even with the special heat consuming coatings. The empire had researched into stealth knowing they had stronger enemies, but they never imagined the technology would have to stand up against an armada.
"Almost there," Kevin said, As they neared the rear of the enemy.
In the rear MERC held all of it's recyclers. Their fleet was so big that they could afford the luxury of keeping their recyclers in the main fleet. Normally that would have been true, but not with the new stealth tech the ion bombers had.
"Bombs away!" cheered Zak, as all the bombers that had flanked to back unleashed their glowing blue electric spheres. The bombs incinerated the recycler's computer mainframes instantly.
"It's play time, let's get going!" Kevin ordered.
Confused, the enemy armada hesitated as it lost contact with it's recyclers. Confusion turned to contained panic when one by one they lost contact with ships in the back without any enemy RADAR pickups.
"This is fun! Easier than target practice," Max laughed. Ship by ship, the ion bombers knocked out the enemy's electronics. The stealth devices were working perfectly. They would never be able to take on the whole fleet, but they sure could do a lot of damage. No recyclers, no profit, no morale.
MERC had no idea what hit them. Mistaking their rear being attacked as a relief effort, they turn around to see what was hitting them, not noticing how the their enemies were clearing out to create a clear path between them and the planet.
Stealth hid the bombers from RADAR, but nothing could save them from being detected by focused heat scanners. "Now it's going to get harder for us," Kevin warned his squadron.
The MERC armada, ridiculed that ion bombers had wreaked all the havoc, launched it's fighters it was holding in reserve to destroy the ion bombers.
"Wait for it..." Kevin breathed.
Slowly from the planet's surface rose huge particle beam turrets. Gleaming in the sunshine, They were mega defensive turrets that the empire had been working on for years. They couldn't be brought up earlier because they were still in their highly experimentle and fragile stage and would have been destroyed by the MERC fleet. The whole ion bomber flanking had been a setup so that the enemy would be distracted long enough to turn their ships around therefore allowing the turrets to be activated safely.
"Time to get out of here, lets go!" Kevin ordered. The bomber squadron spiraled downward to escape the armada and get out of the particle beam turret's line of fire.
After picking up the energy readings from the turrets the MERC fleet quickly forgot the bombers and hurriedly made maneuvers to flee. But they were too late.
Swirvling towards the MERC fleet, the turrets fired. Massive particle beams emitted from the turrets and sliced through enemy shields and ships like laser through wood. Gaint fireball explosions filled the sky as titans were annihilated, Sending massive explosive sonic booms ripping through the atmosphere. Red hot debris rained down to the earth, raising mountainous clouds of dust upon impact.
Dodging around the flying destructive debris coming from behind the bombers narrowly made their way to safety.
MERC, with all their major fleet and most of their smaller fleet blown into debris, the rest fled into hyperspace.
Inside the fleet carrier after being debriefed, the ion bomber pilots sat in the ship's cantina cheering to their success.
"Just wait till this gets out," Max chuckled. "We've just uncovered the next generation of defenses."
"Both good, and bad," Kevin mused. "What can be made into a defensive turret can be made into an offencive ship. When it's prefected it'll become the universe's next superweapon..." Shaking off his dreary mood, he toasted with the others to the empire's victory.