BY JIM CLEVELAND
CHAPTER 3
The Alien ship came out of hyperspace impossibly close to the planet and in perfect alignment with the entry slot.
"Nice job that," growled Krag as he caught the readout on his ship's monitor screen. With a clawed digit he flicked the intercept mode on his control consol, and waited while his onboard computer evaluated the multispatial co-ordinates needed to acquire linkage, and locked on course.
"Maximum deflection in thirteen seconds," reported the mechanical voice of the computer as they plunged downward after the intruder. Krag watched the cross threads on his visor display close toward conjunction. It was going to be tight. The intruder was barely inside his window.
"Give me a better look at that?" he requested, and the display kaleidoscoped through its magnifications until it presented an enhanced image of the alien vessel on the screen before him. What he saw was a ship, somewhat resembling a ray fish, painted black on top, and white on the underbelly.
Drawing a breath, he tensed, stretching his considerable bulk within the compact space of his cockpit seat. "An Antarean," he surmised. "So, Lut was right about who it was that was running the embargo."
His own ship was a Rakshasa interceptor. From the tightly packed confines of the canopied cockpit in its nose, to the swept back wedge of its stubby wings, it was designed with an efficiency of purpose. It was a killing machine and although it was short ranged there was nothing quicker in a fight. Operating off a mother ship, these craft were favoured by Krag's people for in system operations, and the Rakshasa had been patrolling above Lovella for several months now.
Headed straight down toward the blue white swirl of the planet Krag could not help, but appreciate the fragility of its pristine grandeur. Even after months of tedium, patrolling above it, he still felt a rising sense of awe as he looked upon the vista before him. Now, seeing that Antarean carrion eater violating the planet's interdicted tranquillity enraged him.
Glaring through the navigational grid displayed on his visor, he watched, as his ship battled its own inertia in an effort to establish a line on the enemy. If force of will could have brought that about any sooner, Krag would have already had a shot, but at the moment his telemetry was suggesting that he wasn't going to be able to hold contact long enough for his gamma ray cannons to eat through its shields.
"Another way then," he surmised, as he switched his missile launchers to ready.
He had not obtained tone, but he had other sensory inputs besides targeting to assist him. A flick of a key was all that was required to correlate the flow of ionic soundings with tracking so that a new set of deflection differentials were immediately displayed upon his visor. "Better," he allowed, as he looked down the holographically projected pathway to his objective. It wasn't a straight shot and the silhouette of the intruder was just barely within the window of his sight, but it was the best he would get.
Willing the Antarean to hold that line for just a few more seconds he fired. Like a swarm of angry bees the missiles spit out from their launchers to speed swiftly in pursuit of their target. An instant later the cross threads upon his visor display locked upon the enemy and the gamma ray cannons fired.
Twin shafts of coruscating light shot out transfixing the Antarean vessel in a ghostly halo, but other than that, they appeared to have little effect upon her defences. Capable, though they were, of cutting through metal like hot knives through butter, those beams were completely disrupted by her invisible shields. Despite having had no better expectations than this, Krag was not willing to concede the point. Holding the contact, he kept firing as long as it was safe, and then some. It was not until every alarm on his console was screaming danger that he finally let go.
For his audacity, he was treated to a few uncomfortable moments, as his impetus carried him into the upper ionosphere at a bad angle. It was touch and go after that so that he had no attention to spare toward ascertaining the result of his action. It was left for his ship's surveillance to follow that and record what it saw for later evaluation. He would just have to wait to view the result of his endeavour along with the intelligence core back on the Falcon.
The missiles were still on their way. The Antarean, having charged its shields to ward the expected gamma ray attack, did not regard them as a serious threat. It had computed their trajectory and decided that they would miss. Thinking itself safe, it continued on its course, and was taken by surprise when the missiles glanced off the ionosphere and were diverted directly into its path. The Antarean and the missiles converged and there were three hits.
While Krag was still coping with the accumulated Gs from his brush with the planet's ionic shell, his computer was already evaluating the effect of the strike. The intruder was bleeding radiation, while its resonator was broadcasting dissidence. It had managed to effect entry, however, and now appeared destined to end its career in a crash upon the planet's surface.
Having finally wrestled his ship back onto a safe heading, Krag was able to watch, as his scanners registered the final stages of the Antarean's descent. At full magnification, he saw it struggle to lift its nose, only to succumb at last and go in hard, throwing up a cloud of dust and debris in its wake as it skipped and skidded across the landscape. Coming to rest, at last, in a clearing of its own making it was obviously badly damaged, but not destroyed.
"Something for Intelligence to work on," he figured as he turned his interceptor back toward the mother ship. He wondered how his superiors onboard the Falcon would view this incident? They would not be able to fault his shooting, in any case. Not many could have managed the shot that he had just made.