City of IF

[sparta12]

Virtual
Chapter 8: Hangar Bay


“Yes?” The General answered as he opened the door ajar
“There’s a pilot here. A Lieutenant Commander Art who wants to speak with you,” Lieutenant Norman answered the commanding officer
“Send him in,” he answered, walking over to his desk while the marine pilot walked in and sat down on the dusty seat in front of the general’s desk. The general had grey hair, had more battle scar’s then you could imagine and it looked like someone had driven a rusty bayonet all over his face.
“What would you like to talk about?” he asked
“I would like to get everyone out of here sir,” Jack answered him immediately and the general just gave him a look.
“Uh-Huh. And what is your ingenious plan of escaping, lieutenant?”
“Well sir I suggest that we move everyone through the sewer systems and shoot any Boragnians in sight but keep it quiet. We’ll move in until we get directly beneath the hangar bay and steal their ships. From there we will head out to the Freedom cruiser, which I presume will be directly above us in about fifteen minutes and will stay down for about a half hour and that… Gives us a window of forty-five minutes to get the hell out of here before they leave… sir,” Jack answered as he examined the maps of Traders Haven. The general stared at Jack for a long time, thinking of his proposal until he came to the conclusion
“Good plan but there’s one thing you’re forgetting there lieutenant… The sewer system stops about two miles outside the city and we’d be spotted before we could get within miles!” The general added.
“Not really. With any luck they’ll have hybrids on patrol and those bastards are blind. The only thing we’ll have to worry about are the Boragnian-Cerebral-Feeders,” he corrected the officer.



“All Zoraxians are on board sir!” Colonel Ballows informed him
“Good, good. Helmsman! Spread the rest of our shield energy around the ship, get our forward thrusters going on my command and head on in for entry!” the admiral ordered the pilot as he walked to the screen of the ship, staring at the planets surface as the pilot fiddled with the controls and drove the cruiser towards the planet. The Admiral stood there, beginning to sweat as the ship attempted to enter through the planets atmosphere and as the cruiser continued to burn up the screen of the cruiser went entirely red. The crew’s veins began to rise out of their skin, some passed out as they clutched whatever object they could as the cruiser shook uncontrollably and jolted as it passed through the atmosphere’s layers.
“Our shields are at forty percent!” The pilot struggled to report as he clutched the steering wheel, monitored the ships status when suddenly a piece of the cruiser broke off from the rest of the ship and flew across the screen of the bridge.
“Oh my god!” the admiral whispered as the large piece of debris crossed his eye sight when the ship made it through the atmosphere and the pilot slammed the controls to get the thrusters online. The Admiral turned his head to the pilot’s monitors and observed as the computer’s altimeter dropped dramatically as the ship slowed down.
“Get the firing batteries online!” he screamed as his face turned red, he was on the verge of blacking out but luckily the crewmembers weren’t fainting yet, got the mounted guns online and they were firing inaccurately at the enemy fighters that were now swarming the Marine fighters in the vicinity. The admiral continued to turn to the pilot every few seconds when he blacked out and his arm was thrown forward onto the joystick that was now driving the cruiser into the ground. Magnus stumbled over to pilot, pushing him off the seat and pulling the cruiser level while the thrusters continued to slow down the ship.
“Sir I am reading over thirty missiles in coming towards our proximity!” the admiral managed to hear over the roaring sound of the cruiser, the admiral squinted over to the right side of the panel and typed in the command to launch the ships’ countermeasures on the keyboard. Several flares launched out of the cruiser, left, right, front and the rear of the cruiser. The ship started slow down to a hovering state, the G-force effects started to wear off and they were extremely lucky seeing to survive seeing that the cruiser was only a few metres from disaster.





“Shit one of them is all over me!” Petty Flight Officer Barrel reported over the radio. Within seconds Anne Johnson could see the amateur pilot fly across her sights and was being followed by three greedy Boragnian fighters.
“Don’t worry rookie, I’ll get them off you!” Senior Flight Officer Vowels answered so in a few seconds one of the oldest pilots in the squadron was right behind the three alien pilots and launched a missile that flew in between the three that were in a diagonal formation. The missile soared next to two of the fighters before it exploded and the pieces of debris inside ripped two of the fighters apart like a fragmentation grenade. The third Boragnian fighter banked right, holding the brakes and moved behind the senior flight officer but was quickly incinerated when Barrel copied the enemy pilot and fired his laser rounds.
“Nice kill rookie!” Anne said positively and banking left and taking on a Boragnian fighter bomber that was making a run for the cruiser but after a few seconds it was nothing more then a sphere of fire hurdling towards the ground.



Three men scouted the sewer tunnels about one mile in front of each militia team that were jogging, cautiously through the tunnels just in-case a Cerebral-Brain-Feeder jumped out and attached itself to one of them.
“Alpha Team this is Scout One my PDA is reading that we are one click from target over,” The lead scout reported
“Roger that, move with caution and hold when underneath target over,” Jack acknowledged the scouts and continued to make his way to the next checkpoint. As the large team of militia (and other soldiers) moved along the tunnels they came across another manhole, which meant that they were getting closer to the objective but when Jack came across this manhole he stepped cautiously towards it. He raised his pulse rifle up, with his eye right behind the crosshairs of the rifle but when he checked the manhole he could see a small, red, spider like creature covering the light.
Fuck
“Johnston this is Freedom do you read over?” a voice crackled over Anne’s radio who was immediately distracted from her pursuit of an enemy fighter that was lugging a nuclear weapon underneath it’s belly and the only way for that to explode is to first be launched off the ship.
“What?” she answered, irritated as she struggled to pay attention to her target
“We need you to scout out the crash site in sector One-Zero-Niner Five-Seven-Two.” The voice answered, giving her the location of the crash site using Eastings and Northings. Anne acknowledged the command, let go a burst of fire, blowing off her targets’ wing
These fuckers get dumber and dumber! Why the hell are they using nukes in the sky! She thought as she manoeuvred through a cluster of enemy fighters while holding down on the trigger. Her fighter was barely holding on, her shields were almost gone, her entire ship had been penetrated by pieces of debris and when her shield goes down she won’t have any control of her fighter not even for a second. She was going to have to fly her best or else she won’t be making it back to the cruiser and before they would be ordered to fallback. She barrel rolled, she performed flips and went into dives at over 5 G’s until she reached her location… There it lay on the bumpy desert ground. One big cloud of smoke and flames leaping to the sky. Anne dove towards the crash site for a closer look but as she did the large piece of debris from the Freedom collapsed as the support structure did. The large piece of the ship caved in and spread across its massive crater.
“Freedom this is Mercury I am at the crash site and there are no survivors.”




“Copy that Mercury. Return to the cruiser,” the Ensign answered
“Admiral Magnus sir Mercury has reported that there are no survivors at the site!” the ensign reported to the commanding officer. The admiral bowed, placed his hand over his eyes
“ We fucked up on this one,” the admiral whispered to Colonel Ballows who remained silent.
“Initiate the fallback order!” The admiral said, wiping a tear away from his face as he looked around him at the fighters that were falling like flies and fighting for their very lives. The Admiral continued to watch while the crewmembers broadcasted the order across the radios and the fighters suddenly dived away from their targets. Magnus’ legs felt weak as he observed as his pilots flew back to the cruiser that even more of them were dying and they were unable to manoeuvre. The admiral could now hear the voices of a courtroom because he knew that because of his actions that some bastard would court marshal him and he would undoubtedly lose the case.



The Cerebral-Brain-Feeder leapt at Jack who swung the butt of his rifle into it and then switched it around when a second Cerebral-Brain-Feeder jumped onto the Lieutenant Commander’s head. It lunged its tail into his spinal-chord, he felt an enormous amount of pain before it paralysed his entire body and made it fall onto the ground. His comrades raised their weapons at Jack who was now lying face down in the sewer water and the medic of the group rushed forward with his kit in his hands. She pulled out a case of Methadone, which he was using as a strong substitute for morphine, injected into the officers veins and then pulled out her combat knife and severed the tail of the spider which leapt right off the officers skull before being shot into a million pieces. The medic next placed both his hands onto the tail, pulled it out of the pilots spinal chord before the beast could control him and take control of his body. The officer got onto his feet, gasping for air but was quickly pulled back down into the water by the medic who had placed his hand over his mouth to prevent him from screaming and giving them away. The methadone still needed some time to take effect and a few seconds was all it needed to stop the pilot from running around screaming.



“Everyone’s in position,” Jack whispered to himself who was now controlling himself from acting stupid from the methadone. His wound had been taken care of thanks to the medic, now he was ready to pop open the manhole and fight his way to back to the freedom. He counted down from five
“Now!” he whispered into his VHF radio, he popped up the manhole and checked if the area was secure. He waited for everyone to get up
“All teams report in,” he asked over the radio and everyone acknowledged. He couldn’t believe that his plan was going this good
“This is Iron man to all teams. Find a dark place in the hangar bay and wait for us to lower their defences,” he reported over the radio before typing in the override code on the security panel down the hall. They rushed into the next room. Clear and another amazing thing was that there was a terminal they could use to hack into the base’s mainframe.
“You! Hack into the terminal and use disable the defences!” He pointed to the technician who rushed over to the terminal and everyone got behind cover in case something entered the room. After a few minutes the technician was at the final stage and that was to disable all security mechanisms like turrets and booby traps. The technician entered five digits when his blood was splattered across the terminals computer screen.
“Man down!” Sergeant Peterman said and looked around the room.
“Oh Jesus… Where is the bas-” Eric Sandor whispered before something invisible tackled him to the floor and ripped open his stomach.
“Oh my god the fucker’s cloaked!” Jack concluded as blood gave away the alien that was now eating the Eric’s lungs and immediately he fired three hollow point rounds that crashed into the aliens’ skull and killed it. More Boragnians were now rushing into the room and Jack rushed over to the terminal, wiped away some of the blood and typed in the last key for the override code.
“All teams into the ships!” Jack screamed over the radio before rallying his troops and running away from the Boragnians. They headed back the way they came, jumped over the manhole, shot there way through a security door and ran out into the hangar bay with hundreds of Boragnians now chasing after them. Jack headed for the largest ship he could find; he ran up the ramp and gave his comrades covering fire before running to the cockpit to close the ramp. Some of the Boragnians were inside but Jack couldn’t care, his friends would take care of that but for now he had something more important to do and that was to fly the hell out of there.


“Sir all fighters are in the hangars!” A warrant officer reported
“Good. Helmsman! Get us out of the atmosphere and engage the hyperspace drive!” Magnus said eagerly and the pilot immediately pulled the ship into a vertical position with his joystick. He engaged all of the ship’s remaining engines at full throttle and the cruiser was sent flying up into the air at 75 000 kilometres an hour but that would not get them through. If they didn’t get up to 80 000 kilometres they would go into a stall they would never pull out of and be sent to their doom. The cruisers engine struggled as they sped up slowly, increasing their altitude and going through the layers of the atmosphere. The bridge shook vigorously as the speed increased and everyone held onto desks even though they were strapped down safely in their chairs for occasions like this. The cruiser was now at 78 000 but if they didn’t make it to 80 000 in the next few seconds they wouldn’t make it. The pilot looked at the engines status. Engine four was about to go along with Engine two but the others would be able to make it. Still the cruiser pushed on through the sky until they felt a large jolt that sent them into the planet’s orbit. They made it through the atmosphere. However when the pilot looked at the engine status he saw that Engine four had just gone and now there were some minor fires in the engine decks but regardless of that the pilot was being congratulated by crewmembers.




The ships weaved through the old city of Traders Haven, manoeuvring through the tall buildings of Traders Haven. Jack looked at the monitor over to his right that had a camera with a crosshair in the middle of it and in the crosshair it had the core of the hangar bay they had just escaped from. Jack pulled the trigger, a guided missile was sent out of the ship into the very heart of the city.
“Everyone pull up!” Jack yelled over his radio because when the missile detonated it would blow up the nuclear material inside of it along with their weapons that would destroy the entire city of Traders Haven. He set the engines to full throttle and soared up to the heavens when the missile detonated. It reached out into the air and engulfed the entire city in flames within a few seconds. Jack squinted as it became very hot inside the ship but he knew that the flames were in hot pursuit of him, the sides of the ship on the outside was surrounded in a cloud of fire while everyone else was already ahead of his slower and larger ship. However the ship did not sink into the cloud and get drowned in fire but flew out of the atmosphere.
“Yahoo!” Jack laughed as his ship was taken into the planet’s orbit
“Wow… Look at that…” Sergeant Peterman said, looking at one of the monitors that were showing the ship’s rear from the top of the ship. The entire planet was in flames and it was obvious that there was no other triumphing yet humbling moment in the galaxy then this. They had defeated their enemy and they had suffered a tremendous loss to their war efforts. It was a magnificent sight to see. Everyone paused for several minutes to watch this event before Jack got onto the ship’s radio and hacked into the Freedom’s frequency.
“Freedom this is Lieutenant Commander Jack Art do you read over?” His voice crackled over the radio.
“Yes Commander Art we read you loud and clear over.” A Warrant Officer responded to the call.
“Roger that Freedom. I am requesting permission to land in your hangar bay and I also have guests with me from below,” Jack answered as his main engine pushed him closer to the freedom.
“Roger that Commander Art but what do you mean by guests over?” the Warrant Officer enquired. Jack lowered his landing gear
“I have survivors from below with me and we are flying Boragnian ships over.”
“Roger that. Welcome home.”


To Be Continued…

[sparta12]

VOTE!

[saxon215]

sorry sparta i completely forgot about this good buddy
well i've read it now and i am about to vote

[sparta12]

Well the next chapter will be coming up soon.

[Smee]

Hey Sparta - apologies for my extended commenting hiatus.

A good chapter - plenty of action as always. :D

A brain feeder on board is the more feasible option - secure communication should prevent the captain from being supicious enough to actually attack them.

Happy Writing. :)