Flight Over Corin

We were running hot as we threw ourselves headlong over Corin, trading stealth for speed in a desperate dash for the freedom of the de-militarized zone that waited so many miles out of our reach. The lights of the city danced below us as the spotlights played over the bottom of our undercarriage, picking us out for all to see. My fingers flew over the worn keys of the console as I brought up the Engineer’s furious report on what we were doing to his engines, filled with angry epitaphs and disparaging remarks about my lineage.

“Faster, damn it!" The Captain screamed. "I want every man not currently doing something important heaping coal in that boiler now!”

“Damn it Captain, we can’t go any faster! It’s going to take weeks to repair the damage we’ve already caused the engines! At this rate they’ll go critical in… five minutes!”

Outside the Airship, a megaphone blasted as the Corin Naval Airship Defender Of Innocence delivered its ultimatum for the second time:

“Pirate vessel Falcon’s Flight, I say again: turn off your engines and prepare to be boarded! This is the final warning before we open fire!”

“Shit!” The Captain yelled, before grabbing the microphone from the master console in front of him.

“Uh, yeah, the thing with that is… our engines appear to be, er… broken. It’s the damndest thing, you know. They just don’t seem to want to stop!” As if to punctuate the Captain’s statement, a puff of smoke suddenly began trailing from engine #3, and the Engineer’s intercom screamed again, before I cut it off. We had bigger problems at the moment.

“Fine, Falcon’s Flight. Fill your ballast and extend a ladder so that we may board your vessel. Any aggressive actions will result in your immediate termination.”

“Arrogant bastard,” the Captain muttered. “Uh, we’ll work on that ballast… our controls have gone haywire up here. Stand by for ladder.” The Captain turned to me. “Garret, lower the ladder.”

“Sir?” I questioned. Ignoring me, he turned to Chief Weapons Officer Marlin.

“And Marlin, ready the Anti-Aircraft guns!” We all breathed a sigh of relief. Captain Ross Kotor would give his ship up the day hell froze over. Still, he had me worried for a moment. I lowered the ladder as a trio of Spryte class airplanes screamed towards us.

“Closer… closer…” The Captain intently watched the distance gauge that told him how close the planes were. “Alright Marlin, the moment you fire those AA-Guns I want you warming up the Gauss Cannon. And Nomi, the moment he begins warming up the Gauss Cannon, you bring us the hell around!”

I opened my mouth to interject something on the exact possibility of our managing to get our ship turned 180 degrees before the Innocence blew us out of the sky, but I didn’t get the chance as the bridge suddenly erupted in activity.

“Fire, God Damnit, Marlin, Fire! Board this, you sons of bitches!” The Captain screamed. The anti-aircraft fire played over the approaching planes, blowing up two outright and sending a third spiralling off toward the city, leaking fuel like a funeral shroud. Marlin through a few switches, pushed a few buttons, and suddenly there was a myriad number of sounds and vibrations as the gigantic Gauss Cannon began aligning itself.

Suddenly we were all thrown out of our seats as Nomi spun the ship around with her characteristic reckless abandon. Still, as fast as it was going, for a gigantic Airship to turn right around would take time. Luckily for us, the Defender Of Innocence was currently perpendicular to our ship as she began to unload every combat plane in her cavernous bays. Suddenly the megaphone blared again.

“You’ve plagued our skies for the last time, pirate scum! Die!”

Our ship was suddenly rocked by hits as the Innocence opened fire with every gun her left side had to offer, the equivalent of a naval broadside.

“Damage?” The Captain yelled. I reached over an un-muted the Engineer’s comm.

“Minor punctures on Decks 3 through 17. A single major hole in Deck 13, which is currently being patched. As far as I know, no casualties… but another pounding like that and our luck won’t hold.”

“Damnit Nomi, doesn’t this damned thing go any faster?” Nomi didn’t bother to answer. Both knew the answer to the question. “Fine… how long until we get around?”

“Reaching halfway point in 3… 2… 1… halfway there, Sir.” Nomi answered with typical calm. Damn pilots and their unshakable faith in their machines…

Suddenly we all realized the same thing: With the cycling time on a major warship, the next broadside should have just hit us, and yet we felt nothing.

“Sir?” I asked, knowing he was wondering the same thing. He nodded. I ran at full tilt to an observation window that would allow me to look out upon the Defender Of Innocence. I saw her, but she certainly wasn’t firing. All her planes were out, and our planes were currently engaging. It took me a second to realize what they were doing, but as soon as I did I wished I hadn’t.

“Oh, God help us,” I muttered, then suddenly began to yell. “For the love of God, they’re coming about!”

“What?!?” Marlin yelled, uncomprehending as I had been. Suddenly the Captain clued in.

“You stupid son of a bitch, they’re bringing their own Gauss Cannon to bear!” It took a moment to sink in, but when it did, Marlin suddenly paled. As a Weapons Officer, he knew exactly what a Gauss Cannon would do to us.

Marlin was the first to ask the question we were all thinking: “Nomi, how close are they to turning around?”

“32 degrees to go.”

“And us?”

“28 degrees.” It was going to be close… almost as close as it could possibly get.

“Oh God.” Marlin muttered.

“There ain’t no God out here, son. But ‘least you got me,” the Captain said, his characteristic bravado returning. “How are our men doing?” He asked me.

“Excellent as always, Captain.” Our old Fireflies were knocking the enemy’s newer Spryte’s out of the sky quickly. The Corin Navy may have had the advantage in technology, but our pilots were battle hardened veterans, many of them having taken part in the “7 Years War” and all of them hard-boiled pirates who had been raided every skyport and merchant hub from here to the Planar Wastes. It wasn’t by accident that we were among the most successful (and most wanted) pirate vessel on Hamal. By luck, maybe, but not by accident.

We watched the seconds, or more accurately the degrees, tick away. 12… 11… 10…

“All hands, prepare for firing…” 8… 7… 6…

“Brace to fire!” 3… 2… 1…

“Fire!”

“Sir,” cautioned Marlin. “10 seconds and we’ll be in optimum damage range!”

“We don’t have ten seconds! Optimum range be damned, FIRE!”

“Sir!” I again made the mistake of trying to say something witty about the fact that the ten seconds won’t matter a lick unless we actually hit something vital, but I was cut off by the thunderous roar of our massive Gauss Cannon loosing it’s shell. We could all hear a horrifying shriek of metal as the Cannon nearly ripped itself from its frame. There was a reason we almost never fire it: It was a class 2 Cannon, and we were technically a class D ship, meaning it was technically two sizes too big for us to safely use. The thing was, we were a pirate ship, so we rarely had to blow our enemies out of the sky; generally, that was considered bad form. Still, occasions arise every so often where we needed a lot of power, real quick. Actually, occasions like this one. The shriek of metal was echoed by the shriek coming from the Engineer’s comm as I flipped it back on; Realizing what a mistake that was, I turned it back off.

Still, that shriek didn’t even come close to producing the fear the next significant sound we heard did. A muted whump, signalling the enemy had loosed it’s own Gauss shell. The problem was, we had no idea how new their Cannon was, and if it was newer than ours, it would be faster than ours too. A few agonizing seconds passed, and suddenly a massive shudder shook through the ship, and a colossal explosion was heard. We all looked horrified at each other, then simultaneously we looked to the Engineer’s comm.

“Our ship or theirs?” The Captain yelled at the Engineer.

“Uh, well…”

“Ours or theirs?!?”

“Theirs, Damnit!” A cheer went through the ship as our view ports suddenly cleared, and we caught our first glimpse of the Defender Of Innocence.

“Nokia?” The Captain asked the Engineer.

“My best guess? A catastrophic reactor explosion, at least class 4. They must have been carrying a hell of a lot of fuel,” Nokia the Engineer answered.

We all watched soberly as the Defender Of Innocence blazed, falling from the sky slowly at first, then faster and faster as she caught fire and burned. It was akin to watching a star fall, and we shuddered inside as we saluted the fallen soldiers now burning in effigy of the horrors of war. It was any Airship man’s worst fear. Our reverie was finally broken by Nokia.

“Uh sir, we’ve suffered a fair amount of damage ourselves…”

“That’s fine, Nokia. We’ll get it fixed later, just let us recall all ships and we’ll take her to the de-militarized zone.”

“Damnit, that’s just the problem Captain! That damn shell went clean through our superstructure! We’re losing air faster than we can get it patched up!”

“We’re going down?” The Captain seemed almost unable to believe the possibility.

“Yes, Damnit!”

“Oh. Shit.” The Captain muttered, and I saw one of the rare flashes of fear go through the Captain’s eyes.

The Captain had good reason to be scared. Going down in the middle of an extremely hostile city? After just taking down the pride of their Navy? Perhaps we would have been better eating a Gauss shell…