“Did I just see a Lagotorphin take down half an Ant Head and rush through here? What’s a predator baiter doing here?” It was taking Greta some time to go over the damaged and broken down fighters to find a few viable ones they could use; so far she had found three and needed Gilda’s second opinion on them. Sitting next to her were their duffle bags loaded with the gear they didn’t want to live without, including Mr. Welder. “Speaking of odd things, what happened to Tree Hugger?”
“The little guy was a friend of hers working on our exit strategy apparently, the hangar is locked down and the door out to space is now possibly set as a one way exit. I need you to check that to see if that’s correct before we choose a ship.” Taking a look at various states of disrepair of the fighters, Gilda was giving them a critical eye as she adjusted the plasma rifle strapped to her back. “Tree Hugger ran off to do who knows what, because I can’t give a damn except to learn how she evacuated this hangar before we got here. What’s the situation on the fighters here, are any of them viable and how quickly can we get them working if they aren’t? I’m not exactly sure the doors will hold any of those monsters back for long.”
“Say what you will about her brand of lunacy Gilda, but Tree certainly seems to have our best interests at heart and likely has a lot of connections. Yeah, the door has been rewired and… huh, the atmospheric barrier to this hangar has been turned off. Now that’s rather disconcerting.” Greta was wirelessly accessing the hangar; despite doing this she didn’t actually have the ability to do anything aside from looking up information and she already had the diagnostics of fighters. “As for our selection of viable vehicle… so far I have us up to two Javelin fighters, a Discus bomber and a Poseidon interceptor.”
“Drop the Poseidon as those things are difficult to fly, they are specifically meant for Parascine pilots anyway. For that matter drop the Discus bomber and give me the status on the two Javelin fighters.” Marching up to her partner and friend for life Gilda asked for more details. “I want to know how fast can we get one of them into space and what are the current logistical problems concerning just that.”
“Well one is missing half its main weapons, two variable thrusters and shields. On the bright side everything else seems to be workable.” Taking the time to check her data pad, Greta looked it over to see what the issues with the other one were. “The other one seems like the better option out of all these other ships that are missing vital components, weaponry and shields. Its shielding device is slightly blown and wouldn’t hold up much in a prolonged fight, but the current damages to the shielding device could be fixed with a quick patch job and aside from that its right ordinance tube is clogged.”
“Yeah, I’m not flying without all the available variable thrusters. Take me to the second one, what exactly is the ordinance tube clogged with?” Gilda swiftly followed Greta over the second fighter and saw that it was in a good state. “Seriously what is it clogged with, it looks perfectly fine by my estimations.”
“It’s right ordinance tube is clogged with… active devastator rounds!” At seeing this information Greta paled considerably. “Can we take the other one Gilda?”
“Yeah, that would definitely be a reason why it’s here. Get the shields in an operable condition.” Hearing some clanging noise the two griffons turned to the corridor entrance and heard a crash, they also a saw a dent appear in the door they came through. “Can you patch the shields in the next thirty seconds?”
Gilda turned back to see that Greta already had the panel away and was elbow deep in the fighters undercarriage, her EVA suits helmet light was point upwards. She swiftly joined her and pulled a flashlight out of her toolkit and angled it upwards to get a look at things. The shielding device was burnt slightly and damaged; Greta was feverishly cutting out and twisting a few wires together and she doing a really rough patch job on it as they didn’t have the time to do anything better. They could hear the clanging coming from the corridor getting worse, but by then and with a little direction from Gilda; Greta was already closing it back up.
“That’s the best I can do with what little time we have here Gilda, no time to cannibalize another fighter as I don’t feel safe with making the attempt.” The plasma rifle was thrust into Greta’s claws by Gilda as she popped the canopy and jumped in with her bag into the pilot’s seat to look back at her. “You do realize that while the shields will work, if those devastators in the right tube rupture… well beggars can’t be choosers!”
Greta changed her tune fast as she saw the tip of a Vorager’s bladed arm poking through the metal doors a distance away. Greta popped the copilot’s canopy and slung her own bag and the rifle into it before hauling herself inside.
“Quick question, do we still have devastators loaded in the left tube?” If they needed to devastate something, Gilda wanted to know they had the option. The Javelin came to life as she started flicking switches on the console before her and the canopy locked into place.
“I’m now accessing copilot’s console, can you hear me?” A grunt of affirmation let Greta know Gilda could hear her. “Rear gun is functional, the left tube is perfectly functional and fully loaded, we have a full tank of variable fuel and the impulse engine is running optimally though could use a few tweaks. Let me close up and then we can lift off. I’m shutting the canopy now. Also I don’t mean to be a worrywart Gilda, but I’m the only one wearing an EVA suit. If those devastators go off we’re both death either way.”
“Don’t care; let’s get this puppy off the ground finally! I thought it would take forever with you worrying about every little detail.” Gilda flicked the variable thrusters to point downwards and the fight lifted into the air slowly. “Departure for space incoming, hold onto your ass Greta because we’ve got some fun times ahead of us.”
“That’s what I’m worried about, you’re not a pilot Gilda and I can’t believe I’m going along with this in a flying metal deathtrap that will possibly explode violently.” A crash was heard and Greta looked forwards to see the Vorager stalk into the hangar followed by several Ant Heads and a second Vorager, she let loose a few shots to see if the aiming reticule needed some calibration. The shots were on target, but Greta was still getting used to the controls and only managed kill one of the Ant Heads starting to flood into the hangar. “Well there goes my one confirmed kill before I die.”
“That’s the spirit Greta! Where did the rest of your positive attitude go?” In fact Gilda came off as excited as she started maneuvering the ship into position for thrusting forward towards the door. “I am ready to launch, my blood feels like it is pumping raw stimulants.”
“Maybe because you’re the happy one and now I have to be the completely grumpy cynical asshole with a heart of gold.” Greta took aim with the rear gun and started to fire a spread of shots at the intruders and killed an Ant Head with nice shot to the spine from her position, the shadow of the beam giving off a bright green trail as it passed through space. She blasted the closer Vorager and the three legged beast continued to move forward despite being whittled down under the blasts of energy ripping into it until it perished. “I’m not exactly trained to be a tail gunner, plus the amount of apprehension I have about all of what we’re doing is pretty damn high on top of knowing we could explode at any second. Try not to take to many hits because I don’t know how long my ramshackle patch job will hold, speaking of, I’m going to increase the shields around the right ordinance tube.”
“That’s good enough for me and you don’t need to be the best tail gunner in the universe Greta. Well hope you’re target practice is doing you some good back there, because here we go!” Not even bothering to ease the throttle into it, Gilda pushed it forward to full blast and the Javelin practically jumped forward heading towards the closed doors.
Detecting the Javelins approach the doors opened up swiftly and started sucking all the air and every single being and or object not nailed down out of the hangar into space. It was pulling some monsters through the destroyed doorways, which started to clog with screeching and dying Ant Heads as they were crumpled together in a large collective mass in the corridor. Once the Javelin was clear of the doors, being pushed by the rush of atmosphere being blasted out of that portion of Geoptis Station, they slammed shut preventing any more loss of atmosphere. A heavy bulkhead slid into place and locked down around that section of the massive space station preventing anymore decompression problems.
-
A Discus bomber was shaped like a flying saucer; being a bomber its specialty is in utilizing high end explosive ordinance and carrying lots of it. The main pilot takes care of flying and has access to two laser cannons. The copilot is entirely focused on wielding the ordinance launcher that can be rotated to fire in any direction along the horizontal axis of the ship. The ship itself can be rotated so that it can fire its payload at odd angles to wherever it needs to be delivered. If a Javelin could only carry six missiles, then a Discus could carry twenty eight of that same type of missile or it could be equipped with a variety of missiles that can cause different levels of damage or do different things.
The Discus otherwise has average shielding and even more average forward firing twin energy cannon, it is prone to exploding when its shields are taken down and its mass makes it slow to speed up or slow down in space. It also needed to be reloaded fairly often if the explosive ordinance is used liberally.
What it lacks in maneuverability or defensive capability, it makes up in its ability to rip larger spaceships or threats apart with its ordinance launcher. It is best equipped with long range high end ordinance such as devastator rounds.
Devastator rounds are a physical missile type ammunition that sets off a rather peculiar molecular chain reaction in a very small confined space within the round itself. When it hits something, for a short amount of time it absorbs any mass within a few feet from its immediate surroundings. What it then proceeds to do is rip everything around it apart in the ensuing massive explosion. They are called devastators because the explosion is more powerful the more mass the missile manages to get during its absorbency phase. Even if the devastator didn’t acquire any mass aside from what the missile itself provides, it is still highly destructive.
Devastator rounds are said to be the invention of Plurt scientists, it has neither been confirmed nor denied. The best known counter to these deadly missiles is the runic shielding technology invented by ponies, more specifically one named Shining Armor. Said runic shielding isn’t very effective against many things except things that warp local space violently.
-
(Zone of the Enders 2 – Leo Leo!)
“Okay let’s see if we can push our way into the combat zone. Greta I need you to quickly label our ship as GG dash one please.” Gilda had steered the fighter around on a slow turning arc to head back for the station; she turned to communication and spoke as she watched hundreds of fighters crossing each other’s paths and firing upon the monstrosities crawling across the hull of Geoptis. “This is call sign GG One, lone Javelin class fighter calling to anyone in that mess that has a little time on their hands. We’re on approach and need orders, where do you need us?”
“This is Greg Planter leader of Femur Squadron, if you have no idea where you need to be then aim at the closest mass of monsters on Geoptis and blow them apart. Don’t bother with the Vasps unless they are on you, they are dying off at an accelerated rate without an active MOM core to provide for them and they are also quickly running out of projectile based firepower. So unless they get close to you and or can still shoot, don’t engage.” After a moment of silence and hearing something that sounded like a muted thud of something smacking into the ship, the male voice came back. “Sorry, had one on my tail and a chunk or two of it bounced off the canopy. What we really need is for someone to help keep them off of Geoptis’s turrets, can you handle that GG One? We need all the help we can get to clean Geoptis up as fast as possible; I have word that the remaining MOM piece is already inbound and we have twenty minutes to kill as many of these things as we can. Voragers are a higher priority target at the moment, only use communications to call for assistance, for new orders or to report in on anything you consider drastically important.”
“Roger that, providing cover fire for the turrets and taking out the ground swarms.” It was exhilarating for Gilda to be flying into battle and as for her first shot she placed her targeting reticule on a distant and Vasp and blew it apart with a single pull of the trigger that sent two beams crossing space in an instant. “I’m switching over to alternating fire and coming in hot, combined fire seems a bit wasteful for these guys. Watch my ass Greta.”
“Gladly, now if only you’d allow me to peruse it as well!” Greta stated in a less than chipper tone that didn’t match Gilda’s current cheerful demeanor as she gunned down some Ant Heads. “Please remember that we’ll die if we take a wrong hit, so don’t get reckless.”
“You are pretty much the gayest hen I know Greta and that’s not even taking your sexual preferences into account.” The fighter dropped close to the surface of Geoptis and skimmed along the hull, Gilda started taking aim and unleashed a blaze of alternating shots starting off from the left energy cannon. She swept her fire across the monsters clinging to the stations hull and then carefully picked off two Voragers that were trying to break apart a turret that was wiping out the Vasps in quick succession.
“I don’t feel or sound very happy at the moment!” Growled out a frustrated sounding Greta as she shot at the ground troops Gilda passed by with the rear mounted turret in a steady single stream of death. She was keeping an eye out for any Vasps that took an interest in their backsides and nailed one in the abdomen causing it to implode.
“Like you aren’t happy every day of the week, I’m only giving it a matter of time before you start feeling the joy that I currently do!” Gilda’s chipper attitude was likely driving Greta to act like Gilda usually did. They weren’t having too much trouble with raking hundreds of monsters off Geoptis’s hull while trying to avoid actually hitting the hull itself.
After several more passes over various turrets to prevent them from being overwhelmed by Ant Heads and or Voragers, the turrets started to turn towards the ground forces as the Vasps had been thinned out considerably by the constant fire of the four barreled high powered energy turrets. A beeping noise went off and Gilda hit the communications to receive the message.
“This is Lirutiy, all fighters with heavy ordinance loads, break off and attack the incoming remaining MOM core.” A shotgun firing could be heard and the sound of something screeching its last breath sounded out, it was then that Lirutiy spoke up once more. “Damn, I can’t believe they made it this deep in! We wiped out half of the MOM in the initial confrontation, Geoptis wiped out another fourth and I’ll be damned if we let that last core land intact. Carrier Pessenchince and Destroyer Tirospeice join the fighters by providing support and keep your distance. The rest of the fleet will hold back and hit that remaining MOM piece with everything we have if it enters the atmosphere. As for the rest of you, get these bastards off of my station!”
“What are you armed with GG One?” Greg asked as his notably marked Javelin blasted its way through several more Voragers on the surface of the station and passed over Gilda and Greta’s fighter before angling away from the fighting in the quiet void.
“We’re carrying three viable devastator rounds.” Veering the ship away from the crawling surface of Geoptis after making another quick pass on a solid mass of monsters while helping several turrets on one last attack run, Gilda flew out of the combat zone following three other fighters.
In the distance the distance the griffons could see several other squadrons were forming up and leaving the combat area. The rear gunners in the Javelin fighters were wiping out any Vector Wasp stragglers trying to give chase and Greta quickly joined in on blasting them down with well aimed shots. The fighters that were staying behind were primarily interceptors performing cleanup.
“You can form up with Femur Squadron then, we’re all packing here. Take the far right wing if you want to follow us.” Seeing that GG One take position Greg filled his squadron in on what they were expected to do. “We’ll need to cover for the Discus bomber squads while we make our own attacks runs, if any of you take too much damage then head straight for the carrier Pessenchince. I don’t want any of you dying on me, does everyone copy?”
“Roger Femur lead, we’ve had our warm up with Geoptis covering us and now things are about to get truly nasty once we’re away from its defenses.” The ship on Greg’s immediate left responded with a female voice while waggling its wings up and down slightly. The two other fighters sent in their replies and then it was Gilda’s turn as she took up position on the far right of the flying V shaped formation.
“This GG One, copy that, I have no illusions to the fact that we’re buying time while everyone else gets their crap in gear. I acknowledge that this is going to get messy when the Shamroids and Vasps come our way. Those Shamroids shouldn’t even be able to catch an aware Javelin pilot given we can outmaneuver them easily, they have very poor turning capability.” Gilda was acting like she knew what she was talking about. “They’re more dangerous to the Discus bombers, so relay to them to watch for the Shamroids. The Vasp are going to be the real enemy here until that core is taken care of, the Shamroids are frail and can easily be dealt with by our gunners.”
“Acknowledged, we definitely needed that refresher GG One. I had almost forgotten those exploding gas bags existed. Everyone full throttle and stay in formation until we’re ready to break off and attack, if you see a good opportunity to unload a payload, then do so where it will deal some real damage. If you can get it in an orifice then that would be better than just hitting the surface.” Several ships pinged out at once in affirmation including the outsider in the squad. “Don’t be afraid to call for help if you need it GG One, Femur Squadron is willing to assist you for as long as we’re flying. Just show us the same courtesy where needed if and when you can, remember that you’re not alone out here.”
-
“Damn it, it’s here earlier than anticipated! Everyone break off and pick your targets, it’s about to become a shooting gallery out here.” Greg couldn’t have called it sooner as they came across the massive ball of still active flesh three minutes later.
“Right, I’m going to try and get behind it. Are any of you Disc jockeys going my way and in need of an escort into position to pepper its ass?” As Gilda called out to see if anyone was flying her way she had to avoid several Shamroids, the flying fake asteroids with tentacles were creepy looking but Greta easily popped them as soon as she could get them sighted. Hundreds of Vasps were slowly crawling out of the flesh ball onto its surface and slowly building up a glow of atmosphere before kicking off into space, only to have Gilda mow through them and hit the surface of the MOM with as much fire as she could get out. “It’s confirmed Vasps definitely need the MOM to continue functioning in a greater capacity.”
“I’m surprised that nobody has figured out that you’re not exactly a qualified pilot, but you’re doing pretty good all things considered. I need a barrel roll stat!” Despite Greta being a bit flippant with her piloting, Gilda threw the ship into a barrel roll combining it with an aileron roll using the variable thrusters to shift out of the way of three oncoming Shamroids which were swiftly blasted by Gilda once they passed by. “Thank you, now if only we weren’t getting into danger like this all the time! Maybe I didn’t get enough sleep, because I can swear there’s something very off about how fast this thing is moving. Shouldn’t it be moving at the same speed it had after the fleet’s assault on it?”
“This is Entrencher Squadron; we’ll follow you GG One.” Three Discus fighters came in behind the Javelin. “Lead us into position.”
“Come on and admit it Greta, you’re enjoying this as much as I am!” Hitting the variable thrusters, Gilda had the Javelin strafing sideways in space around the MOM while constantly barraging the surface with blast after blast of energy lancing out rapidly into the Vasps pulling themselves out of the flesh. Gilda stopped the sideways strafe by counter blasting the variables putting her in a position to follow the MOM. “Stick behind us and we’ll try to keep them off you guys while you get your pound of flesh in.”
Following her maneuver were three Discus bombers that shot quite a few Shamroids as they slid around the MOM following Gilda’s lead. The Discus bombers cut their engines and flipped end over end using their variable thrusters to get into position; it was then that they restarted their engines. This put them in position behind the flesh ball with Gilda running interference in front of them as they unloaded explosive after explosive into it dealing massive amounts of damage to its crust.
The next few minutes were hectic with Gilda angling and sweeping across the front of the three Discus bombers, while wiping out many of the Vasps and Shamroids that were coming their way, for some reason they weren’t getting as much as the guys at the front of the MOM’s path. Even then a Discus had to drop off the chase after taking a direct hit from a Vasp.
“You’re right Greta, something is wrong here and we’re getting awfully close to the planet.” As they did the Planetary Protection Patrol fleet opened fire on the MOM and it took a lot of the hits. That’s around the time when the MOM changed, its front exploded unleashing thousands of Shamroids into space in all directions sending the fleet into chaos. The real dog kicker was what was happening at the backside of the MOM. “What… the… tartarus?”
The skin of the large ball of flesh started to rip apart and several flaps peeled outwards letting loose a massive amount of ugly looking bright neon orange fluid into space. The flaps had several large holes and a bit of gas could be seen leaking from it before the flaps erupted thrusting the MOM past where the fleet had been aiming. The underside of the flaps was covered in teeth and at the base of the opened flaps in the center of the opening were a huge eye and three large mouths in a triangular formation around it.
“Well, there goes my ability to take horror movies seriously.” Just because she was making idle commentary didn’t mean she stopped firing on all the Vasps and the rather humongous wave of Shamroids coming at her. “Anybody from Femur Squadron still alive out there, I need you back here with me! I and what’s left of Entrencher Squadron see the core and it is one ugly son of a-”
-
Rarity couldn’t help but be worried about Greta and Gilda’s safety after hearing Geoptis Station had been boarded by monsters. Not like the planet was any safer with an incoming MOM. She really did hope the two griffons were safe where they were, she really needed to get back to the hangar seven as civilians were already running for the shelters and the spaceport counted as one of those places.
-
All of Femur Squadron was out of ordinance and or heavily damaged. The last capable ship of Entrencher Squadron was also out of ordinance and the other one was blown to bits by several Shamroids clasping onto it. The MOM was currently breaching the atmosphere and thankfully absorbing all the heat from the entry as GG One’s shields were currently suffering a major malfunction due to a Shamroid that scorched the left wing and its rear turret had been rendered inoperable. Two of the MOM’s large inner mouths were blown to bloody chunks and some of its inner teeth fell out into space, but it was still going. Gilda’s Javelin was closing in on the eye firing wildly and looked like it was going to ram it head on.
“Gilda… please tell me that you aren’t sacrificing our lives and that we’re not going to die...” Greta looked over her shoulder after seeing the edges of the gas blowing skin flaps and wished she hadn’t, the Javelin was already wailing a heat warning alarm and things were looking pretty bad. “Gilda…”
“We’re not going to die Greta; we’re just going to perform some rather invasive open eye surgery with a really large scalpel.” It wasn’t as if the energy cannons weren’t doing enough to the large eye already and Gilda wanted to be the one to rip the MOM core a new one. She was determined to bring it down regardless of the consequences; frankly she was currently having the best time of her life. “Besides we’re going to save plenty of lives with what I’m about to do, I guess it’s time to say… goodbye my love.”
-
Somewhere high in the atmosphere of the tropical lake planet, the MOM shuddered as what looked like a volcanic explosion rocked its backside destroying most of it. The flaps that weren’t torn off stopped spewing its propulsion gas as it became lifeless and continued falling through the sky towards the planet.
“Commander Lirutiy, it’s a miracle! We have confirmation of the cores destruction, but its ground forces are still going to be an issue once that dead core hits the ground.” The Parascine at the console with a dead Ant Head next to it turned to the Plurt who sighed in relief after having had watched her fleet be sent into absolute disarray and let the MOM core almost reach the planet’s surface.