//------------------------------//
// Chapter 64 
// Story: Hegira: Eternal Delta 
// by Guardian_Gryphon 
//------------------------------//

Earth Calendar: 2117
Equestrian Calendar: 15 AC (After Contact)
April 7th, Gregorian Calendar

Skye dropped the last beacon into the small pile, and cast a wary glance over at the main console.  She had been carefully keeping track of the passing seconds, and in her estimation, there was less than a minute left to take action.

As the Unicorn gingerly stepped back from the small pile of devices, Mr. Utah tightened his grip on the laser pistol, and allowed a tiny hint of a smirk to pass onto the edges of his lips.

"Well.  At least you've proven you're good for the same thing a solid draft horse was.  You have any last words?"

Skye tensed, mentally preparing herself for a last ditch attempt at survival.  To her surprise, she found that most of her brain, and her gut, were focused on the goal of staying alive.  Fear barely had a tiny sliver of a corner unto itself.

To her further surprise, Lantry's voice filled the silence.  Though he could barely manage a harsh tone above a whisper, his words were clear enough to be heard.

"I do."

Mr. Utah raised an eyebrow, and glanced at his captive.  To Lantry's surprise, he nodded, chuckling grimly as he spoke.

"Go on then.  Plead for her life.  If you want to waste air on a fruitless endeavor."

Lantry managed a half-snort, wincing as the knife dug further into his neck by several millimeters.  His voice conveyed surprising anger, and stoicism, in spite of the situation.

"Plead?  Hell no, asshole...  I'm placing you under arrest for treason, terrorism, murder, and sedition, by the power vested in me by the United Earth Government Central Military Command."

For one long, very unpleasant moment, both Skye and Lantry were sure that their captor was going to cut straight to the chase, and dispose of them both in short order.  Much to their bemusement, a grating, gravelly laugh boiled forth from Mr. Utah's chest.

The sound started as a low, silent rumble at first, but very quickly rose into a brief, but unmistakable bout of mirth.  Mr. Utah raised an eyebrow, and snorted as the sound died away.

"I'm honestly curious..."

He paused, and sighted carefully on Skye's horn, depressing a small nub on the right side of the pistol to activate a laser sighting beam.  He continued as a small red dot appeared on Skye's forehead.

"...What, precisely, did you expect that wad of tripe to accomplish?  Did you really think I was going to throw down my weapons and silently allow you to damn the Human race to extinction?"

Lantry smiled, and shifted ever so slightly, speaking in a low, forceful, and calm tone.

"No.  I expected you to be arrogant, and poorly disciplined, and you did not disappoint."

It was the General's turn to chuckle, as a confused expression overtook Mr. Utah's face, twisting it into a goblin-like grimace.  Lantry coughed, and gulped, trying to ease the pain in his throat as he spoke once more.  He directed his words, and his gaze, at Skye, to the Unicorn's surprise.

"I asked a lot of you once before.  Now I'm asking you to be brave, and finish what we came here to do.  Don't blame yourself.  This isn't just for you, or any one person.  That being said;  Tell Fyrenn that we're all square now.  The three of us.  All debts are paid in full."

Skye began shaking her head slowly, as realization dawned on her.  Her chest constricted, and she felt conflicting urges to vomit, and to break out in uncontrolled sobs.  Tears began streaming from her eyes as she managed to force out one word.

"Don't!"

Mr. Utah tightened his grip on the knife, and pulled it a few millimeters across Lantry's throat, causing the General to wince in pain.

"What are you talking about?  You answer me, or I'll take your head off right here, right now!"

Lantry coughed once more, and began to chuckle again softly as he replied.

"We're talking about the first and most important rule of combat explosives... Of course an undisciplined son of a bitch like you doesn't know the first thing about proper military procedure, so let me enlighten you..."

The General carefully twisted his right arm until his hand, and the three objects clutched within, were visible.  As he finished his thought, he allowed the two smaller metallic items to fall away.  Their impacts on the decking lent emphasis and finality to his words.

"When the pin is pulled?  Mister Grenade is *not* your friend."

A single beat, lasting little more than half a second, passed.  The image burned itself into Skye's brain, as if it had been etched with a white-hot hammer and chisel.  Mr. Utah's expression was one of dawning comprehension;  Fear, rage, realization, and impotent urgency clouded his visage.  The sight was satisfying, in a twisted way.

Lantry's face, on the other hand, bore a mixture of contentment, relief, and even a hint of smugness.  It was the face of a victorious soldier who had cheated the odds, and succeeded.

Skye was forced to look away as the grenade detonated.  She reflexively brought her hooves up to shield her face, as a wave of tertiary spent hot gasses whipped past her.  The sound of the storm outside vanished as the explosion set her sensitive Equine ears on edge, replacing all else with a dull aching ring.

In spite of the immense turmoil of emotions that had overwhelmed her gut, the Unicorn forced herself to open her eyes once the light and heat had died down.  Skye averted her gaze from what little remained of the two corpses, instead half-dashing, half-stumbling her way over to the control console.

The small portion of her brain that was still functional found time to express an internal sentiment of surprise, as she worked feverishly.  Overcome by a combination of grief, shock, and panic, it was a wonder she was capable of keeping her hooves steady enough to work.

At last, the console chirruped twice, indicating the re-entry of a maintenance and calibration cycle into the instruction queue.  Skye sat back numbly on her haunches, barely noting that she had completed her task with only five seconds to spare.

Skye wasn't sure how long she sat in a dazed, detached state, before Kephic and Varan arrived.  She knew it was more than one minute, but less than two.

The two Gryphons dropped down from above, skidding to a stop with a palpable sense of rushed urgency.  The broad strokes of the situation became instantly apparent to the brothers.  Wordlessly Varan nodded towards Skye.  Kephic pointed towards the small pile of beacons.

The golden Gryphon gently moved to pull the Unicorn away from the central console, pulling her into a sheltered position under his left wing.  Kephic scooped up the beacons in both fisted claws, and began hurriedly re-affixing them to support struts and load bearing columns.

Varan brought his head down, and around to look Skye directly in her eyes.  His tone, normally so emotionless, conveyed a stunning level of comfort and concern in deeply subtle shifts and tremors.

"He sacrificed himself?"

Skye nodded wordlessly, bringing one hoof up to brush at her eyes.  Varan pulled her close into the soft feathers of his neck, indulging in a deeply surprising display of care and affection.  As he pulled away, he offered the Unicorn a gentle, but firm clap on her back.

The motion, combined with his words, seemed to shake off part of Skye's daze, bringing her back to some semblance of a connection with reality.

"He did what any honorable warrior would have done."

The Unicorn nodded slowly, and inhaled a sharp, ragged breath, before speaking at last.

"We have just over five minutes now."

Kephic finished affixing the last beacon, and twisted the base sharply.  A small, dim red holographic display appeared over the object's face-plate.  The speckled Gryphon twisted the baseplate until the timer read four minutes and forty seconds.

Varan dipped his head, and sighed.

"That is precious little time for us to make our escape."

Kephic nodded, and strode back to the two corpses, speaking curtly and sharply as he bent over what little remained of Miles Lantry.

"And it's all we can afford."

The speckled Gryphon knelt down, and reached across the General's chest.  His claw came away with the charred but still-intact remnants of Lantry's dog-tags.  Most of the chain had been melted away, but the tags themselves remained in one piece, having been designed to defy explosive force for just such a reason.

Kephic tucked the object safely away in the feathers at the joint between his right ring, and shoulder, then jerked his head towards the raging squall outside.

Varan nodded, and allowed his brother to reach down and take charge of Skye.  The unspoken logic was clear;  Varan would make better time on his injured wing if he were as unburdened as possible.

The two Gryphons dashed to the nearest sheer edge, and threw themselves off, spreading their wings and catching the furious gusts of wind in an attempt to augment their speed.  

As the platform fell away behind, so too did the seconds left on the clock.





"We have good signal on the beacons!  Repeat sir;  The targeting beacons just went live!  We have a solid positional lock, and interference is negligible!  Designating as track eight four three."

The TAO clutched the holotank railing firmly, and visually confirmed the telemetry as he spoke.

"Redirect all weapons to kill track eight four three!  Sustained continuous fire!"

The Battleship shuddered as a series of enemy warheads hit home on the exterior of the island structure.  A breach alarm sounded in the distance, indicating that one of the warheads had found a weak point in the armor belts.

The acting XO shook his head, his eyes growing wide with a fear that the tone in his voice underscored sharply.

"We're facing two enemy targets at close quarters!!  If we lose momentum by redirecting fire---"

The acting Captain shook his head, and glowered.

"If we don't then the consequences are just a *little* more severe, don't you think?!  Redirect ALL weapons to track eight four three and FIRE!"

The weapons officer nodded sharply, and clutched at his headset microphone.

"CIC: All weapons to track eight four three.  Continuous sustained barrage!  Fire! Fire! Fire!"

The TAO offered his acting executive a sharp glance, and lowered his voice.

"And if we die today?  Then we die doing our duty.  It's what we're here for."





The roar of battle continued unabated as the North Carolina's weapons re-tasked to their new target.  For three seconds, the volume of the cacophony decreased slightly as the Battleship's main guns ceased firing to afford the turrets a chance to turn, and re-acquire.

The VLS tubes continued to belch forth fire and smoke unabated.  The next round of missiles simply streaked heavenward, then turned east by northeast.

At last, the great warship's main guns locked into position.  Once more the mighty battery spoke, seemingly shaking the world to its very foundation as round after round was dispatched over the horizon.

The weapons struck out with abandon, dispensing their deadly payload at an accelerated rate with no concern for the damage being done to the barrels, muzzles, and loading mechanisms by the grueling regimen.

The rounds whizzed over the sea so swiftly that they left blinding streaks of light, and thunderclaps in their wake.  Sighted on the guidance beams from Lantry's beacons, the rounds flew straight and true, arriving well before the slower missile-driven munitions.

The first volley struck the platform with so much energy that the entire superstructure was pushed sideways by the blast wave, causing the upper portions of the construct to impact the Barrier, and vaporize in a vivid secondary detonation.

The center of the structure was instantaneously reduced to a sizzling white-hot rimmed hole by the first volley, fully vaporizing all the HLF devices, as well as the structure's central field coil.

The second volley arrived only half a second later, tearing through what little remained of the structure, the HLF's railguns, and any survivors from the first blast.  Some of the rounds punched straight through, directly impacting the Barrier, and touching off more secondary explosions.

Two seconds later, the missile flights arrived in conjunction with further railgun volleys, pummeling the entire area with a vicious, relentless torrent of kinetic and chemical energy.  The relentless hounding in turn generated an opposing reaction from the Barrier, pouring untamed and unexplained energies on top of conventional explosives, and kinetic detonations.

In a matter of a few moments, the energies had unleashed a runaway reaction.  A flash brighter than ten thousand stars erupted at the epicenter of the detonation, pushing back the sea in a crater-like depression as water was instantly vaporized.

The North Carolina's starboard lookouts were instantly blinded, as were several unlucky members of both Agincourt and Retribution's crews.

As the Battleship's volleys ceased, a relatively small, but visible mushroom cloud billowed up from the center of the event, a hallmark of the devastating forces of nuclear fusion that had unintentionally been set free.

A wave of energy rippled out across the Barrier in response, zipping away harmlessly towards both horizons at supersonic speeds.

All that remained of the retarder platform was a rapidly expanding ball of hot gasses.  A fitting pyre for the sacrifice that had made its destruction possible.





"Brace up!  That shockwave is going to be rough, even by the time it gets here."

Fyrenn glanced at the rising mushroom cloud once more, then pressed the throttle and the control column forward, increasing thrust and the the angle of the SeaHawk's dive.  Neyla nodded, and carefully checked the cinches on her harness.

"Obviously they were successful..."

The tone of the Gryphoness' words, and the way her sentence trailed off, told Fyrenn that her thoughts were running precisely parallel to his.  He knew full well that even though the primary objective had been accomplished, that many lives were still in danger.  Most especially, the lives of his family and closest friends.

The red Gryphon pulled the fighter level just above the crests of the waves, juking the stick carefully to compensate for rain, downdrafts, and large swells.  He grit his beak, in a gesture that was becoming all-too familiar, and muttered darkly as the North Carolina and the Agincourt appeared over the horizon.

"Reset master arm, and be ready for a series of low pass sweeps.  I'm going to line it up for you to bust the bunker on the first pass, supersonic.  The second time through I want you to pass gun control back to my stick.  I made a man a promise... And I intend to keep it."





"Damage report!"

The acting XO bent over the nearest console, and shook his head slowly, tightening his brace position as the ship rocked sharply under renewed impacts.

"It's bad!  We're taking on seawater through compromised bulkheads on the starboard side.  Two penetrating hits on the island structure.  A third will probably cause critical structural failure!"

The TAO spun to face the weapons officer, and narrowed his eyes.

"Give me a report on munitions status, and situation of enemy targets."

The officer buried his head in his scope for a moment, before barking out a staccato response.

"We're out of torpedos.  VLS bays are down to the last two-dozen warheads.  We can't get a good optical fix on the sub.  Agincourt is in critical condition, more or less adrift, but her ECM generator and most of her missile racks are still functioning.  We lost critical momentum when we re-tasked our weapons."

The TAO nodded slowly, and exhaled.  He rubbed at the back of his head, then clasped both hands firmly on the nearest brace rails.

"Weps;  Concentrate all fire on the Agincourt.  Align guns to focus on the rear and central portions of the island structure.  Helm;  Come port five degrees and bring us back to knife-fight range.  If we go, they are going with us."





"The target is a deck-high slit, probably covered with emergency blast shields.  Oh-Three level.  All you have to do is puncture that blast shield.  Ready?"

Neyla nodded, and tightened her grip on the control column.

"I am prepared."

Fyrenn exhaled slowly, and tipped the SeaHawk up onto one wing, pulling into a tight turn.  The jet exited the maneuver flying level, barely four feet over the wave crests.  The red Gryphon held the throttle at precisely the right notch to produce Mach one thrust.

The Agincourt appeared over the edge of the horizon, and quickly loomed large against the backdrop of the ashen sky.  Fyrenn held his course, unblinking, bringing the SeaHawk in for a perilously low pass.

At the opportune moment, when the angle was precisely right for the shot, Neyla unleashed the fury of the twin autocannons once more.  The barrage tore into the front of the ship's island structure as the SeaHawk blew past overhead, the supersonic shockwave rattling the vessel to its core.

As Fyrenn pulled up and away, rolling to dodge an outbound missile from the North Carolina, an insistent tone sounded from Neyla's flight status panel.

The Gryphoness raised an eyebrow, and double checked before voicing her grim observation.

"We are fuel-critical, likely as a result of our leak and previous fuel dump.  Less than ten percent left."

Fyrenn nodded, and pushed the craft into a loop, once again briefly maxing out the G-meter as he pressed the throttle to afterburn at the apex of the maneuver.  As the SeaHawk dove back to a lower flight level, the red Gryphon snorted, and checked his own panel to determine the average consumption rate, and remaining flight time.

"If you want to bail out now, I won't object."

Neyla leaned forward, and placed one claw on Fyrenn's right shoulder.

"We both know I need to see this done as much as you do."

The Gryphoness reached back to one of her side panels, and toggled a series of covered switches, before speaking softly once more.

"Your guns."

Fyrenn nodded curtly, and narrowed his eyes as he pulled the fighter into another level low-flying pass.

"My guns."





"Sir!  We just lost the other turbine!  We're adrift and on fire in seven, no, EIGHT compartments!!  We have NO response from the boarding party, the Retribution is coming in for another pass, and our Lancets are overdue!  We have to abandon ship!"

Minos seized the officer by his right shoulder, and slammed the man's head vigorously into his console bank.  Spittle flew from his mouth as he raged at the officer.

"YOU WILL HOLD YOUR POST!  DO YOU HEAR ME YOU COWARD?! YOU WILL HOLD YOUR POST! REDIRECT ALL FIRE AT---"

The tirade was cut short by a sound akin to a buzz saw impacting a terra cotta pipe.  The blast shields at the fore of the bridge exploded inwards, collapsing into an enormous cloud of superheated shrapnel.

Minos instinctively slid to a prone position, placing a console outcropping between himself and the worst of the damage.  The majority of the bridge crew were less fortunate.  Anyone in the direct line of fire was eviscerated, by errant shells, or by the vast cloud of metallic debris.

The Agincourt rattled as the assailing craft passed by overhead at Mach one, and the sonic boom mixed with the deafening roar of North Carolina's guns.  Without the blast shields, there was nothing left to block out the external din of vicious ship to ship combat.

Minos pulled himself to his feet, staring out the gaping hole that had once been the front of Agincourt's island structure.  Rain, smoke, and steam poured in through the breach, carried by the stiff winds of the storm.

Minos stood for a moment, utterly dazed, before clawing his way forward to the weapons console.  He paused to shove a dead officer out of the chair, before seating himself, and securing the safety straps over his shoulders.

It only took Minos a moment to find the controls for the deck gun, and link them to the station's joystick.  He scanned the horizon desperately as he worked, at last catching sight of his target.  As he had expected, the craft was inbound for another pass, at subsonic speeds.

Minos grinned, his hair whipped into a wild shape, his eyes bloodshot.  As the SeaHawk closed, coming ever closer to the range of the deck gun, he shouted out into the storm with all the rage he could pour into his lungs.

"COME ON THEN!  I'LL CUT OFF YOUR WINGS YET YOU RED BASTARD!"





Once again the Arsenal Ship loomed to the fore of the canopy.  Fyrenn kept the throttle at a considerably lower setting, rather than opting for a high speed flyover.  He flicked the cover off the flight control's omnidirectional hat-switch, and pressed several buttons on his central console, connecting the gun's gimbal controls to the smaller input surface.

"Target acquired."

The red Gryphon's right index talon hung over the trigger, mere millimeters away from the brightly colored plastic housing as sea and sky flashed past at hundreds of miles per hour.  As the Arsenal ship came into range, Fyrenn hissed, and fixed his eyes firmly on the bridge.

"This one's for Sonya."

His subconscious mind processed the series of flashes almost before the nerve impulses had finished firing completely.  The Agincourt's deck gun erupted in a blaze of rapid fire, painting the sky around the SeaHawk bright yellow with tracer shell trails.

Virtually without conscious thought, Fyrenn flipped the fighter into a tight barrel roll, and pulled back on the throttle, shedding more speed abruptly.

As the jet reached the apex of its vertical path, inverted, time seemed to slow to a crawl.

Fyrenn's eyes fixed firmly on his target.  Minos stared up at him from his seat on the shambles of Agincourt's bridge, screaming vindictively as he held the trigger in on his own weapon.  The deck gun's shells screamed past mere inches from the SeaHawk's left wing, casting Fyrenn and Neyla's vengeful expressions in a lurid, hellish, fearful light.

"Target Engaged."

As the red Gryphon pulled back on his own trigger, and massaged the joystick's hat switch to rotate the weapon gimbals, he watched Minos' expression turn from triumph, to rage, and then at long last, to abject terror.

And then the red Gryphon watched as five thousand rounds of unforgiving tungsten steel carbide hit home, reducing Minos' skull, and upper torso to nothing more substantive than a fine mist.

The SeaHawk whipped over the Agincourt's island structure, still inverted, bringing the canopy within less than an inch of the ship's highest protruding point.  As soon as the craft was finally clear, Fyrenn flipped the jet back into level flight, and accelerated upwards towards the low hanging clouds.

He offered Neyla a short, satisfied grin in the rearview mirror.

"Target destroyed."





"Sir, lookout reports that the Agincourt's bridge structure just went up!  Said a large fighter aircraft made two low passes and shredded the forward portions of the island structure!"

The TAO nodded, and gestured forward sharply with one hand.

"Now or never!  Helm;  Hard starboard, cut across their bow and go to full reverse thrust until all-stop!  Weps;  Standby for full main-battery broadside on enemy target!  Tell CIC to focus on the enemy bridge, we are going to ram our shells down their throat, and we are sending them to the bottom this time, so help me *God!*"

The helmsman spun his rudder wheel vigorously, and placed one hand preemptively on the engine controls.

"Hard starboard and cut across the enemy's bow, aye!"

The weapons operator tapped at his console and conversed quietly with the CIC, before glancing over his shoulder to make his report.

"CIC reports that we're ready and aimed!  Awaiting final fire command!"

A tense moment of relative calm descended on the bridge.  The overall roar of battle had long since been rationalized, accepted, and mostly ignored by the officer's brains.  Compared to the previous frenzy, the moment was more or less silent.

The Agincourt swung into view on the starboard side holo-windows, an enormous gray misshapen lump without a bow, set ablaze in several locations, and listing slightly to one side.  The acting Captain held his right hand up, breathless in anticipation of the opportune moment.

The helmsman abruptly shoved the throttle quadrant into the full-reverse position, generating screams of protest from North Carolina's mainline structural supports.  The bridge crew reflexively braced as inertia pushed them forward, and the deck angled downwards for a brief moment.

After another three seconds, the vessel stabilized, and the helmsman nodded.  The TAO dropped his hand, and shouted at the top of his lungs.

"FIRE!"

The Battleship rocked to port as her main battery went to work once more, showering the front of the Arsenal Ship with a lethal spray of superheated hypersonic rare earth metals.  The barrage was perfectly aimed, and immaculately timed.

Without good angles on her armor, and given the immense structural damage to the front of her island, the Agincourt was as prepared for the onslaught as tissue paper for a mortar shell.

The front of the ship peeled away in a gruesome fireball.  The few survivors on the crew were instantly reduced to ash as the superheated gases expanded into the vessel's corridors, cooking them to the deck where they stood.

The second volley fully penetrated the island, obliterating everything down to the core of the Arsenal Ship with the merciless fury of Newton's laws unbound.  The third, and final volley split the Agincourt's heart itself.

The shells lodged in the reactor casing, turning the nuclear material, coolant, and casing into a momentary miniature super nova.  North Carolina listed and crabbed sharply to port as Agincourt vanished into an expanding fireball, the once mighty vessel reduced to chunks no bigger than sawdust on the wind.

North Carolina's bridge erupted into cheers, shouts, applause and piercing whistles.  The TAO smiled, and collapsed into the nearest empty seat, exhaling sharply.  The celebratory moment was cut short almost instantly.  A series of shrill tones sounded, and the LADAR officer snapped his head around to read the telemetry on his console.

He glanced up, and his face turned stark white with fear.

"Sir...  The sub just surfaced and opened all VLS and torpedo hatches.  We're being painted with fire control LADAR."

A moment of silence passed.  There was nothing more to be said.  Every man and woman on the bridge, and manning the CIC, knew that the Battleship was no match for the submarine in her crippled state.  A single well placed missile volley would obliterate the entire island structure, effectively killing the Battleship where she lay.

The LADAR officer glanced back at his panel, and the TAO winced, bracing himself for the grim news.  To his surprise, the officer's voice bore a strong note of shock, and tellingly, a tinge of hope.

"Sir! We have a new contact entering the battle zone!"





The Columbia exploded through the surface of the ocean, breaching with enough force to bring nearly a third of the destroyer out of the water.  Before the vessel had even fully stabilized, her fore railgun lit off, pouring a stream of merciless fire into the Retribution's conning tower.

The Destroyer had arrived on Retribution's rear port quarter, placing them at a perfect angle to exploit the submarine's weakest points for all they were worth.  The Retribution's crew barely had time to comprehend the arrival of the new combatant, before another devastating hail of railgun rounds punctured the tower fully, killing everyone on the bridge where they stood.

Flames erupted from every port and hatchway in the superstructure as fire consumed several decks of internal space.  The Columbia's VLS tubes sprang to life next, dispatching a swarm of short range ship-to-ship warheads.

North Carolina's crew lost no time in taking advantage of the situation.  By the time the missiles had reached the apex of their trajectory, the Battleship's Helios gun was trained, and loaded.

Columbia fired again and again as her missiles impacted.  Shells flew from the destroyer, and shells flew from the Battleship, turning the submarine into the middle layer of a lethal sandwich of high velocity ordinance.

Retribution had been designed as a command and control submarine.  Her only combat advantages were stealth, and surprise.  Lacking those, she was little more than a target drone for the besieging warships.

No thought was given to quarter, or suggesting terms of surrender.

The North Carolina, and the Columbia, continued to fire until long after the onslaught of missiles and railgun rounds had shredded the submarine.  The two ships continued to bombard the debris field until what remained of the enemy vessel was reduced to parts small enough to float on their own buoyancy.





As the light show went on below, Fyrenn allowed himself a wide smile.

"Now isn't that a beautiful sight."

The red Gryphon glanced in his rearview mirror, and nodded slowly as he throttled back.

"The ECM field should be down.  See if you can raise Atlantic Naval command."

Neyla fiddled with her panel for a moment, dialing in several frequencies in turn, before glancing up, and returning the nod.

"I have a signal from the Norfolk Naval Air Station."

Fyrenn's grin widened, and he tapped his headset to cycle over to the appropriate channel, before speaking once more.

"Mayday Mayday Mayday.  Norfolk Naval Air Station; Flight of one SeaHawk, designator Lightning One, attached to North Carolina Battlegroup at three four point three five, by negative seven five point two one.  Requesting any and all possible support.  Crippled aircraft in low fuel situation, two friendly vessels with extreme critical damage, and one ship down."

After several seconds, a young female voice issued forth from the Gryphons' headsets.

"Lightning One, this is Norfolk Naval Air Station.  Patching you through to Northcom Atlantic Fleet center, and passing on your report, please standby."

Fyrenn chuckled, and inclined his head.

"Understood Norfolk but be advised, if we have to wait too long, we'll be making a very wet landing."

A minute and a half of silence passed before the next radio call came in.  A gruff older male voice piped through the headsets without prelude.

"Lightning One, this is Admiral Jethrin, North Atlantic Fleetcom.  We are dispatching Light Carrier Appalachian, Destroyer Raleigh, and two combat service tenders to your location.  I understand you're bingo-fuel at this time?"

Fyrenn tapped his microphone, and nodded as he spoke.

"That would be affirmative sir. Less than ten percent onboard and dropping.  This craft has no VTOL capacity.  Columbia's aft deck is too short to take us, and North Carolina has lost her rear receiving mechanism.  How shall we proceed?"

After a pause, Admiral Jethrin came back on the comm.  His tone was slightly skeptical, but he voiced his suggestion nonetheless.

"Lightning one;  Appalachian has been transiting from duty off the southern tip of Florida, to provide late action reinforcement.  My LADAR controllers say that based on your position report, you are sixty miles due north of her.  Can you make that distance?  If not, you are advised to bail out and await SAR."

The red Gryphon chuckled, and inclined his head as he tapped his microphone once more.

"Well...  Conventional wisdom says no.  But I'm game to give it a shot, for kicks."