Prep The Birds To Fly

Posted on Fri Sep 29th, 2017 @ 6:47am by

689 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Unknown Life, Unknown Dangers
Location: Hanger Bay Briefing Room

Zan returned to the Hanger Bay where he assembled the pilots, he was still coming to terms with the orders handed to him but understood very well why they had to happen. Already engineering teams were gathering around the fighters to fit the weapon mounts, much to the ground crews annoyance. He walked into the briefing room where the other pilots gathered. "Alright, I'll get right down to it because this is going to be one for the books."

He watched the pilots sit and get comfortable, confused expressions on faces all round.

"After some discussion, command authority believe that the only way to bring our current situation to an end is to deploy the fighters to surgically strike the starboard nacelle strut where the vast majority of this thing is housed." Zan was not in the least surprised to hear shock and questioning glances on the pilots.

"Alright, alright settle down." Zan said with his hands up to calm people down. "Look, it sucks, but the ACEO just presented this to the Commodore and me and the Commodore approved it." Zan showed them the same presentation data James did.

"Sir, our fighters can't get through ship armour this thick, our craft are fighter superiority birds, not anti capital bombers."

"I know, which is why as we speak Engineering has teams outfitting each of our birds with under wing mounts for full size quantum torpedoes from the ships magazines." Zan replied. "Now before you say, I know thats a lot of weight to sling to a fighter. Which is why we will be sitting in our fighters while they are loaded. In light of the weight they will be mounted in Zero-G."

"Handling is going to suck."

"Yes it is, but we are not fighting other birds. We will slowly exit the hanger and take up position. The ship has 30cm's of armour all over it, so we will use micro munitions to get through it and the hull plating." Zan changed the view to the ships internals. "This, is our target. The nacelle brace." Zan zoomed in. "This is the spine of the strut, we need to sever that using the full sized munitions. Now let me make this clear, lets not get trigger happy about it. This is attached to the rest of the ships critical internals. We mess this up and we risk damage to the ship in ways we really don't want."

Zan flicked over to the simulation program James provided. "Once we expose the brace, we will engage it one weapon at a time. This thing is built to hold the ship together, it will take a beating and I have reloads on standby should we need them so lets not rush this." Zan had to ensure the gravity of this part was clear. "This element of the mission is the most critical. Engineering has already sealed off everything from the nacelle, our weapons fire has to be accurate and not go above this line."

Zan drew the same line James did. "This line is holding what ever it is attacking the ship behind it. There is a door that has sealed off that section all the way to the nacelle. We can't go above it, if we do then we risk what ever it is, getting out and endangering the ship more than it already has."

Zan paused as he heard the mumbles and views of the pilots. "Listen, I know this is not normal, firing on our home never sits right with anyone but if we pull this off we will save a lot of lives." He could see that didn't sit well as he'd hoped. "Get prep'ed, we are going to be sitting in our birds for about 90 minutes while they rig our planes, get some rest and remember that we are doing this to save people."

Zan watched as the pilots stood up and filtered out of the room, he didn't envy any of them for what they were about to do and knew he'd have to make the first shot if they were going to go through with this.

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