Empyrean Iris Story Collection

Stalemate

"Commander be advised, more Burg ships have appeared from warp."

"Shit, how many."

"I uh....they don't know sir, but they say it has to be an entire fleet."

"Damn it." The darkfire banked a hard right and began angling upwards. McCaster did his best to get information on the battle proceeding above their heads, though most of the information was garbled and confused.

The dogfight above the Gromm city hadn't lasted more than a few minutes, and while there were still burg drones about, the commander clearly trusted the other pilots to take care of this mess.

They had lost three jets over the course of the battle, which was a surprisingly expensive ad large percentage of their flight budget in the UNSC, of course he ws sure the commander was less worried about the monetary cost as much as he was worried about the cost of lives.

Six pilots dead, and more sure to follow.

McCaster's stomach dropped back against his spin as the commander cut the jet engines and switched to fusion. The switch was so quick that he only had a momentary feeling of free fall before they were rocketed back skyward cutting through the atmosphere and breaking into the dark reaches of space, the eggshell blue of the sky fading about them until darkness and the vast universe beyond unfolded before them.

A universe that was now besieged by silent explosions and eruptions of short lived fire immediately snuffed by the vacuum of space. Debris flew in all directions, and even the commander was having a hell of a time keeping from exploding cutting this way and that, pulling maneuvers that shouldn't have been possible slicing between two parallel pieces of floating metal so close that McCaster could see the individual rivets running down its silver length.

Cutting past that, the commander pulled down bringing them in a stomach churning dive before moving back upwards, pressing them back into their seats.

Ahead of them chaos was unloading, the GA on one side and the burg on the other. Ordinance flew back and forth, and, as they watched, stuck and unable to do anything to help, one of the burg ships cut around from the side and tagged one of the UNSC vessels, with a round straight to the port side.

There was a silent explosion, fire ripped through the inside of the hull as oxygen was quickly consumed. The ship listed heavily to one side.

"Fuck! Who was that! Get me a casualty report NOW!" The commander ordered.

McCaster rushed to do as told, but was having trouble with all the comms interference. As they watched, little pods began breaking away from the ailing ship, most of them coming from the breached decks as panicked crew-members fled to the escape pods.

One escape pod was completely annihilated by a passing piece of debris, popping like a popcorn kernel does in a microwave, ripping open and sending bodies flipping like rag-dolls out into the vastness.

McCaster grew sick just thinking about what dying like that would have felt like. Freezing to death as all the glasses slowly boiled from your blood. He hoped that they were all to dead to think about what had happened to them.

"That was the UNSC Esperanca, commander. Captain Silva is not responding, and all coms to the bridge crew have been cut. GA rescue teams are being dispatched casualties are estimated in the hundreds."

"Shit, shit, shit." The man continued to cure wildly, "Radio in to the harbinger."

"Yes sir."

He connected the coms link so the commander could speak freely, though he was rather concerned about the man's ability to fly and talk at the same time.