Phoenix Wings

[Soul Reaper]

beep..beep..beep beep beep beep

"Frak."

The missile alarm was was screaming at Kyle, tirelessly beeping to make sure he knew that death was but a single mistake away. He saw yet another asteroid lazily floating in space -just like the other hundreds of thousands in Tau 23- and turned his ship towards it, launching countermeasures and rolling to the right whilst spinning around the thing..the missiles impacted, detonating on the asteroid's surface, harmless...until several large energy bursts hit the asteroids while tracking Kyle, turning it into fragments of molten rock-juice. The Ranseur was always there with its impossible range that encompassed the entire battle.

Kyle's hands were a blur on the control sticks and surfaces, his Nyx rolling, turning, doing flips and high-G spins around asteroids, evading the angry red tachyon bolts sizzling a hairbreadth away from his hull, his shields never had a chance to charge up.

"Frak frak frak, where the frak are you Jackson!?"
"Coming up on your four right now, hold on."

The large skirmish had started when Intel had picked up a possible heavy patrol consisting of Storta-class destroyer and several snubs that were at the edge of the 23 asteroid belt. The heavy patrol turned out to be a Ranseur and a support Storta along with several snub-craft. Kyle's wing was joined with two others of the 49th, a total of two skirmish wings consisting of Nyxes and a single bomber wing had engaged the Outcast combat group. Backup was on it's way, the Athena and Asteria had been deployed and even the Vanguard Olympia had sniffed out the emergency call as well, all three cruisers were en route to the combat zone, but it would be a while till they got there. In the meanwhile, the fighter combat had split into several groups, and in the unfortunate outcome, Kyle had been caught alone against 3 Sabres, drifting a bit away from the Ranseur yet still in its weapons range.

Kyle was running out of asteroids.

"Got you, weapons hot."
"About time."
"Nuke them on the asteroid."

Craig Jackson, Eagle, had arrived just in time and unleashed a wall of firepower from his Nyx with pinpoint accuracy, Kyle had dropped several mines on the asteroid he was spinning around, as they detonated on the surface, the explosions caught one of the now-unshielded Sabres and turned it into a radiating glob of molten metal. At that point Kyle clicked off his engines and maneuvered to do a 180 degree turn, then slammed on his engine and thruster controls, accelerating from a negative speed relative to his direction to full velocity, under half a second. He didn't mind the Gs pounding him into his seat or the shots that blistered his hull and heated up the cockpit, all he needed was a few direct shots. Kyle flipped a switch, the extra shield batteries depleted themselves as they charged the shield back on, giving Kyle enough time to squeeze his trigger to shoot a volley of shots and launch a mine while thrusting head on into the Sabres. The time had been short, the speed was high, but not fast enough to escape the mine's detonation, Kyle's shields went down instantly and more high-powered shots blasted onto his hull, several parts of his Nyx bubbling as the armor was evaporated, alarms blared in his cockpit.

But he got what he wanted, coupled with the mine and his volley of fire, one of the Sabres had been heavily damaged, Eagle had finished him a second later. But one of the Sabres was still flying, only lightly damaged with its shields down. The Outcast turned around, ignoring Eagle's fire, focused only on Kyle, whose Nyx had one of its engines shut down, a reactor leak and almost half of the armor burnt off. Not much of a problem if under a non-combat situation, though that wasn't the case. But the Nyx would keep up, it was designed to keep its speed under any situation. Kyle rolled to the side and thrusted foward, starting a spin around an asteroid, the Sabre was nowhere to be seen, the shots he had predicted coming from his six weren't there. Jackson's voice piped through comm line, he was yelling.

"Swerve away, he's in your face!!"

But it was too late. Time slowed down for Kyle as the Sabre appeared in front of him, coming around the asteroid, its weapons lit with a hellish glow. They were almost at point-blank range heading for each other at terminal velocity. At this range, the Outcast wouldn't even need to aim, Kyle could see the grin on the pilot's face. It was over.

Until a bright red light appeared behind the Sabre, a blast of Razor plasma burned through armor, hull, reactor. The ship started to disintegrate just as Kyle's Nyx slammed into it, he crashed forward and hit the top of the cabin, his world went black.

***

Beep...beep...beep...beep...

Kyle was counting the heart-monitor's consistent beeping, he was at 672, he probably would stop trying soon. He had woken up in the Hades' med-bay, the last thing he remembered was Death incarnated as a Sabre, his scythe in his hands, Krakens, and ready to take Kyle to the other world. Or that's how Kyle would be telling the story in order to make it sound cool, he was still working on the details.

Craig had visited him, promptly telling how much of a retard Kyle was before thanking him for the free kills and then wishing him a quick recovery. Cheeky bastard. The battle had been won from Craig's description of the battle, the trio of cruisers came in at the last second and leveled down the opposition, they had won the fight, but at the cost of a wing, Kyle had been extremely lucky. The doctor had come in to tell him that he'd broken his leg somehow as well as fracturing his skull, but he'd have a full recovery and would be back in the cockpit soon.

He hated the med-bay, mostly since he was always in bandages whenever he was there and had nothing to do except talk with doctors and nurses who just kept on blabbering about being more careful, the last one had left half an hour ago. Kyle was fidgeting with a holo-projector, switching from news channel to news channel.

The door opened, and he saw Susie almost rush in, a worried look on her face. Kyle's smile was priceless.

---

User was banned for: http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=114477
Time left: (Permanent)