From where I was sitting I could see past a still unconscious serviceman on some sort of medical drip pumping him full of luminous yellow **** which cast a dim glow over him and his neighbour, a n obvious fluke survivor. A boy, barely out of his teens. You could tell the sort, he was meekly slumped back in his seat, harness loosely buckled and he was stuck in a cross between a soft high pitched mumbling and gassing for breath on the verge of breaking down into tears.
Irrelevant, I’d seen hundreds like him over the years and you either hack it or you don’t. Anyway I was more interested in the view behind them, through the now rapidly moving shuttles window I could see the sun falling back behind Rosewood as we pulled up away from it. Of the three main equatorial continents I could only see East Angelica and most of it was on fire. I was still thinking of the victory parade at the end of the century war when the internal comm. Piped up; “Brace for max Q, repeat brace for max Q” Standard procedure was to tighten harness and straps to prevent flying around like a lottery ball when any ship punches full sub-light engines, I just did my belt up tight and started to nod off again............. Except the young private at that point, started screaming at the top of his lungs: “THEY’RE HERE THEY’RE FOLLOWING US! FOR F*CK SAKE GET US OUT OF HERE” I woke back up with a start, a grizzled Sergeant under one of my Captains, the last of his platoon in fact unstrapped himself and made a move to obviously help the lad get some sleep early. I smiled and once again started to close my eyes when the shuttle did sharp 180 roll and dived still at speed. The Sergeant was flung headfirst into the screaming minor and broke the poor lads jaw with his shoulder. “What the hell is going on I thought?” As if to answer my query the combat shuttles pilot over the comm replied “Hostile fighters eighty kilometres out closing fast, they’re trying to cut us off” At that we seemed to level out, the Sergeant regained his balance, rubbed his shoulder, and knocked out the young lad with a well placed head-butt. In a deep west Angelican accent (a mix between cockney and West Country if you can imagine such horror) “Apologies for the boys conduct sir, I’ll appraise the situation” He was trying to reassure me or show some sort of leadership in front of the men, but he didn’t know jack about exo-atmospheric combat as far as I knew, besides I wanted to see myself. “Sergeant take a seat, I’ll find out myself, and thanks for keeping the noise down.” He seemed taken aback by my formality but I didn’t care I was already on my feet and using the overhead rails to get some stability as I made my way to the cockpit.
The cockpit was large enough to hold two pilots sitting next to each other, the two pilots in question were Major Carter who I’d worked with before and a young co-pilot. My arrival wasn’t noticed until I spoke up. “How’re we doing Carter?” not looking around Major carter replied with a hurried calmness that serving with the Royal Aerospace Force seemed to drill into its officers. “James nice to see you , forgive the short welcome, We’ve two enemy interceptors , they’ll be on us in less than half a minute, I’ve broadcast a general alert to the ships still breaking atmosphere” I thought back to the Tank Carrier, the CCL-180 wouldn’t have a chance. “Any support in the area besides the Victoria?” I was getting edgy now, we’d lost the airfield on the planet’s surface, and any pilots still trying to get to VTOL craft as we left were probably subjected to the Neutron Artillery that had us zeroed when the shuttle picked us up in the first place. As we pitched towards the planet again I could make out the shapes of the two troopships and the CCL-180 which was limping along debris flaking off where it had lost its rear port exhaust. High pitched rapid alerts filled the shuttle as the two Interceptors streaked overhead and made a beeline for the Tank Carrier. Both the craft were about sixteen feet long, angular, narrow and had a silvery black sheen to them. “****” I said blankly as one of them loosed three missiles towards the carrier they were a good fifteen 5 Kilcks away, silhouetted against the burning continent of East Angelica, and for what seemed like at least an age the missiles tore through empty space, finally tearing into the starboard side of the utility ship. A violent explosion rocked the craft causing it to roll around its keel bringing the two exposed Merlin heavy tanks into view, smaller explosions rippled throughout the ship causing the Tanks to break away tumbling helplessly through space. A few seconds space and then giving up a final sigh of defeat the CCL-180 erupted into a massive fireball as its fuel store ignited. “**** indeed,” Major Carter responded with despair, I agreed at first with what I thought was a response to the fireball, but then I noticed what the Flyboy had seen with his RAF flight path foresight. The blast had thrown the two Merlins wildly towards the two Troopships. The two enemy birds still in tight formation had vectored towards the heavy transports and were lining up for an attack run when over the ship-to-ship “##YDAY MAYDAY” the muffled screams of about a hundred and sixty service personnel were audible in the background even through the panic stricken pilot chatter. The transmission cut-off as in the distance one of the heavy tanks tore into the command deck, no more than the size of a modular habitation unit, about six foot by three the much larger tank burrowed into the Troopship from bow to stern. We all waited for it to emerge from the other side but nothing happened, the Transporters engines simply died and it just hung there drifting along lazily. At this point the two bogies opened up on the remaining Transporter, raking it with gunfire, they passed over it, rolled and banked, turned, and repeated.