Phantom Menace

Posted on Sun 17th Jun, 2018 @ 1:01pm by Lieutenant Colonel Brooklyn Wellington

568 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Brushfires

The Orion sat in a newly acquired U-shaped Fringe Class Heavy Fighter that had been modified. Scars marked the body under the black fight suit. He had been a solider once before being fatally wounded by Starfleet in a battle. Unable to continue to be a soldier, he had turned his attention to being a starfighter pilot. He had heard of the skill of these Starfleet Pilots based at this Starbase Vanguard and like all true warriors, he wanted to test their skills first hand--and make liars out of them as his fighter, cloaked among the stars picked up two Starfleet fighters on a CAP. The Orion smiled--there would soon be blood in the water.

***

Wellington sighed as she entered the flight deck control room. Most of the room housed equipment and personnel assigned to the assignment of fighters and support craft on the flight deck. The other section monitored local space traffic to allow a quicker reaction time than from Station Operations. Wellington wasn't looking forward to her dinner with her family and the day had been a long one so far.

Soon, a burst of panicked comm traffic broke her from her thoughts. "Knight Seven to Control, I have an inbound--"

"Control to Knight Seven, say again your last. Control to Knight Seven, please..." the young woman's voice drifted off as she stared at the sensor readout at her terminal. Knight Seven had been destroyed.

"Shit!" came the comm traffic from Knight Seven's wingman, Knight Four. "Bandit came out of no--" Knight Four's comm went dead as sensors indicated his fighter was destroyed as well.

"What the hell is going on?" Wellington demanded as she walked briskly over to the station.

The young petty officer at the station shrugged in disbelief. "Knights Seven and Four have been..."

"I know that! Who attacked them?" Wellington demanded.

"I don't know, ma'am. Sensor logs barely showed another contact and then it disappeared again," the petty officer replied.

"Launch the alert fighters. Find out who is out there and terminate them," Wellington commanded.

"Aye ma'am," the petty officer replied, her hands tapping several commands into her terminal before giving the command for the alert fighters to launch.

Wellington could visualize the controlled chaos that was occurring on the flight deck at the moment as the alert fighters launched, with their backups being placed into launch position. She watched the sensor screen as the two Valkyrie Class fighters from the Black Knight Squadron approached the site where Knights Four and Seven had been destroyed.

"Knight Two to Control. Only seeing debris out..." the pilot was cut off as the sensor contact on his fighter disappeared.

"There's a bandit inbound! Came out of nowhere..." came the panicked voice of Knight Six before being silenced.

"Dammit!" Anger now raged within Wellington as she paced behind the petty officer.

"Incoming encrypted message, ma'am," the petty officer reported.

The voice of the Orion pilot came through. "I thought the pilots of this starbase were supposed to be good. You are hardly entertaining but I will continue to kill any you send out...if you are brave enough to enter as you humans say...shark infested waters."

That was enough for Wellington as she stormed off to the turbolift. "Ma'am? Where are you going? the petty officer turned in her seat and asked, looking pale.

"Shark hunting, petty officer," Wellington replied sternly, entering the turbolift.


TBC...

 

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