Atk. Butterfly - Rust Bucket

Our ship was still cut off from our port, but at least the odds were better. It was then only five to one. The aliens were still in hot pursuit, but we were out of range. That was when I was called back to the bridge.

“Well, we’ve done something I guess, but how do we get out of this?” the acting Captain asked.

I replied, “We don’t for the time being. We take them on a merry chase through this solar system and look for opportunities to chip away at them. If we can manage to get two more of them off our tail, then we should attack.”

“Attack three of them? Are you crazy?” he asked.

I answered, “Not at all. Our gunners are good enough to take out one or two of them on the first pass. By then, they’ll be so frightened of us, we’ll be chasing them.”

“What kind of opportunities are we looking for?” he asked.

I said, “Anything that looks dangerous. Find an asteroid field or a comet tail and we’ll make them wish they’d never seen us before. Just tell me when one of the pilots spots something he considers dangerous. I’ll give you my suggestions then. If you don’t like them, you can always ignore them, especially since we’re out of range.”

He considered what I said, then nodded before waving me away. For my own part, I was glad that those conversations were taking place on the bridge where they were continually recorded. If nothing else, I made sure that the recorders were always functioning on the bridge. After all, Frank wasn’t always on duty.

It was about six hours later when I was called to the bridge and told that we were approaching an asteroid field picked up on our long range sensors.

I said, “Good! Have Frank take over as pilot. He’ll know how to handle this from the pilot’s seat of responsibility. Have your other pilots observe him so that they’ll know how to use this in the future. I’ll put on the best gunners. With luck, we’ll take out two, maybe three, of the enemy ships. Then we’ll go after them and chase them back to where they belong.”

“Are you sure?” he asked with a very frightened look on his face.

I replied, “I’m sure that we’re not going to survive unless we take them out. Sooner or later, they’ll wise up and call for reinforcements to cut us off and surround us. We either take them out now or face even more of them later.”

I guess my last statement convinced him. As with the other officers before him, he wasn’t thinking things through. The enemy was only winning when they got the odds in their favor. Here we were, easy to get odds against. Our captain wasn’t thinking about the fact that the enemy had reinforcements closer than we did. The acting Captain called for Frank to take over and the other pilots to gather round. I left the bridge and started putting the best gunners on every gun station. I called back to the bridge about two minutes later to let Frank know that we were ready. Our gunners were briefed on what to do. Hopefully, we could convince the enemy that we had taken hits and half our weapons were out of action. Then when we presented the inactive side, I expected the enemy ships to flock close to that side and we’d then give them a surprise.

We approached the asteroid field and changed course so that we weren’t going into it. Instead, we were staying on the edge of it with only one side of our ship facing all five enemy ships. No matter what happened, Frank maneuvered so that the same guns were always in firing position against the enemy until we convinced them that we were hurt. With our turning maneuver, the enemy was able to change course and cut down the gap between us and them so that both sides were more or less just within effective firing range again. Frank started his maneuvers while we kept up a steady rate of fire. He looped and shifted sideways, jinking the ship but always keeping the same one side of the ship facing the enemy. We must have kept that up for almost five minutes before we reached a point that Frank judged was just right to make it appear like we had to leave our position or be destroyed by the asteroids.

Frank announced over the speakers, “Leaving the asteroids. Enemy ships taking up pursuit. Be ready on command to open up with everything.”

We all waited for the enemy ships to get into position on our supposedly blind side while two of them tried to keep us busy on our good side at very long range. Frank waited until the other three ships were tightly together, then hit the reverse thrusters so that we suddenly dropped speed. We came alongside the three enemy ships with our bad side blazing away at them before they were quite ready. It was almost impossible for us to miss as they were in tight together and unable to maneuver without colliding into each other. Only one of them was able to turn away as we successfully destroyed one target and saw the other suffer heavy damage from the debris and our firepower. By then, the other two ships were trying to close the gap now that we had attacked. We dropped speed again, creating an angle of fire for them that let some of their own shots hit on the damaged enemy vessel to complete the job of destroying it.

We, on the other hand, weren’t idle. We took advantage of our new position behind the enemy to cross the ‘T’, as the old sailing ships of Earth used to do, right behind the engines of the two approaching enemy vessels. We managed to give them both hot enemas, leaving them both disabled in space without engine power. With them unable to maneuver, the remaining undamaged enemy ship took off suddenly as it realized that the battle was even. We recrossed the ‘T’ behind the two disabled vessels, pummeling them with more fire, highly accurate fire since we didn’t have to do any evasive maneuvers because they couldn’t hit us back. One enemy ship ruptured from stern to bow and the other went silent completely as our shots skewered both ships, depriving them of an atmosphere.

Then Frank took up the chase on the escaping vessel that made the mistake of running in the direction we wanted to go ourselves, namely towards our port, though we were several days away from it. We had slightly more speed than the enemy vessel had, probably due to better maintenance and the few hits we managed to get on the other ship before it pulled away. Even with our better speed, we weren’t catching up to it easily. It was going to be a long chase, I could see. I started letting some of the other gunners take the positions for awhile so that our best gunners could get some rest. I went up to the bridge where the sudden change in our situation had become infectious among everyone there. They were urging the scheduled pilot, who had just relieved Frank of the controls, to do his best to catch up to the last enemy ship. I stood beside the acting Captain who actually smiled for the first time and put his hand on my shoulder in a friendly manner.

“You were right. We could take them. Will we catch this one?” he asked, no longer afraid.

I said, “I’d like to see us make it a clean sweep. If we do, then that’s one less trick that the enemy will know how to do. Frank, what do you think he’ll try to do? Slingshot around a planet?”

Frank answered, “Yeah, Dave. You thinking about doing it from the other side?”

“Why not? It works real well on pirates. These aliens aren’t any better. Just more of them is all or there were a while ago,” I said, getting a lot of smiles from others on the bridge who overheard my comment.

Frank went over to the pilots and explained the maneuver so that when the enemy ship tried to pull it, whichever of our pilots was at the controls would know what to do. I left the bridge and notified all the gunners about what to expect, reminding them to start shooting the moment they saw the enemy ship in range, no matter what gun station they had.