Beyond Sol

Chapter 13M

Proximity alarms went off, the echo and rumble of the hell of 17 inch guns shaking the sea itself. "Horizon team, cleared for launch, go get 'em." Alex Zukkers, still aboard the HWSC Event Horizon called, monitoring through the clearing clouds above.
The Aurora subdivision team simply jettisoned out of the way via RCS, leaving even more ice in the water. Shouldn't be a problem...right? With the Aurora ships out of the way, burning structural frames fell out of the sky, rogue missiles detaching into the sea.
The front ZXC's lit their nuclear's, taking off from the wavy seas. Line by line the crafts rose into the air, creating a true military sight. "Line 982, go go." An Aurora ship called, the Spectrum lighting its dumbfounded nuclears, skimming over the water.
"Muhammed, strap in idiot." I glanced over, pulling back on the stick.
"Oh." He pulled his harness over, strapping himself to the seat.
"Just don't kill us, Carter." Amelia shut her eyes, deeply inhaling.
"I'll try my best." I pulled up farther, matching the AOA of the similar ships around me.
"ZXC line 982, level off, break formation." Alex called. I swung the stick forward, dropping below the main lines of craft. I slammed the throttle to full, passing by the arrays of ZXC's, slowly bundling into a clump rather than a wave.
"Horizon team, expect autonomous jet deployment." 
"Autonomous fucking what now?" Eliza perked up at the message, peeking her head upfront. In a split second, thousands of TFA-75 like jets whizzed by, the sudden lurching of the Spectrum as it was caught in the slipstream, followed by the deployment of our own.
They barrel rolled and such before passing over the naval fleets, a few thousand feet below, flying right into the Aesons approaching airspace, distracting the...thousand Ixtals, that's a shitload, but that's a 20:1 ratio, not bad.
"Horizon team, launch lethals." I radioed, mike dangling just in front of my face on a strung up wire. I turned around to Eliza, our convenient weapons specialist. "Go!" I shouted at her lazy ass, returning to piloting.
"Oh!" She shouted, launching a variety of sidewinder missiles, joining a batch from ships behind. A wall of fire erupted as they struck the nearing Ixtals, a mix of what looked like hydrogen and nitrogen based fuel spreading the fire, all the way until it splashed into the sea.
The Horizon team passed the Ixtals, a full fledged death cloud coming into existence. "Woah! Flares, flares!" I shouted out, waving the stick all around, the Spectrum sort of dancing in the field of oncoming Ixtals.
"Flares!" Eliza called, deploying multiple sets of flares, setting ablaze multiple ships, burning holes of metal shrieking and sizzling from the hell of seventeen inch shells from below.
"Aurora Team is in the air, brace for paratrooper drop." Muhammed engaged the radar shielding on his right hand control panel. As the Spectrum 'drifted' through the air, the sight of 417 VTOL powered ships took off from the sea, ready to reign hell.
"Command to Horizon team, you have another wave closing in on ya, Ixtals and gunners, twelve o'clock low, 21 miles." Alex watched cautiously as the battle unfolded, ships on both sides dropping like flies. The Aurora team flew through like stunt pilots, using some odd pattern on the VTOL coding, cobra-ing their way through the mess of ships, taking off a load while they were at it, impressive for that big of a ship. (Remember, these ships cold take on three Spectrums if they wanted to.)
"Horizon, get on the next wave, your jets are already on their asses." An Aurora pilot ballsy called, slicing through Ixtals like nothing.
"10-4." I panicked, dipping down towards the oncoming wave of Aesons, clinging to the water surface, hundreds of 17 inch shells shredding through them. By the looks of it, they were about to take out the Naval Fleets.
I held down the red button on the top of my stick, fifty calibre rounds firing out the two ring mounted cannons. "Brrt." James monitored the heating of the cannons and airframe on the edge of his seat, or however far he could get in his harness.
"A-10 time ladies and gent's." I continued with the near vertical kamikaze dive mowing down ships with my fellow squadrons until we nearly dived into the water. We pulled up violently metres above the water, crossing just above the Ixtal clump perpendicularly, pulling up twenty degrees some more.
The paratroop based Aurora ships that had followed us dropped their batch moving above the clump, although three hundred metres higher. "Did they drop?!" I shouted, whipping the tail of the ship back around.
"Aurora team, you dumb fucks! Those ships are about to blow!" I eyeballed the rapidly incoming shells from the naval fleet, dumbasses! The shells struck the clumps of Ixtals and gunships, a fireball erupting. I slammed back on the stick, taking on a vertical climb.
"Aaaaaaah!" Amelia yelled, the sudden climb pushing her to the verge of g-lock. A shockwave hit the Spectrum, along with a bombardment of bits of metal shreds, think of a cloudy school day, heavy rain pattering on the ceiling, except your school's foundation is unstable and your whole frame is about to come down.
The Spectrum's power cut out, suddenly free gliding directly upwards. the monitors and screens went dark, the harnesses catching us as we flew forwards. The Spectrum stopped, suddenly falling back towards the sea, flipping onto the nose. "Fuck!" I shouted into my helmet, watching tens of others plunge into the ocean.
Two hundred feet above the sea level the monitors flickered on, engines lighting again. "Oh shit! Is this almost over?!" Muhammed clung to himself, watching the Spectrum violently pull back.
"Far from!" I yelled, the loud rumble from the various life support systems, AC, propulsion...I eyeballed the Aurora fleet pulling away from the main battle above, four o'clock.
"Aurora to Horizon, pull into the crater, it would be nice without them overpowering us!"  Ship 73 called, separating from the main, smoked out battle. Roaring jets of burnt fuel exploded outwards, massive ships flying in and out. only at the reign of two military superpowers.
"That'll kill...too many ships!" Amelia remarked.
"Kill the whole fleet or kill half of it." Alex sipped his coffee obnoxiously, not seeming to care about the brutal war below. Hells, he had a point didn't he? I banked hard left, sending Amelia, Muhammed and James flying into their harness.
"Gently, please!" Amelia cried, shifting back into the centre of her seat as we levelled off. The fleets of ZXC's whizzed by, leaving the Spectrum in some of the worst turbulence you've seen from the wake. I glanced down to the radar, it's working.
"Suck it up Amelia." Eliza kept on targeting the now following, oddly organised groups of cocksucking bastards.
"'Hammed, how's our airspace portside?" I asked, eyeballing the approaching crater wall.
"Obstructed, flocks of birds...things." He snapped his neck over to the fuel gauge, not a ton. "Don't try anything, I'd like to have enough fuel to get home. You know, the place we came from?"
"Yeah, well not everyone can be a hero." I reached down to the centre console, muting the fours mike's. I pulled back, some fifty feet away from the main crater wall, inverting while I was at it. I pulled back as we flew over the rim of the wall, dipping into the lush crater.
The crater was filled with thousands of navigating ships, almost all in pursuit of Aeson-related ships. The Aurora fleet led the 'line,' crossing between the overgrown trees, leading almost three quarters of the Horizon fleet into the ground.
The air around us was swallowed, a popping bang pushing shrubs and leaves off their bases. "Oh shit! What was that?!" I covered my ears, or tried to. The Spectrum was pushed by sudden shockwave, rumbling in the afterwake that it brought.
"That's the Event Horizon!" A lonesome Horizon squadron called in shock.
"I'm sorry what?!" I leaned over to get a better look, god damn. The previous hazy view of the colossal ship turned into a pristine image of a burning structure, collapsing in on itself in the gaps of clouds. Entire ring structures detached from the ship, crashing back in. The ship had started to roll, cooking everyone inside evenly.
"What the hell?! H-How?!" Muhammed shouted, doing some quick 'calculations,' by that I mean just estimating–that it would land directly in the crater.
"It's intentional, it'll take out everything within two hundred clicks, vaporised. It's thirty kilometres long with several nuclear reactors and a 342 wide ion based propulsion system, long story short, keep them preoccupied until it's about to hit, then beeline for the stratosphere." I glanced up at the glass again before redirecting my gaze towards the controls and situation ahead of me.
"Aurora, you're killing us over here!" I 'drifted' the ship around a tree, just behind the Aurora team, funkily messing with the throttles. "The Planetary Protection Program isn't gonna be happy with this!"
"Hush, Carter." Ship 333 muted the line, cocksucker. The crater wall already approached again, the rubble and raging fires alight below. Corrupt bastards. I pulled back over the wall, AETHER suddenly screaming of new bogeys on the horizon. The Aurora and Horizon fleet kept on the nearly vertical climb in hopes of stalling out the Aeson Fleet.
I panted in my seat. I had an option...I went to grab the radio above–I slammed the stick forward, creating a smaller target for the Aeson fleet. It was only later that I regretted this decision, but it saved the operation, didn't it?
I pulled up a foot above the water or so, glancing down at my visual cameras every few seconds, it was working. "Spectrum, what the fuck are you doing?!" Ship 1 called, along with some other Horizon ships.
"Saving your ass, go!" I muted the line, looking over to Muhammed, who stared ahead blankly, almost just accepting the fact that his life was over. I unmuted the crew lines, hells, if I was about to die I'd like to do it with my buddies.
"You dickhead." Eliza chuckled, tearing up. "Oh man, I love you guys, even if you suck."
"I love you guys, man." James shut off his monitor, unlatching his helmet and throwing it behind him. He peeled his head sock off by the mike, tossing it on his lap. His black curled hair was drenched of sweat, enough to fill a pool.
The Spectrum lurched forward as engine 2 cut out, filled with lead abruptly. The metal grate encased alarm went off, I lifted up a small plastic casing over the fire extinguish button, pressing it down.
ENG 2 FIRE EXTINGUISHED, LOCATING REAR ENFORCEMENTS.
What does that mean? I don't know, and I don't think it'll matter. "Hey, someone here is gonna make it out. Tell my family I loved them, I never meant to abandon them." I turned around in my seat, releasing my worn out harness, bands hanging on by a thread.
"I'd rather die here with my best friends than at Sol, I just want the ESA to know to fuck off." Amelia laughed, resting her head back in her seat, taking her helmet and gloves off, brown curled hair up in two buns behind her head, baby face glimmered in sweat.
"Just close your eyes and wait..." I sighed, engaging AETHERS autopilot.