War for the Iron Planet

Chapter 2: The Blue Griffon Fleet

High above Hittania, Admiral Jasken walked onto the Wingspan's bridge, his mag-boots clicking as they kept him anchored to the floor. His command, the Blue Griffon Fleet, consisted of the carrier Wingspan, the gunship Arrowhead and the support ship Ferryman.

One thousand feet in length, the heavily armored Wingspan resembled a massive flying barge, with much of the space dedicated to hangars for the complement of sixty-five fighter craft it carried. Though much of the main deck and the deck below were dedicated to the fighters that rose up onto the deck from hangars below, they also housed most of the crew, the rocket-propelled drive and the faster-than-light "ripmed" drive and other utilities. A command tower rose from the starboard side of the ship. It was ten stories tall, encased in a heavily shielded clear polymer dome and housed the officer's quarters and communications utilities. The bridge was in the uppermost story, overlooking the rest of the ship and able to keep a 360-degree visual of the area around the vessel. In addition to housing flight controls, the bridge could direct an array of heavy ballistic and energy cannons located along the sides of the ship.

The destroyer class gunship Arrowhead was a humbler five hundred feet long, but had a sleeker, more agile design. The bridge emerged towards the pointed nose of the vessel, facing in the same direction as the ship but with viewports that swept back towards the tail for maximum visibility. Though smaller than the Wingspan, the Arrowhead boasted an array of guns that rivaled its fellow, along with its own rocket-propelled and ripmed drives.

The Ferryman reassembled a space station more so than a ship. It was essentially a three hundred foot tall tower with a massive spoked wheel encircling it roughly halfway up the structure. The wheel offered a number of docks for fighters and shuttles, and the spokes were hallways into the main structure for crew and supplies. It housed spare parts for the other ships as well as a dedicated hospital wing to complement the smaller medical facilities aboard the other vessels. While it had its own rocket-propelled drive, it had to dock onto the Wingspan for faster-than-light ripmed jumps.

"Captain Hunt," said Jasken, standing on the bridge of the Wingspan and addressing his second-in-command. "How soon can we get our satellite network fully established?"

"It's going to take a couple weeks, sir," said Hunt, shaking his head. He was a young Human male with close cropped dark hair and thoughtful, intelligent eyes. Jasken had been grooming him to lead his own fleet some day, but, despite his promising talents, it would be some time before the youth was ready for the job. "We can cut that down some but not without sacrificing other projects."

"Cut back what you can. We're sharing the planet with the Ramshackle Collective now, so we need to find their base and/or fleet ASAP."

"Understood, sir."

"Excellent. I'll be making an announcement concerning the Collective's presence shor-" Jasken was suddenly interrupted by an explosion that shook the ship.

"Sooner than I thought!" He finished his interrupted thought and turned to the communications officer.

"Officer Mairen, what are we looking at?"

A kindly-looking gray-haired woman studied a complex array of screens and readouts, tapping her console as she studied the information it was feeding her.

"Two Ramshackle gunships just popped up over the horizon," she said. "They must have launched a guided stealth missile to hit us before we saw them - yes. Anti-stealth scanners show two more headed our way. They're targeting the Wingspan in particular. Deploying countermeasures."