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[img]https://media.indiedb.com/images/games/1/7/6313/SSX_blowing.jpg[/img]
[h1][color=firebrick][b][u]Pursuit[/u][/b][/color][/h1]
[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUrSQNSN6_c](Mood Music)[/url]
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Dearil powered the transport on and flipped through all of the switches the pre-flight called for. He fitted his helmet on and spoke over the ship's intercom, [color=firebrick][b]"Welcome aboard the River Styx. We'll be departing momentarily. Please ensure your helmets are on and your seals are secure as I will be depressurizing the ship prior before take-off. Wouldn't want a piece of space debris puncturing the hull and sucking you all into space now."[/b][/color] Dearil made sure not to finish that sentence with the fact that it happens frequently... An set of inquisitive eyes would easily spot the myriad of welded breach panels all over the walls of the ship's interior. Such things were common in a battle space.

After the pre-flight was complete, Dearil confirmed with his passengers that their helmets were secured before closing the rear ramp and depressurizing the hold. There was a hiss as the air was vented from the ship. Dearil watched on a display as the ship's O2 storage tanks filled. An atmospheric readout showed that internal pressure was nil. He nodded to himself and powered up the engines, the landing gear of the ship leaving the deck of the Hammerhand. [color=firebrick][b]"Hammerhand Tower, this is River Styx. Pre-flight checks completed. Requesting permission to launch. Over."[/b][/color]

[color=white][i]"River Styx. Hammerhand Tower. You are clear to launch. Take egress lane five for five kilometers before breaking to your destination. Over."[/i][/color]

[color=firebrick][b]"Roger, Hammerhand. River Styx launching now, out."[/b][/color] With that, Dearil pushed forward on his throttle. The VTOL engines rotated to be parallel with the ship. They fired, sending loose papers and space dust flying backward in the Hammerhand's hangar. One unlucky deckhand had his bottle of hyperwater sent flying out the air shield hangar's ingress gate. Good thing Dearil already got the money for that one.

The River Styx was a cumbersome beast. As were all Carry-Alls. They weren't meant for fancy aerobatics or high speed. They were heavy lifters, and such instant acceleration would jostle the cargo or the passengers in the hold too much. The power the engines had to put out to get the ship moving at a decent speed was quite high. It also had the tack-on effect that slowing the Carry-All down was just as tough. But once it reached cruising speed, there would be little in its size range that could stop it. Dearil banked the ship right and pulled into the egress lane prescribed to him by the Hammerhand. It was a UEE standard for all ships to have multiple lanes to enter and exit the ship through for non-combative ships. In larger scales, the space between ships would often be cluttered and abuzz with activity. Such lanes prevented avoidable collisions from happening. Dearil had been reprimanded once or twice for accidentally flying into another lane. The lanes were uploaded to the ship's flight computer and projected into the pilot's visor as an AR overlay.

Dearil did his usual line of sight checks, rotating and swiveling his head on his shoulders to find out what was immediately visible to him from the cockpit. He saw the Hammerhand to his right as he flew down his lane, and the Horizon Point station more ahead of him. To his left, Dearil saw the distant destination marker on his HUD denoting the Roanoke, the ship he was posted to. As he flew down the lane and continued to slowly accelerate, Dearil noticed a brief flash of light on Horizon Point station. [color=firebrick][b]"What the..."[/b][/color]

He zoomed in with the HUD on his helmet, the advanced sensors and computers superimposing a window in his immediate field of view of an enlarged picture. The computers worked to enhance the definition of the zoom in, allowing him to see Horizon Point in much greater detail than what his eyes would have allowed. He saw a black scorch mark and debris getting sucked out into space where the flash had been observed. Then he saw another flash- no... an explosion! Then another! And soon all of Horizon Point was breaking up and alight with brief fireballs. The concussive force of the blasts knocked the station off of its orbit, spinning it slightly on its axis as the centrifuge was disrupted and breaking up.

In seconds, Dearil's alarmed were blaring and his comms screen was alight with emergency signals. [color=firebrick][b]"Shit."[/b][/color] he said, gritting his teeth. Not long after, Dearil was receiving orders to divert his flight path to assist in recovery operations, to which Dearil instantly denied. His flight path was going to take him right past Horizon Point, and thus its debris field. He wasn't about to risk the Princess trying to fly through that. He suddenly banked left and broke out of his egress lane to peel straight for the Roanoke. Dearil heard his radio start squawking his callsign like crazy.

[color=white][i]"River Styx, you WILL obey this emergency directive!"[/i][/color]

[color=white][i]"River Styx, you will incur severe penalties if you do not carry out your orders for humanitarian aid."[/i][/color]

[color=white][i]"River Styx, return to your lane!"[/i][/color]

Dearil growled and responded, [color=firebrick][b]"Fleet, this is River Styx! Sunray is aboard my transport. I say again! SUNRAY is aboard my transport. My mission supercedes yours. Kindly get the hell out of my ear!"[/b][/color]

There was a long silence over the radio for a moment before one traffic controller responded, [color=white][i]"River Styx, carry on with your assignment. Out."[/i][/color]

Dearil let out a long sigh and slumped back in his seat. One nice thing about working with royalty, rules were tantalizingly easy to bend. Dearil lined his vector up with the Roanoke and sped toward the distant carrier. [color=firebrick][b]"Roanoke Tower, this is River Styx. I am on approach, ETA: twenty minutes. Be advised, Sunray is aboard my transport. Requesting landing priority."[/b][/color]

[color=white][i]"Roger, River Styx. Landing priority confirmed. All ingress lanes have been halted for your arrival- wait..."[/i][/color]

Dearil blinked. He'd never been told to wait like that for landing clearance. What the hell was going on today? Was the Roanoke being assigned to help at Horizon Point too? While Dearil waited silently, he heard multiple pings on his short range scanner. He looked up and saw a number of red pips on the display. More alerts and alarmed sounded in his cockpit. The most harrowing of the alerts was a cold, emotionless [color=red][b]"Contact. Coalition IFFs detected within Fleet security perimeter."[/b][/color] Horizon Point was no accident.

The shockwave from Horizon Point's explosion finally reached the River Styx, causing the whole ship to shake and groan. He heard a voice chime in through the ship's intercom, [color=lightgoldenrodyellow][b]"Is everything alright, Dearil?"[/b][/color]

Dearil didn't want to tell the princess that things were most certainly not alright. But he didn't really have much of a choice. [color=firebrick][b]"Strap in, princess! The Coalition is here and Horizon Point is sunk! I'm burning hard for the Roanoke!"[/b][/color]

[color=lime][hr][/color]

[color=lime][i]<<: ... Incoming transmission ... ;
<<: ... Signal Origin: UEES Hammerhand ... ;

<<: ... [color=white][b]"This is Hightower. Confirmed. The target is aboard a lone transport and has just departed the Hammerhand. It has no escorts. Now is the chance to secure her."[/b][/color] ... ;

<<: ... Transmission ends ... ;[/i][/color]

Captain Fernaldo Ghent of the Coalition Special Tasks and Intelligence Fleet sat in the captain's chair of his stealth cruiser. He listened to the transmission and smirked. It seemed that black mailing and threatening the chief petty officer's family paid off. That was precisely the information he wanted to hear. Not only that, but his double agents in the UEE orbital platform pulled off their part of the plan without a hitch. It was all too easy. The black cruiser remained just outside the detection range of the fleet's inner perimeter, the stealth materials used in the STIF ship were more than capable at remaining undetected in passive sensors.

He order his sensors operator to filter out the UEE fleet before them to find this transport that Hightower had identified. He would see a number of transports, all headed toward the wreckage of Horizon Point. But one wasn't. One was headed away from the wreckage unlike everything else. Surely enough. THAT was the one that held his target. He tapped at a comms screen built into the armrest of his chair, [color=tan][i]"Commander. Your squadron has been waiting long enough. Our quarry has been found. Capture the target, kill the rest."[/i][/color]

In the compact hangar of the stealth cruiser, four C-MAD MAS units waiting in launch tubes began powering up. Much like the stealth cruiser that carried them, these units were all black and fitted with stealth materials as well to compliment the cruiser's capabilities. The [url=http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/muvluv/images/b/b8/Mecha_1_f22_em2.png/revision/latest?cb=20121206094734]stealth armor[/url] was lighter and offered less protection against attacks. But it allowed for greater speeds and greatly reduced the distance the distance the MAS would need to be at in order to be detected by radar. They were the perfect units for a stealthy retrieval mission such as this. Fitted to the backs of the stealth units were overboosters to quickly launch them through a defensive perimeter.

The launch tubes powered on and sent the MAS units out into the cold vacuum of space. They all reoriented toward their highlighted target and fired the overboosters. The blue ion thrusters accelerating them to unprecedented speeds remarkably quick. They would show up on the UEE's sensors only briefly before the overboosters were discarded.

[hr]

Dearil looked ahead and saw that a battle had already broken out between the River Styx and the Roanoke. It was likely the 7th giving the Coalition hell. But it didn't bode well for him or the princess as they had to pass right through the chaos. [color=firebrick][b]"This is going to be a rough ride, princess! Hold on tight!"[/b][/color]

After saying that, Dearil heard some voices over the radio. Fleet command had dispatched an ISS frigate and a squadron of ISS MAS units to link up with the River Styx and act as escorts. But they were ten minutes out, and they were requesting that the transport powered down to reduce its signature and wait for them to arrive. Dearil wasn't keen on being dead in the water while a battle was waged all around them. Plus all the extra attention from the ISS would draw all the action toward them anyways. Dearil kept powering ahead toward the Roanoke and hailed the carrier. [color=firebrick][b]"Roanoke, this is River Styx. I'm going to need an escort as I pass through the battle space. The ISS is too far out to provide support for Sunray. Requesting the 7th's supp-"[/b][/color]

The Carry-All was suddenly and violently rocked by a shot from a ballistic cannon. The ship span from the impact as alarms blared. It took Dearil a moment to regain control of the ship. [color=firebrick][b]"What the hell was that?![/b][/color] he looked around from his cockpit and spotted four black MAS units firing at the River Styx. An alarm sounded, which drew his attention to the diagnostics readout. Engine two was disabled and fuel was leaking from the nacelle.

[color=firebrick][b]"This is River Styx! Contact! I am being engaged by four times Coalition irregulars! I've lost power to one engine. Sunray is aboard this ship! I say again! Sunray is aboard! I need immediate assistance!"[/b][/color]

Another shot hit the River Styx, rocking it once again. Thankfully, Dearil was prepared this time and kept the ship under control. More alarms blared, and Dearil saw that life support had been disabled. Good thing they weren't using that right now. Another shot hit the engine remaining engine, but the armor held. They're trying to disable the ship! Do they know who's on board?!

Dearil looked at a screen that had a video feed of the cargo hold. He saw Aurelia sitting straight backed in her seat, her whitened knuckles clutching tightly at the seat's restraints. She had her eyes closed. One of her ISS bodyguards laid unconscious on the floor, a crack in his helmet showed that he likely was hit in the head by loose crate. The other agent was knelt over him, trying to seal the crack with a plasticene foam. This was bad... Dearil knew that at that this rate, these irregular MAS units would have the princess before help could arrive. He switched off the inertial dampeners of his ship, allowing it to drift on its vector without input from the pilot. He then rotated the ship on its axis, bringing the nose to face its pursuers. Dearil tried to acquire a lock on the MAS units, but their stealth coating was making it difficult. [color=firebrick][b]"Fuck... Manual it is."[/b][/color]

A shot ripped past the ship and missed. Dearil slaved the nose turret of the River Styx to his helmet, which tracked his eye movement. It would aim wherever he looked. He looked down, seeing that the AR display of his visor linked to the sensors underneath the cockpit of the ship. He was effectively able to see through the floor of the River Styx and operate the turret outside of what he could normally see. One MAS passed in front of him, which he quickly began to track. A quick burst of the small caliber ammunition traced out and missed the MAS. Manual aiming wasn't easy... He fired another burst, closer this time but still no dice. Another cannon shot came at the River Styx and hit just to the right of the cockpit, piercing directly into one of the large retro thrusters. The shot caused a small explosion, and the reinforced glass of the cockpit shattered, exposing Dearil directly to the vacuum of space. He was once again glad that he depressurized the ship. The glass exploded in every direction through the cockpit, a larger shard embedding itself in his lower abdomen. He groaned and bit down hard on his teeth to fight back the pain. Dearil kept piloting however. His third burst tracked a different MAS ahead of him, and he managed to score a series of hits on the armor of the MAS. The shield generator on the MAS stopped a number of the rounds, but some made it through and connected with the armor. He saw sparking flying from the shoulder joint of the MAS as it began to take evasive maneuvers.

[color=firebrick][b]"This is River Styx! Where is that god damn support!"[/b][/color] he yelled. Pain lanced through his body from the glass in his gut. Thankfully his flight suit had worked to seal around the shard so he wouldn't be exposed to the radiation of space. 

Another accurate shot from one of the stealth MAS units went straight into the nose turret. He let go of the turret controls with a frustrated gasp. A second shot hit the last engine, and this time it had done what it needed to do. The engine exploded, and with the inertial dampeners off, the River Styx was sent into a spin. Dearil tried to rearm the inertial dampeners, but they were disabled as well. There was nothing he could do in the pilot seat anymore. Dearil removed his harness and climbed from the pilot's seat, a hand firmly placed on his gut as blood floated from the shard. He held firmly onto a hand rail and made his way down into the cargo bay, the ship rocking again. Red emergency lights flared and span in the bay and klaxons sounded, though all Dearil could hear was the klaxons being dull and muffled through the vibrations of the hull. He saw that the ISS agent with the cracked helmet was dead, and the other was standing in front of the princess to shield her from debris in the hold.

Aurelia looked up and saw the injured Ferryman stagger down from the cockpit. [color=lightgoldenrodyellow][b]"Dearil!"[/b][/color]

The ISS agent looked over to him and took Aurelia's cry as a sign to go and help him. The ship rocked again as he took a few steps toward him. Suddenly, another cannon round pierced the hull. It ripped right through the ISS agent, turning his entire upper half into red mist. Dearil's suit was smeared with the ISS agent's blood, and his visor was blinded briefly until he used his hand to wiped the blood away. Dearil heard another alert sound in ear, which made him look at his wrist computer. The River Styx was sent into a decaying orbit. It was falling toward Cerol! He knelt before Aurelia who had a very worried expression on her face, [color=firebrick][b]"Princess! You need to get out of your seat!"[/b][/color]

[color=lightgoldenrodyellow][b]"What's happening?!"[/b][/color] she asked worriedly, [color=lightgoldenrodyellow][b]"You're injured, Dearil! How do I help you?"[/b][/color]

Dearil shook his head, [color=firebrick][b]"Don't worry about me."[/b][/color] He pointed next to the ladder that lead to the cockpit. [color=firebrick][b]"There's an escape pod there! It's good for four people. We need to get into it now!"[/b][/color]

Aurelia nodded as Dearil took her hand and pulled her from her seat. He pushed her ahead of him, [color=firebrick][b]"I'm right behind you, Aurelia! Go!"[/b][/color]

The ship rocked again and Aurelia fell to her knees. Dearil picked her up and moved her along. He reached into a pouch and pulled out his good luck charm. [color=firebrick][b]"Come on, baby, hold together!"[/b][/color] he said to his ship.

Another round pierced the hull and just narrowly missed the two. Then they heard the sound of something heavy making contact with the ship. A MAS had just grabbed hold of the River Styx. They were going to board! Dearil reached out and shoved Aurelia forward into the escape pod with the hand that was holding his charm. It floated into the pod with her. Before she could turn around, Dearil slammed on a button to seal the pod. Aurelia screamed and pounded against the door of the pod. [color=lightgoldenrodyellow][b]"Dearil! What are you doing?!"[/b][/color]

[color=firebrick][b]"This is Ferryman. Sunray is aboard a lifepod and is ejecting toward Cerol. Send a recovery team immediately."[/b][/color]

Dearil saw a plasma cutter beginning to shear away at the cargo bay ramp. He pulled a submachine gun off of a weapons rack and stood in front of the lifepod's door.

[color=lightgoldenrodyellow][b]"Dearil! Let me out! Don't do this!"[/b][/color] she cried.

The ramp blew open and a pilot in tan and black armor surged through. Dearil opened fire on the pilot, but he was inaccurate in his wounded state. The shots missed, and Dearil was answered with three fatal shots to the chest. He gasps and slumped back against the door. He heard Aurelia scream again just as the pod launched.

[hr]

Aurelia watched through the small window at the River Styx. The wounded beast was flaming in more than one place as it span violently. She cried out for Dearil again, ignoring the fact that he wouldn't hear her. Then the River Styx exploded, taking the MAS that was attached to it with it. Her eyes widened as the fireball illuminated the dark pod. Then she heard alarms blaring within the pod. It took her a moment to collect herself and realize her situation.

[color=dodgerblue][i]"Warning... Atmospheric reentry detected. All survivors brace for landfall. Warning... Atmospheric reentry detected. All survivors brace for landfall. Warning..."[/i][/color]

Aurelia looked around the pod and saw a display showing the pod's speed and time until it made impact. She grabbed a hold of a handrail and clung to it for dear life. The automated system in the lifepod continued to brief her.

[color=dodgerblue][i]"Landfall imminent. Deploying chute. Firing retro thrusters. Engaging crash padding."[/i][/color]

Multiple panels in the hull of the pod opened up. Large air bags quickly inflated and obscured the steel walls. Aurelia could feel the deceleration from the pod's automated landfall procedures. The whole pod rumbled as it breached through the atmosphere. The surface of Cerol was fast approaching.

[color=dodgerblue][i]"Landfall in ten... nine... eight... SOS beacon active... seven... six... five... Brace for impact... four... three... two... one... Impact..."[/i][/color]

Aurelia was sent into one of the air bags, and all went dark...
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