Taking Space

TOPPLING GOVERNMENTS

Capturing Vice President Almon V. Charmin was going to be easy. He was currently having a small dinner party on the Boklar Colony, getting Winkler on the other hand… Daniel rubbed his forehead. He didn’t even want to think about trying to come up with a plan for that… He lived in the capital flagship for Pete’s sake.

“I guess that will work.”

“Sounds like a long shot but I guess that’s the best we got.”

Daniel took off the hat, and Harold went into idle. “So we're really going to go with that?”

“Why do you sound so surprised, you suggested it after all,” Steven answered.

“Yeah but usually my ideas are instantly thrown out the window.”

Stephanie harrumphed. “Of course they are they usually Intel something as stupid as this.”

Daniel ignored Stephanie. “Why aren’t we using Catherine’s disguise ideal.”

Steven looked at a screen. “I wish we could.”

Catherine shook her head. “We don’t have the resources to make a believable Almon replica. Not only that the plan would require him to make a believable escape from our assault and to do that we have to let one of the androids get killed.”

“Which is a very inefficient use of our limited resources,” Michael added.

“Yeah but if Daniel can’t pull this off,” Stephanie argued.

“He’ll have seven tries. I’m sure he can do it.” Michael said encouragingly.

“I hope we can do it in no more than three,” Steven added.

Daniel scratched his chin. “Me too,” he muttered

A hologram of Alf appeared on the deck. “I have a room in the mobile station prepared to receive our guest.”

“Okay then, do you guys have your androids in position?”

Stephanie put back on her hat. “Yes, Zephyr is in position.”

“David Kell is.” Michael switched to Harold for a second. “And it looks like Daniel has Harold in position as well.”

“All right whoever gets to him first bring him to this room here.” Steven tapped on the screen displaying the floor plan for the building the dinner party was taking place. “It is the securest room in the building and should allow enough time to deploy the dimensional door. After you are through, I’ll micro disintegrate it.”

Daniel put back on his hat and turned to Stephanie. “I bet I get to him before you do.”

Stephanie rolled her shoulders. “Ha, I doubt that.”

***

Almon V. Charmin sat enjoying his prime cut of space whale while he listened to the other politicians talk when one of the security guards walked in and bent down by his ear. “Sir someone is currently hacking this building’s security systems.”

Charmin turned and glared at the security guard. “That’s nothing un-normal track them down and take care of them. That’s what I pay you to do. Why are you bothering me with this?!”

“The signal is synonymous with the one that hacked your personal room in your manner.”

Almon bolted up out of his seat, and half dragged the head of the security out of the room. “What do you mean the same signal? I thought Cox was taking care of this!”

“He was Sir, but his contact and his man were just killed by a construction droid not more than two hours ago.”

Charmin’s face paled then flushed with anger. “Why didn’t you tel –.”

The entire building shook as a loud smashing sound coming from the outside then reverberated inside. A few seconds later two similar smashes followed.

“What was that?!”

“I don’t know sir.”

“We’ll find out and get the rest of security in here!”

The sound of bending metal and cracking wood erupted from the room beside them.

The chief of security pushed Almon behind him just as the wall flew apart and a burly man wearing the Lionhearted uniform came smashing through.

The guard tried to pull his weapon, but Harold swatted him aside like a fly, and the man smashed against the far wall and slid to the ground unconscious.

Vice President Almon V. Charmin tried to run, but a heavy hand pushed him to the ground then brutally bent his arms behind his back-slapping them into some type of restraint.

***

David Kell and Zephyr followed Daniel’s path of destruction to where Harold was already restraining Almon.

“Told you I get to him before you would,” Harold boasted.

Zephyr stared at him. “I can’t believe you just charged through the building as if you were a raging bull like that!”

Daniel opened his eyes and stuck his tongue out at Stephanie.

The door to the room flew open, and three security guards came into view. At seeing Charmin lying on the floor, they instantly drew their weapons.

Daniel closed his eyes and sent back his full concentration into Harold.

Harold reached out and ripped loose a transport-size chunk of the wall he just came through and interposed it between them and the guards like a shield as if it weighed no more than ten pounds.

The small arms fire pinged off the makeshift shield. “Through the roof. The extraction point should be just down the hall then,” Harold shouted.

Zephyr nodded and grabbed David Kell unceremoniously throwing him through the ceiling. Then jump up through the hole she had just used him to create.

With one hand, Harold tossed Almon up to her then threw the wall at the guardsmen pouring into the room buying himself enough time to jump up as well.

Zephyr threw Vice President Charmin over her shoulder and dashed down the hallway towards the designated room.

David Kell clambered to his feet. “You know I think I’m going to let you two handle this type of stuff from now on, that stinking hurt!”

Harold laughed as they ran after Zephyr.

By the time they got to the room and closed the door behind them, Stephanie had already had Zephyr deploy the curved metal tubes, and they were snapping into place.

Almon squirmed as wheeze, “Who are you, people?!”

Michael had David Kell stand up straight and shake the dust off himself as he said, “We are the Lionhearted. And you and your president will stand trial for your crimes.” Then he turned and smashed the security camera.

***

They came through the dimensional door onto the mobile station. A hologram of Alf and eight droids were waiting for them.

Zephyr shoved Almon to the droids. They took him by his arms and dragged him off to the cell Alf had prepared for him.

“Good job, Sir, I especially like that last tidbit,” Alf commented.

“Seen that did you?”

“Yes, soul Knight’s hack enabled me to watch the whole thing.”

“I’m hoping that last threat will get them to draw the big ships a little farther out and close in fighter security.”

Harold wilted a bit, “I’m sure it will.”

***

Daniel sat in the pilot seat clenching and unclenching his fist, mumbling prayers to God.

“There they’ve set the larger ships farther out and drew the fighter patrols in too tight formation around the capital flagship. Just like emergency procedures dictates they should.” Steven looked up at Daniel. “I’ll have a probe pass the larger ships any minute now, all you have to do once you’re through the gate is get past the fighters flip up the light sails and fire the lasers.”

“Easy for you to say that there are a hundred and fifty fighters out there,” Daniel grumbled.

“Yes, but like you pointed out earlier you only have to get past a hand full of them to get in range of the capital ship with them in tight formation like this.”

Dan shifted, uncomfortably, “Yeah.”

Stephanie sat down in her seat. “What’s wrong? You’re always claiming you’re the best pilot there is in the galaxy. Can’t prove it now that it comes down to it?”

“I am the best pilot! But no pilot no matter how insane would pit himself against such extreme odds. And this is not like a game where I can just reload or respawn if I get gunned down; we lose one of our valuable ships, ones that take forever to replace!”

Michael walked up behind Daniel’s seat and put his hand on his shoulder. “You can do this just calm down and remember the time you took out one hundred and sixty-three players, in one go with only one death.”

“That was different, they were piece mail, and they were not all gunning for me, and I could freely hit their cockpits if I wanted to I don’t want to kill these guys!”

“If I remember correctly more than one hundred and thirty of those takedowns were disabled not kills because you didn’t want them to be able to respawn. And after about fifty kills they all look like they were gunning for you to me.”

“In place and deploying the gate now.” Steven tapped a button with finality.

Daniel looked at the two screens and down at the Virt helmet

Catherine looked up from the screen she was working on. “I know you can do this. Neither Michael nor I would’ve ever agreed to this plan if we didn’t think you could.”

Swallowing Daniel nodded picked up the Virt helmet and put it on his head.

***

Opening his eyes, he found himself sitting inside the Starfighter. The GTX 4000 was the most advanced piece of virtual technology there was, and Steven had just added a few adjustments using the Lionhearted brain interaction know-how, so it was as if he was really there.

He took a deep breath and reached out, turning the fighter on. “Father please help me.”

The fighter didn’t so much as turn on as it did light up as all the systems came online.

Stevens's voice pierced into his hearing as if it was coming through a long tunnel “Okay get up some inertia and as soon as you’re ready I’ll flick the gate on just long enough for you to get through.”

“Okay.” His own words felt like they were coming from far away. This was the first time he’d ever gone this deep into Virt, so he flew around a little bit and was surprised to find out that it felt more real than real and it seemed like his senses were slightly heightened as well. “Okay I’m about ready to make my run, but first Steven could you go into the system settings and turn off any destruction feedback? I don’t want this thing to accidentally hurt me if my ship blows up.”

“Good idea.”

The reality around him flickered, and Steven said, “All right make your run.”

Daniel leveled out and aimed for the hoop that formed the dimensional door. It was only a few inches in circumference larger than the widest point of the starfighter for stealth reasons, but that was going to be easy to thread for him.

He turned the propulsion engines all the way on and shot forward.

Once he reached the normal velocity of a stray meteor, he killed all power plunging the virtual cockpit into darkness.

The inertia carried him on and right before he got to the dimensional door Steven flicked it on.

The starfighter was through it in less than two seconds, and Steven had the dimensional door back off in three leaving only the faintest of energy spikes that no one could possibly catch, but just in case they could Steven immediately began to collapse the metal tubing and move the drone’s position.

Daniel kept the starfighter off, and because he had no residual energy or heat source like a dynovamator it remained undetected.

Gazing out the virtual viewport, he could see the giant capital flagship clear as day and the three dozen fighter formations that look like small gnats flying around it.

He stilled himself for the fight to come. With no detectable signature, radar couldn't detect him, but he was coming in range of the fighters logic drives which would detect him as a possible collision and show him as a gray dot on their radar. He knew no pilot worth his salt would mistake him for an asteroid.

If only the starfighter were covered in stealth fiber making him invisible to even logic drives, but that would be a practically impossible proposition seeing the total circumference of the starfighter was almost a thousand times that of a small probe.

One of the fighter formations broke off and headed his direction.

“Alright, I’ve been detected. Engaging.”

The four ships flew closer in the typical Almandian formation consisting of the leader in the front a wingman off to either side and the third bringing up the rear. Daniel flipped the power, and the beam cannon whined to life, impacting on the leader of the formation.

The leader shocked by the sudden attack jerked up hard to the right and as conditioned to do the rest of the formation followed him. This gave Daniel enough time to nudge his trajectory bringing him behind the formation as he kept the beam cannons beam aimed at the leader.

The surprise wore off, and the leader began evasion action trying to toss him off target while his three wingmen broke off and started to circle around. But Daniel was a perfect aim and nothing the leader could do shook him.

The leader’s shields flickered and grew brighter in the aft. Daniel smiled. The leader had just shifted most of his shield energy to the back capacitor, and this is what he had been waiting for.

Daniel gave all the maneuvering Jets on the top half of his starfighter full power rocketing him downward at a forward angle, giving him a clear shot at the bottom of the leader's fighter. He cut the beam cannon and shot two blasts of lasers.

The first set of five lasers impacted on the weekend shield shattering it and the next five all hit the exact same place burning through the lower plating and severing the main power conduit disabling the fighter.

Daniel knew all the weak points of over a thousand fighters and ships and that knowledge had just enabled him to take out that fighter in a total of seven point three seconds.

The radar showed him that the three other ships had successfully rounded him and were now on his aft for most fighter pilots; this would be a death sentence but not for him.

He turned off the pilot assist and the inertial dampers. Neutronic combat had long ago been rendered obsolete with the discovery of the exact frequency of gravity, however with his seemingly wasted years of playing games Daniel had learned a master pilot could use its obsoleteness to obliterate entire squads.

Daniel, in a snapping turn, spun the starfighter around, so he was flying backwards. Lined up his crosshairs and opened fire with the lasers on the fighter in the middle.

All three of the fighters shot back, but he gave all the maneuvering Jets on the left side of the ship full power sending him sidestepping to the right as he released a continuous stream of lasers into the fighter in the middle the formation.

Their weapons tried to track his erratic movements, but he used the same technique to rocket back to the left and up a little; his shields only receiving light splash damage from one of their lasers. On the other hand their fighter in the middle took a pounding forcing it to break off its pursuit and try to evade the continuous stream of deadly rain from Daniel, but it was no use from this position Daniel was like a turret allowing him to continuously scored full-on direct hits.

The fighter’s shields gave way, and the lasers bore through the hull into the shield generator and then through the propulsion system turning the ship into a hunk of floating space junk.

“You’re fighting too much you need to head for the capital ship!” He heard Stephanie complain.

The starfighter beeped warning him that one of the fighters had a missile lock on him.

He smiled. He had been waiting for this. Almandian training taught their fighter pilots only to release one set of missiles at a time and they always began their launching with the wingman on the left.

He swung his crosshairs to the left fighter his right and opened fire with the beam cannon.

Milliseconds later the fighter launched his two missiles, and they both instantly collided with the beam from his cannon and exploded.

The first explosion happened just a tad before the second and shattered the fighter’s shields letting the second explosion take a sizable chunk out of the fighter itself disintegrating both missile launchers and two of its lasers; for good measure though Daniel raked the beam cannon across the remains of the wounded ship turning the rest of its weapons into slag.

“Daniel, there is another formation coming into your eight o’clock high,” Steven shouted.

Daniel glanced up and to his left to see four more fighters headed his way just as his starfighter began to scream warnings of multiple missile locks.

He slammed his propulsion systems back on and shot towards the one remaining original fighter an action that if he’d actually been in the ship would have given him major whiplash.

In less than a second he was at the other fighters bow and in an insane act of maneuvering flipped the starfighter around and sent two times the energy to the propulsion systems something that would have normally required him to shift all the energy from the guns and shields but because the thick waist conduit running into the ship through a dimensional door he had way more than enough energy. This also however made it possible for him to overload the gravity propulsion system turning it into a miniature graviton weapon, that sadly all it would do was pull all the ships around him towards him for a few seconds as his ship imploded upon itself something he did not wish to do. He cut the power just as he reached the same speed and velocity of the fighter above him.

Successfully interposed the fighter between him and the oncoming formation it should’ve forced the other fighters to not fire their missiles however to his shock his starfighter registered four missile launches.

Knowing there was no way he could outmaneuver four missiles at once he turned off all power.

Without the massive energy beacon, the missiles lost their primary locking signature. Normally the missiles would recalculate and lock onto something else on the ship however the fighter Daniel had interposed between him, and the oncoming formation was a glowing beacon of energy and the four missiles locked onto it instead.

The poor pilot in the fighter never even realized what had happened until it was too late. The four missiles smashed into him, and he died in a crimson ball of fire.

A loud smacking sound floated its way into Daniel’s hearing, and Michael shouted, “They killed their own man! Those, those people! Everyone knows you don’t launch a missile when your allies are in the way!”

The starfighter powered back to life and Daniel switched the beam cannon to full power than pushed it to two hundred percent power and changed it to pulse mode. He had been using it only at twenty-five percent power because he didn’t want to kill someone now, however…

His inertia still carried him forward in the direction the now destroyed fighter had been going, and he briefly overloaded propulsion systems shooting himself faster in that direction then he turned off the pilot assist and inertial dampers. Using the very forward maneuvering Jets he spun the front end of the ship towards the oncoming formation and fired the beam cannon.

A long stream of fully visible energy hit the wingman on the right squarely on the left side of the fighter. The fighter shields lasted right up until the last second then gave way. The last of the beam melted the outer hull of the ship but didn’t penetrate.

It did, however, accomplished what Daniel wanted it to.

The fighter formation was turning to the right to track his movements, and the beam had melted the left maneuvering Jets making it impossible for the fighter to continue to turn to the right.

Unable to turn the fighter flew directly into the flight path of the leader and immediately both of their logic drives took over sending the leader high and to the right while the fighters logic drives sent him, father to the left and into the path of the other two wingmen.

Their logic drives acted expertly, avoiding what would have been a deadly collision, but this also sent each of the fighters flying in different directions.

Daniel turned back on the inertial dampers, and the pilot assist as he rocketed towards the scattered formation. Leveling his crosshairs on the wounded fighter he fired another pulse from the beam cannon.

The stream of energy cut straight through the almost nonexistent shield and ripped a giant hole through the top aft of the ship.

Daniel watched as the cockpit of the fighter plunged into darkness then he passed within a few hair widths from it and could easily see the pilot inside, giving him an obscene gesture.

“Poor loser,” Daniel mumbled.

Over the local frequency, Steven shouted, “God bless you too.”

Daniel rolled his eyes. The guy was sitting in a powerless cockpit meaning there was no way he could hear Steven besides there was no reason to comment to such a sore loser anyway.

The leader and the wingman on the left had recovered and were turning around to track Daniel. The wingman in the back of the formation though was still trying to recover from the almost deadly whiplash he had received and now just happened to be directly in front of Daniel’s crosshairs.

Daniel pulled the fire button for the beam cannon, but the ship beeped a warning that it was overheated. Daniel switched the weapon capacitors back to lasers and began pelting his target with them, though before he could break down the fighter shields the leader and the left wingman brought their lasers to bear on him.

Daniel sent a burst of energy into his propulsion systems speeding him forward until he was only a few feet behind the fighter he had just been shooting he nudged his stick forward flying underneath its bow than matched its speed essentially coming into formation underneath it.

The two pursuing fighters continued to shoot but because of Daniel’s perfect positioning underneath the other fighter, most of the lasers impacted upon the fighter instead of his Starfighter.

The pilot finally fully recovered from his debilitating whiplash and try to break away from Daniel but Daniel expertly held formation with him as he used the laser turret, which Steven had replaced the cockpit with, to pelt the underside of the fighter continuously.

“Stop shooting me you space whale tarpaulins!” The pilot cussed over the local frequencies at his subordinates.

They stop firing, but it was too late; the fighter shields gave way, and four laser shots from the turret bore into the hull severing the fighter’s main conduit.

As the energy in the fighter died away, Daniel overrode his logic drive and pulled up hard.

The fighters logic drive used the last of its energy to do a snapping reverse flip that rendered it's pilot unconscious and sent it flying back towards the leader.

The leader’s own logic drive reacted snapping its fighter hard to the right.

Daniel let his inertia carry him upwards as he once again turned off the inertial dampers and pilot assist. He spun the front of his ship around and fired the beam cannon into the side of the leader.

The first pulse broke through the shield and scarred the outer plating and the second drilled straight through the ship, turning it into worthless slag.

“Three more formations are converging on you now!” Steven shouted.

Daniel’s starfighter screamed a warning and Daniel looked down to see the display say there were thirteen missile locks on him.

Daniel’s eyes scoured the area; the incoming formations were too far away to have missile lock on him! Then he realized the one remaining fighter was sending his targeting data to the other formations.

Daniel sent all the energy he safely could into the propulsion engine and snap down hard to the right.

Sadly he didn’t manage to break missile lock, and the starfighter registered sixteen missile launches one was close by, and the others were father out.

He tried to bring his ship around and head towards the one remaining fighter, but the pilot was too smart for that and already had broken off his pursuit.

Daniel drew extra energy through the conduit and sent it to the shields as he decided to take the first missile and try to dodge the rest using the ships flares, but the massive amount of energy now flowing through the conduit disrupted the continuum of the dimensional door, and it collapsed severing the conduit.

The starfighter plunged into darkness and seconds later the oncoming missiles smashed into it obliterating it.