Dead Star Dockyards

"And this is the Pilot Room." Donovan made ensured that nothing was out of place while everyone filtered in. This room was, without question, the most important livable position in the entire ship. If anything got damaged it could seriously impair his ability to command and control the ship. "Don't touch anything unless I give my permission."

"More dangerous and delicate machinery?"

"Very. Those consoles are for independent manual turret control, the cockpit over there is for motion and overall fire control. Break anything and I'll shove it so far up your ass you'll be tasting it." Donovan stared daggers at Gawan. Jokes were fine and all, but he could not stress enough how important this stuff was. "Am I understood?"

"Y-yes sir."

"Mhm. Alright, as I said before, this is the Pilot room. It's where all the magic happens with regards to orientation and control of the Pegasus as a whole. This little square right here," Donovan stomped his foot on the patch of floor painted red, cables extending into the ceiling from each corner, "is the emergency access elevator. If shit goes sideways on the ground and I need to get off the ground quick, this platform will descend into the cargo bay."

"Was the red patch-"

"Where it descends to, yes." Donovan stepped out of the way of the cables, moving towards the side of the room. "These little rooms to the side are for on duty pilots to rest. A little cramped, but better than nothing, and close to where they need to be."

The little triangular rooms barely had enough space for the door to open without hitting the bed, but they were usable. If one disregarded the lack of a place for any personal affects, it appeared almost cozy.

"Those consoles control the dorsal turrets as well as the stacked chin turret, but the big guns are all centrally controlled by the pilot." Eight console stations, four to each side of the cockpit, handled each of the smaller turrets of the Pegasus. The four blunderbusses were controlled by the consoles on one side, while the triple hundreds were controlled on the other. "The second in command sits on that console, commanding the stacked chin turret and providing alignment assistance for the chin turret proper. In the case that the pilot or commander cannot act as the fire control director in a combat situation, they are to assume that role."

"Fire control director . . . like the Gunnery Officer on a battleship?" Cayzi tilted his head, imagining people at the controls here.

"Exactly like on a battleship. They designate targets and establish target priority, as well as establish firing patterns and notifying the Pilot if he needs to adjust the angle of the ship to provide a clearer firing angle." Donovan walked up to the cockpit and dropped himself in. "I can control all of that centrally from down here, painting areas and entities and issuing fire commands for predefined weapons groupings. I'd need help dealing with targets on opposing sides . . . but I've got something that can handle that if there aren't extra hands."

"Interesting." Kayes nodded his head, feigning an understanding of how one might even go about independent control of nine separate turrets plus the ship itself on their own. "Are we to be taken on a short trip?"

"No. This ship is slow by my standards, and the inertial dampeners and gravity control systems will make it seem as though we aren't moving." Donovan had started to flip a few switches and turn dials in response to what was happening on the screen in front of him. "Instead, I'm going to give you all a taste of what a dogfight looks like where I come from. Cayzi, you know what a dogfight is, right?"

"Yes! Of course I do!"

"Is that some sort of duel?" Donovan had no way of knowing how certain Terran terms sounded to those that did not have anything remotely analogous to the concepts said words were built upon, but it seemed Merndil had gathered a moderate degree of understanding.

"Kind of, kind of not. It would be better to show you." Donovan rolled his head and flexed his forearms and hands while Arc loaded up the combat simulation. He had selected 'random objective' on the provided menu, though he did implement an arbitrary time limit of five minutes and the condition that there must be at least three enemy fighters present in the area of operation.

He didn't want to spend forever on a scouting mission, and Arc still wasn't great at mimicking how a pilot would act under real combat conditions. At least three opponents were needed for Donovan to feel pressure when starting in a disadvantaged position, and he could routinely handle five from neutral. He wasn't quite sure how many he would be able to take out in an advantaged position given he had never tested such a simulation, but he imagined that the incredibly short time to kill offered by the twin 20mm cannons on most multi-role and superiority fighters would put the numbers at about ten.

The screen in front of him flashed a few times as Arc's engine rendered in all of the elements of the simulation, including sources of gravity, light, reflected light, magnetism, and various forms of radiation. He recognized the vehicle he had been assigned before the pop-up popped up, the trapezoidal front 'window' combined with the thick screen edges reminiscent of a roll cage could only belong to the Sparrow series of interceptors, probably the Sparrow 9 if Arc was using the most recent model. 

'A Scout has detected a flight of strike craft en route to attack an isolated column of picket destroyers. You are part of an interception flight redirected to disrupt and dissuade this strike. Expect an escort force. Countermeasures will be handled automatically by your countermeasures officer. You may issue basic movement commands to your two wingmen within the next thirty seconds, but radio silence will be enforced until combat begins.'

As the rest of the heads up display elements rendered via hologram in front of his face (something done to imitate the helmet Donovan did not have) Donovan offered a brief explanation of the mission parameters and objectives to those who could not read English.

- - - - -

Titanyana sat down just outside of the cockpit, eyes and ears focused intently on what was happening on screen. The little blue dots to the left and right of the screen were Donovan's wingmen, comrades in arms there to assist in the completion of the mission. To that end, Donovan had ordered them to spread out in such a way that they would converge on the enemy like the talons on the bird. He explained that this was the routine method of performing an interception, providing them with a longer period of time to strike the vulnerable rear of the strike craft and forcing the opposing strike group to make a tough decision. 

Apparently, how easily one could 'see' one of these smaller vessels depended a lot on their orientation - something Donovan referred to as a signature - which had a tendency to be the smallest from the front and largest from the rear. The idea with this approach was to force the strike group to decide whether or not the strike craft would turn to face the interceptors as they got into range. Doing so would keep them safe from the interceptors, the armor being able to defeat the sizable but still fairly weak weapons, but expose them to danger from long distance fire from the destroyers they were attacking.

pi

A red dot appeared on the center screen, closer to the top. That was almost certainly the enemy.

pi pi pipi pi pipipipi pi pi

Donovan said nothing as the screen filled with more and more enemy contacts, only adjusting his angle to better intercept them. They were well beyond visual sight range, Titanyana catching brief glimpses of the distance and time to intercept as Donovan's eyes occasionally focused on them. Sixty seconds, a full minute to combat, and yet Titanyana knew that both Donovan and the enemy were moving far faster than she had any right to comprehend. They were moving distances in seconds that might take days for her to walk, and it was being treated as nothing more than routine.

Donovan suddenly adjusted his ship in a strange manner, rotating such that the front of his ship was running more parallel to the enemy's direction of travel than perpendicular as he had been moving before, putting the enemy on what might be considered the 'roof' screen as he did. For a moment, Titanyana found herself confused.

"This angle presents the smallest signature while affording me the opportunity to close faster and get a better shot off." There were twelve red pips on screen, three squares and nine circles. Given that Donovan's group consisted of three, and that the enemy was grouped in multiples of three, she had to imagine that being in groups of three held some advantage.

brrrrrrrrrrrrrr

A low humming, similar to a growl, emitted from the console as Donovan moved a switch forward on the control stick. A big green circle appeared in the center of the screen, the red dots barely inside of it. It slowly shrank as he fiddled with the controls, barely encapsulating the entire group.

vvvvvvvvvvvvv

The pitch of the humming shifted slightly higher, the circle turning yellow as it did. Donovan remained expressionless, only slightly adjusting the attitude of his craft to keep the enemy inside of that circle. As he was doing so, three additional symbols appeared on screen, all blue and in close proximity to each other. Given the displayed distances, Titanyana could only imagine that these were the destroyers Donovan mentioned. 

VVVVVVVVVVV

The humming shifted to whistling, the circle having turned orange. Donovan flipped the switch back down.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

The tone hurt Titanyana's ears, but she suffered through it with only a slight flinch. That circle was flashing red now, and Donovan took a second to check his wingmen. Seemingly satisfied with their positioning, Donovan pushed a button on the top of his joystick.

"Fox 2 Lima." The circle and tone vanished simultaneously, a flame erupting from the bottom of the screen.

"Fox 2 Lima." "Fox 2 Lima."

Voices, likely belonging to the wingmen, repeated what Donovan said. The pulsing orange dots that had been detached from them towards the enemy likely being the same weapon that Donovan had deployed just now.

"Lima confirmed. Mike on my mark."

"Understood." "Affirmative."

Donovan flipped the same switch again, the circle and noise returning.

vvvvvvvvVVVIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

"Fox 2 Mike."

"Fox 2 Mike." "Fox 2 Mike."

Another flame, more orange dots. These ones were moving a bit faster though.

"Prepare flares and chaff."

"Flares armed. Chaff loaded. All systems green."

He seemed content with this, and slowly nudged the throttle forward. He was closing faster and faster with every second, Titanyana did not understand how he planned to take out all of these enemies at this speed. Surely he wouldn't have time to hit them all, would he?

BEE

Titanyana's ears perked up. Donovan didn't do anything to trigger that alarm.

BEE       BEE

       BEE  BEE

BEE    BEBEE BEE

"Fox 2 Lima hot in three, two, one." The first set of three orange dots began to flash red and change course towards the dots denoting the enemy vessels. "Fox 2 Mike hot in three, two, one." The second set of dots also flashed red now. They were very clearly chasing-

BEEWOOBEEWOOBEEWOO

"Radar free. Weapons free." Donovan adjusted his orientation to more directly face his enemies. "Chaff top, flare bottom. Fox 3 Charlie."

"Chaff top, flare belly." 

Two 'thunk's of a kind coincided with a slight shaking of the frame. Titanyana imagined something being ejected from the ship Donovan was in control of, but could not think of what that might be. Considering that the previous flames hadn't shaken the ship, she didn't think this new one was the cause.

"Splash one Lima."

"Splash one Mike." "Splash one Mike." 

It had been hard to make out from all of the other 'noise' that began to appear on screen, but three of those flashing red dots seemed to have made contact with red circles while the other three sailed on past. Additionally, the screaming alarm had faded and was now beeping lightly.

BEEWOOBEEWOOBEEWOO

"Chaff right. Flare right." The alarm was back, and Donovan immediately issued another command to his countermeasures officer.

"Chaff right. Flare right."

A flash could be seen ahead of them as more dots appeared on screen. They were orange, like the first missiles Donovan had fired, and he adjusted the ship to move to the left a little more.

"Fox 3 Charlie intercept. Double flare right." "Two flares right."

"Fox 3 Charlie."

The orange dots on screen zipped past Donovan to his right side, so fast that Titanyana could only barely get a glimpse of the flames spouting from their rear. She didn't even notice that Donovan had pushed the throttle as far forward as he could. 

BEEWOOBEEWOOBEEWOO

"Fox 3 Charlie intercept. Fox 3 Charlie. Magnum Sierra."

"Chaff belly." "Chaff belly."

BEEWOOBEEWOOBEEWOO

"Chaff left." "Chaff left."

BEEWOOBIDIBIDIBIDIBIDIBIDI

"Hard lock. Chaff plane flat. Repeat four. Fox 3 Charlie. Magnum Charlie. Magnum Sierra."

"Hard lock aye. Chaff plane flat, repeat four."

Three more flames from the below, the first of which immediately peeled away from the red dots and exploded against something.

"Fox 3 Charlie intercept. Chaff belly. Chaff aft. Flare top. Fox 3 Charlie."

"Chaff belly. Chaff aft. Flare top."

"Fox 3 Ch-" BA-BOO

The blue dot to Donovan's right disappeared. It had probably been destroyed.

"Fox 3 Charlie intercept. Splash one Magnum Sierra. Fox 3 Charlie."

Another of the enemies had been taken out, though Titanyana wondered if that was really an equal trade at the current rate.

"Fox 3 Charlie intercept. Magnum Charlie intercept. Fox 3 Charlie. Fox 3 Sierra Final."

It was getting hard for Titanyana to decipher what was happening. Between the launches of these flames, the explosions happening somewhere in front of the ship, the strange terminology Donovan was using to communicate with his wingmen, and the collage of dots and markers on the screen, Titanyana could not determine what anything was supposed to be or mean.

"Fox 3 Charlie intercept. Splash one Magnum Sierra. Fox 2 Charlie. Fox 2 Sierra Final. Magnum Charlie."

BA-BOO

The other blue dot disappeared now, though another two red circles had been taken out as well. If 'Splash' meant that one of the enemies had been taken out, then Donovan's wingmen must have been able to get one before dying.

BEEWOOBIDIBIDIBIDIBIDI

"Chaff left. Flare right." "Chaff left. Flare right."

BIDIBIDIBIDI

"Chaff right. Flare plane flat." "Chaff right. Flare plane flat."

BIDIBIDIBIDIBEEEEEEEE

A bright red dot appeared right in the middle of the screen, Donovan immediately adjusting to put the crosshairs on top of it and pulling the trigger.

VRRRR VRRRR

A pair of explosions followed a stream of lights from the front. Those were guns. They fired faster and looked smaller, but they had the same characteristics of the guns on top of the ship.

"Splash one Fox 3 Sierra. Magnum Charlie intercept. Fox 1 Charlie." PIIIII-VRRRR-IIIII "Splash one Fox 1. Dump plane flat!"

The skin on Donovan's face shifted in an unnatural manner as he pulled an extremely tight maneuver, one of the circles denoting the last remaining enemies having gotten much closer. A hollow red circle connected to the full circle by a line flashed on screen, Donovan putting the crosshairs right in the middle of it and pulling the trigger before breaking and flipping the nose of his vessel back 'down' before repeating the hard pulling pattern he had before.

"Splash one guns."

And it was a good thing he did. What looked like a rain of sparkling light passed some unknown distance beneath Donovan, parallel to his nose at every point. Titanyana surmised that the enemy had performed a similar action as Donovan just then, but had failed to dodge. 

"Fox 1 Charlie final. Magnum Charlie final." Donovan had already returned his focus to the three squares, launching another two missiles at them. They were getting closer. "Stop dump."

"Stopping dump."

- - - - -

Donovan loved missiles. He loved them more than every other category of weapon system, even railguns and nukes. They moved fast, killed faster, and for the most part could be left to their own devices. He could fire a few off, keep an eye on their progress while he took care of other things, and they even had their own flavors - each with their own niche use in a scrap.

For example, semi-active missiles - Fox 1's - locked on to a target painted by his craft's radar. A lost lock could be reacquired, but he rarely felt the need to do so. His primary objective with a Fox 1 missile was to force his opponent to deploy chaff and give a solid radar return.

Fox 2 missiles, heat-seekers, were his preferred method of taking out opponents who where unaware of his presence from the rear. They belonged to the passive category, and were much harder to detect while incoming. Even better, they could easily be launched in series with different speed and activation distances in order to have a full barrage of them make contact with an enemy formation almost simultaneously. Unfortunately, they were much easier to counter. Flares, hiding the exhaust ports, or shutting down the engine in some cases would be enough to make them lose their lock against background radiation. 

Fox 3's guided themselves. They had their own radars with which to detect and follow enemies, but they were really loud and could be distracted by chaff and noisemakers relatively easily. They were really good at intercepting other missiles though, both acting as bait and detecting incoming warheads.

The final missile type he used on a regular basis was of the Magnum variety. In essence, what Fox 2's were to heat sources, the Magnum was to electromagnetic and radar sources. It could be locked on to a specific signature, such as an incoming Fox 3 or enemy actively scanning with their radar, or fired 'blank' and left to acquire its own targets. 

Speaking of target acquisition, procedure dictated that he announce the activation distance or time of his fired missiles. 'Long', 'Medium', 'Short', and 'Closest Possible', all abbreviated to a single phonetic alphabet letter, were enough for deployable craft in combat, but for the bigger boys with more time on their hands the specifics were a necessity. This was to inform anyone in the firing cone what type of friendly munitions were inbound, when they could expect to be armed, and what measures they should take to avoid it chasing them. 

Donovan did not use his missiles in an orthodox manner, less because he though himself better than his peers and more because he understood how the missiles reacted and behaved to different environments and circumstances far better than most others. Fox 3's were not primarily for taking out enemy craft, but for acting like minesweepers along a suspected launch path. Magnums were not for silencing radar, but for taking out incoming Fox 3's and slapping those looking for any Fox 2's he might have launched. Fox 2's, though excellent killing implements, could also temporarily immobilize an enemy by making them turn off thrusters, while his Fox 1's could be launched without a radar lock and given last second guidance when they got close to their target.

Naturally, Donovan often found himself devoid of missiles once he got close enough to switch to guns, but given the short duration of most dogfights and the relative ineffectiveness of missiles in close quarters combat this was not considered a failing. If anything, his ability to get off all of his large, effective, and expensive weapons on the approach without getting himself pasted by return fire was seen as a demonstration of his skill. There was no telling what would happen inside of guns range, even a rookie pilot would only need to get a little bit lucky to trade in most scenarios.

"Splash one Fox 1." His last Magnum had missed. He often complained that Arc wasn't the best at simulating enemy pilots, but every so often he would do stuff that made life difficult for Donovan, such as right now. The strike craft had been deploying chaff and flares as they should, but one of them directed their missile control radar for their Fox 1's into the chaff cloud, creating a colossal electromagnetic signal for the Magnum to latch on to.

Now he had a problem. He had about twenty seconds left before he would get within effective gun range, and he did not have any more missiles. Even worse, these strike craft were of the missile variety, meaning they had the proper payload to deal with him if ever they got a lock.

"Chaff front." Donovan shifted the throttle all the way back as a cloud of static obscured his opponents, dots denoting 'targets' frantically appearing and disappearing in an unpredictable manner as his radar tried to parse the sudden deluge of return signals. "Chaff front." Two flashes indicative of detonating warheads scattered this defensive cloud to a degree, but all he had to do was re-apply the screen and keep his countdown going. Steadying his orientation in relation to some imaginary entity, Donovan made his move.

"Chaff left. Flare right." Deploying a 'decoy' ahead of his direction of travel while a heat signature behind the previous cloud, he emerged to reacquire lock.

pi VRRRRck

"Splash one guns." He had taken out one of the remaining two enemies with that snap shot, but had run out of ammo in the process. This, in his mind, was the unsolvable conundrum of the 'Interceptor' as a design philosophy.

By the nature of their job, they needed to accelerate rapidly and be somewhat stealthy from the front. Achieving the first required a reduction in mass, while the second usually involved a reduction in volume to some extent. These design objectives were complementary, in most scenarios the reduction of one would facilitate a reduction in the other, however they clashed with the other objective of the Interceptor, which was to intercept. This required weapons, which were generally considered 'mass intensive' and came with rather harsh restrictions on the volume they needed to occupy. 

Compromises needed to be made, compromises that Donovan was not necessarily happy with. As someone who made liberal use of missiles on the approach, the inability to sustain a lethal stance while in a dogfight due to ammunition limitations was on par with criminal. He couldn't get mad at the designers for this, there were barely more missiles than the average pilot one could expect to get off during the approach while the vast majority of pilots couldn't dream of approaching Donovan's level of marksmanship, let alone survive contact to the point that guns would be a necessity. The simple fact was that these guns were considered a secondary armament to the designers and doctrinal consultants, and thus were treated as secondary to more pressing objectives.

At this point though, none of that mattered.

DUGUGUG pi WOOP WOOP WOOP

"Radar slaved. Chaff front." Donovan had left his radar on for a moment before the chaff deployed, tagging the sole remaining strike craft before hiding behind another chaff cloud. "Chaff top. Flare bottom." Another moment of radar as he emerged from behind the cloud, "Chaff front. Flare top." Only to hide behind another, the efficacy of this tactic proven by what was likely a Magnum of some variety passing through one of his prior trajectories. 

Those little peeks to get position and path data on the last bogey had been enough though. Through the cloud of chaff a rush of 'tracers' and flak could be seen erupting around the ship, a larger secondary explosion consuming the rest of it. Having faced it's armor towards Donovan to survive a gun run and lacking an escort screen to deploy chaff and noisemakers, combined with detailed spatial data triangulated from Donovan's sensors, the area denial and defense armaments of three destroyers eviscerated the poor bastard. 

"Kill confirmed." This was the reason Donovan could not say he hated intercept missions. Intercept missions could be stressful, sure, but implicit in the concept of an intercept mission was that they were intercepting something. In other words, their target had an important target of their own, a target which was usually something with a decent amount of firepower, certainly more than enough to eliminate the threat by themselves so long as the interceptors got rid of the strike group's methods of defending itself - escort fighters, countermeasures, stealth, and armor profile. "Returning to Carrier."