Installment number four, obviously. This will be the final installment, and it's probably the best of the quartet.
Tollingston was furious. In the past week, the top two commanders in the entire UE Navy had been killed.
The first with a single sidearm blast.
The second from a swarm of enemy ships.
Tollingston was now Commander-in-Chief of the UE Navy. He was on board the current UES Gallant, followed by a fleet of other Cruisers, plus Carriers, Destoyers, and Fighters. This time, a swarm could not get them.
The previous C-in-C, who had died only 48 hours ago, had been naďve, arrogant, and foolish. He'd figured he could take the fleet by himself.
Surprise, surprise, Thompson. You flunked.
He returned to his quarters and left his crew to their duties. He stared out the porthole at an incredible nebula. He remembered the first time he'd ever seen a nebula. He remembered the day that his parents...
Get a grip, he ordered himself mentally. It's just a stupid nebula.
He turned away from the porthole. if it was going to bring back horrific childhood experiences, he would not look at it. But he still could not help but remember that fateful day, when they were flying along peacefully, and suddenly, the Renegades came...
STOP IT! he yelled at himself in his mind. STOP THINKING ABOUT THAT!
For half an hour he struggled to regain control. But the terrifying pictures formed in his mind anyway. He collapsed, cluthing his head.
Thne Renegades boarded the ship. His parents went to the hatch and were shot immediately. The rest of the crew perished with them. he was alone...
Suddenly, Tollingston blacked out.
The guard examined the body that lay before him. It was a human, no doubt about that. But what was his position in the Human Fleet? he knew him from somewhere. But where? He remembered a frenzy of action and chaos and fire and destruction and death. Then it clicked. This guy was the one he had blown up!
How did he survive, though?
Did he make it in an escape pod? He hadn't seen one. Or perhaps he was thinking of a different human. Perhaps this was some other guy.
Perhaps he was not, in fact, the former Commander-in-Chief of the UE Navy.
People screamed. People fled.
People died.
The fleet was invading Saalia.
"SCREW YOU!" one young man was shouting at the Dreadnought. For some reason, he was holding up his hand in a funny way with only one finger up. But the captain of the RFS Headhunter had no time for this. Though he did wonder what a screw was and what it had to do with him, he figured that it must be an insult of sorts and that weird wave was supporting it. Just an instinct.
He shot the man with a Neutron blast and he dropped dead.
A fleet of humans headed toward them. They were disadvantaged. the humans would win. That was bad
That was very bad indeed.
Suddenly, his ship was enveloped in Blaze fire and Rockets and Hunter missiles. And ships.
Many, many ships.
They had all ganged up on the bad boy. The Dreadnought. The ass-hauling machine.
Its ass-hauling days were over.
His shield readings dropped. 43%, 39%, 32%, 30% 27%, 26%. Soon, it was down to 10%. Then it lost its shields and had only armor to rely upon. The human ships had torn through most of his armor on the Starboard side. A little longer and the air pressure balance necessary to maintain Romulan life on board a spaceship would be upset, and they would all be sucked out of the ship to their doom. Scrap metal flew. Some hit human ships. However, the scraps were not enough to destroy the ships. The headhunter was doomed.
Then, a huge bang.
The air was flowing out.
The Headhunter's crew were going to die a slow, painful death.
Every single one of them.
"Commander, Flagship destroyed. Repeat, flagship destroyed. Over." Johnson continued his status report. "Ship sustained heavy damage, requesting withdrawal.Over."
"Withdrawal granted. You have thirty minutes to get a new ship. Over."
Johnson took hold of the helm of his Destroyer and hit the afterburners. He swerved away from the vacuum Dreadnought. Bodies flew from the opening. It was a sickening and disturbing sight. He pointed the nose down toward the landing platform below, turned off the afterburners, and activated the landing thrusters, all while trying to put that horrific scene out of his mind.
But more than that, he tried to put his past out of his mind. His past was ugly and brutal. He had started out as a trader, but soon had his own customized turncoat and began attacking weak ships and plundering them.
Then he would kill them.
He entered the spaceport and headed over to the nearest dockhand to ask where the base commander was. He jerked a thumb behind him toward the bar, and so that was where Johnson went.
He hated that last name. it was so dull and boring. Why couldn't it be something interesting like the C-in-C, Tollingston, or maybe even his Academy professor, Barnhart? But nope. it had to be Johnson. The topic put his mind off his past and the sight a thousand feet up. He opened the door and was hit in the back by a Neutron blast.
The flagship was destroyed. Half the now pathetic fleet was also gone.
A third of the UE fleet was dust.
They Romulans fought savagely. A few Frigates even rammed their triangular sides into the fronts of other ships to cause more damage. The UE, on the other hand, fought gallantly.
Had the UES Gallant been there, the name would have suited it well. The UE were toasting the Romulans to cinders, and they were going to win.
Had the Romulans been using their Warpods, the UE would be completely gone already. but they weren't. They were using Voinian ships. That gave them the upper hand.
A half-hour later, the Romulan fleet was gone. The UE had only an eighth of their fleet left. But they had won.
The UES Gallant landed on Saalia to refuel, and an incredible sight met their eyes: the fleet had been here.
Yet only a fraction of the planet was destroyed.
The defense fleet must have won.
That was good.
Two C-in-Cs had died from that fleet.
That was bad.
But in the end, it doesn't really matter what's bad. What matters is what's good. The defeat of the Romulan fleet was a good thing.
Therefore, it mattered.
