"All right, listen up!" snapped an authoritative voice, and four officers lined up and came to attention. The snug black & white Starfleet flight suits left no doubt that all five were women, and that meant that this was none other than Banshee Squadron.
Lee Carter stood facing her teammates and continued (for the authoritative voice had been hers), "This will be our first combat exercise with the station's Marines, so pay attention. We have to look good out there -- we have our reputations to maintain." She paused briefly to make sure she had their attention, then continued: "In this exercise, our mission will be to provide close space and air support to the Marine ground assault troops. We'll be using a specially designated sector of New Canada, away from the main colony, as the training theater. Here are the mission parameters...."
As Carter methodically went through the specifics of the mission, four sets of eyes stayed focused on her, four sets of ears listened to every word, and four brains memorized every minute detail. Lee, Max, Sam and Jo had seen countless campaigns during the Dominion War, and even Kim, the newcomer, had been with the squad long enough to be counted as a veteran, so they were all very familiar with this drill.
"....so let's get out there and show those jarheads what Banshee Squadron is made of!" finished Carter enthusiastically. The rest shouted, yeah! and immediately set off at a brisk jog across the wide hangar deck toward their fighters. With the assistance of the technicians swarming around the deck and over the fighters, the Banshees were quickly nestled into their respective cockpits, suit umbilicals attached, neural-interface helmets on and active, and canopies sealed tight against the harsh vacuum of space.
Carter's voice crackled to life in the ears of her wingmates: "Commence pre-launch checks." One by one, she went through the startup procedure, calling out the steps as she did them herself. Outside the transparency of her cockpit, she could see the others performing the procedure in step with her. In a few minutes, quantum reactors were tapping the limitless energy of the universe itself, fusion piles awoke, adding their own fire, and engine ports glowed ready, reflecting their ghostly light off of the muzzles of phasers and cannons.
They were ready.
Smiling to herself as she felt the power build beneath her, Carter ordered, "Follow me out."
Silently, five wicked, winged shapes lifted from the hangar deck on antigrav beams and were ejected from the core hangar into the outer toroidal section of one of the station's commerce pods. Massive machinery was called into service to swing the massive clamshell doors open just enough for the fighter planes to slip out into open space.
Carter felt her body float upward and press against her seat restraints as her fighter left the artificial gravity field of the station. While her body adjusted to the abrupt change, she called up the tactical diagrams for the mission with a mere thought to her helmet. Another thought opened a comm channel to Jo, the navigator, in Banshee 3: "Jo, plot us a stealth course to our first target."
[Aye.]
A moment later new lines appeared in Carter's heads-up display indicating the course Jo had designated. She opened a tight-beam neutrino link to the other fighters and said, "Mark target one, orbital defense platform. Refractive shields, double front. Closing speed, 5 gee's, tight vic formation. Quantum cannons on initial run - we should be able to take out the whole thing on the first pass, then switch to phasers. On my mark...." Carter looked left and right and waited the few seconds it took the rest of her squad to maneuver into the V-shaped formation with her at the point, then snapped, "Mark!"
Subatomic energies hotter than any sun roared to life in the heart of five sets of engines and slung the five small fighters forward at an acceleration of 5 gravities, far slower than the maximum they were capable of, yet fast enough so that when they arrived at their target they'd be moving at a respectable velocity, though not too fast to be able to maneuver effectively.
SB901 fell quickly behind in Carter's HUD, and the target platform, configured for this exercise to act as a weapons satellite, as quickly drew closer. She wasn't picking up any indication from it that it had detected them yet, which meant their refractive shields were doing their job.
At 100,000 kilometers, there still wasn't any indication, so she made sure her cannons were charged and ordered the attack. "Alpha-strike attack pattern! Engage!"
A seamless integration of semi-sentient computer and supremely-skilled human pilot resulted in a flawless execution of the plan. The five tiny fighters spread apart so as not to hit each other in the coming exchange, then in perfect unison, twin orbs of crackling energy sprang from the wingtips of each ship toward the weapons platform. Immediately, the fighters peeled apart, each vectoring in a graceful arc away from the satellite.
Too late, the weapons platform realized it was under attack, and started swinging its own cannons and torpedo launchers around to face five angry bees that were buzzing about it. A split second later, ten quantum pulses pounded into it, releasing the energy they had kept pent in one blinding explosion that nearly rent the very fabric of spacetime. When the light subsided, the weapons platform was gone, replaced by a rapidly expanding cloud of basic atoms.
Carter saw all this on her HUD, and was pleased with her team's performance. The alpha-strike had gone off without a hitch, the target being destroyed in the first volley before it could retaliate. But this was just the first phase of the exercise. Next, the ground troops must be protected. She recalled the tactical map to her HUD and took in the current situation. The Marines, which had left SB901 right behind the fighter squad in their transport, were closing on their current position. She opened the neutrino comm and ordered, "Banshees 3 and 4, secure the area and cover our flanks. Banshees 2 and 5, follow me to escort the transport in. Prepare for ground assault."
A chorus of "Aye-aye's" answered her commands. Jo and Sam peeled off to reconnoiter the area around the destroyed weapons platform and ward off any counter-attacks, while Max and Kim swung in behind Lee and cruised back toward the Marine transport to offer them close support on their way down to the planet.
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