The screeching sirens sounded, waking from my deep peaceful sleep. The entire ship was on full alert. I hurriedly grabbed some cloths, and rushed out of the heavy metal door. On the visitors corridor, heads were poking around their quarters’ doors looking bemused and scared. I rushed down to the docking platform. Once down there, all the BAF ships were scrambling out of the docking hatches, and the massive battleship shook as the result of some outside force. I jumped into my fighter, eager to help. Nearly crashing into the other rushing pilots on my way out of the docking hatch, I left the safety of the Essex.
The battle was already fully underway outside, laser blasts flying left right and centre. I caught sight of another Bretonian battleship holding position above the Essex, and not far out, what looked like a Liberty battleship. No, it wasn’t, it was a corsair Osiris. I was awestruck, and just hovered beneath the Essex, trying to make sense of what was happening. The battle seemed equally matched between the Corsair attackers, and the Essex defenders, we had two Battleships, but judging by the antimatter bursts flying our way, they had a good number of bombers. A BMM pilot named Rick Astley half yelled at me to fight, which I was planning on anyway. He snapped me out of my Trance, and instantly paid me a million credits, before I could even respond. Needless to say, I lept into action, chasing down the nearest Corsair with guns blazing.
The battle was crazy, and I took in very little of what was happening, I just focused on chasing down one bomber, who, despite his lack of manouverability, managed to evade most of my shots. As he retreated to the range of their battleship, the Kraken I believe it was called, I took up another target, and continually dodged the battleship’s fire. I get seriously bad tunnel vision in battles such as this, but the massive explosion of one of the BAF battleships exploding shook me to the very core. I can’t recall the name of the ship, but it had moved far enough away from the Essex not to incapacitate it when it exploded. Despite that, I was to close, and the explosion knocked out my shield. Shortly after, a bomber’s mine caught my power core, and I had no choice but to retreat or face destruction. I thrusted to the New London gate, which was risky considering the Kraken was between the Essex and there, but through some fancy manoeuvring, I evaded another crippling blow and retreated to the New London system.
Once in New London and shut off my main power core, having only half impulse to dock with the trade lane and land on New London, it took me a little longer than I would have liked, but I survived. As soon as I landed, I checked the neural news network, who would doubtlessly have live coverage of the battle in Dublin. Sure enough, coverage from the essex was being broadcast, and the defending fleet had been defeated. The Essex was barely holding it’s own, and waiting for reinforcements.
At that time, the yard-master noticed me sitting in my wreck of a ship, and banged on the nose to get my attention. I went to climb out of my tiny cockpit, but my leg gave way under my weight. Searing pain shot up from my leg, through my hips. I almost blacked out, but managed to hold myself together enough to see what was causing it. The flight control panel had twisted round and crushed down onto the pilot’s seat. I looked out of the viewscreen at the yard-master, then slumped back down into the seat with another shot of pain, and blacked out.