Basher Conceptual Design
What do you think are we ready to build the first one, David asked. Yes, I think we are, it will be in the hanger bay by the time you get down here, Ship said. They each left their building to head down to the hanger. How cool is it that in less than two hours we can build a ship, Gordon said. Well, most of everything we used we already had in a slightly different configuration, so it was easier, David said. People were standing around looking at the large square box that had appeared in the hanger bay. I thought it would be better not to have people see it, Ship explained as they approached. A door appeared in the box as they got closer, and they stepped inside. The ship looked exactly like the rendering, so they entered through the rear hatch, there was another on the side for spaceport docking. There were four comfortable seats in the back in a circle facing each other and two in the front with the controls.
Shall we take it up, Gordon asked, he and Emma had both learned to fly the Javelins in case they were needed on a mission. Sure David said, as he took one of the weapons systems chairs and Emma took the copilot seat. The front side of the box disappeared since the ship was now cloaked, and the hanger door opened. They taxied out to the area in front of the hanger and took off. The box disappeared completely after they left the hanger, everyone went back to what they were doing. The ship was fast they were in space in seconds and flying around the moon a moment latter.
Flight systems check out, Gordon said, let’s go out to the asteroid belt and test the weapons systems, Emma said. They flew toward the asteroid belt and David designated six large asteroids, in seconds they were hit by the double attack of two torpedoes each. Well, that sure works he said. They returned to the base, still cloaked, and taxied to the restricted runway entrance were the Javelins entered the restricted area from. They contacted the guards and gave them the authentication code to enter the gate. The guard was surprised since the outline of the ship looked different than the javelin he was expecting on the security screen that checked for cloaked objects.
They parked it just off the training field were some of the Javelins were parked. Well, that’s not a Javelin, Megan said, as they got out of the back hatch. Yeah, we designed a ship to attack the Gamma ships, David said, in way of an explanation. Really, and when did all this happen, she asked? Oh, about four hours ago, David said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. We just got done testing it, it will do the job, Gordon confirmed. Ok, so what’s the plan then, she said, rolling with the situation, and watching David to try and get a clue to how he was feeling after their kiss. She had given up on being surprised when they did stuff like this, it was just who they were, but she was feeling vulnerable about the kiss and what it meant for their relationship going forward. Not sure yet, thought we would all get together and discuss it, David said. Not giving her any hint to what he was feeling to her frustration, she was slightly hurt thinking it didn’t mean as much to him as it did to her.
A few minutes later the Team that was now called Red One, plus Joan and Ship were in the virtual conference room. Ok, we now have a ship that can attack multiple ships and only needs a crew of six, two pilots plus four weapons operators, David said. In a pinch we could do it with three, maybe two, Ship added. It only took ship about a half an hour to build one as well, Emma added. Ok, so how do we use it, we need to find a way to draw them away from the base, Michael said. “Well, chatter is starting to pick up they have discovered the destruction on the Saturn moon as we hoped they would. Also I think they are trying to contact the Mars bases”, Ship said. What if we sent the ship out there to the mining station base and waited for them to send a ship out to investigate, then we take out that ship and the one that comes after that one, David said. Pretty soon they would start sending more ships at a time, Michael said, following his train of thought. By then we could even have more ships built and standing by to take them out, Gordon interjected.
The only problem will be staffing the ships, Michael said. Not really Dad, David said, the interface is almost exactly the same as the suit interface so the RT guys could learn it really quick, and we have ten Javelin pilots including Jully and Derick that could fly the ship, plus our team. I think we should be on standby, in Ship just in case they need a little help Michael said. By the way what are we going to call the new ships, Emma asked. I was thinking the Basher, Gordon said. Sounds good to me, David said. Yeah, that will work Michael agreed. Anybody else have a problem with it, Michael asked, they seemed to agree. Ship sent the constructs to the manufacturing facility and ten new Bashers started being built. What ship didn’t tell them was it had designed two of the telekinetic coils connected to the fusion generator under the domes on each side of the ship, so it had the added strength of roughly three grand masters to help keep the batteries charged.
The first Basher took off for the ambush point about two hours later, it was so fast it could fly about six times faster than Ship. Jully had been chosen as the first Basher pilot and she was proud to be the first one. The Basher flew about the same as a Javelin but much faster. The Basher entered the area around the destroyed base well before the first ship showed up to check out the situation. They jammed their communications and dispatched them easily. A few hours later another ship showed up, and they destroyed it as well. Ship monitored the surveillance of the Enemy Base and it saw they were getting ready to launch a fleet of ten ships. It would take them a day to get to the location, from the enemy base, so they had a little time.
They had two new Bashers ready with crews, so they sent them to be on standby a few thousand miles away from the area. They could close the gap quickly if needed, but they wanted to test the ships capabilities against multiple ships. David had handled six targets at once by himself and they had four crew members manning the weapons systems, so they should have no problem with ten ships. The next day the ships showed up, five were cloaked and five were not. Ship informed the crew that the non-cloaked ships were also from the enemy base and should be considered hostile, so they took them all out. The weapons system performed better than expected and the battle was over in a few minutes. If it could be called a battle, the enemy ships didn’t even have time to react before they were destroyed. Even if they did have time to react they had no way to target the ship, because the missiles appeared out of nowhere, near their ship so there was no way to track the trajectory.
It was the moment of truth, they had destroyed twelve of the enemy ships, would they send more or would they be smart and stay away. The three ships sat around waiting to see what would come next, luckily they built a head into the design, and the suits kept them clean, or it could have been a bad situation onboard. Ship monitored the surveillance, it had mixed emotions when it saw they were sending one of the large ships and fifteen smaller ships to the area. Three of the Bashers should be able to handle it, but they decided to head that way with the rest of the team, and two Bashers and two Javelins in the hold. They had used Bravo Squad as the crew members of the Bashers and that left Alpha Squad intact and part of Bravo Squad available for the other two Bashers if needed, and as support for Alpha Squad should they need it as well.
About the same time that the Enemy ships were passing through the Saturn Region, Ship was stopping a few thousand miles away to wait in a supporting role. They were not sure of the capabilities of the larger ship so they wanted to hold back just in case it was able to pick them up somehow.
The next day the Enemy ships entered the area. The Bashers jammed their communications, but did not attack right away. One of the small ships broke away and started to head down to the destroyed base. Before they even made it halfway there, Jully’s Basher targeted it and five others on that side of the larger ship. The other ships seemed to be on the alert, but did not have a clue where the attacks came from. They fired randomly in the general direction the ships had been destroyed in. The other Bashers engaged the remaining ships, one of the crew members of a Basher sent
four torpedoes into the larger ship two into the command and control and two into the reactor. All that was left of the command and control was a large gaping hole in the ship and then its reactor exploded, and huge chunks of the ship hit the other ships around it, even as they were getting the same treatment from the other crew members. The result was total destruction and mass chaos and death, for the crews of the enemy ships. They had no idea where the attacks were coming from and had no defense against the attack.
Some small attack ships managed to get away from the big ship before the reactor exploded. The small attack weapons on Basher One (Jully’s ship) and the other Bashers made short work of them. They used a version of the exploding shard except four at a time would hit the cockpit and turn into five inch explosive balls. The oxygen rich cockpit provided a perfect environment for the explosive charge, the blast could only be seen inside the cockpit which was vaporized from the explosion. The battle was over within a few minutes. They had won an easy victory, the new ships were a great success.
The area around the base became a ship graveyard, the Bashers had to pull away further, it was too dangerous with all the debris floating around. The great thing about the torpedoes was they turned the oxygen inside the ships into a five thousand degree firestorm and then followed it with a huge concussive force, so anyone onboard the ships would be blown into little fried chunks that would freeze in the vacuum of space so they could not be read. The Enemy would never know what happened to their ships they would just find the pieces floating in space. But for now they would wait and see what they did next. There were at least forty more ships left at the dark planet. If the ships did not come to them, they would have to go after them.
So for now all they could do was wait, for Jully and her crew that was the toughest part of the job, flying the Bashers was easy they maneuvered really well, so it was not hard to fly them. The targeting systems were very close to the interface the suit used, and was tied into the suit, so they could designate targets and see the battle unfold just like when they were fighting in the suit. In that sense the ship had become an extension of them, almost like a giant suit, except they shared targets. Even though they were divided by regions around the ship there was still some overlap.
The interface handled that by updating the screens as soon as a target was designated by one of the crew members, and would not let them designate one that had been assigned, it would automatically jump to the next available target. The network functioned across multiple ships so they always knew where the other ships where and what targets where available for attack. So even though there were multiple ships involved with multiple crew members targeting the enemy and sharing the same target pool, they functioned seamlessly and very efficiently.
Two days went by and still nothing happened, then Ship saw they were sending more ships twenty five this time including another big one. They tracked their progress and as they got closer, they sent out the other two bashers to join the others. There would be five Bashers against the enemy ships, with Ship on standby. As the ships got closer they stopped on the other side of the debris field, Ship jammed their communications with the drones it had attached to the ships while they were at the Enemy base, so they couldn’t tell their base what they saw.
The Enemy Ships started firing their weapons into the debris field, they must have thought the ships that attacked their other ships, were hiding in the debris. The Bashers setup their attack they were out of range of the weapons the enemy was using since they had taken up positions on the other side of the debris field. The first ship to go was the big one, four torpedoes slammed into it, a split second latter the rest of the ships were hit each receiving two torpedoes. The results were devastating the large ship ripped apart just before the small ships did the same, the attack ships did not even get a chance to launch this time. They were consumed in the fireball inside the ship just before the explosives ripped the hull apart, there was nothing that could survive the devastation.
The torpedoes were a nasty spell Ship had developed, the large projectiles slammed into the hull with enough kinetic energy to push the two-foot by four-foot carbon shard through any hull. After the shards passed through the hull they turned to white phosphorous softening the area around the hull breach, next a two-foot in diameter white phosphorous ball with an explosive ball inside slammed through the hole. The explosive went off showering everything within range with white phosphorous burning everything within the oxygen rich environment at 5000 degrees Fahrenheit, right behind that two more explosive balls two-foot in diameter slammed through the hole, the concussive force of the explosion would burst the hull wide open like an egg in a microwave. By targeting the reactor area of the ships it caused the rector to explode as well increasing the devastation.
They had destroyed a significant portion of the enemy ships, they were pretty confident that they would not be sending anymore for a while. They decided to leave a ship on patrol and the rest would head home. Jully and her crew would be heading home, they could use the rest and a nice shower, the suits took care of all the bacteria and kept the body clean, but it was still nice to take a shower. One of the Bashers that had been on the Marauder would stay on patrol and the rest would head home with Ship and the team. They would fly three day missions patrolling the area around the ship grave yard, and any targets of opportunity that might come up along the way. The Bashers flew so fast that they could cover the distance between home base and the ambush site in a few hours. The biggest thing they had to worry about was boredom, since the Enemy had finally gotten smart and stopped sending ships.
Sharing the patrol duties helped with that. So it was only a three day mission every few days. They had time for a rest in between. Jully put hers to good use, her and her sister spent some time together since they didn’t see each other as much as they had when she was flying the Javelins to and from the Marauder. It was one of the draw backs of being a Basher pilot for Jully, but she wouldn’t give it up for the world, when she was flying a Basher she was right in the middle of the action instead of being a glorified taxi service for the teams. She was loving being a Basher pilot and she felt like she was making a difference and getting a little pay back for her parents.
With the Bashers on patrol and Ship monitoring the surveillance feeds from the Dark Planet the team finally had an opportunity to rest. They restructured the pilot training and divided the secondary training between Javelin and Basher training, no one outside of the Team knew of the Bashers. They changed the team training program to have a section that trained recruits to be crew members of the Bashers. In the interest of time they pulled all the recruits out of Bravo Squad and stripped it down to just the leadership. They then recruited more candidates, since they still had a fairly large list to choose from. With all that done all they could do was wait and get some well needed RR. For the first time in a long time they had some time to take a moment for themselves. Not surprisingly they spent it together, at David’s apartment. The only rule was no shop talk, they were going to take a few days off, before they went back to the fight.
During that time Megan managed to get David alone in a place that she was sure they would not be disturbed in, and asked him how he felt about the kiss and them. He was honest with her and told her he had been thinking about it a lot, and he definitely liked it, but he was still trying to find out how he felt about them as a couple. He explained he didn’t want to lose what they had as friends and didn’t want to hurt the team. He even told her about his realization that Emma was interested in him as well.
Megan’s reaction was pretty diplomatic considering, so you finally figured that out did yah, she said acidly, feeling like she was getting the brush off. So what about my feelings do they matter, she said, feeling hurt and betrayed. Of course they do, he said, suddenly realizing she was getting upset. He reached out to her and she pulled away. He closed the distance between them and gently held her head in
his hands trying to get her to raise her eyes to his, she was crying now.
Look all I am saying is I am scared to lose what we already have, I am not saying that I don’t want to try and see what we might have together, he said, hoping they were the right words to get her to look at him. She slowly raised her eyes to his, do you mean that, she asked, praying he did and afraid that he was going to hurt her again. Yes, I mean that, he said, kissing the tears on her cheeks. You know, I am scared too, and I don’t want to lose what we have either, she said, starting to respond to his tender kisses. Let’s just take it slow, he said, and I don’t want to hurt Emma, so can we try to keep it between us until we can break it to her. Yes, I understand I don’t want to hurt her either, I know how that feels, my heart almost broke when I thought you were choosing her over me, Megan admitted. I know it is going to hurt her, I just hope I can find a way to do it gently I don’t want to lose her friendship either, David said.
Megan was having mixed emotions about what had just happened, on the one hand her heart was soaring, but on the other she was feeling bad for Emma, they had become friends and she really didn’t want to hurt her feelings. She wasn’t looking forward to the time when they finally told her about them. She really liked the thought of her and David being a them. She pushed up on her tippy toes and kissed him, he returned the kiss and they held each other and kissed and generally just enjoyed the feeling of being together.
Several weeks went by and there was no sign of enemy activity, even the safe houses had gone quite. The Basher patrols became routine and more recruits were trained. Bravo Squad was back up to full strength and they had eight Bashers in the rotation with two always on standby with the crews on alert should the need arise. The council was still not aware of the Basher program or the Dark Planet. They explained the extra patrols of ships that flew cloaked out of the hanger as a new Javelin prototype that they wanted to keep need to know. The council did not question it they had stepped back and let them do their thing shortly after the first tour of the facilities.
They were running more Javelin missions as well, with all the surveillance in place ship was finding more gifted and they were able to rescue them and bring them back to other Delta bases. Gamma Faction had even stopped trying to find the gifted, as far as they could tell. It was like they had stopped all operations all together, and were waiting for something.
Finally the surveillance showed that a small fleet of ships were leaving the Planet and heading deeper into space, then they docked with a large structure. It seemed to be a builder ship that had been converted to a battle platform. There were several guns and three decks of the small attack ships. The entire thing could travel through space and would be very hard to withstand as a base of operations against even the Alliances defenses. Ship gathered intel and found out the structure was meant to attack Earth. It was what they had been trying to destroy the defense grid for. Once the grid was down they would punch through with this ship and attack the planet. This was the end game, and now Ship knew what it was, they would have to stop it.
Ship contacted the Team and they came together in the virtual meeting room. Ship showed them the surveillance information and told them the target was Earth. They made plans for an attack on the battle platform. They were going to have to be very careful, the Enemy must know that they are watching so there was a good chance this was a trap meant to draw them out and allow the Enemy to takeout the threat to their ships.