Here it is a sneak peak of Conquest , Book II of the Triumvirate Chronicles. This part covers a small bit during the final battle in the Lonsatia campaign. I hope to release this in the next 8 weeks.
Lonsatia Prime - Outside Zigurin
Roni was ploughing his fields around midday, grumbling to himself about the Hegemony presence on Lonsatia Prime. It was warm and sunny, the birds were singing as they flew around looking for their next meal. Sweat dripped down from the top of his head, his short, red hair soaked in it. His lithe body was sore, having hit middle age about five years back. Roni's blue eyes scanned the field and he knew he had a few hours yet to go before he finished this stretch of land. He glanced in the distance, barely able to see the towers of Zigurin, the capital of Lonsatia Prime. Thinking of it made him grumble again as he remembered the mess the Hegemony had made of the central nature reserve.
Roni looked behind him, swearing he could hear a distant whine. He cursed as he failed to spot anything on the horizon. Other than clouds. "Getting' old, and now I'm hearing things," he muttered and went back to work. He shook his head, trying to clear the sound, but he could swear it was getting closer, and now he could hear rumbling. He looked behind him again and his mouth dropped open. Roni jumped out of the cab of his plough and stared with his jaw agape. He could see fighters approaching and they looked like they were about to crash. The four wings of fighters were approaching in a quadruple chevron formation at supersonic speed, trailing a very large carpet behind them, and causing a sonic boom that could probably be heard for twenty kilometres in every direction.
Within a minute they passed him by so close he swore all he had to do was jump up to touch the bottom of one of them. The jet wash from the fighters knocked Roni flat on his ass with a thud, and looking up as the lead fighter of the first chevron passed over. He thought about what he was seeing for a minute and began to smile, then laugh. The sonic boom almost deafened him a second or so later as the fourth chevron of fighters passed overhead.
Roni also had a second job: a spy for the resistance. He had been taking pictures out here while he was ploughing his field, of ships coming and going from the space port as this particular field was in most of the flight paths. He climbed up back into his tractor and called up the pictures that had been taken by the automatic camera. Roni could make out that the fighters all had markings that were strange to him: definitely not the Hegemony emblem he had come to hate, that of the globe and the encircling crescent moons, nor was it the emblem of the old Lonsation fleet, three sinister-woven five pointed silver stars emblazoned on a red triangle. Instead he saw a sword with an eye in the hilt that was plunged into a green world, much like Lonsatia. Instead of getting back to work, he sat down to watch what would be one hell of a fire fight. It was what the camera had been lucky enough to catch under the wing of these strange ships that interested him the most: the word freedom painted in red in the Lonsatian language. Even though Roni did not recognize the fighters, he knew they were there to free Lonsatia.
Roni jumped into the cab of his tractor and relayed the news that there was an invasion under way back to the resistance so they could be ready to step in and help.
Lonsatia Prime - Approaching Zigurin
Savage kept his fighter low and close to the ground, flying more on instinct than on sensors. He was scanning ahead on minimum sensors so as not to give away their position. It was not looking good in his opinion. He could already pick up cannon emplacements on the tops of the tallest buildings visually that would be able to shoot down their bombers if they didn't take them out in time. Savage knew his fighters were next to invisible to the Hegemony sensors as they were travelling underneath the range of their scanners, but there wasn't a thing he could do about the sonic carpet his squadron was trailing over the planet's surface. Nevertheless, he felt fairly confident that his squadron could reach their targets well before any sort of serious Hegemony resistance could be scrambled and launched from the air fields.
"Wing leaders," said Savage breaking radio silence. "Track gun emplacements and set up targeting solutions. Be ready to accelerate point two five faster than attack speed." Savage cut it short to decrease the chance of being overheard by any Hegemony listening stations that might be active. They were still a good couple hundred kilometers out of the city limits. He checked his sensors again and saw that the ships at the ceiling had pulled back a bit, probably to give them enough time to deal with the guns, no doubt detecting the gun emplacements.
"Increase to attack speed," ordered Savage. The entire squadron surged forward, covering the distance between their position and the outskirts of the city in less than three minutes. "Increase another point two five. Wing two, and three, you are on either side, wing four and one will be down the middle. Watch those buildings and set yourself up to take out the upper floors." Savage locked his sights onto three targets using the multi-target mode of the computers on his craft and began weaving in and out of the buildings that bled out from the outer city limits. He slowly increased his elevation as he went, getting ready to open fire. He could see everyone below was stopping to look up at the invaders, but Savage ignored them. They were now on the outskirts of a city that measured over two thousand kilometers end to end.
Savage tensed as he was coming into range. The alarm went off from his targeting computer and he squeezed the upper trigger on his control stick. Green energy shot out from his wings, enveloping the building top. The upper floors exploded in a flash as the power supply for the cannon that the Hegemony forces had installed atop the building exploded, doing what his lasers would not have been able to do on their own. Savage flew right above it and into a heavy fire zone. Sensing the attack, the other cannons opened fire the minute he cleared the building. He sensed rather than felt two wingmen destroyed by crossfire between the buildings.
Savage cursed and juked his ship, avoiding the cannon blasts as quick as they came at his fighter. He quickly brought his fighter down below their line of sight and lined up the next target. He sensed an explosion near him and noticed he lost another of his wingmen. "Fuck," he muttered as he prepared to launch a torpedo. He waited for a confirmed lock and launched it. It raced away from the fighter as Savage pushed his fighter into a dive. The torpedo impacted, turning the top of the building into a mushroom cloud.
Savage scanned his sensors and saw he was down a total of three ships, a quarter of his squadron, but the guns on this side of the city were neutralized. He sighed, their deaths resting heavy on his shoulders. Savage took his fighter back down, skimming the street. People were scrambling to take cover as he flew overhead. On the street ahead he could see Hegemony soldiers mobilizing. He sighted them and squeezed the trigger, chewing up the street and through them. Savage smiled briefly as he went by, happy to see the Hegemony troops scrambling.
"What do you mean we've lost contact with the defences on the north side of the city?" demanded Nonx in the operations room. "Is it a communications glitch?"
"No sir, it just went down," replied the communications officer. "I could have sworn I heard explosions under the last communiqué from there before it we lost it. The last telemetry seemed to indicate one man fighters possibly, but I can't be sure. As well I am picking up strange signals that just don't mean anything right now."
"What the hell is going on?" asked Harpson, his huge mass waddling into the room. "I was just talking with the defence towers and then they were gone. Get them back."
"We can't sir," replied the comm officer.
"Order all fighters scrambled right away, we are under attack!" declared Nonx. "They must be using fighters. We sure as hell can't pick up any large ships in orbit."
"How can you be sure, and how dare you give orders out? I am in command here!" said Harpson, in a defiant stance.
"You were in command," said Nonx, removing his pistol from his belt and shooting Harpson. Harpson hollered as he fell to the floor. His flabby, starfish-like hands flew to the wide, smoking hole in his chest, and his eyes rolled up to show whites. Ignoring the meaty thud that signalled the end of Harpson's military career, Nonx turned back to the specialist. "Scramble all the fighters, I want to know what in the hell is going on. I want visuals and I want them yesterday!" Nonx ran over to one of the scanning stations and saw what he feared. "Are those fighters in the air yet? We have bombers and fighters coming in from the north on the ceiling. They must've taken out the defences."
"The fighters are on their way sir."
"Watch it boys, keep fast and low," instructed Savage. He had ordered the remainder of his squadron back down to the deck to avoid fire from above, but it left them dodging buildings, and their forward speed slowed. The alarm horn of Savage's sensor sweep suddenly brayed, quite loud in the cockpit of the fighter. He looked at his sensors and saw enemy fighters taking off. "Shit. Wing two, take one fighter from wing three and intercept those Heggy fighters now! Warn them upstairs, too. Repo Man Eight and Ten, in with me, our first target will be the air fields. Let's go!"
Portryl, the leader of the second wing answered Savage, "Just saw them, sir. We're on them!" The fighters of the second and third wing broke away in response, streaking ahead and above of Savage, and the remaining fighters of the lead wing. Savage looked up to see his wing mates move up and out of the maze of the city, on a direct intercept course for the launched fighters. Savage took his fighter up fifty meters, clearing a lot of the lower buildings. He could finally see the park in the near distance, and the air field carved out of the middle of it.
Savage increased his speed a bit more, his two wingmen following suit. When in range, Savage opened fire, tearing into the air strip the enemy fighters were taking off from. With cold precision, he and his wing mates hit fighter after fighter on the ground and those taking off, leaving behind charred wreckage. But still some of the Hegemony fighters had managed to get off of the ground. Next, they turned on the hangars, Savage's wing mates each dropping one of their bombs, turning the hangar into a fireball.
Veering up, the first wing came into fire from the buildings on the other side. "Watch that fire from those buildings," Savage warned. "What's the status upstairs?"
"Going well, one. We've destroyed all of the fighters. The bombers are about to make their runs. We have only lost two of them. Good clean up job."
"Good, tell them to hit the main bunkers first and circle around for the power supply and communications next. We don't want to give them too much time to warn any of the defences. We're moving in to take out the rest of the cannons on the buildings. Savage out."
Savage climbed higher and set up his run on the remaining cannons. This time it was much harder with laser blasts zipping by his ship. He found himself weaving to avoid most of the hits, a few of them close enough to singe the sensors on his fighter. He targeted and blasted the first two cannons into fireballs before his ship was struck from above.
Using instinct, Savage took his ship down low, his sensors screaming he had two ships on his tail. "Damn!" he cursed. "Where are you two?" Savage shouted into his comm unit for his wing mates, "I'm hot with two on my tail!" There was no response.
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