Brandolynne hated sitting in the Vipers waiting. If they were going to just sit and wait, why not in the pilots ready room? It didnt take but a couple minutes to strap in and light the fires. The ready five craft were standing by for a reason, why make us all do it? She looked over at Tabitha. The ensign was sitting quietly with her helmet off, her head back, balancing a pencil on her nose for something to do. To her other side, Steph was on the command frequency recieving last second updates from C&C. She wondered why the ensign wasnt getting those reports till she looked back over and saw Tabitha put the pencil up and look down at the middle display of her insturment cluster and begin reading something. Brandy felt left out.
Steph saw Brandy looking over at the pretty ensign and knew she was getting jealous. He typed out a message "I love you princess" and sent it to her IFF display. It beeped and Brandy looked down and smiled. Little things...
Brandt tried to hold onto the railing to keep his hands from shaking. His XO, Danson was chewing the end of his finger, having long ago removed the nail down to the quik. The entire bridge was scared, but the stoic figure of their Captain standing resolutely by his command chair held them in check. Brandt looked from side to side, trying to keep the muscles in his neck from knotting up. Danson looked back and nodded, as if they were communicating. The bridge crew took that as a sign that all was going according to some plan.
In space, there was uncontrolled chaos. Vipers and Advanced Raiders fought it out in silence. The flashes of explosions lit up the metal fragments ruining night vision for the humans, and causing the Cylon machines to lose their ability to lock onto specific targets. The Cylons had never planned for a battle so far into a gravity well. They had assembled their newest fighters for deep space operations, to attack colonies and Battlestars outside of the system. This new attack was taxing their abilities. The Viper pilots suffered initial losses that staggered the squadrons, the pilots that survived the first waves were terrified and their formations broke up into confused sporadic fighting.
After the gravity well began to pull the fragments back towards the large battle zone, the Cylons were treated to a role reversal, as their advanced guidance systems began to track the larger metal debris as well as the Colonial Vipers. The confused tumble of debris, with Vipers dodging in and out of the larger pieces confused the Cylon attack computers, they tracked too many targets and couldnt decide which to target first, so they went into an endless reset loop and became useless. The young Viper pilots found themselves with an unforseen advantage. Their ability to distinguish what was and was not hostile was hampered only by the amount of night blindness they suffered. Those pilots who had tinted visors were racking up kill numbers that would make even the most experienced pilots smile.
Steph looked back, seeing Brandy on his tail. She wasnt a great shot, but she was an artful dodger of Cylon fire. He smiled, her call sign, Dodger, thats what he would give her for her birthday next month. She kept the Cylons so busy trying to get a shot on her that he was free to pretty much swoop in and take his share of kills. Tabitha's loose deuce formation was working splendedly. One Viper was no match for an Advanced Raider, but two Vipers working together was more than a match for five of them.
Tabitha looked back, her wingman had flown into a piece of Raider and was dead. She watched four of the raiders swoop in for a shot on her. She pulled back, pushing the throttles hard to the limits. The nimble Viper twisted in a cartwheel as she released a volley of rounds into the black. One of the Raiders took a hit and went out of control. The other three banked giving her a few seconds to figure out how to live a few more seconds.
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