Command 46

    Chapter 1: Practice


    Shadow Viper turned, just in time to see Alexandrov, or Alex coming up behind him. Viper turned the Defender to miss Alex's tagger shot. Viper cut his engines and turned just enough to tag Alex right in the cockpit. A monitor to his left bleeped telling him Alex has been tagged and out. Viper saw another Defender come out of nowhere, he reactivated his engines and began to afterburn at the Defender, Viper locked onto the Defender and shot a tagger, but missed.


    "What do you call that, Viper!?" he heard a voice, probably one of the other Command 46 soldiers that Viper doesn't know.


    "I call that a practice shot!" Viper yelled back. He turns and shoots another tagger, tagging him out. Viper then saw a familiar Patriot come out of the shadows, and up behind him. Hunter..., he thought. Hunter came around and was about to tag Viper, but he moved before Hunter even came close to firing. DK came around the side, firing taggers, but all missed, he hit Hunter, I turned and hit him.


    "Good job guys, return to Ames Research Station for your debriefing and new briefing," The commander came through the comm.


    "Understood, Viper out," he said back, he then turned and activated his engines...

    Chapter 2: The Corsair


    Alex watched as Ames Research Station came into view, but something was wrong, there was no ships in space around it. Alex looked at Viper's Defender come out of Cruise.


    "Why's it so quiet?" Viper's voice came through the intercom.


    "I was wondering that myself," Alex called back. This isn't good. He thought. Then something came into view, a Titan. What the hell? Alex thought as it came into view. The Titan turned and went into attack speed, uh, oh. Alex turned the Defender just enough to miss the Titan's initial attack. Viper came around behind the Titan, firing Advanced Lasers, but they didn't pierce the Titan's shields.


    "What is this thing?" Alex asked.


    "A Corsair!" Viper said back.


    "A Corsair out this far?!" Alex yelled back.


    "I know, it's weird," Viper called back. I turned just enough to see the Corsair come around for another pass. Alex turned and shot at it, doing massive amounts of damage to the Titan's shields. Hunter came around and shot a missile at the Corsair's engine's, but the missed and hit a nearby asteroid.


    All of a sudden the Titan began to charge it's cruise engines, blasting it's way into the nearest nebula. Alex turned towards Viper's Defender.


    "What happened?" he asked.


    "I don't know, Alex, best bet is that he came from the Sigmas, and probably farther out, like Omicron Theta, but that'll be a dangerous area to investigate," Viper called back. I don't like the song of that.


    "Well, then let's got to Ames and see what we can do," Alex suggested.


    "I agree," Hunter's voice comes through, "it's strange for a Corsair to be out this far into colony space," We turned and headed for Ames, as we drew closer, smoke began to rise from the Research Station.


    "What the hell?" DK's voice comes through.


    "It was a attack," Viper said.


    "How many?" Alex asked.


    "By the looks, at least 10 Titans," Viper said back.


    "...'s out there?!..." a crackling voice came through the comm.


    "This is Command 46, may I ask who this is?" Viper asked the voice.


    "This is the deck officer James Long, of Ames Research Station, we've been attacked by the Corsairs, almost 90% of Ames's crew is dead, including the Liberty Officers on board," the voice said.


    "Any idea which direction they came from?" Alex asked.


    "I'll upload the of their direction to your neural net now," James said as he press buttons on a datapad, "are you getting the signal?" he asked.


    "Yes, loud and clear, we're going to investigate, please call for backup and a repair crew for Ames, tell the backup to meet us at the coordinates," Viper said and began to fly in the direction of the way point. I only hope we have time to escape before the Corsairs kill us. Alex thought as he charged his cruise engines...