Fan Fiction /Labor Day 2011/Day In The Life
Chief Petty Officer Kim Whalley was rather involved in the card game when her C.O. entered the bay. She jerked to attention when one of her “Squadies” shouted “Squadron attention!” letting her cards fall to the floor. Captain Krouss called out “I’m looking for a volunteer” which elicited a wave of groans and grumbled complaints. “Listen up people, this mission is to make a delivery to SEALS Team V on Barkon VI” at this everyone in the room threw up their hand volunteering, no small number of “Fighter Jocks” owed their very lives to the daring men and women of the SEALS who whisked in out of nowhere to snatch you from certain death or worse at the hands of the enemy. Captain Krouss sighed “I figured this would happen so I came prepared” he held out a hand filled with small sticks, “All right everybody draws one”. The Squadron quickly lined up and drew straws. After a few moments they held up their hands to discover that Whalley had drawn the short straw. “All right, it looks like I have my volunteer, come with me Chief”.
After the briefing, if you could call it that. Her mission wasn’t a rescue mission or even a supply drop; it was to deliver a simple message. She boarded a Recon Gryphon; these are stripped of weapons and much of the armor plating around the cockpit to make room for the larger drive and the sensitive electronics package. Nicknamed a “Wreck” short for recon and also for the condition the planes typically returned or were found in.
Forty hours later
She checked her sensors for the ten thousandth time since coming out of warp behind the star of the Barkon IV system almost eighteen hours ago. Traveling at sub-impulse to avoid the detection systems that helped discover the extraction vessels for Team V. Almost forty hours since her mission began, forty-four hours since her C.O. had asked her squadron for a volunteer.
She pushed the stick down to lower her Starfighter slowly through the upper atmosphere without leaving the telltale vapor trails. Checking her screens for enemy craft, she keyed the mike on her comm. set.
”Lighthouse to Roadrunner, Roadrunner do you read?”
“Lighthouse to Roadrunner, Roadrunner do you read?”
”Roadrunner if can copy, use codebook, alpha slash delta slash eight-eight-five-niner-three."
After the fifth try she got an answer.
“Uh Lighthouse this is Roadrunner-Actual, what can we do for you Ma’am?"
“Roadrunner, Lighthouse, have SITREP? Over".
“Lighthouse, Roadrunner-Actual: Sections 1 and 2 at full strength at underground base. Have lost contact with section 3 presumed captured, killed or scattered. Supplies limited we have weapons but ammo is critical, no explosives, rations are low maybe good for a week tops. Be advised communications have been compromised assume all codes are compromised. Can give extract coordinates momentarily?”
Tears stung her eyes and her throat threatened to clamp shut as she delivered her message
“Roadrunner, negative on extract, Poseidon says to tell you are YO-YO, extract too dangerous at present, over.”
“I thought so. Copy YO-YO Lighthouse We’ll do what we can from the ground. From this point on Roadrunner is going dark repeat we are going dark. Roadrunner-Actual out.”
She keyed the mike one final time “Godspeed Roadrunner, I’ll keep a light on for you guys”.
She pulled the Recon Gryphon into a steep climb towards the outer levels of the planets atmosphere and slammed the throttles to the warp 4 setting. The tears flowed freely now making the long trip home even longer.
“YO-YO” meaning Your-On-Your-Own, being a virtual death sentence to the men and women of SEALS V. With the present level of attention over the captured SEALS command had decided it was too great a risk to try and rescue the Operators from the enemy quickly closing in on them.
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