The Tau Ceti Agenda

Roger that, DeathRay. Several flight vector lines started bouncing around in his virtual mindview, giving him flight paths of the Gomers and showing where he and Fish could converge on them. The red and blue lines twisted around each other like stripes on a candy cane— and showed that they could get the drop on the enemy fighters if they did it right.

Pass it along to Fish.

Done.

'Okay, Fish, follow my lead and take a shot if you can get it.'

'Roger that, boss!'

Jack kept the hammer down with the throttle full-forward against the hard stop. He jinked and juked through the trajectory that Candis had calculated, adding a touch of his own to it here and there.

'Hurry up, DeathRay! I've been locked up!' Stinky said shakily.

'Pull into the tightest, hardest left bank you can stand, now, Stinky!'

'Roger that! Banking left!'

Stinky's mecha pulled tight into a very tight, counterclockwise turn, throwing g-forces on him that pushed him to the brink of blacking out. Demonchild pulled up and across a firing solution for one of the Gomers.

'Damnit, Demonchild, don't pull up! Flatten out!' Fish shouted.

The enemy Gomer fired a streak of cannon tracers into Demonchild's fighter, bouncing it into an uncontrolled roll. Another streak of cannon fire blasted the power plant in just the right spot, causing the fighter to explode violently and too quickly for Demonchild to pull the ejection handle. He was killed instantly in a raging space inferno.

'Fuck!' Jack screamed through his bite block. 'Keep it tight, Stinky!'

The three remaining Gnats banked through the turn, with Stinky trying to get a firing solution on him. The enemy fighters appeared hell bent on not letting him get away. As the three Gomers all pulled in tight behind him, their trajectories led them right across Jack and Karen's line of sight. A firing solution tone sounded in Jack's head.

'Hold on, Stinky! Almost . . . Guns, guns, guns!' Jack's railgun cannon tracers cut in across space in front of the lead Seppy Gnat and tracked its trajectory until it flew right through the forty-millimeter cannon rounds. Several of the baseball-sized, high-incendiary, armor-piercing tracer rounds ripped through the empennage of the enemy fighter, scattering debris and gas vapors from it. 'Guns, guns, guns!' He continued to fire until the lead Gnat broke up. Its pilot punched out at the last second.

'I've got two. Watch number three!' Fish shouted. 'Guns, guns, guns!'

A blue-green DEG beam pulsed across the wing of the second Gnat, vaporizing important structural members there. Welds and composite-to-metal junctions delaminated from the blast. The high-g turn pulled the wing the rest of the way off, spinning it madly out of control. The fighter exploded with no sign of an ejecting pilot.

The third Gnat pulled off of Stinky's tail and banked hard upward, but by that time DeathRay had managed a barrel roll over Fish putting him in behind the third Gomer. Jack brought the Separatist Gnat fighter through a firing solution that blinked on and off between yellow and red.

'Guns, guns, guns,' he said, and strafed through with his DEG missing. 'Fox three!' He loosed a mecha-to- mecha missile that twisted and spiraled around until it hit home with a white ball of flame engulfing the enemy plane.

'Hot damn! Take that, you Seppy Gomer son of a bitch!' Stinky cheered.

'DeathRay, DeathRay, Madira!'

'Go, Madira!' DeathRay replied.

'Pull high altitude plan and go for the deck, ASAP. I repeat, all Gods of War are to give coverage on the deck!' the air boss ordered.

'Roger that, Madira. Gods of War are hitting the deck!' Jack checked his DTM and visuals and didn't see an immediate threat. That only meant that nothing was shooting at him right that second, but his DTM was still filled with more red dots than blue. But their maneuvering upward had pulled them to the top of the 'ball.' He looked down toward the planetoid more than ten kilometers away. There was a buzz of air-to-air and surface-to-air combat going on between them and the deck.

I guess we just plow through it, he thought.

Only way to get there without getting your ass shot off, Candis replied.

Right.

'Okay, Gods of War, we are taking this fight to the deck. The groundpounders and the Demon Dawgs need some more backup down there. And maybe we can force this ball into a small bowl, if we're lucky.' Jack pitched the nose over, pushing the HOTAS forward on both sides. The sleek fighter fell downward like a missile at maximum velocity through the spherical combat zone. As his speed picked up, the planetoid continued to fill more of his field of view until there was nothing left in it but the surface. Flashes of explosions danced around the cockpit as he pushed harder and faster to the surface.

He and Fish tore rapidly by several close calls as enemy and friendly fighters both zoomed past with relative velocity of well over three thousand kilometers per hour. Then several glints strafing a blue line on the ground caught Jack's attention. His DTM quickly identified them and turned them red. Five Seppy Stingers were giving the tankheads a seriously bad day.

'Fish, I've got five Stingers at about cherubs two off to the right. See them?'

'Roger that, DeathRay. Want to teach them not to mess with our guys?'

'Exactly what I was thinking.'

'Watch for AA coming off the ridge to the east,' Lieutenant Commander Penikea 'Hula' Moses warned. 'Looks