plane.
'Guns, guns, guns!' Deuce shouted. Not to be left out, Dee followed suit.
'Guns, guns, guns!'
'Let's go, Marine2. You take the lead!' Deuce shouted.
'My pleasure!' Dee slammed the throttle full forward a bit eagerly and abruptly. When the propulsion kicked in against the backward velocity vector, she hit about twelve gravities for a few seconds. 'Whoooaaah, shit!'
'You might wanna tell somebody next time,' Jawbone coughed from the backseat of the trainer.
'Ungh, no shit.' Dee held back her stomach from lurching out of her throat by biting down as hard as she could on her bite block. When she did, the mouthpiece shot fresh oxygen and stimulants into her system that snapped her quickly back to life. The high-g thrust reversal's effect on her quickly vanished, and she pushed on her pursuit of Fink's ass.
'I'm on the Gomer!' Dee kept her targeting X in center, trying to lock it on to the Navy fighter, but the old Marine colonel was real good at managing his energy.
The Navy fighter pushed at top acceleration upward and back directly toward Dee and Deuce. That was a brilliant, yet gutsy as hell, maneuver. Had Fink pulled down and away, it would have allowed the marines to get on his six and lock him up. Pulling into Dee's vector put the Navy fighter's and the two marine's vectors criss-crossing at near equal energies. The key to modern space combat was controlling the energy of your three-dimensional position vector and trying to make the other guy overshoot you. Then that would put their ass in your sights. The other key was not to get killed.
As it currently stood, Dee and Deuce were now barrel- rolling around each other and Fink, and all three pilots were cutting and adding throttle in a three-way dance to see who slipped up first. Dee had every intention that it was going to be Fink.
'Deuce, you got DeathRay on eyeball?' she grunted.
'Negative, Marine2. You watch Navy3 and I'll keep an eye out for the CAG.'
'I've got him DTM coming in behind us. He'll be in range in ten seconds, so we better get on with this!' Dee added.
'Roger that, Marine2. Stay on Navy3. I'm with you.'
'Do you see him anywhere, Jawbone?' Dee asked.
'He's back there. Trust your DTM and your wingman, Dee. And hurry up and lock this Gomer up!' Jawbone replied.
Dee rolled and jerked the Marine mecha trainer round and round but couldn't get a lock. At one point the two fighters were cockpit to cockpit with each other. If it weren't a simulation with good guys on each side, Dee thought she could go to eagle mode and punch the pilot through the cockpit, but they were all friends here playing a game. One hell of a game. Then an idea hit her. She would do just what DeathRay had done to them in the first round of the engagement.
'Deuce! When I say bank right, do it!' she shouted to the squad commander. Rank didn't really apply to covering wingmen in a tactical scenario.
'Roger that, Marine2,' Deuce replied.
'Three, two, one, now!' Dee slammed her throttle full forward hard into the stop, shooting her way out in front of the dance she had been in with Fink. She could see in her mindview that Deuce had banked away.
The g-load on Dee's body from the mode change was over thirteen gravities for the entirety of a second or less, and then it lurched her the other way to minus seven, but under that much gravity time slowed and it seemed like it took an hour and a half. Dee screamed and grunted and fought blacking out as best she could and kept presence of mind to stomp her left pedal to spin her bot around, pointing at Fink's plane. She had just enough strength left to pull the trigger.
'Guns, guns, guns!' she growled. The yellow targeting Xs from each arm bounced around, and then both of them locked onto Fink's snub-nosed fighter plane and turned red. The tracer simulators pinged him and generated a fake fireball. There was no simulated pilot ejection, either.
'Great shot, Dee! Now go to fighter! Hurry!' Jawbone shouted loud enough that she could almost actually
'Dee, break out of there at top throttle, go!' Deuce yelled at her as
