“Got it, skipper.”
While the reasoning made sense, it pained Tehrani to her core that she was asking her pilots to do so much with so little. Better get used to that feeling, if this turns into a war. The next thought through her mind was they were already at war, and she would have to come to grips with it.
“You got the target-rich environment you were hoping for, Mateus,” Justin said through gritted teeth as he matched maneuvers with a League fighter directly in front of him. The missile-lock-on tone sounded, and he pressed the button to fire a heat-seeking “fire and forget” missile. “Alpha One, fox two.” At the same time, he squeezed the flight-stick-integrated trigger for his miniature neutron beams and repeatedly sent their deadly energy into the aft shields of his target. Between that and the missile, the enemy craft exploded brightly in the darkness of space. “Alpha One, splash one.”
“We’re getting to be pros at this,” Feldstein remarked.
“Hey, mates, I could use some help over here,” Lieutenant Martin cut in. “I’ve got two of these cheeky League buggers on my tail, and they won’t piss off!”
“Alpha Two, with me,” Justin replied. “Hang on, Gamma One. We’re coming.”
“Yeah, trying to, mate.”
Justin glanced at his HUD. The tactical picture was muddled, with dozens of icons overlapping one another. He thought back to the training simulations they’d run through. Always four on four. They were nothing like actual combat. As his Sabre rocketed across space, League plasma balls and Terran Coalition neutron beams crisscrossed the area, their glow eerie and beautiful at the same time.
“Any day this week, mates!”
While Martin’s commlink calls were cheerful and even funny on some level, time was running out. The icon representing his Mauler bomber flashed red, showing it was taking hull damage. Justin toggled his afterburner and cued the commlink. “Alpha Two, push it up. We’ve got to close the range pronto.”
“Wilco, sir.”
The Sabre accelerated, and the g-forces pushed Justin firmly back in his seat to the point that he saw stars. Just as he reached the limit of human endurance, the missile-lock-on tone sounded. Justin throttled back and pressed the launch button. “Alpha One, fox three.” An active LIDAR-guided warhead dropped out of his craft and hurtled off toward the target. He watched as it tracked the enemy movement for movement and finally exploded against the shields of the League fighter.
Before Justin could line up to finish the fighter off with his miniature neutron cannons, another missile streaked in and blew up the target.
“Beta element engaged,” another pilot practically shouted through the commlink.
“Nice shooting,” Justin remarked. He let out a breath as the mental pressure of combat abated momentarily.
A fresh group of four Sabres raced into the fray. League craft dropped like flies as they exploited tactical surprise, as one downside of a quick-turning tail chase was that the pilots involved lost overall situational awareness. While the dust settled, Justin reexamined his HUD, which was mostly clear of hostile fighters and bombers. The Leaguer heavy cruiser continued to fire on both friendly capital ships, as did the destroyer. The enemy frigate, though below fifty percent hull integrity, was still combat-capable and added its weapons to the mix.
“Hey. Mates. Yeah, I’m talking to you over in the short little ugly fighters. How about some cover fire while we engage this cruiser,” Martin said. “Half my bombers have holes in ’em, and these buggers seem to have unlimited energy to shoot at us.”
“Alpha, form up and assist me in covering Gamma and Epsilon elements,” Justin said before he switched the commlink channel back to squadron command. “Martin, we’ll engage their point-defense turrets as much as possible now that you’ve got the cruiser’s shields down.”
“Thanks, mate. Time to finish these wankers off!”
Still smirking, Justin turned his craft toward Master Three. The dark void of space seemed to glow as dozens of the suddenly ubiquitous red plasma balls flashed by his Sabre, but he stayed the course. Juking slightly to make his fighter harder to hit, Justin maintained a laser-like focus on his target—an anti-small-craft point-defense weapon belching death out of its barrel. Space usually isn’t this crowded. Before the previous day, he’d never seen more than a squadron in space at any point in time.
Justin squeezed the trigger on his flight stick, sending dozens of blasts from the miniature neutron cannon on his fighter into the turret. Twisting the stick from side to side, he avoided most of the incoming fire. The missile-lock-on tone buzzed, and he loosed a LIDAR-tracking warhead at the offending turret, while Feldstein and Adeoye added their own neutron cannons and missile fire to the fusillade. At the last possible second, Justin pulled up and hit his afterburner. He was rewarded with the League point defense turret exploding as one of the anti-fighter Vultures hit it.
“Thanks, mates. That opened up a hole in their PD coverage,” Martin said. “We’ve got a special delivery for them to take advantage of it.”
As Justin looped his Sabre around after gaining distance on the heavy cruiser, he was treated to a sight he’d never seen before. The four Maulers, led by Lieutenant Martin, lined up on an attack run toward Master Three. In perfect formation, the bombers loosed one anti-ship Javelin missile each and veered off. With little point-defense fire coming from the League vessel, all four struck home. The heavy cruiser’s shields glowed red, and the HUD showed a twenty percent drop in shield strength.
“Nice shooting, Epsilon.”
“Yeah, that’ll teach those wankers not to mess with us. Care to join us for another pass, Alpha?”
“You got it, Lieutenant.” It seemed as if they might pull it off after all.
“Spencer! Quit hotdogging and pay attention to
