“All fighters, launch, launch, launch!” Whatley thundered.
The forcefields protecting the hangar bay snapped off, and Justin jammed the throttle on his Sabre to maximum thrust. Pitching forward, the craft zoomed out of the flight deck and into space. Behind him, the rest of Alpha element followed along with the rest of their squadron. The stream of fighters and bombers exiting the carrier was a sight he’d never seen before. Typical flight operations limited launches to four to eight small craft at a time and never over twelve.
Justin gripped his flight stick tightly as he took in the scene before him. Hundreds of capital ships arrayed in line formations were battling it out. Crisscrossing beams of blue streaked across the blackness of the void, while thousands of red plasma balls answered them. Plumes of exhaust from large missiles could barely be seen, and tiny orange explosions dotted the sky. It took him a moment to process the explosions as fighters and bombers in their death throes. Hopefully more of them than ours.
Whatley’s voice broke through Justin’s thoughts. “All Greengold squadrons, this is Major Whatley. The CSV Conqueror—our old friend—is getting lit up by League bombers, bearing zero-two-eight. Engage max thrust and afterburners. Red Tails, you have the lead.”
“Acknowledged, sir,” Justin replied. He slid his craft to the heading indicated and toggled the afterburner. “Alpha, keep up. Beta and Gamma, maintain formation. Alpha and Beta will engage hostile bombers. Gamma—your objective is the League fighters. Good hunting!”
The Sabre rocketed forward, and he slammed back in his seat. Ugh. I think they forgot to fix my inertial dampers. It certainly felt as if there was a bit more weight on his chest than the maneuver would typically cause.
Flying through the void of space with the battle raging all around him was surreal. Justin almost felt as if he were in a simulator. A friendly destroyer exploded off his port side, sending waves of flame and debris into the path of his fighter. As he juked around it, two League ships blew up simultaneously. Grimly determined to add his own charges to the butcher’s bill, Justin pressed on.
“Spencer, watch your HUD,” Whatley cautioned. “A squadron of Leaguers is headed straight for you.”
“Aye, sir,” Justin said. His eyes went to the HUD, and sure enough, a cluster of red dots was inbound. “Red Tails, tally ho. Bandits at twelve o’clock high.”
The enemy fighters were coming in from above the Z plane his squadron was on, and he pitched up slightly to line them up head-on.
“Reinforce shields forward, stand by for max range, and engage. We’ll take one pass and break through to our actual target—the bombers.”
As the range continued to close, Justin reflected on how calm he felt. There he was, flying into the mouth of hell, yet he felt as cool as a cucumber. I wonder if this makes me a veteran.
With a wry grin, he settled onto the leading League craft. The missile-lock-on tone buzzed. “Alpha One, fox three.” Two LIDAR active-tracking missiles dropped from the internal weapons bay and zoomed away from his Sabre. He’d toggled the dual-fire option on, remembering from previous engagements that it took two direct hits to kill one of the fast-moving enemies. A few moments later, he was rewarded with a minor explosion.
“Alpha element engaged! Press through them, people. Gamma, cover our six. Next stop is those bombers.” He used the HUD’s interface to highlight a group of three craft on an attack run toward the Conqueror, labeled as Sierra Two Hundred Thirty-Six on the display.
The battle raged around Alpha element but not directly with it. As Justin pressed on with the other three fighters in a tight finger-four formation, his Sabre’s sensors detected multiple anti-ship missiles launched from the bombers they were racing toward. At the range they were at, neither he nor the other pilots could do anything to intervene. All three warheads hit the Conqueror, impacting brightly on its shields and generating an EMP wave.
Fusion warheads, most likely. He cued his commlink. “Max afterburners. We’ve got to get to intercept range.”
“Roger. Wilco,” Feldstein replied.
“Save me a few, Spencer,” Mateus said with a snicker. “I can’t have you running up the kill score on me.”
Justin couldn’t help but laugh. Her single-minded focus on destroying Leaguers at least put things into perspective. Once his afterburner ran out of charge, he kept pulsing it, pushing the device to its limit. The split second that the targeting reticle turned green, he held down the trigger for his fighter’s neutron cannons. “Alpha One, guns, guns, guns!”
Toggling the ordnance selector, Justin armed the dumb-fire rockets and added them to the fusillade. Several hits later, the enemy bomber exploded. “Alpha One, splash one.” With a slight roll, he slid behind the nearest enemy and opened fire once more.
“I said to save one for me, Spencer.” Mateus chortled. “Alpha Four, splash one!”
The bomber directly in front of Justin exploded as he took his finger off the firing trigger, and he pulled up relative to the explosion to avoid a rapidly expanding fireball and debris field. “Alpha One, splash two!”
He looped his Sabre back around and checked the HUD. More enemy fighters and bombers were already clearing their respective hangar bays, while the dozens of capital ships he could see exchanged directed-energy weapons fire. Blue and red shield effects lit up the void, bathing everything in an eerie glow. The result was almost beautiful. Justin picked a new target and designated the unlucky fighter as a priority intercept for the rest of Alpha element. The four craft turned as one and accelerated into the thick of the fight.
“Conn, TAO. Sierra One Hundred Fifty-Eight destroyed,” Bryan reported. The bridge shook from plasma-ball impacts, as the Leaguers had found them almost as soon as the damaged carrier emerged from its Lawrence drive wormhole. That was also the third friendly vessel blown up in the last sixty seconds.
Tehrani stared at the tactical plot. She could do
