“Conn, TAO. Sierra Ninety-Six is prosecuting the target.”
The Conqueror—battered, with its armor plating burned and melted—was like a prizefighter that didn’t know when to quit. Her weapons blazed defiance as blue neutron beams erupted from her hull and connected with the League vessel. Coupled with a volley of a dozen missiles and thirty magnetic-cannon shells, the impacts rained down on its protective shields. At some point during the bombardment, the shields failed, and hits landed on the armor plating of the cruiser.
“TAO, match bearings, shoot, neutron beams.” Tehrani leaned forward as she spoke. The timing had to be perfect.
Twin blue energy beams shot out of the Greengold and lanced through the hangar bay of the enemy ship. A small series of explosions blossomed around the hull nearest to the hangar. One after the other, the bursts of orange-and-blue flames grew until the stern of the vessel blew clean off.
“Conn, TAO. Master Four Hundred Twenty-Six neutralized.”
“Nice shooting, Lieutenant. What’s coming in next?”
“Three more destroyers, ma’am, designated—”
“TAO?” Tehrani prodded.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. Sierra One Hundred Sixty-Eight is on terminal approach. She’s less than fifty kilometers from Master One.”
Tehrani quickly brought up the tactical plot and zoomed in to the area around the League flagship. The screen was impersonal, an antiseptic display of blue and red dots, with relevant information such as speed and heading. She imagined that the enemy was flinging everything they could at the destroyer, which was little more than a speck among giants. The bravery shown by Major Cohen, a man she only knew by name, was awe-inspiring. To ride into the face of certain death took incredible guts. Or balls, as I’m sure the master chief would say. As the kilometers closed in the blink of an eye, Tehrani mouthed a prayer in Arabic, asking Allah to watch over the souls of Cohen and his crew and guide them into heaven. The blue icon representing the Salamis merged with the red graphic that represented Master One.
“Conn, TAO. Sierra One Hundred Sixty-Eight… destroyed.” Bryan’s voice sank, then it rose again. “Aspect change, Master One. Multiple explosions, ma’am. Debris separating. She’s disabled! Repeat, enemy flagship disabled!”
Hope was a fickle thing. Sometimes it manifested as grim determination to press on and at other times as ebullient optimism. On the bridge of the Zvika Greengold, it was a bit of both. The enlisted personnel and several senior officers let out a series of cheers. Bryan high-fived Mitzner. A raucous chant of “CDF! CDF! CDF!” broke out and was taken up by most of the crew.
“As you were! Maintain proper bridge protocol!” the master chief rasped.
“TAO,” Tehrani said as the chant stopped, “status of the enemy fleet?”
“Slowing their advance, ma’am. Some vessels appear to be ceasing forward movement.”
But most continued. The battle was far from over. Tehrani set her jaw. “TAO, firing point procedures, forward neutron beams, Master Four Hundred Twenty-Eight.” Their target was the nearest enemy vessel to them—a destroyer.
“Firing solutions set, ma’am.”
“Match bearings, shoot, forward neutron beams.” Even with their brilliant victory over the flagship, the fight ahead would be brutal. Without the promised nation-state reinforcements, she still saw no way to win. But she pushed the depressing thought down and went back to work.
Justin pulled up hard on his flight stick, dropping a trail of flares. The flares ignited almost instantly and attempted to decoy the incoming missiles with their five thousand degrees Celsius burn temperature. He killed his Sabre’s afterburner, hoping to cool his engine exhaust just enough for the enemy warheads to take the bait. One overshot and exploded violently, close enough that it shook his craft and jostled Justin. The second slammed into his weakened aft shields, knocking them down to five percent effective strength.
Red bolts of energy streaked by the cockpit canopy, putting a fine point on how bad a predicament Justin was in. His OODA loop was so compromised it hadn’t even registered to call for help yet. “Alpha One to any friendly fighters, my wingman is down, and I’ve got three bandits on my tail.” He jammed the throttle back to max thrust and engaged the afterburner. “Repeat, any friendly fighters. Mayday! Mayday!” Beads of sweat dripped down Justin’s forehead.
“Spencer, this is the CAG. Execute guns-D and keep those bastards guessing.”
“Roger that, Major,” Justin replied. Immediately, he launched his craft into a wild series of random twists and turns, accelerating and decelerating and doing his best to avoid the massive volume of fire directed toward him. After no fewer than twenty dodges, one of the red dots directly behind him disappeared, and for a split second, he saw a faint orange glow in the canopy reflection.
“CAG, splash one,” Whatley said calmly. The man sounded like he was merely giving a to-go order for his lunch. “Spencer, break right, ten degrees declination.”
Justin was well aware his life wasn’t in his hands at the moment. He sucked in a breath and rocked the flight stick as instructed, pulsing his afterburner simultaneously. To his surprise, Whatley overshot him, then things got weird. The major’s Sabre turned a full one hundred eighty degrees, still flying forward. Blue bolt after blue bolt erupted from its neutron cannons, and both pursuing League fighters were caught unaware. The first one blew apart into centimeter-sized chunks, while the second attempted to avoid. It lasted a few seconds longer than the other before it, too, exploded.
“CAG, splash two.”
“Uh. T-Thank y-you, sir. How’d you do that?”
“You did read the flight manual, right, Lieutenant?”
“Uh. Yes, sir,” Justin replied sheepishly.
“There’s a little-noticed feature these Sabres have… you can disengage your inertial damping system and use the station-keeping thrusters to turn your bird. It’s quite a shock to anyone not expecting it.”
Justin
