“All right, Coda. Just like we practiced in the simulator. Stay with me.”
Commander Coleman’s fighter rocketed forward, quickly leaving Coda behind. With the aid of his computer, Coda initiated his main thrusters and matched speed. One second, he was moving at a comfortable five kilometers per second; the next, he was moving at more than twice that. Thrown back in his seat, with what felt like the weight of the world on his chest, he finally understood what five G’s truly felt like, and along with the sensation came something else: true, unbridled joy.
Letting out a long yell, Coda fell in behind Commander Coleman, but because the commander had launched forward before him, the blue of his thrusters appeared as little more than a pair of blue stars shining in the distance. Coda brought up his targeting computer, identified Commander Coleman’s ship, and locked on. No sooner had he done so than the commander strafed right, turning forty-five degrees.
Coda followed, and the G’s increased. If he hadn’t been harnessed in so tightly, he would have been thrown against the left side of his cockpit. As it was, his body cried out against the restraints, and he could feel the blood inside his body forced from his extremities. The flight suit tightened, compensating for the movement, keeping the blood where it belonged and preventing him from blacking out.
Before he’d fully adjusted to the sensation, the commander turned again, bringing his fighter around ninety degrees to the left. Coda followed again, and again, the harness and flight suit adjusted for the increased g-forces. Coda still felt his vision grow fuzzy.
This is going to take a lot of getting used to.
Zigging and zagging, they flew, Coda always matching Commander Coleman’s maneuvers. For an hour, Coda followed him, doing barrel rolls, corkscrews, aileron rolls, and split-S maneuvers—everything he’d already mastered in the simulator—and by the end of the hour, the overwhelming panic he’d felt when he’d shot out of the Jamestown had been replaced by a growing confidence.
“All right, Coda. That’s enough for one day. Lead us home.”
“Copy that, sir.”
With the Jamestown behind them, and Coda once again in the dash-two position behind Commander Coleman’s starboard wing, the correct maneuver would have been to make a wide one-hundred-eighty-degree turn, but his confidence was growing by the second, and Coda wasn’t interested in correct. He wanted some fun.
Coda fired his nose thrusters, flipping the front of his ship backward. It was a maneuver he’d done in the simulator a thousand times, but in the short time since the beginning of the exercise, he had forgotten how little the two had in common. He was thrown up, down, and backward, then all three all over again. By the time he stabilized the fighter, he was still facing the wrong direction.
Breathing heavily, Coda reoriented himself, finding the two other ships, and braced himself against the commander’s impending rebuke. However, what he heard was even more unnerving.
Commander Coleman was laughing. He appeared in front of Coda, their fighters nose to nose, Commander Coleman flying backward so that he was looking directly into Coda’s cockpit.
“That didn’t look comfortable,” Commander Coleman said.
“I feel like my brain was put on spin cycle.”
“I bet. Are you hurt?”
“Only my ego, sir.”
“What did you learn?”
“That I’m an idiot?”
“I won’t argue with you there,” Commander Coleman said. “That wasn’t very good headwork. But tell me why you’re an idiot.”
“Because I can’t do things out here the same way I did them in the simulator.”
“Very good, Coda. I won’t argue with your stupidity, but part of this was my fault. In my day, a pilot would fly eight simulations before flying their first real flight. You’ve flown more than eighty. We never had the opportunity to get comfortable in the simulator. You did. And you’re going to have to unlearn a lot of it.”
“Understood, sir.”
“It’s going to be a process, and we’re going to spend some time getting comfortable. After that, the real work will begin.”
“Sounds good, sir.”
“All right. Let’s try that again, shall we? Home’s that way.” Commander Coleman pointed behind Coda, laughed again, then used his forward-facing thrusters to create some distance between them, giving Coda space to turn around and plot a course back to the Jamestown.
As they drew closer, Coda radioed in. “Jamestown Tower, this is Hawk Two requesting clearance to land.”
“Roger that, Coda. You are cleared for landing in hangar bay 7C.”
“Copy, Jamestown Tower. Thank you.”
Coda set a course that would bring them into the fighter recovery bay then toggled up the landing procedure on his HUD. Selecting the automated sequence, he let go of his stick. Instead of following the designated path, though, the fighter drifted off course.
Cycling through his systems again, Coda made sure his autopilot was activated. After confirming it was, he reattempted to connect with the Jamestown’s auto-docking procedure. It failed a second time.
“Is there an issue, Lieutenant?” Commander Coleman asked.
“My auto-docking isn’t engaging.”
“That’s because we’re not using the auto-docking procedure.”
“Sir?”
“The enemy has a way to disrupt our connection with our drones. Who’s to say they couldn’t do the same with an automated landing? We’ll be hands-on the whole way in.”
Hands-on. The words filled Coda with dread. He’d practiced landing in the simulator, of course, but he’d already learned that the simulator wasn’t the same. Now he was supposed to land on a ship that was traveling at eight thousand meters per second while coming in on an adjacent flight path.
“Is that going to be a problem, Coda?” Commander Coleman asked.
Coda had no idea what to say. Yes, sir, I’m petrified? He would never live that down, especially since he knew his radio communications were being broadcast in the ready room for anyone who wanted to listen. He didn’t expect a big draw; he wasn’t
