Blue neutron beams slashed through the blackness of the void, crisscrossing with red beams and superheated plasma balls. Both the Zvika Greengold and the Marcus Luttrell were closely engaging the League destroyer that had successfully jumped into the middle of the freighter convoy. While both ships gamely engaged the enemy, the Leaguers weaved through and around civilian vessels, peppering them with weapons fire.
As much as Justin wanted to peel away and join the fight against the capital ship, his task was to keep knocking down the incoming fighters. Maybe one of these days, I’ll transfer to a bomber squadron. It’d be interesting to be the one delivering heavy ordnance. The missile lock-on buzzed, making Justin focus on the LIDAR display in his HUD. Three enemy warheads were heading straight for him. He briefly pondered the wildly differing skill levels of the pilots they faced. Whoever the latest group was seemed to know their business.
Justin triggered his chaff dispenser and sent a wave of sensor-obscuring decoys into the void while choosing an enemy fighter to engage. Because of the extreme quantity differential, he avoided a head-on engagement and instead loosed a Vulture at the craft outside the League formation.
“Alpha One, watch your location. You’re too close to Master Four,” Whatley said.
“Roger, Major,” Justin replied tightly. A glance at the master overlay in his HUD showed the danger. This is going to be close. With his right hand steady on the flight stick, Justin angled his craft around, deftly avoiding the cruiser’s point-defense kill zone and sliding into the enemy fighter’s six o’clock position. He loosed a flurry of neutron cannon bolts into its aft shields, severely weakening them and scoring several hits on its hull.
The League craft weren’t content to sit still and let Justin finish them off one by one. The formation shifted as a unit, protecting the damaged fighter as much as possible. They turned back to his Sabre and executed a high-speed firing pass that left Justin’s forward shields greatly diminished and approaching failure.
I need to change this up. Justin reached deep into his bag of tricks and decided to try a trick he’d seen Major Whatley perform. He decoupled the thrusters from the inertial damping system and waited for the right moment, allowing all three fighters chasing him to settle into a stable pursuit course. With a grin, Justin pivoted his Sabre around and fired a long stream of blue neutron energy. His first target was caught entirely unaware and exploded after a multitude of shots hit its hull.
The other two enemy fighters attempted to veer off. Justin sent two Eagle heat-seeking missiles after the closest craft and turned his attention to the third with another fusillade of neutron-cannon bolts. The Leaguer’s shields quickly failed, and four hits to its hull later, it blew apart in a brief orange explosion. Feeling good about his use of a precision tactic he’d only seen employed once before, Justin resynched his thrusters and enabled the inertial damping system.
But Justin forgot the other threat: the Rand-class heavy cruiser off the starboard side of his Sabre. In combat, a person tended to narrow their focus onto a specific danger or set of hazards closest to them—and that tendency typically led to disaster. As powerful point-defense fire erupted around his craft, Justin immediately focused on the threat the cruiser posed. The shield arc facing the enemy collapsed with one hit. He tightened his grip on the flight stick and wrenched it to one side, going into a series of maneuvers known as guns-D. They were a last-ditch effort to avoid overwhelming fire with wild and random course changes.
“Spencer, I told you to watch out. Break to a minimum distance of two kilometers from that cruiser now,” Whatley barked.
“I’m trying, Major,” Justin replied through gritted teeth. Even with the outstanding protection of his Sabre’s inertial damping systems, by whipping through the twists and turns, he was generating significant g-forces and stress on his body.
“Try harder.”
Justin grumbled, “If it’s so damn easy, why aren’t you out here doing it?”
He started to breathe a sigh of relief as he cleared one kilometer from the enemy vessel. But that relief turned to fear as his fighter rocked to one side. Another hit. While the plasma ball caught him on a different shield arc, it did far more damage than the last one. Red lights lit up across his HUD, indicating internal system damage. The flight stick suddenly became untethered from the movement of his craft. He wrenched it to one side, but the Sabre rocketed onward in a straight line. “This is Alpha One declaring an emergency. I have total loss of flight-surface control.”
“Detach maneuvering thruster control and fly manually,” Whatley said.
The master alarm blared, making Justin’s ears ring. He pulled up the HUD interface and attempted to follow the wing commander’s instructions, to no avail. Red lights spread across every system in his craft. I’ve got to eject before the reactor goes critical. As the thought raced through his mind, point-defense fire filled the void around him. “Negative, Major. My master alarm is lit, and reactor temp is rising. Initiating ejection sequence.”
Justin double-checked his suit pressure, confirmed it was one hundred percent, and pulled the bright-yellow Eject lever under the seat. It triggered a series of explosive bolts that blew the canopy off, and a rocket motor ignited, sending him flying out of the doomed Sabre. His emergency beacon kicked in automatically, and he hoped against hope that the onboard fuel wouldn’t give out before he was out of the blast radius of his former ride.
The tension on the bridge of the Zvika Greengold was so thick that Tehrani could’ve cut it with a knife. Around her, watchstanders performed their duties, and the battle played out. The old
