Pilgrim stars (wing commander)

by Peter Telep

  The Tiger Claw would hold back while the destroyers and fighters went about their business. Maniac knew that Gerald wouldn't bring the ship into the fray unless absolutely necessary. The Claw sorely needed a dry-docking, and makeshift repairs had been performed throughout the old ship. She would deftly serve her function as a launching platform for fighters, but she couldn't bear another beating like the one she had received near the Charybdis Quasar. Fourteen Rapiers from Fifth Squadron would shadow-hug her hull as escorts, and the thirteen of Seventh Squadron would sit warm and ready on the flight deck.

  In all, twelve Broadswords and eighty-four Rapiers participated in the attack, with Second Squadron's loss sorely felt by all. Trouble always was, as pilots died or became incapacitated, they were not summarily replaced. There were often more ships than personnel to fly them, which explained why squadrons had become smaller and why cadets were being pushed through the academies, having to meet only seventy-five percent of the qualifications that Maniac had had to meet just weeks prior. The brass covered it up by renaming programs. It wasn't flight training anymore but "accelerated" flight training, which implied a tougher class that was, in fact, easier. Maniac had heard about the revised training from Zarya, whose sister had just graduated early and had been assigned to the CS Drayton as radar officer. Maniac hoped they didn't send any ill-qualified nuggets to the Claw. And if they did, he would waste no time pounding them into shape.

  "Operation Zeus," AKA "Operation Get Some" in Maniac's engagement book, relied upon simplicity-just the way Maniac preferred it. Enemy Rapiers would go after the Claw's bombers, whose escorts would stick with them and engage only the attackers who broke through the intercepting force. First and Sixth Squadrons served as the first wave of interceptors, which put Maniac and his comrades at the sword's tip to protect Lightning's team.

  "Got about eight seconds until primary weapons range," Bishop said.

  Without further ado, the order that Maniac lived to hear rattled through his headset:

  "Break and attack!" cried Angel.

  "Got the tail pair," Hunter said. "Bishop, you bag the one on the far side."

  "Got him," the pilot responded.

  The high number of fighters in the zone dictated that wing-man and wingleaders would stay close and cover each other but were still free to break off when necessary. Maniac repeatedly pushed this unwritten rule to its limits.

  As the skipchatter further clogged the general frequency, Maniac glanced to his one o'clock and picked out two Rapiers bound for the lead Broadsword. He skimmed a menu of channels and dialed up the lead bomber pilot's frequency. "Hold course, Pandora. Maniac and Zarya are in to assist." Throttling up, he leaned back on the control stick and fell in behind Zarya as they tore into a forty-five-degree climb. In five seconds they would be within cannon range.

  But Zarya had no intention of waiting even another second. Her neutron gun spun and spewed salvos of glittering rounds that strayed wide before drumming along the starboard shields of the fighter nearest them. Now solidly locked on, she held her bead as the enemy Rapier broke off in a sharp, corkscrewing dive and vanished from Maniac's field of view. Zarya stayed with the Rapier, plunging well below Maniac.

  The other Rapier maintained course, then suddenly swooped down on the Broadsword to unleash a volley of neutron fire before Maniac could react. He pinned the throttle, lit the burners, and tore into the Pilgrim's exhaust trail. "Got this little problem," he told the enemy pilot, having locked on to the guy's operating frequency. "I'm Pilgrim intolerant. You fanatics upset my stomach and generally ruin my day. I don't like that."

  No response from the Pilgrim.

  Yes, the bravado had returned, and yes, it remained a weak neutralizer of the guilt. Maniac swore at himself, at his feelings, then tightened every muscle and gave himself to the machine. The smart targeting reticle appeared in his HUD, a green circle that floated just ahead of the enemy Rapier as it wheeled around to make another pass at the Broadsword.

  Maniac widened his eyes and jammed down his primary weapons trigger. The rotary barrel hummed and got to work, belching out an unceasing spray that caught the enemy Rapier's canopy. Shields tossed up bursts of azure light as they strained to curtail Maniac's rounds. "Now, listen to a reading from the gospel according to Maniac."

  A terrific explosion astern threw a veil of shimmering light over his fighter. Even as he cocked his head to see what the hell had happened, an alluring female whooped and shouted, "Zarya drops one! What's the delay, Lieutenant?"

  Not one to have his thunder stolen, Maniac narrowed the enemy Rapier's lead to twenty meters. The other pilot leveled off, cutting through a second furball created by Sixth Squadron. Maniac ceased fire as he wove a hair-raising, torturous course through fighters and bombers crisscrossing about a quarter kilometer away from the pockmarked moon. He scarcely believed that the enemy pilot had navigated through coordinates so densely packed with other starcraft.

  Raging aloud, he pulled up and out of the traffic, vowing that before the engagement ended, he would find and smoke that jock who had eluded him.

  "Maniac?"

  He glanced to his radar scope, speckled now with so many blips that if more popped up, the display might become a solid swirl of red and blue. He threw a toggle, and the scope zoomed in to show his wingman's position. Zarya glided at his four o'clock, about three hundred meters away. "Hold your course," he told her. "Coming down to form on your wing."

  As he barreled along the outskirts of the AO, cutting through the paths of dozens of dogfights and plowing through tumbling shards of durasteel and severed pieces of twisted hydraulic line, he jolted as his missile lock alarm woke in a rapid beeping. The computer's automatic announcement chimed in over the alarm: "Warning. Enemy projectile has positive lock. Impact in nine seconds, eight…"

  Speed is life, Maniac thought as he re-lit his burners and brought the Rapier up to three hundred KPS, three twenty, forty, sixty, ninety-

  The right VDU showed the Tempest computer's ID on the missile, a Spiculum Image-Recognition bomb using a computer to memorize Maniac's electronic and visual signature. The damned rocket approached at velocity of 1600 KPS-his evasion would only gain him an extra second or two of life. He thumbed off a cloud of chaff but assumed the superheated fragments of wire and durasteel would do little to fool the missile's advanced guidance system. Were it a Dart Dumbfire missile, he might have a chance.

  The computer reached three seconds, two…

  He reached for the ejection handle.

  But a powerful detonation tossed him forward. A second later, roiling flames tongued his canopy before dematerializing into the vacuum. He jerked the stick back, trying to stabilize the Rapier, and shouted, "Computer? Report!"

  "Missile detonated. Range, twenty-point-two-five meters. Severe power drain to aft shields. Armor at full strength."

  Flabbergasted, he laughed and tried to figure out why the rocket had prematurely detonated.

  The answer came quickly as Zarya's face flickered on his right VDU. "Zarya drops missile, saves rocket jock's life. Give me a pen. I'll sign your palm."

  "Zarya? Maniac?" Angel called. "We need more fire support. Come around the moon to point three-five-seven by six-two-one. Got a fresh squadron of enemy Rapiers coming in. Lay down suppressing fire and draw Lightning's people another path."

  "Roger, ma'am," Maniac said exhaustedly. Be nice if he had a half-second to catch his breath. He eyed his tactical screen and tapped for the right grid. Then he brought the Rapier around in a hard turn to port, shifting the white crosshairs that marked the nav point to the center of the HUD. "En route to coordinates," he assured Angel. Zarya slipped up beside him and tilted her hel-meted head quickly from shoulder to shoulder, a dance move and in-joke that alluded to their night of swing.

  By now the destroyers had already dropped behind Lyatta, and the moon wore a halo of intermittent light created by the dozens of explosions that occurred behind it.

  "Zarya? Maniac? I've IDed a
troopship pulling away from McDaniel," Angel informed them. "You got it. Cheddarboy and Sinatra? You take their grid."

  Maniac pulled up the vessel on his tactical display, and he didn't need a detailed computer model to project its destination.

  "I'm all about the killboard today," Zarya said, lancing out ahead of him.

  "Guess you are," he admitted. "But now I'll stop holding back. You think I got this call sign for being shy?"

  "No, I assumed that-"

  "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" he cried as an enemy Rapier dove in front of his fighter and darted after Zarya. "Got one on your back! Jinx!"

  "I'm outta here," said Zarya.

  Where had the bastard come from? No warning had flashed on his scope. His gaze sought the tactical display then lifted as a bone-chilling salvo of neutron fire came within a meter of his starboard wing and razored into the distance. Another glance to the scope told him nothing. "They got us jammed up good!"

  "I know! I know! And a three-G loop didn't shake this sucker. Gonna try kickstopping him."

  Maniac wished he could watch her perform the hard ninety-degree turn to make sure that the enemy Rapier overshot her and that she pulled into the requisite one-eighty to lock on and blow his ass back to that higher plane of existence.

  But Maniac had his own problems, namely a Pilgrim pilot who bore down on him with wing-mounted laser cannons blazing and neutron gun spinning like a tornado whose eye blinked white lightning every time it fired.

  Sick and tired of these aggressive fanatics, Maniac howled a curse to the heavens, slammed down the throttle, and went ballistic, waving on the Gs like an infuriated boxer waves on his opponent. Acceleration dampeners compensated for some of the force, but he had to focus on his breathing and get his blood back into his extremities. Three Gs. Four. Four-point-five. His vision grew dark around the edges. He knew that in a few seconds he would lose consciousness. He slapped back a toggle, stalling both thrusters, then manuevering jets fired as he rolled onto his back to face the oncoming attacker. The Pilgrim apparently had no qualms about playing an old-fashioned game of chicken. He also had no idea of Maniac's experience with the game, though the Pilgrim could consult a few Kilrathi pilots who would spin him quite a tale.

  With reckless abandon coursing through his veins, Maniac snap-fired the thrusters and advanced at full tilt with neutron fire pinging off his canopy shield like droplets of neon blue jelly. He thumbed off the safety cover on his secondary weapons button, then closed his left eye, focusing on the targeting reticle as it swam around the Rapier, then blinked red as he got the lock. Even as he fired the Dumbfire missile, the Pilgrim liberated one of his own.

  Holding his breath, Maniac rolled ninety degrees, and the enemy missile glanced his port wing but failed to detonate.

  The Pilgrim plunged into a seventy-five-degree dive and swept under Maniac's Rapier. Though he had evaded Maniac's missile, the Pilgrim had not evaded the man himself. Not yet. Maniac pulled a hard U-turn and pursued the Rapier, gritting his teeth as it took agonizing seconds for him to fall squarely in on the Pilgrim's six o'clock.

  "Maniac? Little help here," Zarya said. Static burst through the audio-video transmission coming from her Rapier as she became a cushion for laser strikes.

  That was all it took for Maniac to abandon his pursuit of the Rapier and pull up her position on his tactical display. "I'll be right there. Hard brake 'em if you can."

  "Roger that. And hey, that troopship's making its final approach. It'll be aboard the Olympus in a second or two," she said glumly. "Failed that objective."

  "Who cares. Worry about that Rapier on your back."

  "Believe me. I'm worrying."

  "Five seconds 'till I'm in," he reassured her, stealing glances at his tactical and radar displays. Twin flashes scaled the void above as someone, hopefully an enemy, bought the proverbial one-way ticket.

  They had rounded the moon and now drew much closer to the supercruiser. Maniac clearly made out her outline against the ruffled sheet of the moon's surface. Her four primary antimatter guns swiveled to follow targets and dispense humbling clouds of anti-starcraft fire. All thirty of her point-defense missile systems launched Dumbfires at those Rapiers operating along the rim of the five-hundred-meter gravitic cloak zone. The Oregon and Mitchell Hammock stood about a quarter kilometer off the super-cruiser's bow and stern respectively, taking light fire from a few Pilgrim Rapiers that strafed their decks. The destroyers hurled anti-cap ship missiles at the supercruiser, but most of them detonated well short of their targets, cut down by the Olympus's unrelenting antimatter guns. Maniac spotted a few missiles getting through, but the carrier's powerful shields and thick armor could withstand the pummeling, at least for a little while.

  Jinxman's squadron had yet to near the supercruiser, and three of the Broadswords in his team's escort had been destroyed. Lightning had fared even worse. His group had been thinned out to nine Rapiers and two Broadswords. Both squadrons had encountered ambushes as they had come around the moon, while First and Sixth Squadrons had been diverted into another fray. Yes, the Pilgrims had taken full advantage of those craters, and no, they weren't better shots-but they sure as hell knew how to navigate through furballs, evidenced by the Claw's blistering losses.

  "Maniac? Where are you?"

  "Look back," he said coolly as he descended from the heavens like a venom-spitting demon whose every sense focused on the Rapier pursuing Zarya. He engaged his electronic counter-measures system to, in theory, jam the bastard's radar. Relying on a reserve that had taken him his entire academy career to forge, Maniac held his fire and narrowed the Pilgrim's lead, positioning himself just three meters above the fighter. Looks good, he told himself, then felt the correct slam as the afterburners kicked in and propelled him directly over the enemy. He thumbed down on his high-hat control and belly-flopped onto the Pilgrim, driving the guy away as his own fighter rocked violently.

  And he could have kissed Zarya for taking full advantage of the diversion. She yanked into a one-eighty, pitched down, and got a lock so clean on the Pilgrim that Maniac could almost see the tactical line stretching from her missile station to the Pilgrim's fighter. Her missile flew, curved ever so slightly, then struck the enemy Rapier's rotary neutron gun in a fiery fist of devastation. The starfighter twirled away, leaving behind jagged embers of its cockpit and nose.

  "Zarya drops two!"

  "With assistance," Maniac quickly added, then began a long, swift turn to port, headed back in her direction. The supercruiser floated below him now, and he spotted the multiple bursts of breaking thrusters.

  Another ship boldly violated the five-hundred-meter zone, and Maniac did a double-take as he realized that he hadn't spotted another Pilgrim troopship, but instead Commodore Taggart's merchantman, the Diligent.

  "Hey, Maniac? Isn't that the-"

  "Yeah. What the hell's going on?" He dialed up Angel's channel. "Ma'am? I'm watching the Diligent make her approach toward the Olympus. They ain't shooting at her, ma'am."

  "No, they're not," Angel observed stoically.

  "Is Blair aboard that ship?" asked Maniac.

  "I believe he is."

  "Well, what is this? We sending over negotiators?"

  She didn't answer, her attention stolen by her instruments. "Reading gravitic distortion. All ships clear the zone. Repeat! Clear the zone!"

  Somewhere out there, far across the cosmos, a deity with a huge dislike for cocky fighter pilots looked down on Maniac's puny Rapier and thought, No, it shouldn't be so easy for this one. He's cheated fate one too many times. Now the bill has come due …

  Or at least that's what Maniac thought had happened as one of the Pilgrim Rapiers returning to the supercruiser suddenly blurred by him and fired a missile that struck between his thruster cones and detonated, drop-kicking him down toward the supercruiser amid a shrieking chorus of alarms. "Shit! I just took one up the tailpipe. Got mucho damage. Thruster control is gone. Can't maneuver. I'm falling within the five-hundred-mete
r zone."

  "Pop the top," Zarya cried.

  "Lost power to the ejection system," he said, gaze frantically sweeping the right VDU's damage report. "Reactor's offline. Can't even pull the plug on this one."

  "I'm coming in to get you," Zarya said.

  "Negative. Fall back as ordered."

  "No way!"

  "Lieutenant Rolitov, you will clear the zone," Angel insisted, cutting into the channel.

  "But I can get down there and tractor him in!"

  "Don't do it, Zarya," he said softly. "Just go home." He heard her panting into her headset, then a slight whimper escaped her lips. "Oh, God…" The VDU went blank. His radar still operated on emergency reserves, and he watched her break back for the Claw's retreating fighters and bombers. Once her ship reached them, Maniac looked up. Bad idea. The supercruiser's starboard aft quarter rushed toward him.

  11

  VEGA SECTOR.DRY QUADRANT.CS OLYMPUS.MCDANIEL'S WORLD.MOON LYATTA.

  2654.088.0510 HOURS CONFEDERATION STANDARD TIME

  "I'm not dead yet," Maniac whispered as his Rapier advanced into the great shadow drawn by the Olympus's superstructure. In about ten seconds, his fighter would shatter across the supercruiser's hull with all the glory and fanfare of a mosquito spattering on a windshield. He decided to stay alive long enough to remind the deity toying with him that Lieutenant Todd "Maniac" Marshall had chutzpah and flying skills up to here, and did he really want to mess with that?