Retribution: Sector 64 Book Two

by Dean M. Cole

  Like an automotive rearview mirror, a small EON-generated movable window floated in her peripheral vision. Currently, a front-on view of the fighter flying behind her hovered near the middle of the small display.

  Flying through space while suspended in the geometric center of the spheroid, it was easy to forget that an entire fighter surrounded her body. However, visual reminders hung all around Sandy. Flying in formation around her spaceship, teardrop-shaped Phoenix Starfighters lay in every direction. The needle-sharp nose of each pointed at the planet that hung before the squadron.

  Beautiful beyond anything she had ever imagined, an incredible panorama filled the forward half of Sandy's spheroid. Knowing she was one of the first humans to see it in person made the image all the more incredible.

  Jupiter hung motionlessly ahead of her Phoenix Starfighter. Obscuring half of the star field, it looked closer than Earth did from the altitude of the International Space Station, but they were still outside the orbits of Jupiter's inner two moons: Io and Europa.

  Sandy had seen many pictures of Jupiter. Aside from its curvature, the planet's upper atmosphere had always looked flat and two-dimensional, its cloud bands rendered in soft, earthy pastels. However, in front of her fighter, vibrant, brightly colored and visibly churning, three-dimensional bands ringed the gas giant. Within the globe-spanning cloud formations that formed each major band, smaller-scale features boiled and churned. Even from this distance, she could perceive their motion, especially near the Great Red Spot. In places, she could peer between continent-sized cloud formations and see into darker, lower regions. At the giant planet's limb, a faint blue hue hinted at a clear upper atmosphere.

  Shifting her mental focus, Sandy studied the virtual hologram that the EON was pumping into her brain's visual cortex. In the tactical display, the perfectly spaced formation of eighteen human-manned Argonian fighters silently sliced deeper into the Jovian system. Europa, one of Jupiter's ice moons, passed beneath the formation as they flew into the space between its orbit and that of Jupiter's innermost moon, Io.

  The two moons painted a study in contrast. Scientists believed that Europa's red-striped ice shell hid a global, miles-deep salt water ocean that might support life. On neighboring Io—the most volcanically active planetary body in the solar system—volcanoes, lava lakes, and sulfur-covered plains wrapped the moon in a hellish milieu that outstripped Dante Alighieri's darkest imaginings.

  Beneath Sandy, reddish ochre deposits—possibly organic material that had boiled up through cracks in the ice—criss-crossed Europa's white crust. Ahead of her fighter, Io looked like a rotten orange. Various sulfurous compounds covered its mottled yellow surface. Roughly the same size as Earth's natural satellite, the relatively tiny moon appeared to float just above the sharp-edged shadow it cast on Jupiter's vast atmospheric ocean.

  Sandy flew in close formation with Richard. As the Commander of 1st Space Fighter Wing, Colonel Allison had also assigned himself as the leader of 1st Squadron. The commanders of the wing's five other units (2nd through 6th Starfighter Squadrons) acted independently, but all reported directly to Wing Commander Allison.

  The day after they'd boarded the Helm Warden, Newcastle had promoted Sandy to Major and assigned her to 1st Squadron as Richard's second in command, his Executive Officer or XO for short. 1st Fighter Squadron of 1st Fighter Wing had taken the name of their new starships as its nickname. Using that designation, Sandy's position as the unit XO made her call sign Phoenix Seven. As squadron lead, Richard was Phoenix Six.

  In their current configuration, the sixteen other starfighters of Phoenix Squadron cocooned Richard and Sandy's paired fighters in a spherical formation.

  Through the use of his EON, Jake had discovered that the original name for the alien fighters came from an ancient Argonian story of a mythical beast that would rise anew from the ashes of defeat. The similarity of the tale to Earth's mythical Phoenix was obvious and made the selection of an English language name self-evident.

  As a highly maneuverable and heavily armed attack spacecraft, the Phoenix Starfighter afforded significantly less interior room than the utilitarian Turtle. It crammed many of the same amenities into a small, single-floor design. Behind Sandy, a small airlock and spacesuit cabinet sat next to a modest living space designed for use during long-duration flights.

  While the ships relied on maneuverability to avoid laser burn-throughs, they also had a protective force field. It turned out the Turtle was equipped for one as well, but it had been removed before its arrival on Earth. To bring the utility ship up to specs, engineers had recently installed a spare force field generator.

  Capitalizing on their head start in planning and training, Colonel Newcastle and his team had taught the new starfighter pilots how to operate in the three-dimensional battlefield of space. Each pilot had first received a download from the edification encoder. The program helped each man and woman master their Phoenix Starfighter. It also imparted a basic understanding of the tactics of space combat. While the encoder even gave the trainee a level of muscle memory for the learned task, only hands-on training turned a knowledgeable pilot into a proficient combat aviator. And only a live-fire exercise could approximate real-world combat.

  Today, for the first time, the fighter wing was about to fire real weapons at an armed target: a modified asteroid that orbited Jupiter. Roughly the size of a Zoxyth ship and apparently a relatively recent acquisition for the Jovian system, the mile-wide moon's orbital eccentricity and inclination were currently carrying it between Io and Europa.

  Admiral Johnston had directed them to perform the live-fire exercise in the Jovian system for obvious reasons.

  The Phoenix Starfighters had turned out to be devastating war machines. The antimatter-fueled ships sported a pair of incredibly powerful lasers that had punched holes through every test material the scientists placed in front of it. They'd been unable to determine how something that powerful wasn't self-destructive. Its energy output was so intense it should melt the emitter.

  Additionally, their long, pointed noses contained an extremely powerful railgun that fired hypervelocity rounds. The projectiles were small, but they were double the weight and mass of a similarly sized lead pellet. The rounds departed the ship's prow with a muzzle velocity of twenty miles per second and slammed into the target with enough kinetic energy to level an office building.

  Reckoning that the unit wouldn't get much out of the battle drill if the target couldn't shoot back, Newcastle had sent engineers to the asteroid yesterday. They'd placed targeting lasers all over its surface. Their randomly fired focused beams wouldn't harm the Phoenix Fighters, but any ship that got hit by one of them for anything longer than a millisecond would automatically exit the battle.

  Crackling across her tactical radio, Richard's voice broke the silence. "Second through Sixth Squadrons, proceed to your assigned initialization points. I'll take First Squadron to IP Alpha. As briefed, proceed inbound from your assigned IP coordinates at precisely the assigned time."

  "Second Squadron, roger."

  "Third Squadron, roger."

  The last three commanders responded in order.

  Across the squadron's assigned frequency, Richard said, "This is Phoenix Six. Turn direct IP Alpha in three, two, one!"

  As if physically connected to one another, 1st Squadron's eighteen starfighters simultaneously snapped to their new course line. On Sandy's tactical display, the hexagonal formation of six squadrons flew apart like a starburst. Each spherical eighteen-ship formation simultaneously rocketed away from the central point. Their independent vectors soon spread the fighter wing's 108 Phoenix Starfighters across a broad swath of Jovian space. On the new headings, each squadron's sixteen ships raced toward initialization points that ringed the target.

  Just as it had during their final drills in Earth space, the choreographed maneuver went off flawlessly.

  The navigational portion of her EON's virtual vision fed Sandy position, vector, and velocity
information. She was thankful for the edification encoder. Without the intuition-level comprehension imparted by its processes, she would have needed a year in this cockpit to fully understand half of the layered data pouring into her visual cortex. Thanks to the encoder's assistance, Sandy now absorbed the data like a sponge. In this fluid, rapidly developing exercise, she had a high level of situational awareness she wouldn't have thought possible two weeks ago.

  The eighteen Phoenix Starfighters of 1st Squadron neared their assigned initialization point.

  "Phoenix Squadron, this is Six," Richard said. "Turn IP inbound in three, two, one!"

  In unison, the squadron's eighteen fighters turned inbound toward the target asteroid. However, an instant before they'd executed the course change, Sandy had seen a problem.

  Alarms started going off in her head.

  3rd Squadron had turned early!

  For this live-fire exercise, the timing was crucial. If one flight fired before the others were in position, the exploding debris field could overtake the other two flights before they could deploy their weapons and change vectors, exiting the blast plane.

  She had to alert Richard. "Six, this is Phoenix Seven. Third Squadron turned about a second early!"

  "Roger!" Richard said with evident alarm.

  "Third Squadron!" Richard yelled over the fighter wing's common frequency. "Break off, break—"

  Things were moving too fast. Before the words had left Colonel Allison's mouth, Charlie Flight had fired their weapons.

  The asteroid exploded in a brilliant flash. Suddenly, debris and railgun projectiles were flying at them at twenty miles per second.

  Her fighter's automatic collision avoidance algorithms had Sandy's ship jumping all over the place. In less than one second, the fighter changed position at least four times, and her shields flashed several more times, as the debris, too concentrated to be completely avoided, impacted her fighter's protective envelope.

  "Phoenix Squadron! Abort! Abort! Abort!" Richard yelled.

  Executing the planned escape maneuver early, each fighter shot vertically out of the asteroid's orbital plane.

  As Sandy's ship launched out of the debris field, she saw Richard's fighter tumble out of control. It looked like a huge swarm of tightly packed asteroid chunks had outstripped the ship's maneuvering ability. As Richard's fighter tried to jump out of their path, a glancing blow from one of the tumbling rocks blasted it sideways.

  "Phoenix Six, what's your status?"

  No response.

  "Phoenix Six, come in!"

  Still no response.

  She did a quick inventory of 1st Squadron. Aside from Richard, all were still with her.

  Sandy formulated a quick plan.

  "Phoenix Squadron, this is Seven. Continue to the egress rendezvous point and hold. I'm going back for Six."

  The expected objections burst from the speakers of her spacesuit's radio. Some of them offered to join her; another said it was suicide.

  "The railgun projectiles are well clear by now," she said, cutting them off. "By myself, I can deal with and avoid the largest asteroids. The ship's computer and shields can handle the rest."

  She hoped she sounded more certain than she felt.

  Sandy turned her fighter in the direction Richard's ship had disappeared. The icy surface of Europa filled her view-wall.

  "Oh shit!" she whispered.

  Ahead of her fighter, an insane storm of ricocheting, tumbling asteroids plunged toward Europa's frozen surface. Sandy could already see icy geysers erupting as the leading edge of the debris field rained down on the Jovian moon. The tactical display showed Richard's ship in the middle of the storm and falling fast.

  "Really?!"

  Shaking her head, Sandy dove her fighter headlong into the meat grinder, directly toward the ice-covered ocean.

  ***

  Richard's ship continued to roll and tumble violently end over end. An insane panorama of alternating red-streaked white and star-speckled black scrolled across the only portion of his display that still worked. The blurred, looping black-white cycle of the outside world visible through its rectangular presentation made it difficult for Richard to get his bearings. If something didn't change, the centrifugal forces would soon rob him of consciousness and any chance of recovery.

  Grunting, the pilot bore down, trying to keep the blood from draining out of his brainpan—a technique all fighter pilots used during high-G maneuvers. Unfortunately, it was only useful for short-duration exposure. If he couldn't soon restore power and arrest the spin, he'd first gray out and then pass out completely. And he didn't even want to think about what would come after that.

  3rd Squadron's early salvo had launched a city-sized debris field straight at 1st Squadron's fighters. Before he could escape, a particularly crowded swarm of fragmented asteroid had overwhelmed Richard's fighter. He'd almost cleared it. The ship's last-second maneuver lessened the blow, but the rock still slammed the fighter hard enough to knock the gravity drive offline.

  When the drive had failed, it took the fighter's inertial dampening with it. Richard guessed that the jolt might have knocked him out for a second or three. One moment the ship had been jinking and dodging around rocks, the next instant he found himself floating in the middle of a tumbling cockpit. When he'd tried to move, Richard discovered that webbing held him suspended, his head in the geometric center of the fighter's now completely hollow spheroidal cockpit. Because of the ship's uncontrolled roll and his head's central position, blood was draining from his cranium and pooling in his legs.

  Due to high G-forces and restrictive webbing, Richard was unable to shift his body to a better position. And there was nothing for him to push off of. All of the nanobot-formed cockpit structures had melded back into the fighter's concave floor. He guessed that the constructs had retracted to reduce the threat of blunt force trauma. Fortunately, the repurposed nanobots had encased him in the safety webbing. They'd stopped Richard from becoming a red, lumpy bug stain smeared across the fighter's inside wall. However, the entire thing had happened instantly, in a time frame shorter than the refresh rate of human consciousness; he'd perceived none of it.

  Through the insane, spinning image crossing the display's field of view, Richard noticed that each time Europa's icy surface flashed across his small piece of functional display, certain surface features appeared to have grown in size.

  "Great!" he said through a grunt. He was falling into the Jovian moon's gravity well. "Fucking wonderful."

  Suddenly, an impossible image flashed across the display. He caught a momentary glimpse of a fighter deftly maneuvering through the debris field.

  A few rotations later, he saw it again, this time much closer.

  Then Richard began to gray out. His eyesight narrowed, peripheral vision fading as his brain was starved of oxygen-carrying hemoglobin.

  The emergency radio attached to his hip crackled to life.

  "Phoenix Six, this is Seven. Are you still with me, Richard?"

  He reached for the radio with a hand that he'd previously freed from the cocoon. Richard tugged at it, but a piece of the webbing had pinned the radio to his leg. The effort exhausted him. Conceding defeat, he released the small device, cursing under his breath. Blindly probing its side, Richard found the textured transmit button and pressed it.

  "Get the hell out of here, Major! There's nothing you can do for me." He paused and grunted, fighting to keep his eyes open. "Go, Sandy," Richard said weakly. "I can see Europa getting—"

  A series of knocking sounds interrupted him.

  "What the hell?" he said through a guttural growl. Then he hyperventilated a couple of quick breaths and bore down in another effort to force a little more blood into his fading brain.

  The knocking continued, but its frequency was slowing, as was the spinning of his ship.

  Breathing heavily, he felt his body respond to the reduced G-forces. The easing pressure finally allowed his circulatory system to send blood t
o his oxygen-starved brain. Color and peripheral vision returned to Richard's universe.

  Through the rectangular display, he saw an amazing scene. Sandy had pulled her fighter insanely close to his and matched its rotation, but in the opposite direction, meshed together like two counter-rotating gears. Once she had synchronized her roll with his, she had slowed the tumble a little with each rotation. The knocking he'd heard had been the two ships making contact twice per revolution. Two stubby, wing-like laser pods extended from the sides of each of the counter-rotating teardrop-shaped ships. She'd used them like gear teeth. The pods were probably beat to shit now and almost assuredly no longer functional. But her tactic had worked, was working. A few thuds later, the rotation stopped. Then she made a couple of additional surgical impacts and arrested the slower, end-over-end tumble as well.

  "Very impressive, Seven, but …"

  "I know. We're not out of the woods yet," Sandy said, finishing the sentence for him.

  Outside, their velocity had matched that of the debris field. On the good side, that meant the danger from flying asteroid chunks had subsided. On the bad side, it meant they were falling toward Europa's frozen surface even faster.

  His pinned-down emergency radio sparked to life again. "I'm going to position myself under your ship," Sandy said. "I'll try to use my gravity drive to arrest your fall."

  Through his EON, Richard attempted to reconnect with his fighter, but the obstinate piece of shit refused to respond.