Once he slipped the memento away Vincent reached above his head to a series of levers with large stylized symbols beside them. One of them portrayed a medieval shield. With a twist and pull of the lever, Vincent activated defense mode.
The shudder caused by the grav prop's microscopic singularities was nothing compared to the violence the shifting combat roles inflicted on the fighter. The wings along the side of the fighter split apart and flared open, as did the nose, and as the armor sheet reconfigured, the craft went from sleek to bulky. Vincent's view of the battlefield went from unobstructed to blind, and only the senor nodes outside the armor provided him with what he needed to fly.
Around him, his squadron's ships shifted modes in tandem as they prepared themselves for contact, and on the sensors, eleven other asteroid-shaped lumps of armor fell into formation around the Inferno.
"Vape it, zombie. They record the AMI chats." Vincent growled. Whatever leniency fighter pilots might enjoy would not cover insubordination.
In the corner of his HUD, he could see the other pilots’ vitals scrolling across the display. Fledgling's heart rate had spiked with his orders. Vincent’s newest pilot had gone through the extensive training all the Reapers endured, but nothing could compare to the thrill, and terror, of your first dogfight. Vincent considered opening a private channel to give Fledgling some words of encouragement. Somewhere on the Inferno, a group of corpsmen were watching the vitals with an unblinking eye, and would be quick to pull Fledgling back if he went above their unnegotiable limits.
Vincent didn't want to see Fledgling grounded because the numbers didn't add up, flying was about more than that. Before he could tell AMI to contact the new pilot, however, he saw that Havoc was already taking care of it, and the decrease in heart rate made it clear that it was working.
With all his pilots in the green and ready, Vincent dialed up the gain of his HUD to see the fighting laid out before them. As the Vapefalcons connected with the enemy, the scene turned from organized squadrons to indecipherable chaos. The fight seemed like a swarm of bugs laced with fireworks. Vincent checked and double-checked his weapons. Not long now, he thought. Vincent took stock of his thoughts; despite his growing excitement for the battle, this was not a fight he relished flying into. The last several years had been a fight he could get behind, against an enemy not even from his own universe. Fighting his own kind, no matter the reason, was not something he took lightly.
Vincent twisted his multitool open and closed again, and with each snick-snack of the metal he was reminded of the nightmare he had stayed awake to avoid. He stared at his unchanged readouts as his ship orbited the Inferno and waited. Snick, snack, snick, snack. He was waiting for anything to move close enough to distract him, and wondered why the bombers hadn't been launched against them yet. He dialed out his sensors, looking for their telltale signature on the HUD.
Vincent rolled his ship into a lazy turn to take in more of the battlefield. Why would the enemy disgorge its fighters without bombers to make any real impact? As he finished his roll, he saw the planet's moon, and on the HUD, the friend tag that was blinking between it and the planet.
He tapped onto the console to zoom and saw a shuttle that had been traveling towards the Inferno when the fighting started. They were just outside the moon’s orbit, and would have to turn back. Vincent was surprised to see they were still accelerating towards the fleet, and doubly so when an SOS signal broadcast. The surprise faded when the red blips started filling the sector from behind the moon. The enemy bombers had made their appearance.
"Flight Control, Reaper One, I had positive ID on multiple bogies coming in from behind the moon. COBs in danger of attack. Permission to engage?" Vincent commed back to the ship. No response.
"Flight Control, Reaper One, I say again I have civilians on the battlefield. Permission to engage." More silence.
Vincent didn't ask a third time.
"Reapers, follow me," he commed, and rolled out of the defensive orbit to blast towards the closest planetary moon.
His squadron followed in his wake.
A transmission came through from his wingmate.
Vincent reached to the com unit to key in a private channel. "No, bombers just appeared from around the moon. Linking coordinates now. We have COBs between us and them."
The Duchess commed back a sense of approval, a transmission without words.
The Inferno had been locked in tidal orbit around the colony planet before it maneuvered for the attack, so the moon was only a few hundred thousand kilometers away. Vincent had his AMI pull up a holographic display to type in a brief calculation, then grunted in frustration when AMI crunched the numbers and set them on the screen.
"Thanks," he muttered.
The enemy decided that Vincent would not need to respond. Another squadron of bombers dropped into view from behind the moon. There was no way the Inferno could ignore the threat now.
Vincent keyed a wide beam transmission. "Multiple hostiles approaching carrier group." He glanced at his readouts. "Heading fower, tree, six, niner, by eight, niner, five, tree. Reapers set to intercept. Permission to engage?" Vincent knew he needn't bother giving heading or even calling the targets. His computer had already sent a beam back to the ship with far more detail. He certainly wasn't ensuring everyone saw Belford's blunder. That would be petty.
Vincent’s lip twitched upward.
Chapter 5
Johnston
"Damn cowboy," Belford snarled, causing Johnston to look up from his dais toward the CAG. “Commander of the Air Group” was a term the wet navy used for their atmospheric fighter commander. Belford was in charge of all the Inferno's squadrons, and though they operated in a vacuum and not air, the moniker stuck. After all, Johnston had started his career twenty-five years ago on one of those water-dwelling ships.
"Problem?" he asked.
"Chimera squadron left their post to chase after some bombers," Belford said. "They were our fighter screen."
Johnston sank into the data stream the squadron in question had been beaming back to the ship. Two bomber squadrons and escorts from the far side of the moon. As the details filled in, Johnston had to restrain his mounting annoyance. The squadron was the closest and most appropriate deterrent, Belford should know that. Johnston had an entire battle group to manage, he didn't have time to coordinate the fighter squadrons because his CAG's personal feelings got in the way.
Chimera squadron... Lieutenant Vincent Barkhorn, son of the legendary Chase Barkhorn. Kid's face was posted on every recruiting station the colonies had. Old animosity between Belford and Barkhorn, and Johnston had the worse of that pairing. What he wouldn't give for Chase to still be alive, now there was a fighter pilot.
"Multiple hostiles approaching carrier group," Chase's son said over the intercom. "Heading fower, tree, six, niner, by eight, niner, five, tree. Reapers set to intercept. Permission to engage?"
Johnston turned his head so Belford would miss the smile. "Acknowledged. Divert the Independence to support them. CAG ensure the civilians are protected. They are our priority here." The kid was rubbing it in Belford's face. He would have to deal with the two of them before long.
Belford scowled, but he had no leg to stand on. The Reapers were in a prime position to intercept and protect the civilians.
Johnston turned his attention back to the battle. His fleet was closing the distance, and the real battle would commence. The plasma blasts they traded were powerful, but easily negated at range. The computers could anticipate point of impact and engage defe
nsive split-second singularities. When they closed the distance, and could bring their mass drivers to bear, then the real slug match would begin. Even the most sophisticated AIs couldn't predict and defend against every projectile in a point-blank broadside. At those ranges, raw fire power and hull strength were the deciding factors.
Even with all the technology the gnomes had given them, and all subsequent advances since then, it was still human minds that brought the fight. AIs were powerful and necessary tools, but they were predictable. Humanity lacked technology, but on a galactic scale, they made up for it with ingenuity and adaptability.
"Shields singularities are at seventy percent and holding."
"Failure in gun battery eighteen, two casualties taken to medical."
"Engineering reports reactor core stable."
Johnston couldn't help but feel pride in his crew—well, most of them—as they worked seamlessly together. The Warstar Class ship wasn't just the newest in the fleet, it was the first to incorporate all the races that comprised the Joint Fleet. Giants, gnomes, nymphs, and even shogoths were aboard, and Johnston was the one they’d chosen to lead them.
Up until that point in the war, the races had been segregated. He still had race specific crafts in his battle group, but for all humanity brought to the table, the technology that had been thrust into their laps was barely two decades old, and they needed to work together to keep up in their war against what lurked on the far side of the portals.
With his officers working to compile and sort all relevant information from their respective ship systems, Johnston was able to see the battle as a whole. Until they closed, he had little that required his full attention, so he planned ahead. He called up a hologram from his command dais and reached out to manipulate the field. His own ship was armed to the teeth, and had enough singularity generators to hold its own against anything the Separatists fielded. He would lead the charge. His escort ships, however, were far smaller, though what they lacked in firepower and defenses, they made up for with maneuverability. He used the hologram to plan out their attack routes, allowing the computer to power through the precise calculations while he worked out the general idea.
He had four ships go “up” in relation to him, and another four “down.” They would accelerate away from the carrier, and once far enough away, turn to catch the enemy between them. With the Inferno charging up the center, the enemy would be forced to stay within the trap, or more likely, execute their own plan.
It was a simple maneuver, one every officer learned at the Naval Academy, but there was no sense opening an engagement with your trump card. It was a game of rock-paper-scissors, and the plays would change a dozen more times throughout the course of the battle. Once the enemy reacted, Johnston could react, and then again and again until he emerged victorious. He rested his hands on the console and looked up. On the view port, the formation was already breaking up as the ships went on their proposed paths.
A pair of eyes turned on him in his periphery and he looked over. One of the nymphs was staring at him from her command console. Her purple skin and the two dark gray horns growing from her forehead made her hard to ignore. A tingle in his mind alerted him that she was trying to speak.
Johnston did not have to ask how, with no monitors in her workstation, she came by that information. She was connected with several others of her race around the ship, as well as the two that piloted the Chimera ships. Nymphs had a knack for picking up anomalies the sensors could not. The kinds of anomalies that came from portals.
"Classification?" he asked.
"Tell the fighters to be on high alert. It seems the Separatists are covering up something far worse than a wildfire."
Chapter 6
Vincent
Vincent wasted no time putting the attack order into action. "Reapers on me, switch back to attack mode," he commanded.
His fighter shifted the armored plates away, giving him an unobstructed view of the field again. In reality, the only change was from total darkness to some pinpricks of light—the enemy bombers were still too far to make out with the naked eye. His sensor's magnification was a different story.
"Reapers, key in maneuver tango fower." Using the phonetic radio code for T-4, he keyed for his ship to slave its first salvo of missiles to the targets he designated. Faster than he could blink, AMI laid out a set of variables across his HUD, having powered through the calculations. Vincent grunted in acknowledgment, swallowing his distaste.
He glanced at his weapons and set his blasters to rotating fire, then his Gatling cannon to standby. He lined up a bomber in his sights to paint its hull with a sensor, and when reticule changed from red to green, he flipped up a plastic shield and depressed the trigger beneath. Two missiles streaked ahead of him into the oncoming bombers, while simultaneously, twenty-two other missiles filled the shortening space between ships. Each missile was tipped with a nuclear warhead with enough destructive power to wipe out a city, and just enough to be effective in the void.
The enemy bombers were arranged in cube formations so their gunners could overlap. As the missiles streaked in, the sandcaster round leapt out to meet them. The simple clouds of sand hit the missiles like a thousand bullets, and destroyed any they touched. They couldn't hit them all, however, and as seven of the bombers were struck and destroyed, an eighth took a grazing hit in the port engine and went spinning out of control. The oxygen mix within the ships blossomed into short-lived fireballs in the vacuum, and sent a spray of debris to litter the battle space. A sour taste welled up in Vincent's mouth, but years of experience overrode the feeling—this wasn't the first human he had shot down.
An immediate spike in the vitals monitor flashed below Vincent's peripheral—no surprise there. His excitement level was just as high as the rest of them. But despite his numerous engagements, and the horror of every death, he still reveled in every twist and turn.
The bombers continued in their formations, blasting sandcaster clouds out around them like a wall. The more sand around them the harder it was to maneuver, but it forced any attacking fighters to fly straight in. The grav prop would pull in and defend against the particulates, but any sharp maneuvers would leave them wrecked. With the speeds they were flying at, even the smallest grain of sand could cut right through their ships, and in attack mode, Vincent’s cockpit was exposed. It was strafing runs against the bombers’ gunners.
The bombers numbered three dozen, with a squadron of fighters for support. The Reapers would be hard-pressed to keep them all from letting their payloads loose, even with the extra time Vincent's maneuver had bought them. Several of the ships dropped torpedoes that blasted into the Reapers’ midst, the more maneuverable Chimeras were able to dodge the incoming projectiles. As the Reapers jinked and weaved among the incoming fire, the lead bombers grew desperate enough to launch their payloads at the Inferno.
Vincent cringed as the missiles streaked towards his home. He turned away without looking to see if they connected, and concentrated on stopping the remaining bombers from loosing their own missiles. Let the Inferno's own point defense systems worry about the strays. With a quick kick to the left rudder, he popped into a tight turn. His maneuvering thrusters turned his tail and his grav prop pulled his craft onward, taking him out of the path of the bombers, and their sand clouds.
The fighter escort broke out to engage the Reapers, and Vincent locked onto one. As he painted the target, it juked left then followed with a sharp turn to the right. Vincent followed a moment later, stealing himself to the spin as the toned-down inertial compensator allowed him to feel a small percent of the g-forces his ship was pulling. As the fighter leveled out, he attempted to paint it with another missile lock. The enemy pilot responded with a tight roll up and around.
A less experienced pilot might have attempted to repeat the maneuver, but
Vincent only rolled his wrists forward on the joysticks so the ship snapped upside-down, and with his grav prop turned down low to reduce drag, he continued backwards with the inertia and painted the target. It was a dangerous maneuver to have his unprotected flank traveling forward, but he was rewarded with a flash: The enemy ship flared bright as a star in its destruction. Vincent flipped back around, keeping his grav prop forward to catch any debris in his path.
The other Reapers had broken down into four groups of three, Vincent flying with the Duchess and Zombie. Not feeling the need to oversee his well-qualified pilots, Vincent let his squadron's position fade into the back of his mind, concentrating instead on his own path.
"Break off, I'll take him," Vicnent said as he swung up and around.
"Zombie, cut hard," Vincent commed.
Vincent dialed down the power on his grav prop while the Duchess and Zombie spun in a helix around him. As he lost momentum, one fighter shot past him to chase his wingmates. Vincent squeezed out a shot with his blasters, scoring a glancing blow against the oncoming fighter's shields. As the blast connected, the refracted light fed into his sensors, the data showing negligible damage in the strike. Both fighters banked away.
Knowing he would not trick them again, Vincent directed power back to the engines. His speed peaking, he took his wingmen into a turn up and around to strafe a group of bombers. As his HUD keyed onto the new opponent, he rotated the frequency of his blasters. He sent out a call to Duchess and Zombie, who rotated their own frequencies to different wavelengths from his own. Hoping to overload the bombers’ shields together, they triggered a trio of blasts. The beams slammed home, though when the light faded, Vincent cursed as the shield shrugged off the combined blow.
Forged by Battle (WarVerse Book 1) Page 3
