“No good,” Matt remarked, his head shaking under the shroud. “A standard fighter’s Slipstream Drive isn’t precise enough for that kind of maneuver. Give me a bomber or a corvette and we could, no problem. The best we can do now is slipstream around one of the moons and back. Even that is more risk than I want to take. I bet Gokhead will, though. I’ve seen some of his slipstream plots, they’re insane.”
Gavit did not look forward to waiting for the better part of a hect. “Okay, program the fastest route. Then load up some cards to give us something to do on the trip.”
Optimus Teg, Monstero Nach 08
From the back of the pack, Chris stared at Gavit’s dwindling fighter with the kind of contempt that she reserved for bitter enemies. Ex-pro or not, there is no way I am going to lose to him. “Bichard, where is that vector taking Gavit and Matt?”
“High speed parabolic course into the atmosphere over the last waypoint,” Bichard returned, plotting the course on Chris’ navigation screen.
The lack of hum and click in his computerized voice still disturbed her, though not as much as it had first done. “Is there any way we can beat it from our current position?” Chris asked as she slid past MN-02 giving Trevis and Telsh a thumbs-up.
“Remote chance, but it is very risky.”
Chris tensed as she dove through the ring to the next waypoint, and turned back towards Gavit, gunning the throttle. “Mind elaborating?”
“I can slipstream around the fourth moon and back to this point above the clouds,” Bichard commented, putting the proposed course on Chris’s display.
Chris studied the screen. “Can you take us through a course like that?”
“It will require my full concentration, but it is possible. It is the only safe slipstream route available that will give us a chance to win. Even then, we won’t be able to go full throttle. With luck, we’ll just barely beat Gavit.”
Chris eyed Gavit’s exhaust flares in the distance, her determination to bruise his ego growing. “Even better! I’d hate to have him miss who beat him. He’ll crap his pants when we drop out of slipstream right on top of ‘em.”
Optimus Teg, Monstero Nach 06
Deactivating the card game projected onto Gavit’s Helmet Display Matt announced, “We are approaching the atmospheric insertion point, Gavit.”
Gavit grabbed hold of his controls. “Just as I’m about to win this hand? You cheat so bad, Matt.”
“I do not cheat. I just tell the truth,” Matt replied, a smirk visible on his face through the clear face of his helmet.
Gavit brought the approach corridor up on his HUD and checked the list to his right. Several tail numbers were absent. “Any sign of the others who tried to slipstream yet?”
“Acknit seems to have miss-plotted their course. He must still not be used to the fighter’s slipstream drive. He and Mikle came out at the wrong null point. They’re about twenty pulses out and they’re further than the rest who tried a normal course. Still no sign of Zero Eight on the combat scanners. They must not be back on the return trip yet. Roilin royally messed up, and they lost their primary slipstream drive. They’ll have to bring it home on the backup. Still no sign of Pio-Tolis either, but if the course I weaved out of her computer is correct, she should be here any time now. She has a damn good WSO.”
“Only thing he has on you is experience,” Gavit replied, as a fast moving blip appeared on his sensor sphere. “Speaking of which, here she comes.”
“Dive, Gavit, Dive!” Matt screamed from the back seat, almost coming out from beneath the shroud. “They’re coming in right on top of us.”
Gavit slammed the stick forward and pressed the throttle down. They dove towards atmosphere as he hammered the throttle to the stops. The fighter streaked into the atmosphere cents ahead of a Splicer 5000 reverting from slipstream only metra from where Gavit and Matt's course would have placed them. Without so much as a moment to get their bearings, the other pilot inverted their fighter and lunged for the planet below. Streaking past, Gavit spotted the distinctive paint scheme of their squadron, NM-08 painted upon its tail.
Gavit punched the afterburner and dove for the last waypoint. “That was Chris!”
“Damn, Bichard must not have bled off all their speed. He really knows what he’s doing,” Matt bit out. “I’m pouring everything we have into the engines and dive shield, Gavit, so move!”
Gavit’s thumb ached as he held down the afterburner control. There is no way Chris is winning, not when we’re this close. “That’s what I’m doing!” The atmosphere beat against his dive shield as he began to narrow the gap. “Eight, Six, are you crazy, Chris?”
“No, not crazy. I just have one Sheol of a great WSO,” Chris replied, her engines flaring.
“You and your WSO seem to forget one thing,” Matt replied, working the fighter’s systems. “The faster you hit the atmosphere the more drag you produce and the more your dive shield will pancake to try to slow you. Gavit, go! The dive shield is configured.”
Gavit tickled the afterburner once more. “Catch us if you can, Chris!”
Gavit smiled at his shield display, where Matt had reconfigured the dive shield, gravitational deflectors, and de-grav generators into a flat shockwave riding shape to help propel the fighter.
Perspiration dripped in his eyes. He hadn’t felt this stressed in a race since his last professional go. “Matt, I’m not sure we’ll be able to beat them. They have too much momentum.”
“It’ll be tight, just keep on that afterburner. I’m shunting every erg of additional power I can squeeze to the engines.”
The two fighters raced onward through the hydrogen-sulfur atmosphere, the gap between them closing. Gavit searched for a way to get around Chris as she maintained her shrinking lead, but they were in open atmosphere now. Sweat stung at his eyes. He caught flares of burning atmosphere behind Chris in his peripheral vision. The heat radiating from their dive shields and engine exhausts ignited the hydrogen-choked air behind them. I bet we’re quite the sight, each of us with a tail of fire behind us.
The atmosphere thickened as they descended, until they dove into an inversion layer and streaked clear of the thick hydrogen clouds, revealing the final waypoint, an imaginary point programmed into their computers. Imaginary or not, we’re close.
The two fighters tore through the densening atmosphere cockpit to cockpit. Gavit had to resist the urge to look up at Chris, focusing all his attention on the course ahead. Unwilling to back down, he considered an old trick his uncle had once told him about. “Matt, on my signal, pulse all power into the engines. Shields, weapons, life support, everything.”
“I got you. Ready.”
I have to time this perfectly, or we’ll end up powerless. Gritting his teeth, he prepared to give the order. He blinked to get a drop of sweat from his eyes and to his utter shock a single craft streaked through the atmosphere. No more than a blur, it blasted through the waypoint before streaking back towards the starlit sky above the dark orange world.
Before Gavit could react, a single message appeared on his HUD. “UCSBA-13-000 winner.”
Stunned, Gavit’s grip on his throttle loosened and his fighter drifted through the waypoint side by side with Chris. Dumbfounded, he eased up on the throttle and made for orbit alongside Chris. Still in shock, Gavit reentered the thick clouds. “How did she do that?”
“Like I said, she has one Sheol of a WSO,” Matt replied. “The flight plan I weaved out was a phony. He rode their slipstream drive right through the damned waypoint.”
Gavit scoured his memory. Did uncle Toran ever mention anything like that? “I didn’t think that was possible.” A glint of light caught his eye and he looked over to find Chris staring back at him, her face unreadable behind the silicasteel visor at this distance. I wish I could see the look on your face right now.
“It’s a very advanced trick. I wish I could do it. You have to be a master of the slipstream drive to even attempt it. That is fragging dangerous. I’m
not sure I would ever try it unless lives depended on it.”
“It’s no trick, cadet,” Commander Pio-Tolis commented, her helmeted head appearing in the communication’s screen, her WSO smiling away behind her. “You will quickly learn, flying with me, that the simulators are wrong. They are programmed using numbers and figures supplied by the manufacturer. Only in the real thing can you discover what a fighter can really do. What we just demonstrated is quite easy once you learn how, though wasteful of energy. You will learn to do it; that and other things Splicer Corps says can’t be done.”
“It’s been a very long time since we had to work that hard to win, though,” Gord Brough, Commander Pio-Tolis’ WSO, commented through the shroud. “Six, Eight you are very good flight crews.”
“Lead, Eight, thank you sir, I’m just glad someone could put Gavit down a notch,” Chris replied.
“Form up, you two. Your fuel readings are getting too low for my tastes. Put yourselves in a parking orbit with us, and we’ll wait for the others.”
UCSBA-13, Monstero Nach 06
Fuel conservation was the furthest thing from Gavit’s mind during the race, and the state of his fuel bladders was proof of that. Their hydrogen scoops had been disabled on this flight, in fact, on Pio-Tolis’ orders. Too many cadets had damaged their intakes during the final atmosphere dive in the past, because they’d failed to close them. As a result, his and Chris’ fighters would be the first to land, now that they’d returned home. He approached the open end of the academy with ease, following the guide beacons to landing, careful not to overdo things in order to conserve the little fuel he had left. I flew too well to get towed home.
“Shields?” Gavit called as the hangar loomed in front of them.
“Dispersed. Undercarriage?” Matt countered as the energy barrier faded away.
Gavit tapped the virtual soft button to lower the landing gear, and a thump echoed through the cockpit. “Deployed and locked. Master Arm Switch?”
“Safe. Vector?”
“On,” Gavit replied. Watching the velocity vector on his HUD, he held the approach path.
“Vector?” Matt repeated as they approached, keeping his pilot focused and on course.
Despite having landed his old fighter and this one countless times before, albeit in simulations, Gavit’s twin hearts still pounded as he crossed the threshold into the landing bay. He always hated that. He should be coming down off the high of the race, not getting worked up again as the landing pad came into sharp focus. Matt’s repeating his vector call didn’t help. He fired thrusters with minute precision and settled onto the pad. He let out a sigh as the sound of magnetic clamps grabbing hold reverberated through the cockpit, and the pad dropped away. The cool darkness of the elevator shaft was a welcome relief, until the lights of the hangar shone through.
Reaching their level, Gavit taxied off the pad. His hearts calmed as he headed towards the decontamination and defueling area. He followed a technician, her jumpsuit hugging her butt, as she guided him into his parking slot. I might have to ask her out again, I bet she’ll be impressed by how close I came to beating Pio-Tolis. She wouldn’t see it through his helmet, but still he winked at her when he settled the craft back onto its skids before he commenced the shutdown checklist.
“Engines?” Matt called.
“Idle. Sensors?”
“Shut down.”
“Degrav generators?”
“Off. Engines?”
“One down,” Gavit replied, shutting down the first engine. He waited until the engine status bar dropped to half power than tapped the button to shut down the second engine. “Two down. Shroud?”
“Out,” Matt replied, his natural voice echoing through the cockpit for the first time since before they’d launched. “Life Support?”
“Check.”
“Computer and Navigation?”
“Check, and off, clear to open.”
Gavit reached for the canopy release, and his hand hovered at the lever. He was reluctant to depart the craft, but with a sigh, he grabbed ahold and pulled. With a hiss of compressed air, the canopy lifted open and maintenance technicians bounded onto the fighter. As Gavit and Matt removed their helmets and breathed in their first lungfuls of station air, techs shuffled up with ladders. Gavit scanned the deck and saw that cute tech with the light batons heading away to guide another craft. Too bad.
Gavit climbed down from his fighter and ran his fingers through his sweat-soaked hair. He couldn’t believe how good even the hangar air felt in it. He smiled at his WSO, as Matt climbed down, and gave him a quick hug. “Damn good job out there, buddy.”
“You too, come on.” Matt headed off towards Chris and Bichard, leaving their fighter covered with techs.
Gavit caught up a moment later and slid his hand out to Chris when she neared. “Damn good race, you two,” Gavit said as he shook Chris’ hand. “Looks like Pio-Tolis’ little stunt cooked your paint, though.”
Chris pointed back at Gavit’s fighter. “Yours too.”
Both crews looked back at their fighters and Gavit spotted the burnt sections on the spine of his fighter where Pio-Tolis’ firestorm had cooked through the rear of their shields.
“She is one Sheol of a pilot,” Chris went on.
“And I plan to add all her tricks to my own,” Gavit replied, watching the next two fighters descend the elevators to join them. “I never knew how right Uncle Toran was until now.”
“What’s that?” Chris asked, Gavit rarely speaking about his famous uncle who had helped design the Splicer-5000 and later becoming its first ace pilot.
“He said flying the Firehawk is like being the Firehawk. You’re not the pilot, you’re not the systems operator in the back seat, you are all three in one. If you don’t meld with it just right, it’ll chew you up and dump you as sure as anything. You take that bird into the black and you become it. After that, everything else doesn’t matter.”
Chris remained silent for a moment, just staring at Gavit, then shook it off and let a wicked smile meet her lips. “Right up until you get the enemy in your crosshairs, am I right?”
“Yeah, then you become a bird of prey, and nothing else can dare touch you,” Gavit replied as Blazer and Trevis taxied up.
UCSB DATE: 1001.372
Star System: Classified, Proving Grounds, Monstero Nach 03
Blazer swallowed hard as Trevis’ fighter dropped into one of the canyons snaking across this particular Proving Grounds asteroid. Just like they’d been briefed for this final exercise of the semester, the engines of the fighter flared twice, signaling him to proceed after two more orbits. With his orbit already programmed, Blazer took a moment to look around.
Off in the distance, the hull of the GFS Nosferat rested on the edge of the Proving Grounds. The ship now served as a practice target for cadets since they’d captured it almost an annura before. Memories of that battle came to mind as Blazer looked at it. Could I have saved those we lost? He shook his head, casting his doubts aside. No time for that now. Focus!
“Okay, Blazer, we’re clear for our run,” Arion called out from beneath the shroud, as they approached the scarred surface a second time. The rest of the squadron followed behind, awaiting their runs.
“On it,” Blazer replied and rolled the fighter over to bring the canyon into view. Blazer licked his drying lips as he stared at the gorge, fired his engines, and angled towards the open entry to the canyon.
He broke away from the others and eased the throttle forward, allowing the limited gravity of the massive crust chunk to pull him down. He smiled a little as he dropped within metra of the asteroid’s surface. The dark gray landscape and canyon ahead reminded him of flying in the canyon races back home. He’d never flown anything this advanced back then, of course. The abundance of information coming to him from his screens and holographic displays were in marked contrast to the minimal instrumentation of his old jet racer.
Rocketing down the desiccated riverbed of what had once be
en part of a living world, Blazer spied the lip of an ancient waterfall approaching. Passing over the rocky shelf, he pushed his nose over to dive into the canyon. Time to go to work.
Ancient, water-etched stone walls surrounded him, and Blazer tapped his afterburners twice. The plasma flow from his combined-cycle plasma turbines compressed to the fusion point at the outer thrust ring. A burst of force shoved him back in his seat as he signaled the next pilot in line. Blazer twisted his fighter through the first turn. This was not the canyon where he’d had his accident two annura before; this one had more surprises. He had flown it before, both in reality and simulation: he’d learned his lesson. He wouldn’t let himself get lax in the cockpit ever again.
“Bogies rising,” Arion called out, treating the drones like real enemy craft.
Blazer steadied himself while a series of red dots appeared on his sensor sphere and lit up his holographic HUD. His threat alert displays sprang to life, showing multiple turrets and a trio of targeting drones, but the drones were heading away from him. Blazer smiled as targeting boxes snapped to life around the contacts, displaying their types and distances.
“I see them, prioritize and assign.”
Color-codes shifted to reflect Arion’s targeting priorities. The turrets’ static nature and destructive potential made them the highest priority. Blazer grimaced at that. He’d have just one pass at those turrets in the canyon, but he also wanted a chance at the fleeing drones.
Taking a quick breath, Blazer angled his controls to line up the first turret in his sights and fingered the trigger. Low-powered practice rounds exploded from his wing mounted plaser cannons. Each turret’s protective EM shields lit up under the assault. The light show they put on was short lived, terminated by plasma rounds slamming into the rocky wall behind the turrets. Even at practice power, the plasma rounds flash-boiled the little water still trapped in the rock. The resulting tiny explosions tossed out a cloud of dirt and debris that slowly settled to the canyon floor. Blazer pressed on, engaging each turret in turn before twisting around to go after the drones.
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