The Expanding Universe 4: Space Adventure, Alien Contact, & Military Science Fiction (Science Fiction Anthology)

by Craig Martelle

  Given a choice, I prefer the kick in the guts from launching.

  Seconds had passed, and the bird exits the tube. Engines switch to thrust automatically, shields come on, and there is no longer any need for gravity in the bird. I adjust heading, and change the controls from penguin mode to serious fighter mode.

  The CAG is a good leader, but he's always been crap in the cockpit. Score one for peacetime, and no decent wars for over fifty years, to elevate an average pilot to CAGdom. Give him his due though, his strategy is top notch. Something I couldn’t say about the admiral in charge of Yorktown, or we wouldn’t be in this shit now.

  Modern scanners see well into the distance, so the fighter battle was a long way from each fleet. Throttle hard against the stops was still going to take me too long to get there.

  The wet was pooling in my crotch, and across my hips. Ignore.

  Career over through the mistake of a rookie, and just as a real shooting war begins. Just my luck. Stop thinking about it.

  The German fleet had been advancing up the spine for weeks now. The Joint Chiefs knew they were coming, and thought they knew what was coming. But all we had here in the Cuba system to meet them was Yorktown's recon fleet, since everything else was off chasing pirates.

  We didn’t have the firepower to deny them entry to the system, so the admiral had planned a cat and mouse game to try and get them to turn back. The object was to hold them outside the American sector, long enough for a decent fleet to come together behind us. Technically we were in breach of Earth sector's refusal to allow our fleet into their space, but their military wasn’t here, and we were.

  I’d watched the opening moves from my hospital bed. Rumours had run up and down the ship about the CAG and Captain arguing with the Admiral behind not quite sound proof doors. Admirals can't be denied though, so here we were.

  And now here I was, battered and broken, flying into the biggest battle the American Sector had seen in a long time.

  Details were coming up on the HUD now, showing less detail than should have been there.

  The enemy fighters were not in the war-book.

  Fine, so now I understood our casualties. The Germans had new fighters, and managed to hide them long enough to get them here without our intelligence service finding out.

  I checked who of ours was still fighting. The rookies were all gone, including the one who'd done me in by mistake. Of the rest, most of them had a lot of combat time against pirates. But none of the squadron leaders had made it this far, so there was no real cohesion left.

  Just one big furball, and that was just fine with me.

  Three

  "Redline, is that you?"

  "Who else would it be Thumper?"

  Thumper was a flight leader like me, and probably the senior still left. In case you’re wondering, Thumper did. A lot. Surprising in such a short woman, but by hell you stayed out of her fist range when she was angry. Which was a lot of the time. It made her a seriously aggressive pilot, and held her back when promotions were handed out.

  "In the CAG's bird? No-one I guess. Fuck!" One of our birds disintegrated. "Turn off your ECM, they don’t work anymore, and seem to attract missiles instead."

  "You're shitting me!"

  "I shit you not. Why do you think all the rookies bought it so quickly?"

  I reached over to the switch, and the ECM died. Instead, I added missiles into the target list.

  "Where do you want me Thumper?"

  She told me exactly where I could go.

  Before I could do anything, the CAG told me differently. I ignored him, which was just as well, because Yorktown's Captain cut him off in mid-sentence. I was out here now, they needed every pilot they had, and if I wanted to kill myself, at least it was defending the ship. They'd be getting new birds after this anyway, and the CAG always got the newest. But I knew if I made it back, the CAG would tear me a new one.

  If I made it back. I took my hand off the speed slider, and clamped it where some of the synthskin was supposed to be, hoping a few seconds pressure would stop the dribble of blood. I was at full speed now, so I had the seconds before I needed that hand again.

  I should have told Thumper to pick a new tactic. This one got all the rookies killed on the simulator, and was drilled into them never to do. But then, I figured I was already dead, so what the hell.

  There were enough of our birds left to keep tails clean, and Thumper had reformed them back into cohesive pairs working together. But they were being severely hassled, and not returning the favour well enough to stop about a squadron worth of enemy birds peeling off and heading for me.

  Doctrine said when the enemy is coming towards you, angle off so they don’t get the perfect no deflection shot at you. Rookies were taught when a squadron of the enemy was coming head to head at you personally, turn and run home.

  I did neither. What I did do was remove the safety on the speed slider, and pushed the lever to the stops.

  They didn't call me Redline for no reason. I had a long history of returning with no battle damage, but needing the engines replaced. The only reason they left the pin in, was for emergencies when the last erg of speed might save your life. What's an erg? Who cares? I’d saved my skin more than a few times by being the fastest when it counted. But the engine tech weenies hated me. It was odd, knowing I’d never have another argument with them.

  Eye on the ball! The wet trickle had resumed.

  I had two advantages. The enemy were coming on at a normal cruising speed, and unless someone checked, they'd be assuming I was coming at them at this bird's top speed, which was well known to them, and less than what I was coming at. And as I cycled through them, I could see they were out of missiles, while I was fully loaded.

  The bird had four hard-points, two under each wing. Each one held three image recognition missiles. For once I was glad the CAG was a lousy shot, and relied on missiles which tracked a single target until either they hit, or ran out of fuel. I preferred fire and forget missiles, since they were totally unpredictable, and I liked causing chaos among enemy ships. Since they packed a bigger wallop, pilots couldn’t ignore them.

  But now wasn’t the time for chaos. I needed surgical precision, and at longer range, the IR's were perfect.

  I confirmed the lead fighter was the enemy CAG, and locked him up. A few seconds later, a dozen lock on warnings had me turning the alarm volume down. Had they had missiles, I’d have needed to do something about now. But they didn’t, so I didn’t.

  A few more seconds, and I used them to tag second, third, and fourth targets, being the senior Squadron Leaders. I figured they wanted first crack at Yorktown, while their minions kept our remaining birds corralled out here. One last bird launching late, obviously wasn’t going to be a serious problem, even without missiles.

  The CAG was the obvious target, front and center, with the formation swept back from him. The Germans loved their precision. I expected him to survive. The others were not even close, and therefore not on a precise head to head approach, and not expected to be the targets of a single fighter coming at the CAG. Well, so I hoped.

  The target reticule flashed yellow, and then red.

  I double tapped the missile trigger.

  Four

  One missile from either side launched directly at the CAG.

  Change target, tap, tap, change, tap, tap, change, tap, and tap. Shift to guns, and change back to the CAG.

  Now here's the thing about playing chicken. The first one to flinch and pull away, usually gets raked. If neither of you flinch, there is usually a collision. At slow speeds, shields would bounce each other away. At our speed, there'd be nothing left to bounce anywhere. The saving grace was scoring enough hits first, so your shields would keep you bounced away, while tearing the remains of your enemy apart.

  There's another problem with this, if you do manage to survive. Even a partial collision would weaken your shields too much, and leave you vulnerable to other enemy fighters. In other word
s, you announced yourself as dead meat, ready for carving.

  All of this flashed through my mind as I waited for either missiles starting to hit, or the enemy fighters dodging. At the intercept speed we had going, there wasn’t going to be any time for thinking.

  The CAG didn’t flinch. In fact, he did nothing at all. He took the first missile dead on the cockpit canopy, and the second into a wing root. The ship disintegrated. My mouth fell open.

  I pulled gently back on the stick to go over the top of the exploding mass, and pressed the button to change to nearest target. The CAG's wingman was still coming on, and as the second and third sets of missiles hit, I altered slightly to retarget, and pulled the guns trigger.

  Pulses came at me, but not many because of the problem of being too spread out across my line of flight, and turning to fire at me, would be turning into friendly fire. Those who did get a shot off at me, underestimated my speed, and the pulses fell behind me.

  My pulses chewed through the wingman, and again I went slightly high to go over the top of him. The fourth set of missiles also hit, a bit belatedly, and I was five kills to zero in the first pass. Some debris damage to shields, but not enough to worry me.

  I had a few seconds to fire at someone else further down the line, and then I was past.

  My left hand was holding firm against where my kidney had been, again, and so I didn’t slow down. Three hands at this point, would have helped. The engines were redlining, but not yet overheating. My next move depended on their next move, and while they made the decision, I was running. Towards the rest of their force to be sure, but also towards the remainder of ours.

  They had a choice, and no senior officer to make it. They had an enemy behind them now, who still had missiles. While they'd whittled our force down to its core, we still had enough fighters to damage their carriers. And my four remaining missiles, if fired inside the flight deck at the right place, could destroy a Carrier. It was a suicide stunt, but they'd just seen me take the suicide option, and live.

  I heard Thumper bellowing orders, and could see the enemy formations were no more, partly from her tactics, and partly because their pilots were having a hard time coming to grips with losing their seniors in the space of seconds, after having made short work of our formations to start with.

  There was some cheering coming through in the background, and I assumed it was from Yorktown. The CAG's voice silenced them. The Captain's voice silenced him, and spoke to me.

  "There's no need to kill yourself Redline. But keep up the good work."

  I didn’t bother answering. A simple 'Yes Sir' was expected, but it was too much like accepting an order to not kill myself, for my liking.

  I had no illusions. I'd killed myself when I launched. Now was simply borrowed time.

  Thumper was still trying to disengage from the rest of the enemy fighters, but so far hadn’t been able to. The fighters now behind me made their decision, and turned to follow me. I allowed myself a grin.

  Their CAG had screwed up. Had it been me, I’d have had the flights far enough apart so all of them could have turned to fire at me, and still have seconds to avoid colliding with their own. But one is always thankful for arrogant pilots who think they don’t need any help taking out a solitary bird.

  Now they'd had to choose between going up against a fleet carrier without missiles, or let missiles take a shot at their escort carrier. Lose, lose, but in my humble redlined opinion, they chose wrong. Yorktown could take whatever the remaining seven fighters could dish out using only guns, but there is always the chance of getting lucky. Besides, they had more of their squadron mates ahead of me, with more chance of taking me out, and absolutely no chance of catching me before they did.

  Score one to the Redline.

  Five

  The battle still going on ahead of me was all gun based now.

  My people were holding their own against superior numbers, but they weren't as superior as when I’d launched. Thumper was slowly whittling them down. Reduced to a core of experienced pilots, the disciplined formations they were flying now were paying off in terms of kill ratio. The enemy formations were gone, and single fighters were more vulnerable.

  "Crap!" I heard Thumper say, as she lost her wingman.

  Her bird started moving like two drunks were fighting for control of the fighter. She slipped the pulses seeking her out next, and fell into formation behind another of our pairs.

  "You need a hand there Thumper?" I inserted into the gabble of pilot combat chatter.

  "Screw you, Redline."

  "Get in line Thumper."

  "Wilco."

  I smiled. The likelihood of any bedroom based encounter with Thumper was about the same odds as Lexington turning up to save us in the next few minutes. In other words, don’t even think about it. Last I heard, Lexington was still completing her refit, the same one Yorktown desperately needed. We had escort carriers, but only Lexington carried enough birds to save our bacon here.

  Bacon. I was going to miss that.

  I locked up the son of a bitch who'd taken out Thumper's wingman, and almost gotten her as well. I wasn’t yet in range, but being locked up by someone carrying missiles did make you look. And suddenly being aware of your own impending death, tended to stop you planning the death of others. At least, most of the time it did. Gun lockup wasn’t the same. The longer the range, the less reliable guns are, and good pilots didn’t let anyone get too close.

  It was why our pilots were holding their own now. Spacial awareness, generated partly by scanners showing you where everyone around you was, and by keeping an eye on the rear image on the heads up display, kept you moving in a way which kept enemy fighters out of your kill slot. It also stopped you concentrating on a target to the exclusion of all else, which tended to get you killed. It reduced combat to deflection shooting, and the odds of not getting hit improved, the more deflection had to be applied. Of course, there were pilots with superb deflection shooting skills, and there was also just plain bad luck.

  Which was why I was surprised to find my new target seemed to be ignoring me. Maybe he thought everyone was out of missiles, and since I was still too far away to even consider guns, I wasn’t therefore a threat.

  I altered course slightly to close directly on my new target, finger hovering over the missile button. The question was, how many did I fire?

  "Pop the question Redline!"

  My eyes blinked twice, before realizing Thumper was giving an order, not propositioning me. The HUD icon flashed yellow, and then red. Tap.

  Two things happened at once. The target jinked away from whoever he was now set on, and Thumper went to full speed, angling for a deflection shot, leaving the cover of her wing mates. They angled after her, knowing a lone bird would become a target, and trying to give her the shot.

  Our mutual target can't have been paying attention. He turned to face her, and in doing so, took my missile up the arse. The fighter staggered, slowing, and he lost his ability to aim for a few seconds, during which both Thumper and I opened fire with our guns. Both sets of pulses hit, and one more debris field began cluttering up space.

  Thumper angled to pull in behind me, as I’d told her to. The pair behind her picked off another enemy fighter trying to revenge her kill.

  "Slow down Redline."

  "Pull it out Thumper."

  "You pull it out Redline."

  "I already did."

  "Fuck!"

  She obviously pulled the pin on her speed slider, and slid into position behind my left wing. It reminded me to check my engine status. Beginning to become a worry, but speed was what I needed now.

  I picked a target between me and the enemy carriers, and continued my speed run, right hand waiting to fire again, left hand still trying to stem the blood flow.

  At the last second, the enemy turned inwards towards me, and we both fired for a few seconds, before turning away slightly and blasting past each other. Thumper had a few more seconds to fire, and wa
s past as well. We both hit, but not enough for a kill.

  I continued straight on, now on the other side of the main combat area, and heading for the carriers. The dot on my scanner which had been our last target vanished, as the pair behind Thumper finished it off.

  "What's the plan Redline?"

  Six

  There wasn’t a plan.

  I was running on adrenalin, and instinct, and too zoned in to plan anything. The need to keep my left hand clamped on my side, kept the engines red lining, and with a few seconds to think now, made me wonder which was coming first. The engines exploding, or loss of blood turning me from a pilot into a passenger.

  One hand couldn’t cover multiple bleed sites. I could feel the trickles continuing under my flight smock, and the ordinary fatigues I was wearing underneath were plastered against my skin. The smock being designed to keep you alive if you found yourself drifting in space, there was no bleed through to show me how bad it was.

  I lost focus in my eyes for a moment, and had to blink to clear them. An awareness of feeling colder followed, and I turned up the heat. It was bad, and getting worse. I dragged my attention back to Thumper's words.

  Plan? What plan? There wasn’t a plan. Just me and a carrier.

  "Talk to me Redline."

  The nav map was changing. Behind me and Thumper, was the other pair, so we were essentially a flight of four fighters zeroed in on the enemy carriers. Behind them, were enemy fighters, trying to catch us, and failing. It looked like the other two had pulled their pins as well, as they were keeping up, even though a fair way behind. About half the remaining enemy from the main fight were following them, while the rest continued to fight the remainder of ours. Further back, were the seven still chasing me, falling behind all the time.