3

Orange Flight, 5th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 276th Tactical Fighter Wing

Ogawa City, Tsukude

Prefecture I, Republic of the Sphere

28 November 3134

Two undeniable facts: The universe could kill a guy a thousand ways to Sunday, and what the universe couldn’t do, the Dracs were pleased as punch to finish.

Now, his onboard sensors shrilled a warning about five milliseconds before Lieutenant Adrian Penn’s Lucifer hit another pocket of turbulence. Oh, yeah, baby, bring it on; peg that old fun meter one more time. Penn’s altitude dropped, and his stomach balled in his throat. Penn wrestled his bird, angled off fifty degrees, and then let out a slow exhalation when he felt the fighter lift.

Static sizzled in his headset: “Whoa, shake and bake.”

Penn grinned past the acid taste in his mouth. “A chance to excel, Menace.”

“Uh-huh,” said Menace, aka Brad Dennis, Penn’s Dash Two for what seemed like a million years and was closer to seven. “Punches my ticket.”

Penn grunted. A week ago, Central Command’s systems’ boards had lit up like a Christmas tree when the Drac JumpShip winked in at the nadir jump point. Count ’em, boys and girls, numero uno JumpShiperino. That mother coughed out a DropShip, the sphere blowing free like a spit wad shot out from a straw, and Command got all kinds of beaded up. To top it all, the sun burped, big time, and with all that superheated plasma gumming up the works, all Command could figure was that the DropShip had closed on the planet, then deployed four aerospace fighters. Going where? Who knew? Some brainiac crunched numbers, figured that fighters (plural) would hit Tsukude’s ionosphere roundabout twelve hundred over Ogawa City—he guessed.

The preflight briefing came at oh-nine-thirty. A dour commander reminded them of everything they didn’t know. “But whatever happens, one thing’s crystal, boys and girls. You will not fire unless fired upon.”

Terrific; an aerial quick draw. But Penn didn’t say anything, just suited up with his flight—Menace; red-haired Pattie “Red” McAllister; and Samantha “Power” Will—and blasted out of there. The upside: They had Lucifers and could take on a medium-size DropShip, push came to shove. The downside? Lucifers packed muscle, but they were slower than molasses in an atmosphere; hence, the decision to engage the enemy in the upper reaches of the atmosphere where gravity didn’t count as much, and there was enough ionized crap to hide their signatures. (And, oh, yes, had Penn mentioned that, in a Lucifer, a guy couldn’t eject? Well, he couldn’t eject. Sweet.)

Penn’s Lucifer knifed through shimmering curtains of multicolored auroras that were shet-mah-mouth beautiful, and a bitch to maneuver through. Orange Flight was way up high: angels fourteen-hundred-and-change above the floor. They flew a classic box: Penn and Dennis in front of McAllister and Will by six kilometers; Dennis two-point-seven-four klicks behind and point-three-oh-four-eight klicks above Penn’s right side; Will the same for McAllister. It was Penn’s job to search and report, Dennis’ to watch his tail, and as Dash Four, Will’s to make like her neck was on ball bearings and cover all their collective butts.

Suddenly, his computer blatted. Penn snapped to, felt his heart kick up, said, “Tangerine One has two, repeat two contacts, forty right, angels sixteen-four.”

An instant later, Red McAllister’s voice filtered in a wash of static. “Tangerine Three confirms same. Read two bogies, forty degrees right, altitude now sixteen-three.” A pause. “Confirm two, green for go.”

Menace: “So where the hell are the other two?”

Good question. Penn chewed the inside of his right cheek. Two unidentified fighters, angling down from sixteen-thousand klicks and change—and green : not acquiring, not even hot. And two Dracs missing. Headed somewhere else? Or hiding in all that plasma soup, waiting for a chance to slip in at their six o’clock?

Evidently the strike controller ticked through the same calculus because there was a squall of interference, and the words: “…change… eading… atch… and speed… do… engage… conflict.”

Lord, help me. “Control, this is Tangerine One, say again.” More fuzz and urps, though Penn caught deconflict.

“Ho, boy,” said Menace. “I don’t frigging like that.”

Penn didn’t either. Deconflict. Translation: Wait until Command decided these were the bad guys. But he said, “Roger, Control, Penn Thirty-seventy.”

Penn watched as the bogies remained to his right, forty degrees off the horizontal, but shedding altitude: fifteen-six… fifteen-one… fourteen-nine. Then he made a decision. And screw Command. “Tangerine One flight, check forty right.”

No one pointed out that Penn’s order turned them toward the Dracs instead of away. But they were too far away to answer that old bogie-bandit question, so, by God, they’d get closer. They executed hard rights, Menace’s turn putting him five hundred klicks ahead of Penn. Throttling down, Menace angled up to cover Penn’s rear. Penn stayed glued to his HUD as the bogies squiggled, resolved, metamorphosed into… Oh, hell. Just to be sure, he blinked, double-checked his IFF, said, “Tangerine One is tallyho two, repeat two bandits, zero, nine-point-six klicks.”

“Two?” Menace again. And then: “Uh-oh.”

Now Penn saw it, too. First there were two Sholagars. And then there were four. Fanning out from their flight-mates’ electromagnetic shadows, two additional Sholagars fell into a diamond formation—coming right for them and closing fast.

A second later, Red: “Tangerine Three is tallyho four bandits, nine-point-two klicks and closing. ID Friend or Foe confirms Sholagars. Confirm, Control.”

Red was cool; he had to give her that. Penn watched as the pings streaked right for them. Suckers got the speed of heat and can turn on a dime, so it’d be like a knife fight in a phone booth, and, yeah, we outgun them, but they can evade, so where’s the sense in that…

Three seconds went by, then ten. Penn rekeyed for Control: “Tangerine One is tallyho four bandits, eight-point-six klicks. Request confirmation.”

His answer was a hiss followed by a pop, and something that sounded like a man gargling underwater. And that was the extent of his contact with strike control. Then his HUD flared, and Penn looked. Looked again. Cursed.

Menace: “Tangerine Two, read bandits, coming in hot!”

Hot. The Sholagars were targeting, and Penn’d bet his bottom stone note the Dracs wouldn’t wait around for them to take their shots. Unless we shoot first. Penn’s thumb searched out his laser override switch, one o’clock on his throttle… and hesitated as a new thought bubbled to the surface: But what if… “Red, Power, throttle up, assume four at forty-five, two-point-seven klicks, go hot.”

No one argued; everyone did as the lead pilot said and in ten seconds McAllister and Will had caught up to assume positions right and left of his wing as Menace dropped back and shed altitude. Penn nudged his speed to put on some distance until they were configured in a flat, elongated diamond, Penn in the lead. And they were hot.

Now it was a test of nerves and speed. Yes, the Sholagars’ turn radius was tighter. Only his guys had superior weaponry, so one of two things would happen. Either each would break off and start turning, hard, cutting their turns and threading their fighters across ever-narrowing loops until one slid in to their opponent’s rear and took his shot. Or they’d get a knife fight in the cold, hard, darkness of space: Dueling fighters scissoring nose-to-nose, back and forth in sheer, fast vertical or horizontal turns, like knitting needles crossing, uncrossing, crossing, until one fighter got inside the other’s turn, slid in behind, and let ’er rip. And gravity didn’t count for a damn in space because a fighter never ran out of vertical velocity. Problem was the Sholagars could run circles around them, and the last thing Penn’d see would be a laser chewing its way up his ass. Unless… he got very, very lucky.