Operation Chimera (22 page)

Zavex glanced at him. “I hardly think this is a time to think about being with a woman.”

ichael pulled his sidearm, aiming at the Draxx fighter. He imagined the pilot laughing at him as the personal laser weapon fizzled into the hull. An orange glow grew deep within the bowels of the particle accelerators. Zavex bowed his head, muttering something the translator disregarded.

“Hello, boys!” cheered Liam, as the Manta bobbed up behind the Monitor.

A pip from one neutron beam hit the Draxx fighter straight in the left engine, detonating it and kicking the Monitor into a descending spin that sailed clear of the
Lewis & Clark
. The Manta pivoted, firing all four beams out of sight. The warm light glimmering over the dark blue hull confirmed the kill to Michael, and let him breathe.

“Excellent shot,” he said, running to his tilted Glaive.

“Will you hold still,” scolded Emma. “I can’t get this mole off your bum if you keep squirming.”

“He’s all over me.” Fear was audible in Aaron’s voice. “If I level out I’m going to get shot.”

“Funny thing about hornets, luv. They tend to get a bit cheesed off when you kick their nest. It’s almost like they know you did it.”

Aaron got some of his confidence back. “Tell, I’m swinging around wide, give you a broadside. See if you can do some laser surgery.”

“I’m already on the blighter, Liam has other problems.”

“What? I do?” He looked at the spatial targeting display, where two dots raced toward him. “Mung!”

Liam dove, the huge Manta sank out of sight from where Michael sprinted. A second later, two Kraits zoomed past. Climbing in to the Glaive proved to be a challenge at the angle, and it took him a moment to squeeze the survivor in the space behind the pilot’s seat. Every time a fighter whizzed past the open space to his right, he tried to move even faster. With the recovered man stuffed in place, he flipped his body horizontal and pulled down on the canopy edge to seat himself. A few seconds after the canopy sealed, the cockpit flooded with air.

Gingerly, he manipulated the left wing, extending it as a means to push the Glaive close enough to level to take off. He cringed at the metal-on-metal scraping sound that shuddered through his ship. Fortunately, with no gravity, the wing did not bear noticeable weight. The maneuver tossed the ship off the ground, and he activated the flight control systems, which kicked the ship into a lazy glide to the left. Once he had it under control, he tapped at the sticks and backed it out, mindful of hanging strips of twisted metal.

Zavex had a cleaner egress, racing backwards before flipping over into a dive in pursuit of Liam’s new friends. He went for a missile lock first, not wanting to risk a particle beam hitting the Manta by accident. As soon as he got tone, he loosed an AFM-13 “Hornet”, the smallest missile in the Fleet, but fast enough to chase down a Krait. The Draxx peeled up, off Liam’s tail, into a wobbly dance. The Hornet streaked out of sight, leaving only an orb of energy from its thruster visible as it pursued the panicking egg.

With a hundred meters to target, the thruster flared into a streak as the burst charge fired, doubling the missile’s speed to over 24,000 m/sec. It stabbed into the Krait from behind, detonating a fraction of a second after piercing the hull. The debris plume burst out of the nose end before the entire ship crumbled apart.

Emma snarled, sending a stream of curses into her helmet, but not over the comm. She pondered calling Aaron a lily, but decided against it in case she had to live with him after this was over. She fired past the Krait-II several times, her effort to hit it at least kept it from lacing Aaron’s ship with a fatal hit.

“Betty, compute a missile lock on the target.”

“Lieutenant Loring, we do not have any guided missiles mounted.”

“I’m aware of that, Betty, just do it.”

“Hunter, this is Sylph. You got any Hornets?”

“Yeah, four, but the damn thing is behind… Good idea.”

“Set a two second delay, drop it on my mark. Targeting data incoming.”

Aaron’s fingers flew over the controls, binding one of his Hornet missiles to Emma’s targeting computer. For all intents and purposes, it would be as though the Mosquito fired it. As tone squealed through both of their helmets, Aaron pushed the thumb switch. One of his four Hornets broke away from its mounting rail and sailed into space. He overflew it, as did the Krait-II and Emma.

Two seconds later, the thruster came on, and the homing missile zipped toward its mark. The Krait-II veered into a desperate turn, finally breaking Aaron’s tail. The Draxx super-light rolled through a torturous series of maneuvers, causing the Hornet to explode just far enough away to prevent major damage.

“Dammit,” grumbled Emma, having managed to stay with him.

As if flying down the inside of a tornado, she slid sideways in an orbiting helix, firing endless streams of pulse laser. The enemy avoided her. The little ship shimmied, the gesture told her the Draxx was about to roll off to the lower left. Just as she went to follow, the Krait-II exploded as a pair of particle beams smashed through it from behind and right.

“Damn thing,” grumbled Aaron. Several seconds of radio silence. “Thanks…”

“I’ll give you that, Hunter… You’re a good gunner.”

A wave of energy orbs flew past the cockpit, sending her into hard evasive maneuvers. “Where are they all coming from?” Emma looked up, left, and right. The number of Draxx fighters had not seemed to change despite their kills.

“Hold it together, Green Wing,” said Michael, swerving onto the tail of a Monitor gunning for Liam. Two blasts ended it.

Liam had all he could do to stay away from the cloud of gnat-like Kraits desperate to get a piece of the slowest, largest target they had. Emma ran interference, chasing them off his tail one by one and not staying with the same one long enough to inflict damage. A few lucky hits slowed one down enough for Zavex to dust it.

“It’s not like we have a home to run to,” said Emma, skimming just shy of an incoming Draxx missile. “We have no choice but to win.”

“Thanks for the pep talk.” Liam had run out of Monitors to go after, and did not fancy trying to pit his mediocre piloting skills against the task of trying to hit Kraits with a pig of a heavy fighter. Instead, he concentrated on evasion, leaving the shooting to Keg.

“Zavex, see if you can get some distance and start picking fleas off the Manta. Everyone else, get in close and don’t give them a good shot.” Michael joined the fray, going from Krait to Krait as they swung in for a shot on Liam.

The next forty-five seconds felt like an hour.

Michael rolled away from an exploding Draxx fighter, another victim of his particle cannons, and clipped another passing sideways with his lasers.

“Check one-nine-one degrees off the
Lewis
”
―
Michael glanced at his console
―
“seventy thousand meters approximate. What is that?”

“Another anomaly,” said Liam.

“Jump trace,” said Aaron. “Something found us.”

Michael punched the console. “Proc.”

A shimmering blue-white point of light appeared, promptly expanding into a vaporous cloud. The hole in space offered a view of a deep azure world, streaked with lightning and globs of energy. A long, ovoid Draxx ship slid through the rip, bristling with pods and antenna clusters. As the breach in hyperspace sealed, hatches parted along the rear sides. More Kraits launched.

“Attention, Green Wing,” announced Keg. “I’m reading a DCV-17 “Python” class corvette.”

“Thanks for the update, lunchbox,” grumbled Aaron. “It’s plain as day.”

The front end of the Python opened, four triangular panels bending away from a central hollow as a swell of energy formed at the end.

“Are those damn lizards seriously trying to hit us with a capital ship weapon?” Aaron laughed.

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a giant proccing target!” shouted Liam.

True enough, the Python’s orientation shifted about as if it were trying to aim at him. Liam rolled the heavy fighter about, rotating until the derelict was horizontal. As large as the Manta itself, a sphere of energy coalesced at the front end of the corvette’s main weapon. Liam accelerated as hard as his ship would allow as the death orb leapt away from the Python, a fuming comet headed straight at him.

He cleared the edge of the
Lewis & Clark
, and the magnetized plasma swerved down, favoring the huge vessel. An EM pulse wave created by the impact washed over the Manta, knocking him into the dark and filling every display screen with static. As the stricken heavy fighter tumbled, everything inside jumbled about. Keg, already sizzling from the EMP blast, sailed headfirst into the iris door at the rear of the cockpit and crashed to the ground. He flopped about in a droid’s version of a seizure. When he went still, the LEDs on his face spelled one word:
ouch
.

Green Wing turned to pursue their drifting comrade. Liam pounded at the console, as if the force of his fist upon the buttons could somehow bring the systems back online faster. Panic rose in his gut as he prayed that the energy pulse only triggered an emergency degauss, and did not blow out any components. The
Lewis & Clark
blurred repeatedly through his field of spinning vision, stars were streaks rather than dots. He whimpered at the nineteen-meter wide glowing melt-hole where the weapon struck.

One screen came on, displaying the results of a system start up. The flight computer went off hard; it had never been completely powered down since the ship had rolled off the assembly line.

“Come on, come on. I don’t have a minute to wait!”

Keg twitched.

“You okay, little fella?” He looked back past his seat at the droid.

No reaction. He almost felt sad.

“Sons of”―he cringed as debris clattered over the outside of his ship―“Come on, hurry up.”

Michael’s Glaive flew around an expanding field of shrapnel, having just destroyed a Krait trying to shoot the helpless Manta. Liam’s communications came back, and the sounds of his wing-mates shouting tactics returned to his ears.

“I’m coming back online. Everything shut down from the EM blast.”

Liam froze with a bewildered look, smelling coffee. He whirled. Keg floated by the lavatory, waiting for the tiny coffee maker in the bomber-sized cockpit to finish filling his travel mug. Once done, Keg took hold of the cup and hovered towards the front at a slow drift, one spindle arm folded behind his back. LEDs at the top of where his ‘face’ should be lit up in an attempt to create the appearance of scrunched eyebrows and a thick moustache.