Behind the Knights, the Gazelle looked pristine from its undamaged side, but a small rolling wobble betrayed that Shay and FO Pratt’s attack had damaged its control surfaces. One of the spheroids, an Intruder-class infantry carrier, was belching smoke from rents in its hull plating around the engines. And the pair of Liao Thrush light fighters were climbing after the mercenaries, bent on revenge and gaining quickly.
“Jouster Two-Three, break right and thatch,” ordered Dallenbach.
“Roger, Captain.” Shay cut back on the throttle, rolled to starboard and pulled back hard on the stick, breathing hard as G-forces pressed him down into his reclined seat. Pratt matched his maneuver while ahead the flight’s other element mirrored it to the left. The Thrushes closed in quickly now, firing their medium-caliber laser cannons as soon as they were in range. Emerald beams played over the wings of Shay and Pratt’s Rievers, armor instantly melting away and then dissipating in the thin air, but the heavy fighters’ thick plating held.
Shay counted to four, rolled 180 degrees, and reversed his turn. The two pairs of Knights fighters were now criss-crossing each other’s flight paths in a scissors, an ancient tactic for defending against pursuit by a more agile foe. One of the two Capellan pilots, at least, was familiar with the tactic; his Thrush pulled a split-S and disappeared somewhere below. The other Liao pilot was either less experienced or more determined. He doggedly hung on Pratt’s tail, blazing away with his lasers, until the inevitable moment when he passed through the gunsight of “Rusty” Dallenbach on the third leg of the weave and the Riever’s heavy arsenal simply took the Thrush apart in mid-air.
“Splat, how’s she flying?” Shay asked his wingman as the mercenaries regrouped into formation.
“Still in the fight,” Pratt responded. “Anyone have eyes on the other Thrush?”
“No joy.”
“Let him take his ball and go home,” Rusty said. “We’re back on our objective.” Engines thrusting at maximum power, the four Rievers hurtled upwards in an Immelman turn to pursue the still-fleeing DropShips. Judging from the tangled mass of contrails still filling the sky above them, the Knights task would only get more complex the higher they allowed their targets to climb.
“Jouster flight, Windchime. Jouster flight, Windchime.” The Davion GCI controller sounded less businesslike than before. “Caution! You have bandits inbound, zero one five for twenty, angels twenty and descending, hot.”
They’re coming down right on top of us! Shay searched high and at one o’clock, trying to pick out glints of sunlight on the wings of diving Capellan fighters that had made it through the covering screen of the Davion Guards’ Cutthroat flight.
“Stay on target, Knights.” Captain Dallenbach was unflappable as ever. “Maximize our next pass. Padre, Splat, finish off the Gazelle. We’re going for the ‘Mech carriers.” The DropShips were back clearly in view now, the Union and Overlord in the lead with the damaged Gazelle and Intruder trailing slightly below. With accurate shooting, the Knights could down three of the four in their next pass and then be free to maneuver against the new threats. But…
Shay pulled the nose of the Riever up and his HUD instantly illuminated with icons for three new bogeys. Given a crystal-clear sensor picture against the backdrop of the stratosphere, his threat management system immediately identified the descending Capellan craft with the code TR-13. Transgressors. A staple of Capellan aerospace forces, the Transgressor was smaller than the Rievers and had enough thrust to outmaneuver the Knights’ craft in a vacuum, but in an atmosphere its stubby wings made it handle sluggishly. Still, it was a well-armed and well-armored type, not one you would ever want to hand an advantage to at the beginning of a fight.
“Cap, bandits coming down on us are Transgressors,” Shay radioed. “They’ll be on us as soon as we finish our run. You and Tiki stay on the droppers, Splat and I will cover.”
“Negative, Padre. Rejoin formation.”
“Too late, Cap.” Shay and Pratt were climbing almost vertically now to meet the swooping Liao fighters. Shay centered the icon for the lead craft in his HUD and the speck beneath rapidly resolved itself into what his trained eye recognized as the snub-nosed shape of a TR-13. A missile lock tone sounded in his ears and he let fly with a salvo of LRMs. A second later there was a blue flash from his foe’s nose and wings and for an eyeblink his cockpit went dark as the armored canopy glass polarized to protect his vision under a glancing hit from a heavy laser. When he could see again the enemy fighter was twisting away from his crosshairs and his snap-shot of autocannon shells and short-range missiles missed cleanly.
His rear threat alarm sounded and a green laser lance scored a hit on his starboard wingtip. The missing Liao Thrush had chosen an effective moment to return to the fight. “Jouster Two-Three, defensive,” he radioed to his flight. “The damn frisbee is back.”
Shay cut throttle, yanked the stick to the left, and kicked the rudder, throwing the Riever into a wingover. Shay had a brief glimpse of the Thrush rocketing by him, could make out the Capellan emblem on its left semi-circular wing, but had no chance to bring his weapons to bear.
Picking up speed again as he descended, Shay took in the battle unfolding below him. The three Transgressors had blown past Shay and Pratt after the head-on confrontation, targeting Dallenbach and Drumm in an effort to protect the DropShips. The squadron leader and his wingman were diving away after their attack pass, using the dead zone beneath the spheroid DropShips to protect themselves from most of the transports’ fire. The lead element must have switched their targets at the last second after Shay had disobeyed orders, he judged, because the Gazelle was falling out of the formation in a lazy spiral.
There was a celebratory shout over the radio as Pratt pumped autocannon fire into one of the Liao fighters, turning its predatory descent into an uncontrolled, burning, terminal one. Another member of the Capellan trio dropped into place behind Pratt’s Riever and caught it with the sapphire spears of its heavy lasers.
Pratt checked his dive and the Transgressor, descending almost vertically and unable to match the sharpness of the mercenary’s pull-up with its scant wing area, overshot. The Capellan pilot zoom-climbed to disengage and never saw Shay coming before the Riever’s autocannon and missile barrage eviscerated his machine.
The Capellan fighter began a sharply descending right turn, and for a moment Shay thought the Transgressor was somehow still under control. Then it rolled inverted and plunged directly into the nose of the ascending Intruder. Its command and control destroyed by the unguided seventy-five ton missile the Transgressor had become, the stabilization and maneuvering thrusters that kept the massive, un-aerodynamic craft steady in its ascent fired wildly, out of all coordination. Spewing flame and smoke from both ends, the Intruder began to fall out of the sky.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Although everyone on the Intruder’s bridge was almost assuredly already dead, there were still hundreds of crew and infantry on board. For them, it would be a long, terrifying ride down, assuming the ship didn’t start to break up before then.
Shay wrenched his attention away from the spectacle of the falling Intruder. The Liao DropShip was out of the fight. Who was still in it? “Jouster Two-Four, this is Two-Three. Splat, you still with me?”
“Just barely, Padre.” Shay quickly located Pratt’s Riever at his three o’clock and slightly low. Above him, the squadron’s other element were hounding the Capellan Union, but Shay’s priority for the moment was his wingman. He could see Pratt’s fighter was trailing smoke from its left wing, where he guessed that a laser shot from the Transgressor had detonated the propellant for several short range missiles. “Roll authority’s not what it should be,” Pratt said as Shay pulled up alongside the wounded Riever. “Think he took a piece out of the aileron linkage myomers.”
“RTB, Splat,” Shay said, searching the skies around his damaged squadronmate. “There’s still one Transgressor out here somewhere, and maybe the-...”
A trident of laser beams raked over his fighter. The Thrush was at his seven o’clock, high. Bloody nuisance! “Splat, dive for the heck. Bug out.” Shay started a left-hand chandelle, trying to draw the enemy away from Pratt’s damaged fighter.
“Padre, I-...”
“It’s an order, Splat.”
Shay thought he might have heard a muttered obscenity over the radio as his wingman’s Riever done away in the opposite direction of Shay’s turn, but it was drowned out by an alarm in Shay’s cockpit as the Thrush scored another glancing hit. A warning light indicated possible damage to the ammunition feed system for the Riever’s missile launchers. Shay’s remaining warheads were now nothing but potentially explosive dead weight, and he was reminded that his occupation meant spending large amounts of time strapped to what was essentially a very large bomb. It was a thought Aerospace fighter pilots usually preferred to avoid, as if the dead-hand plunge of the Transgressor into the DropShip hadn’t been enough reminder.
God's eye to look before me,
God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak for me,
God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me...
The Liao pilot in the Thrush was no amateur. He had foreseen the trap that the Knights had used to kill his squadron mate, and had used the superior agility of his tiny craft to disappear and then re-engage at will. Shay would not be able to simply outmaneuver his foe. So what were his comparative advantages? Aside from firepower - useless with the Thrush glued to his six, even if his missile launchers were functioning - and its steadily decreasing armor protection, the Riever was an easier and more forgiving craft to fly than the infamously tricky “frisbee.”
Let’s see how good you really are, you bastard. Shay tightened his turn and converted it into a steeply ascending spiral. The Thrush flitted after him. Shay’s left hand made fine adjustments to the throttle moment to moment as he watched his airspeed drop. The two fighters were twisting around each other now as they rose vertically towards the stratosphere, like the strands of a double helix with life and death balanced between.
With Shay holding the thrust of its mammoth fusion powerplant on a tight leash, the heavy Riever was shedding speed rapidly now as it spiraled upwards. Any moment now Shay knew he would feel the tell-tale buffeting that warned him he was on the verge of an aerodynamic stall, as the flow of air over the Riever’s wings stopped generating enough lift to keep the ponderous craft airborne. His bet was that he could use the Riever’s much greater wing area to hang on longer at the ragged edge of control than the Liao pilot could in his twitchy, round-winged Thrush.
And it was working. One rotation at a time, the Capellan fighter jock was losing his advantage as he was forced to add thrust to keep his craft flying. He was abeam Shay now, in a couple more twists of the spiral he would be inexorably pushed out ahead. Shay could feel the beginning of the buffeting in his stick, but the Thrush was almost in his sights. The whole Riever was shaking now. He was seconds from a stall. Now or never.
Shay squeezed the trigger and the autocannon belched fire and depleted uranium. It was too soon, too much lead. The shot missed, and the recoil of the massive weapon had robbed him of the last few knots of crucial airspeed. But as he kicked the rudder and rolled the Riever over to recover from the stall, he saw the Thrush snap into a violent horizontal rotation worthy of its nickname.
Now I’ve got you. Shay finished his recovery and leveled out expecting to see the Thrush falling into his HUD targeting reticle in an uncontrollable flat spin.
Instead what he saw was nothing but empty sky. What he heard was a warning tone from his fighter’s tail warning radar, and the shuddering of the Riever’s frame as he barely snap-rolled out of the path of another salvo of laser fire. How in the hell…? Recovering the Thrush from the dreaded flat spin was one thing, but for the Liao pilot to be able to do it so fast, and to actually use it to change direction and end up back on Shay’s tail…
Shay did not remember the last time during a mission when the thought had occurred to him that this might be the day he died. In his mind the words that had long become mere ritual started to sound like more of a sincere prayer.
God's shield to protect me
God's hosts to save me…
He was diving now, trading altitude for speed and, hopefully, time to come up with another idea. The Riever’s sheer weight allowed it to accelerate away from his opponent in a dive at first, but the Thrush would catch up soon enough. Already the Capellan pilot was clawing at him from the extreme range of the Thrush’s lasers.
Shay’s eye was drawn to a wispy trail of black smoke, weaving across the layer of cloud that was rushing up beneath him like a child’s random mark on an immaculate untouched canvas. The Riever’s sensors tagged the origin of the smoke as a Gazelle-class DropShip. Shay was shocked to see that the tank carrier had somehow recovered from what had looked like a sure death spiral and was now descending more or less steady and level in the direction of Valencia.
And in the Capellan DropShip’s unlikely survival, Shay began to see the shape of his own salvation.
