The Ascent

Chapter 8

I relaxed into the acceleration couch, surprised to realize how much I had missed the cool green and amber displays projected on my visor. I even missed the dry plastic-tasting air hissing into my helmet. I took a moment to scan the fighter's cockpit and ignored the three-G acceleration. Executing a quick rotation to test the cybernetic link's responsiveness, I kept the Cack warship centered in my sights. As I rolled my fast attack craft, my accompanying fleet of sensor pods and ECM drones pin-wheeled around me. Great Maker! How I 've missed this!

"Are you ready for this, Zoomer?" Fleet Sub-Commander Chris Knight sounded bored, though the sensors said his ship was half a click away on a parallel course to the warship.

"Oh, yeah!"

"We'll reach its threat zone in less than sixty seconds. Standby for overtake," Chris said.

My counter display was at five seconds and counting down, but at one second from zero a fleet of missiles launched from Torchbearer roared past at close to a hundred gravities. I say "roared" because the situational awareness sub-systems provided 3D sound for objects moving nearby. When combined with all the other alert tones the cockpit of a fighter can be deafening and yet, somehow, the brain manages to sort out all the messages.

"Missile Flare," Chris announced unnecessarily.

My ship had already tagged the enemy missiles from the optical sensor data and correlated it with the Torchbearer's gravimetric sensors. The incoming missiles had only closed half of the distance before Torchbearer's missiles began exploding. Expanding spheres, each a mix of hard gamma and other EM radiation destroyed some missiles and blinded the rest. They couldn't use shrapnel because our fighters were only seconds behind them.

"Initiating Evasion Plan Theta," I said before Chris could play flight leader.

"Copy that, I'm going with Epsilon."

Our ships began rotating on all three axes, seemingly thrusting at random, though actually navigating us around the worst of the hard radiation.  Hopefully, we would slip past any surviving missiles and approach the Cack warship from  unexpected vectors.

An ear-piercing tone told me a stray missile had managed to lock onto me. The fighter blew chaff and jinked around at black-out inducing Gs. A flash of light followed and one of my ECM drones exploded. My three remaining ECM drones repositioned themselves relative to my fighter and continued screaming as if they were full-sized heavy battlecruisers. My sensor pods, each natural--if smaller--targets, stayed in formation. They began sending back detailed info on the Cack warship as we circled the last cloud of radiation and started our attack runs.

Target suggestions sprouted across my display, each encoded with the fighter's estimation of the threat value. Almost as quickly, Chris began tagging the ones he wanted. "Hey! Quit taking all the good ones," I said.

"If you want them, you'll have to take them from me."

"Now I know where you got your call sign, Klepto."

Taking into account our differing approach vectors, I flagged all the high-value targets I thought I could reach first, then any secondary targets he was likely to miss. The fighter displayed its suggested flight plan and I OK'd it. At the speeds we would be traveling, human navigation was impossible. I was already inside the reach of the Cack's missiles; I could only hope my speed was great enough their defensive targeting systems wouldn't have time to track me. 

My tiny craft shuddered with the release of its missiles. Though smaller than those launched by Torchbearer, my missiles had nearly as much impact. Since I was providing most of their propulsion, the majority of their antimatter could be reserved for their payload.