by Aer-ki Jyr
“They’re getting behind us,” Paul noted through the comm to Jason, who was sitting in a simulation pod beside his.
“Don’t let them get our engines!” Jason said, yelling without realizing it. “I only need another minute.”
“Flipping forward,” Paul said as he lifted the aft of the ship up with thrusters, making it harder for the flankers to shoot into their engine vents, all the while bringing the dorsal laser turrets into range of the last arriving drones. The autofire setting immediately tracked those closest and fired off a few shots, half of which missed. Those that didn’t wounded several drones, but didn’t kill any of them right off, lacking the triple power of Jason’s linked guns.
Paul resisted the urge to kick the console in front of him. He could have easily flown and fired at the same time…not as effectively as a dedicated gunner, but enough to contribute to the fight. The rules of this challenge, however, specified one pilot and one gunner, without the ability to share duties. They had to trust each other to take care of their part of the operation, and while Paul definitely trusted Jason, he really wished he could help him out with fire control.
One of the aft batteries, a small laser mount on autofire, went dark on Paul’s display, meaning it had been hit and incapacitated, if not destroyed. That didn’t affect Jason at the moment, but it was yet one more wound their warship took that they wouldn’t be able to repair or replace. Paul tilted the ship aside slightly, trying to bring the other aft turret away from a direct line of fire, because the last thing they wanted was a dead zone in which an enemy could hide and attack them from with impunity.
But true to his word, Jason finished off the last of the drones with a bit of piloting magic from Paul, who rotated the ship around methodically so Jason could target the widely placed drones with his linked guns, some of which had already been wounded by the autofire batteries.
As soon as the last drone vanished from the radar screen, three new dots appeared at the edge of the engagement zone…three large dots.
“Wave four,” Paul noted, repositioning their wounded warship to display the minimum cross section as three rail gun rounds appeared, one from each ship, tracking their way at insanely high speed.
5
Knowing that the rounds were purely ballistic, Paul used the warship’s thrusters for a hard burn upwards, drifting the ship out of line from where it had been and allowing the rounds to pass perilously close by underneath. Fortunately none of them had missed high, otherwise they would have flown right into them.
“Get me a shot,” Jason said over the comlink, and Paul reluctantly cut out the thrusters after pointing the nose of the craft towards the middle ship, which was now accelerating towards them. A moment later a medium round shot out from the prow in the blink of an eye, soon joined by three more coming in from the enemy.
Paul didn’t wait to give Jason a second shot, he immediately hit the thrusters hard to starboard, hoping to pop the ship out of alignment again as he belatedly noticed their round hit the center ship. The computer projected damage had a large hole punched into the nose of the larger warship, taking out various weapon systems, including its primary rail gun, but it wasn’t a kill shot, leaving the ship still in the fight and now drifting closer to them with every second that passed.
One of the enemy’s rounds nicked the underside of their warship, tearing a computer simulated scratch down the hull but not hitting anything more than the armor…though most of the reflective panels were shattered by the impact, taking away most of their remaining anti-laser defense.
“Shoot when able,” Paul said, knowing they were cutting it too close as he kicked in the engines and turned them to starboard. With every second that passed the enemy was getting closer…meaning their rail gun rounds would have less travel time and more accuracy. Paul wouldn’t be able to dance the ship around to avoid them in time with the thrusters alone, so he had to get the ship pointed in a lateral direction so that he could use the main thrust for evasive maneuvers, which unfortunately took their rail gun battery out of alignment.
Unable to fire, Jason used the time to start reprogramming their missiles, or rather unprogramming them, into shipboard target lock as two of the warships jumped out ahead of the wounded third.
Sensing the opportunity immediately, Paul adjusted their course and swung them around so that they were actually traveling backwards at an angle, cutting across the path of the approaching ships even as they adjusted to match them, increasing the distance between themselves and the wounded ship while still flying a continually erratic course.
More rail gun rounds from the two ships continued to track towards and miss the trainees’ warship, due to the fact that the computer was calculating where their ship would be at the moment they fired, using their speed and trajectory to plot an intercept point, but by continually adding thrust in different directions the equations were changing constantly, and once fired the enemy had no way to adjust to Paul’s new heading.
That said, they weren’t missing by much. Their warship was small, but it was still a floating multi-ton hunk of metal and not exactly graceful. Moving it out of alignment required a massive amount of thrust, and thankfully for this challenge they were also afforded infinite fuel, because at the rate Paul was moving them around they would have run out within minutes.
As Paul continued to dance the ship around while trying to delay the closure of the approaching ships a barrage of tiny missiles shot out from port then vanished as he moved the ship again, but on radar he saw the swarm track towards the starboard enemy ship and begin to thin as its anti-missile defenses activated. He saw some wink out unpredictably…meaning laser hits, while others were met by fast moving anti-missile missiles.
The intercepts took out about a third as many as the lasers, but Jason had launched so many that some still got through and hammered the enemy ship. While Paul continued to fly evasively, Jason pulled up a closer diagram of the radar image and confirmed that at least some of the ship’s weapons batteries had been destroyed. They didn’t have a status diagram of the enemy as they did their own ship, but some of the obvious protrusions on the hull had disappeared.
“Nice shot,” Paul said approvingly.
“Just keep us moving,” Jason reminded him as he prepped the short range rail guns. “One lucky hit and we’re toast.”
“Believe me, I know,” Paul said, wrenching the flying controls as he tried to eek every bit of maneuverability he had out of the warship as the enemy continued to close…but fortunately, while that made their rail guns all the more dangerous, it also took them out of alignment, because as far as angular transition was concerned, Paul could fly across their firing arcs much faster at closer range, and since the rail guns had very little of their firing arc to ‘aim’ with, as long as Paul kept them off the enemy’s forward bowline they wouldn’t be able to hit them.
And given that they were in a smaller, more maneuverable ship that made the task somewhat doable.
The trick was crossing the medium distance gap which was, in their case, the worst of both worlds, so Paul tried to fly in something approximating a flanking circle while still being somewhat unpredictable, yet he did manage to get the firing line of the port ship to cross the other, at which point Jason fired off the small rail guns in their direction.
The Gatling guns were designed for short range and notoriously inaccurate at distance, used primarily as an anti-missile defense or for point blank carnage, but with both enemy ships in approximately the same position Jason took a wild shot and spat out over 300 rounds with one slow pull of the trigger. The elongated cloud of metallic shards expanded until it was wider than both ships combined with the closer one taking a few dozen hits, while the partially blocked one took only four impacts.
No major systems went down, but each round did chew up a bit of armor, as well as break the anti-laser reflective panels, opening up firing opportunities for Jason’s lasers if and when they ever got close enough…which was going to happ
en soon because the engagement zone boundary was beginning to creep up on them, though Paul was doing a good job trying to laterally skirt around it.
By the time the ships did come within range, Paul had their trajectory totally reversed and heading back towards the opposite end of the spherical zone where the enemy had first appeared, causing the intercept to happen to port, meaning their rail gun was woefully out of play. The enemy ships, however, kept firing off rounds and missing until both ships blossomed with missile plumes that arced toward Paul and Jason’s ship like a fireworks display on the 4th of July.
Paul immediately kicked the engines into full throttle and adjusted their trajectory so the missiles were more or less coming at them from the aft. Jason only had one turret back there to work with, but he knew he had to negate some of their incoming speed or else they’d overwhelm their ship’s defenses.
Jason launched a wave of their own intercepts, then used the laser turret to start sniping at the approaching missiles which didn’t appear to move much at all when flying at them straight on…the trick was to hit them all before they could cross the gap.
“I need more than this,” Jason said, firing frantically.
“Five seconds,” Paul said, wanting to eke out a bit more speed…then he cut engines and used thrusters to flip the ship up on its side, bringing the bulk of their weaponry into play.
Jason’s targeting display immediately linked another laser battery to his current one, as well as linking another two which he controlled with the second joystick, while the rest went on autofire mode, as did the small rail guns that began spewing thousands of rounds in the general direction of the approaching missiles, hoping for a lucky hit.
While Paul couldn’t see it from his pod, Jason was masterfully using two targeting reticules at the same time to shoot down the approaching missiles, which was one of several reasons why he was the better gunner of the pair. Two hands, two joysticks, and one mind that had previously learned how to multitask in a target-rich environment had two little icons dancing around the screen firing at the approaching missiles and downing them with incredible speed…and with Paul’s hasty course correction effectively slowing down their approach, Jason and the ship’s computer managed to take all of them out.
That left them tracking back towards the damaged enemy warship with the other two now in pursuit.
Paul maneuvered them directly on the line connecting the enemy ships…which caused all rail gun fire to suddenly stop.
“Sweet,” Jason commented as he grasped the tactic. The enemy was afraid of friendly fire and had to reposition before risking another shot. They, however, didn’t have that problem and Jason toggled their own rail gun controls. “Target the rear ships,” he suggested.
Smiling at the suggestion, Paul flipped them over, swapping nose for tail, then began making micro-corrections as the enemy ships tried to slip out of line, but he kept them blocking the view of their sister ship up until they finally got the idea to split up, making it impossible for Paul to block both lines.
But it was too late. Jason had already fired off four rounds, three of which hit the rightmost ship and took it out of the fight…leaving a cratered and broken hull surrounded by a halo of debris.
With it out of the equation, Paul had little trouble staying on the targeting line with the second ship, which Jason also destroyed with more of their infinite rail gun slugs. One advantage they had was that the enemy ships had ammo limits and they did not…but then again, the enemy had unlimited ships, so all in all, they were still screwed.
Before Paul could flip the ship back over, the wounded enemy fired off a missile barrage. Jason barely got to it in time, given that their speed was actually adding to that of the missiles, and one managed to slip through…blasting a huge hole in the upper starboard armor, but failing to penetrate the hull, thankfully. Dying of simulated decompression while your weapons and engines were still intact was just plain annoying.
Paul noted several damage spots popping up on the hull, meaning laser impacts. The medium grade lasers the enemy was using were identical to the ones on their cutter, and given enough opportunity could cut through their unshielded armor within a minute if continuously targeting the same spot on the hull.
But the medium lasers were pea shooters compared to the rail guns, so when Paul got the ship aligned with the target Jason quickly finished it off with an accurately placed 3-round salvo down the centerline of the ship.
Immediately one large dot appeared on the edge of the engagement zone behind them.
“Wave five,” Paul noted with a measure of relief. They’d never gotten this far before.
Suddenly the large dot started spewing tiny dots that lined up into V-like formations.
“Oh crap,” Paul said to himself, realizing that the huge ship was in fact a carrier.
Jason realized the trouble they were in as soon as Paul did. “Go for the big one,” he urged.
“Right,” Paul agreed, seeing his teammate’s wisdom. If they were going for maximum points, go for the big target that can’t dance around and evade their rail guns…question was if they could even get close enough to it.
By the time Paul had the ship turned around and headed for the carrier the 24 fighters were already a third of the distance to them, armed with enough missiles to take them out on a single pass as well as a pair of small lasers for utility work if the explosives weren’t enough to do the job.
Seeing that they weren’t going to even get close, Jason started firing off rail gun slugs as fast as he could, aiming at and around the target, hoping for a lucky long range hit. Even if they did some damage to the ship it would increase their point total, though it would probably take at least a dozen shots to kill it, if not more.
Needing to keep a straight line to the carrier for Jason to target, Paul couldn’t so much as touch a thruster without throwing off his aim, so he sat helplessly and watched to see how this challenge would finish out…
6
Morgan sat in the trainees’ lounge along with most of the others enjoying some rare downtime as they waited for the last challenges to be completed, having nothing else to do today since she’d officially turned in her ‘finish’ notice to the trainers, indicating that she wasn’t going to attempt any more retries to up her score. While part of her didn’t like quitting early, she knew that technically there was no end to it all, and she could continue to work and improve her scores from now till infinity.
Given that she and the others had passed all the required challenges a week ago, and most of the trainees had finished immediately rather than try and go back again for what, at this point, would have been useless gains as far as the rankings were concerned. Only a few of them were close enough in the individual lists to realistically overtake one another, and the team gaps were even wider, though the 6s were perilously close to the 7s for second place, but without a new challenge to earn more points in there was no way they were going to scrape up enough on redos to catch up in the next few weeks, and all of the trainees wanted to move on to what the trainers had called ‘The Final Challenge.’
It wasn’t for points…individual, team, or tandem, but they hadn’t been given any other information about it. They were supposed to enter it blind and, if they passed, graduate at the completion. Morgan was more than interested in tackling what was due to be probably the toughest hurdle the trainers had thrown at them yet, but she was still focused on winning the individual title, and while watching a movie on one of the big screen displays in the lounge kept checking a small data pad in her lap for the updated challenge scores.
When Paul and Jason’s naval score was updated, she half smiled/half cringed. They’d succeeded in attaining the high score on the challenge and Paul had cut her point lead over him by more than half…down to a mere 134 points. That was still a solid lead though, but not altogether impossible to overcome, especially not with Paul’s skills, but she was beginning to sense that he wasn’t going to be able to catch up, giv
en that their score was now on par with their other four naval challenges, as far as the point differential over their competitors was concerned.
If Paul was going to catch her, they were going to have to redo this one again and do it far better or redo all five with modest improvements. She didn’t think that was likely, but a part of her didn’t feel right ruling it out either. They’d been accumulating points for two and a half years, and with only 134 between them now…well, if it had been the other way around Morgan definitely would have been going back for more redos, at least for an extra week, maybe two.
That wasn’t going to happen, however, because less than a minute after their score was posted the individual rankings suddenly crystallized…meaning they changed over to glossy blue numbers, signifying that the competition was over. So did the Tandem and team scores.
Morgan blew out a slow breath, realizing that not only Paul and Jason had entered their finish notices, but the rest of the trainees had too…and she had officially just become sole owner of the individual #1 ranking.
She giggled to herself quietly, not really sure what to think, then just forced herself to relax and enjoy the moment. Mission accomplished.
That lasted all of five seconds, before her mind put it aside, as she did all her successes, and focused on the next step ahead. Morgan leaned back in her cushy chair a bit farther, settled in and watched the movie without paying much attention as her mind leapt ahead to the possible scenarios the trainers might have planned for them. The fact that they weren’t telling them anything made her all the more curious, and she found herself getting more anxious by the moment to find out exactly what this Final Challenge was going to be.
Paul and Jason returned to their quarters after an abnormally large Halo tournament in the lounge which lasted a good five hours and saw the 4s come out on tops, but that hadn’t really been the point. They were all making the transition out of the training cycle they’d been enduring for what seemed like the past 10 centuries…high school felt like another life to Paul, which technically it was, given how much he’d learned and developed since then. His body was far fitter and his mind far sharper than he’d ever imagined possible, but it still seemed odd that if he had gone ahead to college he’d only have been a second semester junior by now…that just seemed all kinds of wrong.