In Death's Shadow

by S. F. Edwards

  The drones hugged the canyon walls, using outcroppings as natural cover to mask their presence. Blazer shook his head at the attempt, but his fighter’s sensors and WSO-enhanced computers saw the drones with ease. Eyes narrowed, Blazer lined up the first drone in his sights and pulled the trigger. Rounds splashed along its shields, disabling it, before he turned to the next and opened fire. This one maneuvered to avoid the rounds, to no avail. Unwilling to let it escape, Blazer opened fire again and disabled it, tearing up the side of canyon wall again in the process.

  Guided by a clever pilot, the drone twisted about and fired into the canyon wall, creating a cloud of dust and debris to hide within. Visually obscured now, the drone raced away. When Blazer checked his sensor sphere, he found that scrambled as well.

  Blazer bit back a curse as the dustcloud veiled the whole canyon. The cloud left him with no idea what dangers lay beyond. A moment later, Arion came through; a wireframe of the canyon walls appeared around Blazer using sensor data from before the cloud’s appearance. “Thanks big…”

  “Blazer, Break Off!” Arion ordered.

  Blazer pulled away from the canyon wall not a cent too soon and saw the skeletal frame of a long-destroyed bridge appear from out of the debris cloud. Blazer dared not take his eyes off his course to look, but he knew it had come far too close for comfort.

  “Don’t get target-fixated, Blazer. I have a date later, and I don’t want to have maintenance deliver what’s left of me to her after scraping my entrails off the canyon walls.”

  Blazer shook his head twice to remind himself of that very fact as he shot out of the debris cloud. The drone was just ahead. He lined up his shot and squeezed off two shots into it. “Sorry, fangs were dragging again.”

  “Just keep them in your mouth,” Arion laughed, the chuckle making it into his flesh and blood body. “I have enough work to do back here, without having to keep reining you in.”

  “You got it, buddy,” Blazer replied as he slid the fighter through the next turn in the canyon, and a land bridge came into view.

  He stared at the stone structure for a moment. It was not unlike the one that had almost taken his life back in their first semester, and just like that one, it was not in the simulators.

  Blazer would not let it control him, would not let fear paralyze him into making another mistake. Nor would he let anyone else think his long-ago blunder still controlled his actions. He angled up towards the rocky archway linking the two sides of the canyon. The ghosts of my past are dead and gone, where they belong. Nearing the bridge, he came as close as he dared to it.

  The fighter skidded under the bridge with two metra to spare. The gravitational deflectors blinked at the distance, kicking the fighter down as he passed. Blazer smiled at that before he felt Arion kick the back of his seat.

  “Knock that scrat off. If Marda saw you do that, she’d roast us both.”

  Blazer swallowed hard. She would have no compunction against beating him down for such a reckless maneuver. “I read you, what’s the status on our primary target?”

  “We’re just entering torpedo range. Give me a clear line of sight, and it’s ours.”

  “Clear line of sight, coming right up,” Blazer replied, banking the fighter through a bend in the gorge. The wireframe map hovering before him revealed their course, the red outline of the target a clear contrast to the yellow hues of the canyon. “Two more turns and you can let the sharks out.”

  Blazer tore through the next two turns, acceleration forcing him back in his seat through each banked turn. Thrusters burned all across the fighter as he whipped the fighter about. Slamming his thumb down on the afterburner control kicked him back again as the additional thrust canceled out their previous momentum and threw them towards their objective.

  The saucer-shaped port side hull of the GFS Bathory hung at the exit to the gorge, a mockery of what it once was. The pitted hull still bore battle scars from the previous annura, scorch marks from where it had blasted loose from the rest of the ship marring most of its surface. It hung there before them, grafted onto the side of an old freighter providing power to its turrets as they swung about to engage the fighter.

  Blazer slammed his throttle down as the first shot lit up space above him, the low-powered laser beam lighting the darkness where he’d been just a moment before. He punched the throttle forward, evading turret fire and looking for a safe approach vector. Four red dots appeared on his sensor sphere a moment before the targeting boxes lit up his HUD. Blazer slid his fighter up against the wall as he watched the four fighters angle towards him. The smooth arrowhead lines of the targeting drones were invisible beneath their holographic masks, disguising them as four cranked-arrow winged Tiger Cat Fighters rushing towards him. Twisting his fighter about for a firing solution, g-forces keeping him seated, he fired into the wall ahead of the fighters. The resulting cloud of dust and debris filled his sensor sphere with static, but it would obscure his fighter even more on theirs. “Arion, get me a missile firing solution on those fighters, then lock both sharks on target. I’ll try and keep them off us.”

  Blazer’s breaths came in short bursts as targeting boxes on the fighters flickered for a moment as Arion set to work, his concentration wavering for a moment. “Already on it,” Arion relayed as one of the targeting boxes slid into the wireframe of the canyon wall and disappeared. Lock diamonds appeared around the remaining three craft as their SAM-271 silhouette-seeking missiles locked onto them. “I can confirm the trail fighter is down. Missiles locked onto the other three. Fire at your ready, I’m setting up the sharks to launch soon as those bogies are clear.”

  Blazer glanced at the targeting solutions displayed alongside the lock diamonds. The missile seekers built as complete a sensor silhouette of the fighters as they could, to prevent spoofing. The solutions read better than 80%. Best we’re going to get without seeing their rears.

  Blazer flipped up the cover on his missile trigger and fired another burst of plaser fire into the cloud to distract the fighters. He slid his fighter back towards the center of the canyon and smashed his thumb onto the missile launch button. A series of thumps echoed up through the fuselage as three missiles kicked out of their launchers behind him. Their engines lit an instant later, and all three rocketed away.

  Blazer glanced down at the plumes of fire that pushed the missiles away before an alert shone on his HUD. Ripping his eyes away, he pulled up hard on the stick and throttle to avoid a barrage of laser fire from the fighters and from turrets on the destroyer hull ahead of him. He grunted as he flipped the fighter over, just shy of the canyon lip, and dove towards the canyon floor to set up a new evasion pattern.

  Looking up, he spotted the fighters emerging from the dust cloud. The three missiles bore down on them, relentless killing machines. No explosions marked the missiles hitting their targets, but one by one, the fighters disappeared from his sensors. The first two went inert as the training missiles streaked past the drones within the simulated warheads’ kill zones, but the third missile hit the drone square in the nose. It speared the arrowhead-shaped craft and sent it tumbling into the canyon wall. Its fuel bladders ruptured under the impact and a silent explosion marked its permanent end.

  Blazer stared at the explosion for a moment in shock. Don’t tell me we’ll get maintenance duty for that. Another alert lit up his screen. Back on task, he slid away just as another laser blast occupied the space where he otherwise would have been.

  Blazer gunned his throttle and dove into the dust cloud. Debris blinded his sensors for a moment until they exploded out the other end, and the target loomed before them. Laser fire from point defense turrets lit up the canyon. Blazer danced the fighter about through the hail of coherent light, each maneuver threatening to throw him from his seat. Sweat dripped from his brow as a blast scorched his shields, stripping away 10% of his protective ion cloud.

  “Anytime now, Arion,” he said between clenched teeth and dove for the canyon floor again.

 
“Be a lot faster if you kept us steady for a cent.”

  “Be a lot deader too.”

  Blazer dove into a hole in the point defense net and held the fighter steady for just a moment, until a loud bang reverberated through the cockpit to mark the launch of the first shark. The fighter jerked back in response to the mass shift. Blazer caught only a glimpse of the torpedo before it disappeared into the darkness. A moment later the second shark roared free of its launch tube and Blazer pulled back, rolling the fighter over to watch as the jagged atmospheric control fins of the torpedo popped out. The torpedo streaked away with no visible exhaust trail, propelled by an advanced gravitational drive that, while stealthy, was not robust enough for use on larger craft.

  From underneath the shroud, Arion guided both torpedoes towards their target. He weaved them through the defensive fire of the destroyer, while Blazer did the same with their fighter. The two torpedoes separated as they raced ahead, trying to make sure at least one made it through. As they neared the Bathory, Arion pumped all available power into their engines, plunging them into the hulk.

  Both torpedoes jerked to a sudden halt as they neared the hulk, held suspended in the sky above it. The fighter’s computer registered hits for both weapons as gravitational deflectors and grappler beams held them in place only a few metra above the heavy turrets they were about to strike. Their engines shut down a moment later, and grappler beams towed them into the freighter the Bathory hull chunk sat grafted to.

  Blazer smiled, as point defense lasers shut down, and flew in low over the hull of their target. He couldn’t help it, performing a victory roll as he did so. It wasn’t something he would do most flights, but after all the dancing around he’d just done, he felt that they deserved it.

  A new course appeared on his HUD a moment later, and Blazer climbed their fighter high above the shattered chunk of planet that made up the Proving Grounds. He slid into an orbit with Trevis and Telsh that crossed that of the other fighters waiting to commence their runs. The pair flew inverted over the asteroid, looking up through their canopies to watch the rest of the squadron.

  “That be a nice run,” Telsh’s voice chimed in over the link. “Almost be putting ours to shame.”

  “Long as it gets the job done. We take any hits in there Arion?”

  “We were a little closer when we launched than I would have liked. That cost us a quarter of our shields to defensive fire, but I’m not showing any damage. I could have launched sooner, but someone decided to throw up a dirt screen first.”

  Blazer just smiled as he looked back at the target area. Grappler beams lit up the canyon as they reset the drones and cleared their torpedoes and missiles away. A new drone emerged from the freighter to replace the one they’d destroyed. He watched the dust of the walls slowly settling to the canyon floor below, but too slowly. He was about say something when he spotted the grapplers turn their focus on the cloud and force it to the canyon floor. “Sorry about that, just glad they can clean it up in time for the next fighter.” As they crossed over the lip of the asteroid and the canyon disappeared from view, he thought of something else. “Any idea if we get into some kind of trouble for destroying that drone?”

  “No, you won’t be,” Trevis replied. “Regulations be clear, that accidental destruction of target drones be considered acceptable losses, so long as they not be excessive. Even then, the operators and instructors be held liable first.”

  Blazer felt relieved that he hadn’t just earned another round of service to Chief Flind. Not that he would mind that so much; he still helped out in the hangar whenever he could. He just didn’t want to be forced to it, not with their training schedule. I shouldn’t have taken such risks in the canyon, I can’t afford to let the team down again. As their orbit brought them back to the upper side of the crust again, he cast those thoughts aside to watch the next squadron member make their torpedo run on the destroyer.

  Inside half a hect, the whole of the squadron had completed their runs, with the exception of Gavit and Matt. That pair had ceded their normal position in the queue to fly last, without explanation. That was the topic of conversation now running through the squadron as they orbited the Proving Grounds and Gavit’s fighter neared the torpedo run. Pulling into their slot position at the rear of the formation, Mikle had his own theory about why and was not afraid to share it with the rest. “I bet he just wants to show us all up. He thinks he’s really hot in the Firehawk, since his uncle helped design it.”

  Commander Pio-Tolis took the lead position in the formation this cycle as Tadeh Qudas oversaw another Special Operations team’s training mission. “I doubt that, cadet, after the stunt he pulled at the tender earlier. The emergency combat breakaway those two demonstrated, without my permission, stressed their docking arm and almost broke one of the six docking latches.”

  It was an uncharacteristic move on Gavit’s part. While he sometimes liked to play the part of a hotheaded playboy pilot, he was anything but that, in the cockpit most of all. Ever since they’d started flying the Splicer 5000, though, he kept pushing himself and his craft to their limits. Matt let him get away with it far more than he should. I’m going to have to have a talk with them about that, Blazer thought.

  As the orbit brought them back to the “surface side” of the asteroid, Gavit and Matt’s fighter made a final turn to begin their attack run. Everyone turned to watch, with WSOs getting front row seats in their network from Matt’s telemetry and Arion projecting the run onto Blazer’s lap for easier viewing.

  Fire erupted from all four of the fighter’s fixed guns, Gavit pouring plaser and bio cannon rounds into the drones. The flex-mounted Narfic cannons beneath the cockpit soon joined in. Twin lightning bolts bridged the gap between the fighter and the drones, ripping through the drones’ electrical systems and disabling them. Faster than Blazer would have thought possible, they shot down all four drones, with guns alone and at extreme range. No one else even attempted something like that.

  Arion whistled from beneath the shroud and sent Blazer an image of Gavit’s weapons display. “Matt’s locking all twelve of their missiles and both torpedoes onto the target.”

  “A barrage burst?” Blazer asked. We haven’t tried that outside the sims, yet.

  Blazer turned back to the hologram, Gavit’s fighter hugging the canyon floor. His defensive flying was a work of art and he seemed to dare the weapon’s fire to hit him before rocketing free of the canyon a thousand metra from the target, all weapons still in their launchers. The fighter lurched a moment later as it disgorged all fourteen of its warheads. The force of the launch tossed the fighter up and back before Gavit rocketed away, afterburners glowing like two miniature suns within their thrust rings.

  The Bathory’s turrets elevated to follow the fleeing fighter, ignoring the warheads streaking towards the ship’s midline. Looking back on it, Blazer could see that the automated guns had no chance to catch the lightened craft. Their programming couldn’t compensate for the higher than normal acceleration.

  Unimpeded by the distracted turrets, the fourteen missiles crashed into the gravitational deflectors and grapplers protecting the hull of the ship. The shields managed to hold back most of the warheads but it wasn’t set to overcome so many at once, and the last two missiles penetrated the force wall. The two weapons slammed full speed into the side of the Bathory, shattering on impact. Blazer almost jumped in his seat when their engines exploded and opened two new holes, for real, in the hull of the devastated craft.

  The link remained silent for a long moment as Gavit climbed to join the rest of the squadron.

  Matt soon broke the silence, patching the fighter’s internal comms into the link. “Shields are depleted by half, reading 15% armor loss on our rear off the simulated shockwave. No function loss to any systems. Am replenishing and rebalancing shields to compensate and we are good to go,” he announced, pumping more ions into the weakened shields and spreading out the remaining ions to cover any gaps left by the shockwav
e dispersing them.

  “And that is how a Markus kills Geffers,” Gavit growled.

  Commander Pio-Tolis made no attempt to hide the anger in her voice as she snapped back at Gavit over the link. “Cadet’s Markus and Talkerna, that was a completely unacceptable risk you just took. That little stunt of yours could have gotten you both killed.”

  “But it didn’t, ma’am. My uncle taught me how to fly, in and out of combat, and it was maneuvers like that that made him a hero.”

  “It was also one of his famous maneuvers that got him killed.”

  The normal background buzz of link traffic went silent in response.

  Blazer couldn’t even begin to imagine what was going through Gavit’s mind in that moment. He looked down at the Bathory. They’d lost their first squadron leader in the battle which had claimed that ship. Seri’s cries for help still rang in his ears as he gazed down at it. He looked back at Gavit’s fighter. Gavit had taken Seri’s loss the hardest of all of them. Did seeing this ship again override his judgment, or was this show of bravado no different from what I did at the land bridge?

  “The maneuver didn’t kill him,” Gavit growled. “Bad intel did, bad intel and a compromised design,” he continued. Unlike the craft they flew now, the first Splicer 5000 squadrons, including Toran Markus’ squadron, had flown the Engineering Development Model, not the final production craft. “I won’t take any more unnecessary risks, ma’am. I just had to get something out of my system.”

  Matt transmitted an image to the rest of the squadron. It was of one of the missiles that had impacted the hull, a bouquet of flowers painted on it, with Seri’s name wrapped around them.