by Tripp Ellis
Corpsman were rushing to the wounded. It seemed surreal. Chloe’s eyes welled with a mix of sadness and anger. Her face tensed, and the lump in her throat burned. Harrison was down. So was Stewart, Richardson, and Patel.
Her defiant eyes glanced back to the flaming Stingrays—a few had survived. Chloe secured her flight helmet and sprinted toward one of the remaining vehicles. Adrenaline rushed through her veins. Her heart was pounding in her chest. She had begun to realize why Instructor Cash had been making cadets do morning runs in their flight suits. She wasn’t in near the shape she needed to be in, but she had a little more stamina than she did a few days ago, and every little bit helped.
Chloe could hear the enemy squadron approaching. Some of the other cadets had run for cover inside the main building. Chloe figured she was probably sprinting towards her death, but she wasn’t going to go out without a fight. She glanced around—Lily was sprinting alongside her. At least she was going to have a wingman.
All of the cadets had plenty of time in the simulators flying Stingrays. But few had actually sat in the cockpit of one. Chloe climbed into the cockpit and powered up the craft. The orange glow of the interior lit her face. She pressed a button and the canopy slid shut. The cabin pressurized. The seat adjusted to fit her perfectly, hugging her frame. The cockpit seemed like it was molded specifically for her. Sensors would detect body height and weight and would automatically adjust to fit each pilot. The SK-7 flight suits were fully integrated with the Stingray’s central computer. Tactical information was displayed within the pilot’s visor on the heads-up-display. The 360° OmniView™ system provided the pilot with unparalleled vision, and allowed the pilot to identify, track, and target threats. 30mm machine guns mounted in the forward swept wings unleashed a devastating 200 rounds per minute. The Stingray V2 had rear facing weapons, allowing the pilot to target threats fore and aft. An improvement over Version One. Flying one of these birds was a dream come true, but she had hoped her first flight wouldn’t be under these conditions.
Chloe engaged the vertical thrusters and lifted off the tarmac.
The enemy fighters swooped overhead. Glowing orange bolts of energy rained down, blasting the tarmac. Sparks, fire, and debris sprayed everywhere. The tarmac was pocked with blast craters. Fire and destruction encircled her. Somehow she had managed to survive the enemy’s second run.
She gripped the joystick—it was tight and responsive. Not too twitchy, not too lose.
“You still with me, Bananas?”
“Roger that.” Lily’s voice crackled in Chloe’s ears.
Chloe engaged the thrusters. The force slammed her against the seat. It made the old Mustang look like a wind up toy. She rocketed through the upper atmosphere.
“Sound off. Who’s with me?” Chloe asked.
Dixon, Kahn, and Fisher sounded off. That brought the odds to five against twelve. Seemed like a fair fight, she thought sarcastically.
The Stingrays formed a combat spread and pursued the enemy fighters. The air above the compound became a swirling chaotic mess. The fighters looked like angry hornets buzzing about.
Chloe got an angle on one of the enemy fighters. She swooped in on it six, and tried to get a target lock. Her fingers squeezed the trigger, and a flurry of rounds blasted at the fighter. The thing was fast and nimble. It whirled around avoiding the stream of bullets with ease. It took every ounce of skill Chloe had to hang on its tail. She was still trying to get a feel for the Stingray’s handling, but she picked it up quickly. The joystick seemed to have the perfect amount of sensitivity, and the craft was impeccably balanced.
The enemy fighter continued to dodge and weave, plunging and twirling. Chloe finally heard a solid tone from the targeting system. Having achieved missile lock, she fired one of the space-to-space rockets. The deadly missile blasted toward the enemy fighter, spitting sparks and propellant from its tail. It slammed into the craft and erupted in a brilliant explosion.
Chloe pulled hard on the stick to avoid the debris as she knifed the Stingray through a plume of smoke and fire. Still within the planetary atmosphere, the mangled fuselage tumbled to the ground.
It was her first kill in a Stingray, and she was already starting to feel comfortable behind the stick.
She caught sight of another explosion out of the corner of her eye. But this time it was a Stingray.
“Dixon’s been hit,” Fisher yelled over the comm line.”
Chloe grimaced. But she didn’t have time to dwell on the loss. Two enemy fighters swooped in behind her.
22
Chloe
Chloe slammed from side to side in her safety harness as she dodged and weaved her way across the sky, trying to avoid her attackers. Energy bolts whizzed past the cockpit. Chloe twirled the Stingray, avoiding the projectiles with the grace of a ballerina.
With the OmniView optical targeting system, she was able to put a picture-in-picture window of her rearview in her HUD. The auto targeting reticle locked onto one of the fighters pursuing her. The barrels of the rear facing weapons were able to adjust 15° in all directions. The tracking assist feature on the OmniView allowed the computer to calculate the speed and direction of the Stingray against the speed and direction of the attacker and fire at precisely the right moment. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it was still pretty accurate. Though, the first attempt to hit one of the fighters missed.
The enemy blasted back at her, and one of the energy bolts scraped the edge of the canopy, charring the high temperature quartz, leaving a black streak.
Chloe kept zigging and zagging. The rear targeting system finally scored a hit. A stream of rounds pierced the enemy’s canopy, eviscerating the pilot. The vehicle tumbled to the ground. But there was still one more fighter on her tail.
Chloe pulled hard on the stick and ascended toward space. Despite whatever radical maneuvers she employed, the enemy stuck with her.
An alert sounded. An incoming missile was streaking toward her. Chloe pressed a button and deployed electronic countermeasures. Two ECMs deployed, burning hotter than the ion exhaust from the Stingray’s thrusters. With any luck, the missile would target them instead of the Stingray.
The rocket was fast. It ripped across the sky and exploded, hitting one of the ECMs. The blast overpressure tumbled the Stingray. Chloe found herself in an uncontrollable spiral downward. Gravity was something you didn’t have to worry about in outer space. It was an added danger for in-atmosphere aerial battles, and one of the reasons they were taught to take the battles to space if at all possible.
Chloe struggled to regain control of the craft. The planet was spinning by at a dizzying pace. Chloe felt lightheaded and disoriented. Alarms were sounding. The onboard computer spoke a gentle warning, “Caution. Excessive loss of altitude. Please correct immediately.”
The auto stabilizers engaged, assisting Chloe in her attempt to stop the uncontrolled rotation. She finally wrestled the craft back under control, banked around, and climbed back into the sky.
The enemy fighter was diving at her. Orange energy bolts were blasting in her direction. Chloe pulled hard on the controls, threading the needle of deadly projectiles. It was only a matter of time before one of them connected.
Sweat poured down Chloe’s face. Her body was sticking to the lining of her flight suit. Her heart was racing. She felt like she was running a marathon. She had never imagined aerial combat would be so physically demanding. She didn’t sweat like this in the simulator.
Chloe heard the disconcerting tone of missile lock as the enemy homed in on her. At the last second, Lily plunged downward and took out the enemy fighter with a missile. The brilliant explosion showered debris down toward the base. The remains of the fuselage tumbled away.
Chloe breathed a sigh of relief. “Nice shooting.”
“I’m not about to lose my wingman.”
Chloe smiled.
The rest of the attackers were bugging out. They ascended through the upper atmosphere and into space, then head
ed deep into the nebula. Once inside, they’d be almost impossible to find.
Chloe wasn’t about to let them get away. She impulsively throttled up and gave chase. She had a determined look on her face.
“What are you doing, Rockstar?”
“They had to come from somewhere. A destroyer or carrier.”
"I don't think following them back to their base of operations is a good idea right now."
"If not now, when?"
Lily grumbled. She knew this was a bad idea. Fisher and Kahn were heading back to base. Against her better judgment, Lily followed Chloe into space. She could see the remaining enemy fighters were disappearing into the hazy nebula. "I have got a bad feeling about this.”
”Go back to base,” Chloe said. “I’ll be fine. I'm going to keep my distance. Trust me."
"I'm not leaving my wingman."
Once they entered the nebula, instruments and sensors were useless. Chloe was counting on this to help hide her from the enemy squadron as she followed them. She stayed as far back as she could while still maintaining visual contact. Even at full thrusters, the enemy fighters were getting away from her. If there was any question about whether or not the Stingrays were the fastest fighters in the galaxy, that question had been answered—they weren't. Before long, the enemy fighters were so far ahead they vanished into the milky haze of the nebula.
Chloe's face tightened. She cursed under her breath.
"Can we head back now?" Lily asked.
"I'm just going to keep heading on this current trajectory. Maybe we'll get lucky and stumble across their mothership."
"At this point, I don't know if I’d call that lucky.” Lily didn't want anything to do with hundreds of those fighters, not to mention a high-powered warship.
Chloe continued to push deeper into the nebula. She weaved through a field of asteroids and kept heading in the same direction.
Lily grew increasingly nervous. "We're getting a little far out, don't you think?"
Chloe didn't say anything for a moment. Then she slowly came to the realization that they probably weren't going to find anything. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Chloe sighed. "I think you're right. This probably wasn't a good idea."
"Now you're making sense."
Chloe made a note of their current position, then pulled on the stick and banked the Stingray around 180°. But an enemy fighter appeared on her tail just as she completed the maneuver. The pilot formally introduced himself with a stream of energy bolts that blasted past her cockpit. Chloe dodged the blasts and maneuvered the Stingray. The enemy followed close on her tail as she plunged through the nebula, twisting and turning.
Another fighter engaged Lily. She swooped and spiraled through the astroids, trying to lose him. "I can't shake him."
Lily spiraled and twirled through the chaotic field of asteroids, pulling out every trick in the book. No matter what she did, the enemy fighter stuck with her, showering energy bolts in her direction. She weaved and spun the Stingray, expertly avoiding the projectiles. She was a good pilot. But the enemy fighters were faster, more nimble, and more powerful.
The rear facing guns of the auto targeting system peppered rounds at the pursuing fighter. But none of them seem to connect.
It was a difficult environment for a new pilot. Even someone with years of combat experience in a Stingray would find this particular scenario to be one of the most challenging.
Lily swept around an asteroid, narrowly missing its jagged edge. What happened next was pure bad luck. A small asteroid was waiting for her around a blind curve. There was no way she could have seen it, or anticipated its trajectory. She pulled hard on the stick, trying to avoid it, but she clipped it with the edge of her wing. The impact sent her tumbling through space. The Stingray smashed on the rocky surface of another, larger asteroid. The fuselage erupted in a blinding explosion, showering chunks of debris in all directions. There was no way she could have survived.
Chloe’s heart sank. Her eyes brimmed. Rage boiled inside her. But she didn’t have time to dwell on the loss of her friend. If she didn’t shake the enemy fighter on her tail, she was going to meet with the same fate.
Chloe spiraled through the asteroid field, keeping one eye focused on the path ahead and the other focused on the rearview in her heads-up-display. Her eyes constantly flicked between the two. Trying to avoid the hurtling space rocks, the blazing energy bolts, and target the enemy on her tail simultaneously was pure madness.
Finally, the auto targeting system locked on. The rear facing guns fired, streaking bullets toward the enemy. A lucky stream connected, peppering the canopy and fuselage with bullet holes. The distressed craft tumbled into space and exploded. Debris showered in all directions. The remains of the twisted fuselage tumbled into the hazy nebula and was obliterated as it smacked into a passing asteroid.
Just as Chloe was about to exhale with relief, the other fighter that had been pursuing Lily angled toward her.
Energy projectiles zipped across the star field. One of them impacted Chloe’s right rear thruster. The engine exploded, sending Chloe’s Stingray into a dizzying spiral.
Miraculously, the cabin remained pressurized, and the flight controls still functioned, for the time being. Chloe regained control of the spacecraft, but her left thruster was coughing and spitting. She was careening towards an asteroid the size of a small moon. She yanked on the controls, trying to avoid a collision, but the stick suddenly became non responsive. She was going to crash on the asteroid, and there was nothing she could do about it.
23
Chloe
Chloe pulled back on the stick as hard as she could. The remaining engine sputtered, then finally died. But she had managed to improve her angle of descent. Both main thrusters were gone, but she still had reserve power in the craft. She fired her forward facing thrusters, and her vertical thrusters, simultaneously in an attempt to improve her angle of descent to an even greater degree. She watched the giant asteroid approach as if in slow motion.
The Stingray slammed into the asteroid and skipped off the surface like a stone across a lake. The reduced gravity of the asteroid allowed for an incredibly high and long arcing hop until she slammed the surface again.
The impact rattled her teeth. She could hear the composite hull crumple—the craft crunching under the tremendous force. Her safety harness dug into her shoulders and waist. She felt like it was going to snap her collarbones.
Plumes of dirt and debris shot into the air as the Stingray scraped across the surface. The craft clipped a rocky protrusion which sent the Stingray spinning and tumbling. Bits of the hull were ripped away with each impact. Chloe was tossed from side to side in her safety harness. She was going to have a helluva headache when this was all over.
The craft finally skidded to a halt upside down against an embankment.
Somehow, Chloe was still alive. She was dizzy, and her temples throbbed. The visor on her flight helmet was fogging up from her panicked breath. Her whole body was numb and vibrating from the excessive adrenaline coursing through her veins. She wasn’t sure how much pain she was going to feel when this numbness wore off.
She looked herself over. There didn’t appear to be any broken bones. She wasn’t bleeding anywhere, but she figured she was going to be sore as hell tomorrow.
The canopy was cracked and scratched. She could barely see through it. Hanging upside down with the blood rushing to her head wasn’t doing anything for her pounding temples. To make matters worse, she was trapped inside the cockpit—the canopy against the rocky ground.
She pressed her hand against the canopy as she released her safety harness to minimize the impact as she fell out of her seat. She still crashed down.
There was barely any room to maneuver within the cockpit. The canopy glass had been made to extremely stringent standards. It was impact resistant, and had to be able to tolerate the high heat of re-entry. Chloe managed to squeeze her foot into position and kic
k at the glass with the heel of her boot. It would have been a futile effort under normal circumstances, but the impact had created a fissure in the glass that gave Chloe something to work with.
She pounded at the glass with her heel until it gave way. Her foot plunged through the frame as glass scattered. She cleared away the remaining shards and took care not to snag her flight suit on any jagged edges as she crawled out of the cockpit. There was no atmosphere on this moon. A rupture in her flight suit could be catastrophic.
She looked up into the nebula, trying to get a glimpse of her attacker. But the enemy craft was nowhere in sight. She was lucky to be alive, and she hoped her attacker wasn’t loitering in the area, trying to finish the job. But that proved to be wishful thinking.
The alien fighter emerged from the hazy nebula. It swooped low, combing the surface of the asteroid. Once the pilot caught sight of Chloe, and the wreckage, he unleashed a flurry of energy bolts in Chloe’s direction. Brilliant orange projectiles blasted at the rocky surface. Chloe ran for cover, but it was hard to gain any kind of speed or traction in the low gravity environment. She felt like a balloon bouncing around the surface.
Bits of rock and debris showered out from the impact craters, hovering in the air for what seemed like an eternity.
Chloe hobbled towards a ridge-line and dove for cover. But the other side of the ridge was a steep drop off. She floated down the cliff face, 40 feet to the bottom. The impact would’ve broken bones back on New Earth. But on this asteroid, she merely bounced.
She regained her footing and ran for cover into a cavernous area embedded in the cliff face. She huddled inside the darkness as the fighter circled around for another strafing run. The only weapons she had were her sidearm and two thermal grenades on her utility belt—no match for an attack fighter with energy cannons.