by Ryk Brown
“Firing!” Loki announced as laser bolts streaked over their head toward the sixth gate.
“You have regained your lost points,” Master Koku announced. “You have even regained the two seconds you lost earlier, thanks to your controller.”
“Good work, Josh,” Nathan congratulated.
“You should be doing the piloting, young man,” Master Koku said to Josh.
“That’s what I told them!”
* * *
“Ensign Tegg, Ensign Wabash,” Captain Nash began. “This is your new crew. This is your engineer, Master Sergeant Biller; your sensor operator, Sergeant Kotai; your med-tech and gunner, Specialist Havins; and your systems tech and gunner, Specialist Aris.” Robert turned to the crew. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your new captain, Ensign Charnelle Tegg, and her first officer, Ensign Sari Wabash. Your new call sign is Striker Four,” he added, turning back toward Ensign Tegg. “Any questions?”
“No, sir,” Charnelle replied, smartly.
“Then I suggest you get acquainted with your crew, and familiarize them with your ship. You have less than two days to get them ready.”
Great, Charnelle thought as Captain Nash departed. “How many of you have experience with a Cobra gunship?” she asked her new crew. When no one raised their hand, she asked, “How many of you have even seen a Cobra gunship?” When everyone’s hand went up, she added, “Other than the one behind me, that is.”
Everyone’s hand went down.
“Great.” Charnelle turned to look at Sari. “This should be fun.”
“How about I take Havins and Aris and show them their guns,” Sari suggested.
“Good idea,” Charnelle agreed. “I’ll show the other two their consoles, and review combat protocols with them.”
“Looks like another sleepless night,” Sari joked as he turned and headed toward their gunship. “Havins! Aris! On me!”
“That leaves you two with me,” Charnelle told the others. “Biller, right?” she asked the master sergeant as they followed the others toward the gunship.
“That’s right.”
“Which engineering department were you attached to on the Aurora?” Charnelle wondered.
“Waste systems,” the master sergeant replied.
“Wonderful.”
* * *
“Jesus! This is insane!” Loki exclaimed as their fighter twisted and rolled, pitched and yawed.
“These gates are moving way faster than the last time!” Nathan exclaimed as he barely managed to avoid colliding with the gate as he passed through it.
“Another gun emplacement!” Loki warned. “Upper left of the gate, two gates from this next one.”
“I see it,” Nathan replied, glancing at his sensor display.
Something suddenly slammed into them, sending the ship’s aft end sliding to starboard.
“What the hell was that?” Nathan exclaimed.
“We’re hit!” Loki warned.
“Moving targets!” Josh announced over comms. “Four drones! Closing on you from your seven high! They’ve got plasma cannons!”
“Why the hell didn’t you warn us?” Loki wondered.
“I didn’t even know there were drones, let alone armed ones,” Josh defended. “They came out of nowhere!”
“My ass, they did!” Loki insisted. “Missile launches!”
“The drones have missiles?” Josh said in surprise. “What the hell?”
“Popping countermeasures!”
“Get ready to drop two missiles, but without engine ignition!” Nathan instructed.
“What? Why?”
“Just do it!” Nathan ordered as he snaked around and through the next gate. “And be ready to remotely detonate them!”
“Whatever you say.”
Nathan glanced up at the approaching gate. “Drop the missiles! Pop two spinners, as well! Now!” he ordered as they passed through the next gate.
Two missiles slid smoothly out of the missile pods, but their engines did not fire. Nathan thrusted up and away from the drifting missiles, just enough to avoid hitting the next gate as he passed through it. As they did, two spinners launched out of their aft, starboard countermeasures pod, and began drifting forward just like the stub-missiles.
“Fuck!” Josh cursed. “Four missiles! Five seconds!”
“Detonate!” Nathan ordered.
Loki pressed the button and remotely detonated the two drifting stub-missiles, just as they were about to make contact with the gate they had just passed through. The explosions caught the drifting countermeasures, breaking them up and creating a debris field in the area of the gate, into which all four pursuing missiles flew.
Four more detonations behind them.
“Fuck yeah!” Josh exclaimed over comms with glee. “Nicely done, guys! But don’t forget about the gun turrets on the last gate!”
“Trust me, I haven’t,” Loki assured him.
“Don’t forget about those drones, either,” Nathan reminded him. “They’re still back there.”
“I’m telling you, there are no attack drones in the Gunyoki races!” Loki insisted.
“I am using them to simulate the opponent you would face in the final round,” Master Koku explained. “Assuming you get that far, of course.”
Loki was sure he could hear the old Gunyoki master smiling through the comms.
“Incoming fire!” Nathan warned. “From the last gate!”
Their forward shields lit up as bolts of plasma energy slammed into them. Nathan tried to dodge the incoming fire by jinking about wildly, but it was to no avail.
“You look like a kalla bug on a hot walkway,” Master Koku laughed. “Just fly the ship.”
“They’re shooting at us,” Nathan replied.
“That is why you have shields,” Master Koku reminded him.
“But we lose points with every hit!”
“Not exactly,” Master Koku corrected. “Every hit reduces your available shield strength, but points are not taken away for the hits, they are subtracted at the end of the race, not during, which gives you time to recharge the shields to avoid losing those points.”
“You could have told us that before!” Nathan exclaimed.
“You could have, and should have, read it in the rule book,” Master Koku replied indignantly. “There will be time to recharge your shields toward the end of the race.”
“I’m sorry, Captain,” Loki said. “I should have known that.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Nathan insisted. “Just keep those fucking drones off our ass!”
“I’m locking missiles on them,” Loki announced. “As soon as you can, do an end-over, so I can launch!”
“After the next gate,” Nathan told him. He continued his rolling turn, then cut his thrust and flipped over, passing backward through the gate.
“Launching four!” Loki announced.
Four stub-missiles leapt from their launchers, streaking behind them toward the pursuing drones. As Nathan rolled the ship back over nose first, the missiles spread out and found their targets.
“Hell yeah!” Loki exclaimed as all four drone contacts disappeared from his sensor screen.
“Uh, Cap’n, you need to fly faster,” Josh warned.
“I’m already doing three-twenty, Josh,” Nathan replied.
“I know! You need to fly faster, trust me!”
“What’s up?” Nathan asked as he boosted his thrust.
“There’s four gun turrets on the last two gates! They’re going to pound the fuck out of you, and it’s going to cost you a bunch of points, because you won’t have any time to recharge your shields before you reach the finish gate! Flying fast is the only way I can see to make up for it,” Josh explained.
“It would’ve been nice to know that ahead of time, Josh!” Nathan scolded.
“I know, Cap’n, I’m sorry. I should’ve studied the course better. I’m not used to being on comms while someone else is doing the flying!”
“If y
ou can swing wide when you transition between gates thirty-two and thirty-three, I might be able to target at least two of those turrets with missiles,” Loki suggested.
“That will cost us time,” Nathan said as he rolled the fighter over and pushed the nose down, just in time to make the next gate.
“Not if you fly faster!” Josh urged.
“I am flying faster!” Nathan insisted. “Be ready, Loki! I’ll cut gate thirty-two danger-close and swing wide.”
“Use the same maneuver I gave you yesterday, Cap’n!” Josh urged. “Flip, burn, spin, and burn again!”
“That’s the plan!” Nathan confirmed.
“Oh, my God,” Loki exclaimed, glancing up as the edge of gate thirty-two missed their canopy by half a meter.
Nathan pulled hard on his flight control stick, applying full thrust for a full second, grunting as he squeezed the muscles in his abdomen and legs to keep from passing out as the blood tried to leave his head. “Here we go!” he warned as he cut thrust and pushed his nose back down hard. He suddenly felt himself being pushed upward, his restraints digging into his shoulders. A quick twist to the right on his control stick, and his Gunyoki fighter yawed to starboard, just enough to bring his nose around to point at the last gate no more than a kilometer away.
“Locking missiles onto targets!” Loki announced.
That’s when Nathan saw it. Flashes of red-orange in the distance as the plasma cannon turrets Loki was targeting opened fire on them.
“Missiles away!” Loki announced.
Nathan didn’t wait to be sure the missiles were clear as plasma bolts were already streaking past them on all sides. He pressed the thrust button on his flight control stick, firing his main engines at full power, pushing him back into his seat hard and nearly knocking the wind out of him. He glanced out the window as he commanded his fighter to yaw back to the left. His engines were burning at full thrust, but he was still sliding directly toward the edge of gate thirty-three.
“We’re not going to make it!” Loki exclaimed.
Nathan said nothing. He just kept adjusting his yaw in an attempt to get maximum delta from his engines. He rolled the ship onto its right side, engines still burning at full power.
“Fuck!” Loki exclaimed.
“You’ll make it!” Josh insisted.
Master Koku said nothing.
Nathan glanced upward. They were headed for a collision.
“Five seconds to missile impact!” Loki announced. “Are you at full power, Captain?” he pleaded.
“I am,” Nathan stated calmly.
“Missile impact!” Loki announced. “Two targets down!”
The fighter shook as its engines burned at maximum power. Nathan glanced upward every few seconds, trying to judge whether or not they would collide with the approaching gate.
“We’re not going to make it, Captain,” Loki warned again.
“You’ll make it!” Josh repeated.
“No, we won’t,” Loki insisted. “You’ve got to abort and miss the gate!”
“No way,” Nathan insisted.
“Captain!”
“Shut up, Loki!” Josh yelled. “You’ll make it!”
“We’re going to hit!” Loki declared. “Aft, just forward of the countermeasures pods!” Loki braced himself for impact. “FUCK!”
Nathan glanced up as the collision alarm began to sound. The gate’s edge now filled his view. Loki was right.
Oh, God.
He removed his finger from the thrust button, cutting his engines.
“What are you doing?” Loki demanded.
Nathan armed his docking thrusters and fired, pushing his nose upward, and sliding past the gate, missing it by only a few centimeters.
“I FUCKING TOLD YOU!” Josh screamed over comms.
* * *
Nathan climbed slowly down the ladder from the Gunyoki fighter’s cockpit. Every muscle in his body ached, and he felt mentally exhausted.
“That was some sweet flyin’, Cap’n,” Josh exclaimed as he came walking across the hangar bay. “Some pretty good shootin’, too, Lok.”
“Thanks,” Nathan said as he set his feet on the deck.
“I’m going to go take a nap,” Loki said as he stepped down from the ladder.
“Good idea,” Nathan said.
“You showed improvement today,” Master Koku said as he approached. “However, I would suggest that in the future, you do not allow yourself to lose mental focus under pressure.”
“What are you talking about?” Nathan wondered.
“All that yelling and arguing. It disrupts one’s concentration, and causes one to make rash decisions. When one remains serene, even under pressure, one’s mind remains clear, and answers come with ease.”
“I’ll try to remember that,” Nathan replied halfheartedly.
“See that you do,” Master Koku urged. “You will need it in your next training flight.”
“I thought we were done for the day?” Nathan said, looking disappointed.
“Although there is still much that I could teach you, there is still one thing you have not yet tried in a Gunyoki fighter.”
“What’s that?” Nathan asked.
“The one thing the Gunyoki was originally designed to do. I believe your people call it ‘dogfighting’.”
“But that only comes in the finals, right?”
“Correct.”
“You said I wouldn’t make it to the finals. Have you changed your mind?” Nathan wondered.
“I have not,” Master Koku replied. “However, stranger things have happened, and you should be prepared, nonetheless.”
Nathan leaned back, nearly falling against the ladder. The thought of enduring a few more grueling hours, fighting the ever changing g-forces as he wrestled his fighter to get it to do his bidding was disheartening.
Then it occurred to him. “Who am I going to fly against?”
Master Koku smiled, which was unusual for him. “I recommend you get some rest,” he said as he walked away. “You will need it.”
Nathan turned to look at Master Koku as he walked away. “Who am I flying against?” he asked again. Nathan threw his hands up in frustration as the old man headed toward the large bay doors that separated their hangar from its transfer airlock. The doors began to part slowly, revealing a vintage Gunyoki fighter that had just arrived. Nathan grabbed Quory as he and Vladimir walked past on their way to inspect Nathan’s ship after its last training flight. “Whose ship is that?” he asked Quory, pointing to the vintage fighter his instructor was walking toward.
“Why, Master Koku’s, of course,” Quory answered.
Nathan’s head fell back. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
* * *
Vladimir was shoulders-deep in a Gunyoki shield generator, when he felt a tap on his shoulder. “I’m busy,” he grunted. The tap repeated. “I said I’m busy.”
“Vladimir.”
Vladimir rolled his eyes. “Bozhe moi.” It was her again. “What is it, Abigail?”
“We think we solved the problem.”
“We?” Vladimir extracted his arms from the shield generator and turned around to see Abby and Deliza, both with data pads in their hands. “Da, konyeshna.”
“We can convert their reactors to static-state,” Abby said, “and with minimal effort.”
“Impossible…”
“That’s what I thought…”
“The entire structure of the core would have to be reconfigured…”
“Not if the reaction mass is reduced to half its current size,” Abby explained.
Vladimir looked at Abby. “I believe I suggested this two days ago, and you told me it would not work.”
“Because you didn’t suggest adding a second containment field within the first. You wanted to put a bunch of limiters in there to maintain the static-state, which would have been a nightmare to keep balanced. A containment field that small is self-balancing.” Abby handed her data pad to Vladimir, so
he could see for himself.
Vladimir studied the designs on Abby’s data pad. His brow furrowed at first, then his left eyebrow went up. After several more facial contortions, he said, “This might work. But this is not the work of a physicist.”
“My idea, Deliza’s engineering,” Abby replied.
“You mean, my idea, your changes, and her engineering.”
“Really, Commander?”
Vladimir waved his hand dismissively, handing the data pad back to Abby. “It does not matter. The Gunyoki Council would never approve the changes. We would be disqualified.”
“We checked the rules,” Deliza said. “The only limit is the introduction of new technology, and technology that comes from outside Rakuen science. This is simply a modification of their existing technology, and it uses components already in existence on Rakuen. There is no way they can disqualify us.”
“If it is so easy, why has no one on Rakuen done this before?”
“Their understanding of physics, especially in the area of power generation and containment fields, is surprisingly limited, considering how advanced they are in other areas,” Abby explained.
“We have seen this in other societies, when Ranni Enterprises has ventured beyond the Pentaurus sector,” Deliza said. “Civilizations usually have limited resources, forcing them to choose which areas to research and improve upon. Areas that are adequate to the immediate needs are often neglected. The Rakuen fusion reactors use seawater as their reactive material, which is abundant on their world. They also position their reactors on the seafloor, which means size is not an issue for them. And they have never cared to be an interstellar civilization. So, you see, it comes as no surprise that they never bothered to fool with static-state reactors.”
Vladimir still appeared skeptical. “How will this change help Nathan?”
“It will give him at least thirty percent more power,” Abby told him.
“So, he could have full power for two of his three primary systems at the same time, instead of just one?” Vladimir rubbed his head. “I am not sure that will be worth the risk.”
“How can more power be not worth it?” Deliza wondered.
“What if we make the modifications and it does not work?” Vladimir pointed out. “We only have a single spare reactor. If something goes wrong with it, we will be finished.”