“Buy one, get one free,” Chase chuckled.
But his victorious dance was interrupted when he received heavy laser fire on his starboard side. The incoming fire finished off whatever shield remained, and several hits broke pieces off his Manticore starfighter as alarm holo-controls lit up throughout his cockpit.
Dammit!
Chase went evasive. Knowing he was in trouble, his instincts fired up. He couldn’t let the last ship score even a single hit more if he wanted to win this engagement.
His heart skipped a beat when a heavy pounding noise resonated from the top of the cockpit.
“Chase! Stop fooling around in that thing; we’re going to be late for class!” Daniel shouted.
Chase refrained from swearing at his best friend.
“I just need another minute,” he shouted back, with no small quantity of frustration seeping into his voice.
Chase veered away and went evasive. He had lost focus, and his mind wandered outside of the simulator. It was pure luck that the last enemy ship hadn’t blown him out of the sky during that time.
“We can’t be late today, buddy, remember special guest and all. Admiral Tharowni will have your ass this time.”
“Leave me alone, go. I’ll be right behind you.”
Chase was met with silence, during which he tried to get his bearings and check the position of the enemy fighter. It had moved right into his six.
Perfect, just fucking perfect!
“Alright, buddy,” said Daniel. “I’m going. See you in class.”
Chase huffed but didn’t answer, infuriated that his focus was interrupted from the virtual firefight. He knew Daniel meant well, but in this very moment, anger filled Chase’s mind like a deadly virus, threatening his ability to fly his ship, let alone engage in a dogfight, virtual or otherwise.
He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself, and for just a split second, in the back of his mind, he thought he heard a female voice.
“Stay calm, you can do this. You can do anything you set your mind to.”
Great, I’m hearing voices now, can this day get any worse?
As if in answer from the universe, part of Chase’s wing splintered as the remaining enemy fighter scored three laser hits.
Son of a bi—
Unfortunately, Chase’s attempt to remain calm failed. His muscles tightened, and he began to sweat, his anger turning to rage and spreading within his body like venom coursing through his veins. Then, something happened, and it felt as if time were slowing down, giving Chase a reprieve to check the situation and find a way out of his current predicament that didn’t involve him losing this fight.
Above all else, Chase hated to lose.
He tried to redistribute power to the shields, but the generators were damaged. He would have to finish this dogfight without them.
So be it!
Chase evaded the next wave of laser fire, dodging, rolling, and sliding through space like a sinuous sea eel on a mission, even with a damaged wing, never letting the enemy fire come close to scoring a hit. His focus was now back one hundred percent, to the point that the dogfight felt real to Chase, and he had to win as if his life depended on it.
It took some doing, but Chase eventually managed to line up his fighter into the bandit’s six o’clock position and finally had the enemy ship in his visor.
You’re mine now!
Chase got a nice lock tone, only to be reminded by the ships’ AI that he no longer had any missiles. Was it her condescending tone or just Chase’s annoyance at forgetting something so obvious, he didn’t know. But he redirected the AI’s power to the weapons, effectively disabling any future vocal messages from AINI.
Now, where was I?
The enemy starfighter started jinking, but Chase was determined to shoot it out of the sky by any means necessary. He stuck on its six no matter what, continuously pounding the enemy’s aft shields; however, the levels were dropping too slowly.
Chase checked his power readings only to notice that he had lost power to the laser cannon located on his damaged wing. It had sprung a power leak. Chase whipped his head to the side and saw sparks fly from the flaming wing every time he took a shot. This was unfortunate as his ship could blow up if he continued to ignore the leak.
Inhaling deeply, Chase tried calming his mind, which was on the brink of blowing a fuse.
I love a challenge, he recited as a mantra.
Chase’s hands blurred on the holo-controls as he redistributed all power to the functioning cannon, bypassing the power node on the damaged wing altogether.
That cost him precious seconds during which the enemy fighter, still unable to shake Chase off of his tail, managed to recharge most of its shields.
I have lost enough time dancing around with you, say your prayers to whichever digital gods you believe in.
Chase felt as if he entered a trance. He switched his laser to full power, siphoning as much energy from literally every system in order to supercharge the one working cannon to one hundred and forty percent. Every one of his supercharged shots hit the enemy ship, draining its shield rapidly. Two more hits and its shields went down. Sparks flew from one of the damaged engines. It was losing speed.
“Time to say goodbye, now—”
Chase depressed the trigger on his flight stick to take the winning shot, but nothing happened. Another three red status indicators illuminated on his holo-controls.
You’ve got to be shitting me.
Chase twitched. It ain’t no thing. You want to play it this way, then let’s fucking play.
Bolstered with an inhuman influx of motivation, Chase’s mind took over, and he felt as if he were watching a holo-movie, as if some strange force was taking over his actions and left him only as a witness. He redirected all power to the engines, even life support, and pushed through at full burn. With the extra juice in his engines and the enemy slowing down, Chase accelerated on a collision course and approached his prey fast. Very fast. He disregarded the “collision imminent” alert.
Here goes nothing.
A split second before he would have rammed into the enemy fighter, Chase rolled his Manticore ninety degrees and vectored his nose just below the enemy, using his good wing to cut at the belly of his prey like gutting a fish. Metal grounded, sparks and flames flew, and every warning and alarm inside Chase’s cockpit lit up at once on his holo-controls. With AINI down, the alarms were displayed as hovering holo-text.
“Ship structural integrity failure imminent, ejecting pilot now!”
His pilot chair was spinning in space as he saw the last scene unfold.
The enemy ship was nearly cut in half by Chase’s crazy stunt, but by some miracle, it was still flying, somewhat. Chase’s ship, on the other hand, blew up into multiple fiery displays of explosions behind the enemy ship, incinerating it in the process.
“I win!” he exclaimed as the holo-projectors reset and the simulator cockpit latch opened. Chase jumped out of the machine to an empty mess hall. Nobody to applaud his last crazy display, and nobody giving their constructive criticism as to how insane his fighting style was and how they wished they would never have to fly with him in a real combat situation.
Hell, even the barman had left the premises.
“Ooookay,” said Chase.
He looked at his wrist holo-device and saw the hour. He was more than ten minutes late for class.
I’m in trouble, he thought as he darted toward section three of the space station.
2
“How generous of you to grace us with your presence, Cadet Athanatos!” bellowed the teacher, Admiral Tharowni.
Chase waved his hand timidly. “Sorry, Admiral,” he said as he sat behind Daniel. “I— I was detained, well, sort of. It won’t happen again,” he added with an unconvincing smile.
“I don’t care what excuse you think you can cook up this time, Cadet! I have half a mind to ask you to leave. And today of all days, you could have made an effort. Let me be perfec
tly clear, this is your last warning. If you ever arrive at my class late again from now until the end of the year, you can kiss your days at the academy goodbye. Is that understood?”
That’s a little rough, take it easy old fart, Chase thought.
“What did you just say?” asked the Admiral.
Chase swallowed hard. Had he voiced his inner thoughts without realizing?
Chase quickly glanced around and could tell from the many baffled looks that he wasn’t the only one surprised. If he somehow had been heard, he would be in big trouble, so he stood up straight, swallowed his pride, and saluted.
“I’m sorry, Admiral. As per your question: understood through and through! Thank you for giving me one last chance, you won’t regret it.”
Chase thought he heard a classmate from the other side of the classroom whisper “sucker.”
The admiral threw his hands in Chase’s direction. “Shut up, Cadet, and sit the hell back down. Oh, and today, just for once, try and learn something, okay? It’s not every day that you are exposed to a living, breathing war hero.”
Chase sat back in his chair, releasing a long and silent exhale of relief.
I’m surprised you’re not including yourself in that statement today.
Chase grinned. “Will do, sir.”
The Admiral was notorious for recounting his glory days during class and putting himself on a pedestal, which annoyed Chase to no end. For a moment he wondered why that was until Daniel turned his head slightly to the side and whispered.
“I hope your joyride in the simulator was worth getting your last blemish. One more cock-up and they’ll fire your ass. Who will I hang around with if you get your dumb ass fired from this place?”
Your concern is touching. You’re lucky you’re my best friend, or I’d kick your ass.
While Chase wanted to argue with his friend that the admiral was probably just bluffing, weirdly, his instincts told him otherwise. Though he shouldn’t be surprised, he had, after all, repeatedly been late, disobedient, and sometimes just plain distracted to the point where dismissal from the academy was probably a real possibility. Now was definitely not the right time to attract more attention to himself.
The thought of being dismissed did scare Chase more than he thought it would. Was it his love of flying that would die should he not finish and graduate from the academy? Most likely, but something else at the back of his mind screamed at him that he had to stop screwing around and take his classes a little more seriously.
“I’ll tell you about it later,” Chase whispered back. “Better not anger the dragon.”
Daniel turned his head even more and gave Chase a befuddled look that spoke more than any words could.
“Now it’s time to present the esteemed guest of the day,” said Tharowni. “Class, attention!”
Everyone got up as the admiral walked to the door. It split open and revealed a bearded man with an iron look in his eyes. He wore a captain’s uniform, and even though Chase was far, he could read the name of the ship under his slew of medals.
The Destiny.
“Class, it is my privilege to introduce you to Captain Saroudis. Hero of the battle of the Thermopylae Pulsar. I’m sure you all know about it by now. It’s been all over the holo-news for the past month.”
Chase had indeed read about it. Captain Adonis Saroudis had used cunning strategy and tactics to defeat a much bigger and more powerful fleet. He had waged battle for three days, relentlessly, and had sent whatever was left of the Obsidian Empire forces packing.
A round of applause filled the room.
Captain Saroudis scanned the classroom and permitted himself a small smile.
“Thank you, Cadets,” said Saroudis. “As you were.”
Everyone sat back down.
“Thank you, Admiral, for having me here. It’s an honor.”
“The honor is ours.”
The admiral whispered something in the captain’s ear, and he nodded slightly before taking a couple of steps forward, looking straight out at the class.
“The admiral would like me to give you a bit of a motivational speech. I wish I could say that your training here will prepare you for what awaits you once you graduate and are assigned to your destroyer carrier in a few months. Perhaps even on board my own ship.
“Unfortunately, I can’t and won’t lie to you. War is ugly, it’s tough, and it will make your life miserable more often than not, that is, if you survive it.”
Chase could tell from Admiral Tharowni’s uneasy face that the captain’s words were not what he had in mind for a motivational speech. But the words resonated with Chase, so Saroudis had his undivided attention.
“You see,” continued Saroudis. “This conflict has been going on for generations, my father, heck, even my grandfather, have been involved in it. I lost them both to this bloody war. In fact, I was very young when my grandfather’s starfighter was destroyed during the onslaught at the battle of Dervenakia.”
The captain’s face hardened before he continued.
“Such is war. You lose people. In fact, you’re very likely to lose your own life. I can see on some of your faces that this isn’t what you wanted to hear today. And I’m sorry if I’m bringing your spirits down. It’s not my intention, but I don’t like lying to anybody, let alone young minds that are training to defend the Star Alliance and what we stand for. I owe it to you to tell you what war really is and what you’re going to have to expect in the career you have chosen.
“Like you, I’ve been through the academy, I flew simulators, then proper live training missions until I was finally assigned to a wing onboard my father’s ship, the Argolis. Had my father requested my presence? Or was it just the luck of the draw? I never found the courage to ask him the question for fear of learning something I didn’t want to know. And so I was there, in my fighter’s cockpit, shot to hell, my engines on fire, when both my father and his ship exploded into a million pieces.”
The class had never been this silent. The cold, hard reality check Saroudis painted with such eloquence, was filled with deep emotional backwash that he managed, for the most part, to not let impact either his tone or the message he was trying to convey to the young people’s minds in attendance.
“No. I can’t lie to you,” continued Saroudis. “I won’t. That moment was, without a doubt, the most excruciatingly painful one of my entire existence. It still hurts today. But it was also a defining moment for me. Even though a part of me died when I saw my father’s ship explode, and at that moment I felt like giving up, and for a handful of seconds, thought about letting the enemy finish me off and put me out of my misery. My fighter was shot to hell, barely still flying, shields failing, half of my power nodes fluctuating. But if I had, then thousands of courageous men, my father included, would have lost their lives in vain. They were fighting for a cause, and that day I realized that so was I, so I couldn’t give up. I patched up my fighter and kept fighting, and so did the rest of my wing until we drove the Empire away from our space.”
There was a long silence.
“This is what war will do to you. But without the sacrifices of brave men and woman, we may not keep our freedom, and could end up being squashed under the Obsidian Empire’s tyranny. So we wage war, fighting and dying for the Star Alliance at a moment’s notice if that is our destiny. For that, I want to thank you for being here, for willing to put your lives in jeopardy for what you believe in. I may have brought your spirits down a little today, but I know that in each of your hearts flows the blood of warriors. Heroes of tomorrow. We need you, more than you realize.”
Chase was the first to get up and clap, and the rest of the class followed suit. The entire speech struck a chord with him, and for the first time in a long time, he actually felt like he was in the right place, doing the right thing. This feeling would fade away later that day when he and the captain would clash on tactics. But, for now, Chase was perfectly happy to bask in the moment. Little did he know this would b
e a pivotal moment that would shape his future.
3
Chase destroyed the last of the enemy fighters with barely any of his shields left before the simulation ended. He removed the neuronal interface from his temple. This advanced piece of technology was still in its beta stages and sometimes glitchy, though Chase had to admit that the engineers in charge of its development were working out the kinks at an impressive pace the last few months. The neuronal implant projected a virtual holographic scene directly inside the mind of its wearer. It was, in fact, just like a regular simulator, except it weighed almost nothing and could link with other minds to practice both standalone and networked dogfight scenarios or even full squadron maneuvers like he just did with his classmates.
Chase looked around, his classmates staring at him. Some looked surprised, some casting him disapproving glances, and a very few seemed to glean some sort of inspiration from him. Or so it seemed to Chase.
“Alright,” said Saroudis. “Who can tell me what Cadet Athanatos did wrong?”
Wrong? I just killed four fighters!
For a moment Chase thought Daniel would raise his hand, but Fillio beat him to it. Fillio Steriopoulou was another of Chase’s friends, though there was more to their relationship than that, even though Chase didn’t know where they were headed with it just yet. It was against regulations to date another fellow pilot.
Like with every other rule, Chase didn’t like that particular one.
“Yes, Cadet,” said Saroudis as he pointed toward Fillio.
“He broke off and abandoned his wingman in the middle of the fight.”
No kiss for you later today, Chase thought.
“However,” Fillio added, “he did take down four enemy fighters pretty much on his own.”
Chase smiled. On the other hand...
“That part was impressive, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that he left his wingman hanging high and dry,” countered Saroudis. “Sure, the cadet seems very good at breaking every rule in the book and flying by the seat of his pants. Granted, his instincts seem pretty strong. But, discipline and rules are there for a reason. Right, Mr. Athanatos?”
Universe in Flames – Ultimate 10 Book Box Set: An Epic Space Opera Adventure Page 2