The hole in the craft was leaking air into space at a rate that did not please Cutter, but he had more important things to worry about. He jerked back hard on the stick and twisted it to port, entering into a bank as he poured on the acceleration.
“Come and get me,” he said through clenched teeth.
He snapped the Bloodwing into a straight climb while maintaining the rearward pressure on the stick. The loop he was pulling was a basic maneuver taught to every skyfighter. He knew that the toothies taught the same things. If he could get them in the right position, though, he might well put paid to them for their little incursion into Combine space.
Screens lit with imminent attack warnings as a laser painted the rear of his craft. He shouted a curse and abandoned all subtlety, hammering a boot into the rudder and turning hard starboard as his paw slapped first at the ECM panel and then at the rear gunnery console.
From the aft tubes came irradiated chaff and sun-bright flares, spinning away from his Bloodwing as he put it harder into the turn and kept the accelerator wide open. The short-barrelled mass driver back there barked and bucked, spitting unaimed rounds into space. It was a desperate ploy to keep the rat from closing, but it had been known to be successful in the past.
“On your seven low, Cutter!” advised a voice across his radio. “Longtail on your seven low!”
“Take him!” Cutter shot back. “I’ve got two hits and I’m pissing air.”
“Trying. He’s good.”
“I’ll run a clean line. Get him when he reaches for the cheese.”
He flicked the shield control with a claw that snapped back into his paw, shunting all the power to the rear portion of the craft. He rolled over once and locked his flight into a straight line. Behind him, the Empire Rodentia fighter lined up a clean shot. Twin lasers flashed to life with a heavy pulse of energy. Cutter rocked as the beams impacted on his shields.
A second later and the Longtail shuddered beneath a series of mass driver rounds as Vapor overtook them and opened up with his main cannons. It seemed to falter in its flight and then erupted into a ball of flame.
“Splash one Longtail,” Vapor said, slowing his flight. “You good, Cutter?”
Cutter snarled, taking advantage of the lull in the fighting to rip open a sealpak and jam the metallic sheet atop the visible hole near his right foot. It smacked into place with a wet sound of adhesive sticking to the interior of the Bloodwing.
“I’m okay,” he reported. The other hole, according to his sensors, was in the ammo bay for the port wing cannon. Best case, it just stayed an open gap into space. Worst case, it would cause the weapon to malfunction. For now it was fine.
“Ready to get back in it?”
“Damned right.”
Together, the two Bloodwing fighters banked and flipped around. Hundreds of kilometers ahead of them was the massive form of the transport they were escorting. They both tweaked the throttle and headed back for the ship. It took very little time to spot the ongoing battles that surrounded the big beast, where dozens of fighters spun and danced in space, their weapons winking and flashing. The larger conflicts between the Flashpoint corvettes and the destroyer from Rodentia were a continuous interplay of energy weapons. Red and green beams seemed almost to connect them like colored string. At this distance it was impossible to tell who was winning.
“You’re upside down,” Vapor commented.
“I always am,” Cutter said with a chuckle. The joke went back to their training days, when Cutter was frequently reprimanded for the way he handled his craft. A training officer had once commented that while the squadron would eventually reach their objective, Cutter would arrive upside down, simply to be contrary.
He cut the thrust, content to allow the sleek craft to drift forward at the speed he had established for it. If he continued to build velocity, when he arrived at the combat scene he would blow through in an eyeblink and spend the next several minutes trying to reorient his craft.
A massive explosion caught his eye. As he started to comment on it, the radio crackled in his ear. Two lightning-fast beeps announced that the transmission was from the bridge on Dragon’s Head, the main transport ship that Cutter and the other pilots were assigned to protect.
“All fighters, all fighters. Breach of rodent destroyer, starboard aft. I say again, breach of rodent destroyer, starboard aft.”
“What say we take them some pain?” Cutter said as the broadcast cut off, tweaking the control to angle toward the damaged destroyer.
“I’d say you’re crazy. Shana’s gonna have every missile in the system directed that way.”
Cutter noted that the statement did not deter Vapor from banking along with him.
“Missiles only go so far,” he said, sweeping his eyes across his tactical board. All his weapons showed ready. “Sometimes you’ve gotta add in a few bullets to help things along.”
A flash of crimson energy flared from his shields.
“Longtails!” Vapor called out.
“Don’t they know they’re getting between me and something fun?” Cutter asked as his sensors locked onto the incoming enemy craft.
There were three of the Longtail fighters angling toward them. Narrow and tall, the enemy craft had a distinctive drive system that extended behind the main body, giving them the name that Combine fighters had tagged it with almost a decade before. The twin heavy lasers mounted above and below the cockpit were no joking matter, as the holes in Cutter’s Bloodwing could attest. With shielding that Combine experts considered ‘acceptable’ and armor thicker than that on his own Bloodwing, the Longtail was a foe Cutter could respect. He knew it had more issues than his craft, however, as the big lasers were a tremendous energy drain. Most Longtails carried two sixteen-inch ship-to-ship missiles to add to their firepower. If those beasts struck home, the effects were devastating, but the Bloodwing ECM suite usually did a good job dealing with those.
For their part, Cutter and Vapor were running in one of the Combine favorites. The Bloodwing was comprised of a long central drive with a narrow arch that ran above the cockpit, supporting a sweeping wing structure that ended in a pair of 80mm mass drivers, with a third cannon running along the drive axis and slung ventrally beneath the craft. The third was their can opener. Equipped with a 200mm mass driver, the main gun drew a lot of power to fire, but punched through fighter armor as if it was tissue. In a pinch, it could do a fair bit of damage to the body of even the destroyer Cutter wanted to reach. Tertiary weapons systems consisted of the aft-mounted light mass driver – intended to deter pursuit more than anything else – and a brace of ten six-inch ship-to-ship missiles. While carrying a lighter payload than those of the Longtail, the Combine missiles were designed to shred armor by separating into a series of submunitions just prior to impact. The hope was that the multiple warheads would manage to bypass shields where a single large round might fail.
While some Combine ships were possessed of laser weaponry, not every pilot wanted them, and most chose the more classically-oriented slugthrowing weapon systems. There were a few specialty craft out there, and most pilots could fly them if they had to, but the intimate familiarity that a pilot developed in a specific craft gave them the edge in combat.
“What ya think?” Vapor asked as the trio of Longtails began to spread apart. It was a move Cutter had seen before.
“Take out that middle one. The others are about to bank hard. They’ll loop out and around; try to come in behind us after the pass.”
“Done,” Vapor said. His wing guns began to chug, sending slivers of forged steel flashing into space. They sparked as they came into contact with the shields that the Longtail had up, but given the high cyclic rate of the guns, one or two of the high-velocity slugs was sure to get past it.
“Target,” Cutter ordered his shipboard computer. His paw stroked the rightmost image on the sensor screen, highlighting it with an orange aura. His claw flipped open the cage on the stick he was holding and he stroked the missile fire command three times. As he hit the third one, he used his finger to press the main trigger, adding his own guns to those of his wingman.
From along the wings of his craft, three long white missiles leaped on tongues of flame and arced up and out to follow the progress of the Longtail that Cutter had targeted. Until the rats either detonated the missiles, they ran out of fuel, or impacted on the target, they would continue their track.
The Longtail in the center began a quick roll, triggering the lasers as it did so. Beams slashed through space, missing the two Bloodwings by narrow margins. Cutter changed his angle of approach by a degree or two, working the trigger in short bursts to send stream after stream of steel shot out in a quest for the drive of the Longtail. Several of them passed through the shields as they closed and his shots were striking more along the port side of the Longtail. He saw them, sparking and shredding, biting holes in the long drive train. Vapor’s shots were a direct visual threat to the rat piloting the craft, and he kept his shields on maximum to prevent the steel from slapping into his cockpit.
A flare of magnesium-bright light signaled to Cutter that his rounds had holed the powerplant. Atomized fuel flashed into short-lived flame.
“Good hit!” Vapor shouted over the comm. Cutter started to reply when he realized the pilot had been talking about his own. A series of slugs had made it past overworked shields and slashed across the interior of the cockpit just as Vapor pulled clear of his approach. One last strike from the laser blasted a streak along his starboard wing, but hit nothing serious.
“The port ‘tail is the one to watch,” Cutter said instead.
Even as the words left his lips, twin crimson beams scraped across the armor of Vapor’s Bloodwing. Metal composite flashed to steam and ablative plates shattered into fragments, falling away in the face of the ravening energy.
“Shit!” Vapor cried. “Life support crash, Nav comp is down as well!”
“Pull out!” Cutter ordered, throwing his Bloodwing into a hard port climb. He wheeled the craft over and spun in an attempt to see the attacker. “I’ll get him.”
“Shield generators offline! Oh, fuck, here he –“
The blast of static was accompanied by a brilliant white explosion from Vapor’s craft as it exploded. Cutter was buffeted by a shockwave that passed almost as soon as he registered it. Tiny bits of the Bloodwing pattered against Cutter’s shields like rain on a tent.
“Mine,” Cutter said, his voice a low growl from deep in his chest. He flicked at the sensor array, setting off a sweep of his surroundings. The screen showed a blue haze as the bits of Vapor’s craft clouded the sensor, but three of the enemy craft registered on it were in his vicinity. One showed red, indicating it seemed sidelined, at least to the targeting array. The second was amber, and Cutter believed that to be the one they had just attacked as a team. It might be a problem if the pilot could forget about his damage long enough to take some kind of action. The third pulsed a bilious green, and was tracking rapidly around behind Cutter.
He triggered the rear mass drivers, feeling as much as hearing the chugging as the electromagnetic drives accelerated the projectiles to incredible speeds. As he did, he tried to imagine where the Longtail had come from and where it might be going next. He tried to think of what his own course of action would be if their positions were reversed.
“Target,” he ordered, poking the bright green object on the screen. It limned with an orange aura and he fired five of the remaining missiles at one second intervals as he twisted the Bloodwing in a spiral arc that brought him into a position where he could finally see the Longtail. The pilot had seen the launch and was now deploying countermeasures. Clouds of finger-sized flares and irradiated metal erupted into the space between the two craft.
Cutter’s face split in a death’s-head grin as he engaged the thrusters at full effect. He locked in the targeting for the cannons and laughed aloud as he passed by the first set of flares and chaff. Two of his missiles exploded there seconds ahead of his passage, and he used that effect to obscure his approach.
Coming in at a slight downward angle to the Longtail, Cutter squeezed the trigger of the cannon controls even as he fired the last two missiles. He saw the mass driver projectiles sparkle and flash as they were turned by the shields, but a handful of them slipped past the flickering field to rake and stab at the Longtail.
Out of habit, he glanced at the ammunition tally, but he discounted the numbers there as unimportant. This fight would go until his guns clicked empty and then if necessary he would ram the enemy ship. He slashed quick bursts at his prey over and over as his ship closed the gap between them. The Longtail wasn’t pushing the power as much as Cutter was.
A spray of ice crystals indicated a life support breach as oxygen vented into space. Electrical sparks followed and Cutter kept his aim focused on that point, sending a hail of cannon rounds tearing into the Longtail near the junction of the drive housing and the main body of the craft. Several of the rounds punched into the interior to wreak their havoc within the craft itself, and Cutter flashed by it as all acceleration within the Longtail ceased.
He cut power to the thrusters and flipped the attitude of the Bloodwing. It was now flying inverted as compared to his approach, but he was once again looking directly at the Longtail. Kicking the thrusters back to life, he bolstered the front shields and flew headlong into the target path of the Longtail.
No shots lanced out from the Rodentia ship, and Cutter wondered if the pilot had more important things to do. To remind the rat that he was still out there, he pressed the trigger again and watched as streams of high-velocity steel shredded the front of the Longtail. He eased off the throttle and flipped the switch for the retros, slowing his approach as he simultaneously angled the craft to be out of direct aim of the twin lasers.
His adrenaline began to climb steadily as he neared the still craft. The computer was now categorizing the Longtail with a red aura. Cutter kept his claw on the trigger despite that designation. He continued to drift ever closer, hearing his own breath coming fast and shallow. The Bloodwing edged between the firing arcs of the lasers and Cutter used his jets to keep the two craft face to face as he turned on his signal beacons. The brilliant white light illuminated the cabin opposite him and for the first time he saw his opponent.
Small and thin of build, with a pinched face that was now mostly hidden behind the bulk of a respirator mask, the rat was a hairless grey thing. Blood ran from a shallow cut on the side of its neck. The cockpit itself was a shambles, and Cutter recognized the look of a door closed and sealed against a breach. He flicked a switch and killed the beacons, using a pocket light to illuminate his own face for the other pilot. Holding up a paw, he tapped at his wrist chron and then pointed at the rat.
It sat still for a moment and then held up both spindly hands. One had three fingers raised, and the other was in a circular shape.
“Thirty minutes?” Cutter asked, making the same gesture and then tapping his watch again. The rat nodded and then tapped at the side of its respirator.
It was a horrible thought that all pilots had considered at one point or another: Slow suffocation in the endless night of space. Several that Cutter knew had vowed to take their own lives if it came to it rather than suffer the agony of their body fighting for air.
Cutter made his paw into a gun shape and waved it, then pointed at the rat and raised both paws as if indicating a question. There was hesitation for a moment, but then the rat shook its head. It gestured toward the instrument panel that was outside of Cutter’s line of sight and then jerked a thumb back in the direction of the battle. He used his hands to show sweeping gestures, then raised two fingers and pointed at himself before indicating the area behind him again.
“Two ships, huh? I guess that will help you be safe.”
Cutter saluted the rat and disengaged his craft from the Longtail, maneuvering up and around to come in behind it. He surveyed the damage he had done, and found none of it lacking. He had managed to chew the Rodentia craft nearly in half.
Chaging the attitude of the ship, he pressed the Bloodwing in against the Longtail, the nose of his ship against the rear frame of the other. From this angle he would be able to act as a pusher to move the rat where he wanted.
“But you took out Vapor and you don’t get to be safe,” he said, jamming the throttle open. It started out as slow going but soon they were leaving the battle behind them and flying hard into space.
“If they can find your ass out here in under thirty minutes then you’ve got more lives than me,” Cutter added, disengaging his Bloodwing and watching the blacked-out hulk drift silently away and into the dark.
<<<END>>>
