A/N: It occurred to me that I have been including a lot of slang in the fighters without clarifying what a lot of it means. Some of it is actual fighter pilot slang, some of it is my own invention of what I think would be fighter pilot slang in this universe and at this future time. This chapter is the first that actually takes place in a pit in quite a while, so I have used this slang liberally throughout. I will have some translations of the slang I use in this chapter at the end of the chapter if you're curious. Some of it I won't bother to translate, it should be pretty damn clear from context what it means.


{36! 36 is about to drop!}

{Confirmed, all clear 36!}

Like a murmuration of starlings, the fighters swarmed together, withdrawing from the Kilrathi bombardier. Fire bloomed briefly from under its broad gut, the ship listing and then yawing madly. With a pulsing glut of light, the dying ship fired three more times. Angel wrenched the stick, her board lighting up as the ordinance whipped past her and sailed on into the dark.

{Angel, are you five by?} Malibu.

{Ten four, five by. Just parted my hair is all.} Bright light flashed behind her, and on her HUD the great red signature that had been the bombardier broke apart into static and vanished. The forty or so Kilrathi johnnies that had been fighting to protect it were still there, dogging after Alpha and the other Wings.

{Mayday mayday mayday, this is November Wing, we're getting pressed hard, two down and floating! Mayday mayday mayday!}

{HiHo, Deadlock, bolster up that side at 234 and start dogging 37. Angel, the rest of you, with me to November. They're singing our song.} Malibu said, as she turned her tourney.

Angel formed up beside Malibu, heading toward November Wing. A pair of johnnies sailed in from above but Angel barely twitched, watching with blank dispassion as Vapor and Notch turned them into a rain of scrap metal.

Three days now, fighting nearly constantly, and she had quickly gotten a handle on how Alpha Wing worked. Most of them had been together so long that orders almost weren't necessary. Vapor and Notch were the best shots, and never let anything get near to the Wing. Deadlock and HiHo (the latter so named due to having the surname Silva) were unstoppable when it came to taking down heavies.

Then there was herself, Birdstrike, and Torch, the three that had been selected to fill out the Wing. They were good, all three of them, but they still needed direction now and again as they got used to their new wing mates.

Three days since the Cats entered the Sol system, and they were still pouring in. Thus far, Alpha's only mission had been the same as the rest; if it isn't us, shoot it.

However that morning they had gotten new orders; Emperor Surc's flagship was about to arrive at the fortified position the Confed had codenamed Ragnarok. It was only two hours flight from there to Sol, and where the Cats had dropped the penultimate pebble in their path of jump gates that lead back to Kilrah.

The first day their lead ships had appeared outside Pluto orbit, the Confed had sent a huge offensive strike to try and prevent them from dropping their final jump gate. If that gate was set and working, it would be just the toehold the Cats needed. They'd be able to ferry in ships, fuel, ordinance, personnel, and resources from Kilrah to the Front at Sol in a matter of a day or two.

The offensive hadn't worked. The jump gate had been put into place, and the Confed's defensive position had been dropped back to Neptune in the wake of the overwhelming Cat offensive.

The Kilrathi had the ships, the resources, and the numbers, and those of the humans were dwindling rapidly.

But they'd known this going in. They'd known this was a war the humans could not win, not if it came down to gun vs. gun, fighter vs. fighter. For the humans, there were no reinforcements coming.

All hope was not lost, however. If Zuhn could kill his siblings and take the throne, he'd withdraw the Cat Fleets all back to Ragnarok and open talks. Earth and the rest of humanity would be spared, the war over.

It was a big 'if', but humanity had an ace up their sleeves now- one the Cats did not possess.

Alpha quickly cleared November Wing, mowing a path so that they could retreat back far enough for S&R to do their jobs without being blown out of the sky. They were just finishing when Deadlock and HiHo reported the final bombardier was down.

{Fall back to staging,} Malibu ordered, and Angel glanced at her chrono. Fifty minutes, and ticking down.

Leaving the other Wings to fight, Alpha clustered wordlessly into formation and pointed their noses at their rendezvous. Two other SFT Wings- Eta Wing and Iota Wing- had broken off to join them.

{Cesar, Cesar, Cesar; Danforth} Malibu said as they neared the rendezvous. On scope and out of her screen, Angel could see the glimmers of two small CSAR transports moving in toward the coordinates as well.

{This is Cesar. Danforth, looks like your birds are pretty badly damaged.}

{Can confirm, we got knocked about in the tornado. What is your ETA?}

{Apple falls in three.}

Angel stretched her neck and shoulders as best she could in the pit, flexing her fingers. Adrenaline was great, but going all but solid for three days with only fifteen- or twenty-minute naps in a mess hall on whatever heavy had the room to take them had exhausted even the best of them. She had to be clear as possible for what came next.

The exchange between Malibu and the first S&R sounded almost like nonsense. None of the SFT ships in all three Wings had beyond very minor damage, of course, and almost none of it meant what it sounded like.

As far as they knew the Cats had not broken the Confed's com scramblers to be able to listen in on their fighter-to-fighter transmissions, but they weren't taking any chances, and much of their orders had come through from Houston in a patois of double speak and code words. Angel was especially fond of 'apple falls', which was a brand-new addition. This was the first time it had officially been put into use.

{Keep icy,} Malibu said, switching over to the Wing's private channel. Angel knew this was for her and the other two new to the Wing. She doubted any of the Alpha veterans needed the reminder; they never stopped being icy, no matter the mission.

{The tree is shaking. Countdown commencing. Apple falls in ten…nine…eight…}

Angel gave her hands another shake and then took hold of the controls. Her radar was a mad spread of signals from the ongoing battle raging in almost every direction and so she didn't even glance at it. Instead, she looked out her viewscreen and whispered a silent, simple prayer in her mind.

Be fast, stay alive, go home. Be fast, stay alive, go home.

{…three…two…one…go!}

Almost as one, the three SFT Wings surged forward into their top speeds, whipping past the stationary S&R vessels. Then, the vessels were gone, and new ones appeared in the distance, the radar blinking to compensate.

Three heavies, two supply ships, and a dreadnaught appeared out of nowhere in front of them, hovering near the comparatively tiny pill shape attached to one of the heavies. The Kilrathi's jump gate.

They had arrived at Ragnarok.

{Free stick and free go! Fire at will, fire at will, fire at will!} Malibu cried.

Angel had to resist the giddy temptation to yell back into her headset, 'Which one is Will?'- something Yelchin trainees did as a matter of initiation the first time they climbed into their simulators. Instead she gunned the engine, darting with Malibu toward the enemy.

Although the free fire order had been given, every one of them knew the mission brief. Take out the unanchored heavies and supply ships. Damage the dreadnaught, keep it fighting, but under no circumstances were they to destroy it.

At the same moment their 'apple' had opened the jump to allow the SFT Wings to pop in at Ragnarok, another 'apple' had opened a jump from Zuhn's command ship (patrolling on the edge of the Sol fight near Pluto orbit and dispensing its johnnies into the fray) onto one of the lower decks of the Vik'Atrilik, Emperor Surc's newly arrived flagship. Through this smaller jump would go Zuhn, Shadow, and their infiltration team to hunt down and take out Sela and Surc. As soon as they were down, Zuhn would commandeer the bridge with the Emperor's sash and send his orders to all Kilrathi ships to cease hostilities and fall back to Ragnarok.

Angel didn't know if either 'apple' had been Ray, and hoped not. The Nephilim had to be near at hand to at least one anchor point to open a jump anywhere. She hoped Ray was safe somewhere, not smuggled on to Zuhn's ship or lurking in an all but defenseless S&R ship, but there was no way to know for certain.

Then she realized her worry was futile. There was no reason that Ray couldn't have opened a jump from Earth onto either vessel, then opened a jump for their Wing or Zuhn's shadow team, then jumped herself right back to Earth. Three jumps in that quick of a succession would be taxing, but Ray was recovering her health more and more each day. So long as she didn't collapse until she got back to Earth, she'd be in no more danger than anyone else on Earth.

Which did not make Angel feel much better, come to think on it. No one on Earth was safe, were they? And no one on Earth would be safe unless Zuhn succeeded in time to halt the devastation.

Because the Cats had not expected fighters to jump in out of nowhere, the SFT Wings had more than halved the distance to their targets before their presence was picked up and the Cats began to respond. A swarm of johnnies began to spill out of the dreadnaught and the heavies, many of them clustering around the anchored heavy and its jump gate. Angel grinned, tight-lipped. That worked to their advantage. Naturally the Cats would think they were trying to scuttle the jump gate, to cut off the Cat's supply line, but in truth they had no desire whatsoever to do that. Their orders were to leave the jump gate and it's anchor unharmed if at all possible.

If Zuhn's plan failed, they were to take it out if they could- cut off the flood of reinforcements and supplies from Kilrah and buying them at least some reprieve.

However, if Zuhn's plan succeeded, the Cats needed a quick way to fuck off back to their corner of the galaxy that didn't rely on the tiny handful of Nephilim opening up a gate big enough and long enough to let an entire armada through. Even Ray didn't know if it was possible to do a jump that big without killing every Nephilim involved.

By holding some johnny squadrons back to guard the jump gate, there were fewer entering the fight trying to take down the SFTs.

Angel dogged Malibu's wing like she was leashed to it, the Wings spreading out and lighting into the fight. At first, the Cats fell as if they were standing targets. Angel darted down between two that were already madly cartwheeling, spraying fire from torn thruster lines- and took out a third and a fourth.

Malibu wiped six off the board in a spin of shot, crossed in front of Angel's nose and hit another two. Breaking off to the port, Angel sent a grizzly chasing after a Cat that had peppered small arms toward her pit, darting quick glances at her HUD.

{We've got bandits sailing off the dreadnaught,} she reported, and felt her stomach tighten. {Iktha Black, repeat, twenty IB johnnies coming in on the bright side.}

They had expected this. It was foolish to think the Emperor's own flagship wouldn't have a full compliment of the most elite fighters and pilots the Cats had to offer, but seeing that streamlined death sailing toward them only hammered the nail home.

Vapor and Brink swept in to port, closing with almost casual grace on the IBs. When the Cats opened fire, both women nearly seemed to teleport out of the way, missing fire-bright ordinance by what had to be centimeters. Deadlock, Opie, Birdstrike, and Fudge from Iota Wing came in from starboard and opened fire almost in time with Angel, as she pushed to the firewall and joined the tornado.

She unloaded full guns as her screen filled up with IBs, then dropped the nose of her bird to bug out as fire bloomed to her port. One of the IBs was down, but a voice cried out over her headset, and she whipped her head around to see one of their own spinning, their engines a blazing white glare.

{I'm hit! I'm hit! I'm-} It was Birdstrike. He broke off as his tourney dissolved.

{Angel!} Malibu cried out, and Parry cursed as she looked back forward and barely tore her own tourney out of the path of a grizzly that had been headed right to her pit. She heard the side of her fighter literally scream, the pit shuddering, as the missile skidded along her plates and tore a gouge before exploding just past her tail.

Everything turned into a mad spin, and she wrenched the stick, trying to right herself. Something else exploded just in front of her eyes, and debris crashed into her screen like hailstones the size of baseballs.

{Angel!} Malibu again, as Parry finally got her fighter under control, quickly assessing her HUD for the damage.

{Bond, Bond!} Parry replied. {I'm golden, nothing to write home about.}

She got visual on Malibu and headed that direction, rejoining her fire to the WC's and helping her tear through another of the IB johnnies.

{Opie, Deadlock, Vapor, Angel, on me!} Malibu said. {We've got to hit that dreadnaught if Shadow's going to have any chance. Leave these boys to the others and let's dog!}

Angel didn't know if Malibu's use of 'shadow' was in reference to Zuhn's entire shadow team, or Colonel Rochester specifically, and decided it didn't matter. Either way she was right; they didn't have a chance unless the SFT Wings did their job and hit that dreadnaught, kept their decks in chaos. And if Zuhn's team didn't have a chance, Earth didn't have a chance.

You gotta get through me first, Cats. You can singe me, but you can't clip my wings. I'm the Angel of Death, motherfuckers.

Leaving the wreckage of another three IB johnnies in their wake, the five fighters of Alpha Wing darted into the dreadnaught, and opened fire.


Slang:

CSAR/Cesar: Combat Search and Rescue. These are search and rescue vessels that have means to protect themselves and actively perform their duties in actual combat scenarios. As opposed to simple S&R, which come in after combat is concluded to mop up.

Tornado- this should be pretty obvious but an especially chaotic dog-fight in space specifically is a tornado, where enemies, friendlies, and ordinance can literally be coming from all directions.

Firewall- bringing your fighter to its highest speed.

Bond- hit and with some damage but still able to maneuver and fight, no injuries or only light injuries; as in James Bond's signature, 'shaken, not stirred'.