Chapter 3:
Final Exam
---
"Now comes the fun part, hotshots," Fargo said a month later. "As a final skills
test before graduation, we are all going to engage in a simulator dogfight against each
other."
After the incident with Red, Richard had stayed clear of the any other training
group's social endeavors. When he was asked why, Richard began recounting some old
childhood trauma tale about the other kids that he made up. Such encounters usually only
lasted about 30 seconds.
The GTD Aquataine had stayed an extra month in Vega while repair crews
scoured the destroyer's surface. Now all of the Aquataine's compartments were capable of
supporting human and Vasudan life again, and the crew and passengers had recently been
briefed that the Aquataine would be leaving for the Deneb system shortly. Admiral
Bosch's Neo-Terran Front had recently registered some dismaying gains there.
The ship has taken some heavy casualties during the battle in the asteroid field, and
the crew replacements were now all onboard... all 300 of them. The field itself had been
classified by the GTVA Natural Disasters Board as dangerous to any vessels, and the jump
node itself had been sealed off. In a way, the Aquataine was lucky to have gotten through
it, because if she had been forced to take the longer route around to Vega and Deneb, she
would still be traveling.
"Now our training group is had more than thirty people in it," Fargo continued,
"Now consider that, and add to those each of those people a heavily armed fighter of their
choice, and a confined space around a simulated Arcadia-class Terran installation, and
what do you have? Cadets, you have hell in a hand-basket. We will be pulling some fairly
tight maneuvers in there."
Fargo had quickly forgotten the 'heroism' Richard had shown during the asteroid
field maneuvers. He knew it was purposeful, to now show favoritism to anybody,
especially not an ace cadet with a bad social record. Such events would spawn an overly-
inflated ego.
Richard had not yet heard anything about Douglas Remmington, and the Siren's
Call. This was natural of course, Douglas would not have contacted him even if he had
made it through the jump node to Epsilon Pegasi. However, nothing had been on the local
news broadcasts that even made a mention of a single ship trying to run the blockaded
jump node. Richard had no choice but to take it as a good omen, if Siren's Call had been
destroyed while running the blockade, the GTVA would trumpet their victory to every
reporter on Vega.
"During the mock dogfight, you will have the ability to respawn for not more than
five times after a death. And," Fargo smiled, "as an extra incentive to do well, I will fail
those three students who get the lowest kill score."
Richard had, for the most part, done extraordinarily well in his training. He now
knew the cockpit interior of any fighter like he did the back of his own hand. During
bombing simulations, it had been Richard who scored the final shot that destroyed the
simulated Orion-class destroyer. He was below average at one point though... during
combat Richard could not for the life of him figure out how to equalize energy settings
between his subsystems without being distracted.
"I did not tell of this until today, as you MUST learn that combat situations are
often times very spontaneous, occurring with little or no warning. Cadets, you have five
minutes now to get in full flight gear and report to the simulator chambers on Deck 31.
Now move."
---
The simulator chamber had little decoration, and for good reason. The walls were
a depressing shade of gunmetal gray in a square chamber 20 meters across. The air here
was cooler than the rest of the Aquataine, and a little stuffier as well. Obviously the life-
support was not as strong here, and to Richard's naked eye he could detect no vents or
openings other than the chamber doors.
What made this chamber special to the officers and crew of the GTD Aquataine
were the oval pods depressed into the floor of the chamber, and there were about fifty of
the stretched across the room. The pods were about the size of a starfighter cockpit (in
other words very small) and painted a dull red, with an opaque shielding covering each.
Various wires were cast haphazardly about the room, and the slight hum of the power
being run through them echoed off the barren walls, giving Richard a feeling of a spartan
oppression which had become very familiar over the last few weeks.
The loneliness that pervaded this room was only staged off slightly by the murmur
of Richard's cadet comrades. Richard tried his best to ignore them, knowing that in a
short few minutes they would become his bitter enemies during the dogfight.
Fargo sat on top one of the simulator pods, and waited until the group settled
down. "Okay, people, this dogfight has no set time limit. Whoever is the last flying will
be declared winner."
"I said before that the three pilots who score the worst here will be flunked out of
my class, and I stand by that. The GTVA has enough fighter pilots as it is, and command
has instructed me to only allow in those who can handle themselves in a combat situation.
However, as another incentive, the 'winner' of this sim will be given command of their own
fighter wing once they join up with their squadrons."
"I'll be observing you from within my own pod, but I will not interfere with this
dogfight. Good luck, Cadets, and remember not to take any of this personally."
The pod covers hissed open, and the cadets began to pick and chose the pods they
wanted. Richard chose the one in the corner, and snapped the cover shut around him.
The false cockpit around Richard engulfed him in pitch darkness. It was not for
several long moments that something on his instrumentation panel lit up. It was the
communications receiver.
Richard pulled his flight headset around his ears, and hit the RECEIVE button.
Another nearby display began to glow, informing him that the message was directed at him
through standard GTVA flight frequencies, standard transmission.
"Pilots, I will engage the encoding sequence as this transmission ends… now."
Fargo's transmission degenerated into a series of static bursts. Richard was familiar with
the routine, and flipped the barely visible decryption switch. The computer buzzed, and
Fargo's voice became intelligible again.
"Okay, now assume you are inside a standard hangar, and begin powering up your
fighter's systems. I will time you for speed and accuracy."
Richard looked upwards, towards the roof of his pod, and triggered three switches
on the top panel, the power lattices signal for start-up. Instead of the dull illumination that
had haunted through the pod, every panel lit up, and began displaying status reports, save
for the forward view, which remained absolutely dark. He punched the engine status key,
and began feeding test instructions into his navigation and weapons systems computer.
A blinking light attracted his attention, the secondary shield generators remained
dead. With the secondary shields, the primaries did not have the energy redundancy they
needed to deflect mass. He smiled, it was Fargo ensuring that her trainees were
completely attentive during the process, and activated the reserve generators. Shields
registered fully active.
A window that would normally give Richard targeting data on a selected ship
glowed with another light, and a menu appeared, listing the various ship types.
"Now select the craft you wish to fly during this dogfight. I have made available
over 21 types, so this should make combat much more diverse. After that, select your
weapon load-outs. What you can carry will be dependent on the fighter you have chosen."
Richard choose the GTF Artemis for the flight. The Artemis was a heavy bomber
class fighter, and moved and maneuvered slowly. However, it carried extremely high
marks for hull strength and weapon ordnance capacity. For weapons, he selected as a
primary laser cannon the Prometheus Retrofit cannon, and as a secondary laser the Subach
HL-7.
Richard hesitated when he began selected the missiles he wanted to fill his bays
with. Yes, he thought, nobody would expect this, but does that make it good? It may
catch them by surprise, but surprise alone cannot kill. He felt his brow furrow. If this
gambit worked, he would be rewarded with a remarkably high kill score. If it didn't he
would meet ridicule and several deaths, and, if his score was low enough, expulsion from
the GTVA fighter program, and it would be the end for his true mission here.
He made up his mind, and thought, *It doesn't matter whether you win or lose, it's
how you play the game.*
For two of his three missile banks, he selected the Harpoon missiles, which were
standard anti-fighter weapons. But for his third bank, he loaded it with the Helios bomb.
The Helios was an anti-cruiser weapon, a slow, bulky warhead that was meant for
piercing the hull of a capital ship with a high explosive charge. It had virtually no tracking
ability, and was thus absolutely useless against the faster starfighters.
He hit the ACCEPT key, and waited.
It was several moments before his communications panel lit up again with Fargo's
voice. "Cadet McKnight, my computer must be feeding me faulty data. It says here that
you selected a bomber fighter, and the Helios bomb as a warhead complement."
Richard opened his transmission channel. "That's correct, Lieutenant. I will fly the
Artemis with the Helios ordnance."
"Cadet," Fargo sounded annoyed, "You did listen me, didn't you? You are aware
this is a dogfight, not a bombing mission."
"I am aware."
"Suit yourself," Fargo said simply, and silence again consumed the speakers.
Another several minutes passed while the remaining cadets selected their choices.
Richard waited tensely, until finally the Fargo cut in again.
"You are now all completely flight prepped. When the simulation starts, you will
be emerging from subspace five kilometers from the Arcades station."
*Five kilometers,* Richard thought in dawning horror, *That's worse than I had
anticipated! Much worse!*
"You will begin in five seconds. Good hunting."
It was another tense ticking of the clock before the forward viewport shed the
darkness, and became the bright colors and shapes of the innards of subspace. After the
inky blackness that had presided before, it was almost blinding. Richard resisted the
impulse to shield his eyes.
The ebbs and flows of subspace gave way to the pinpricks of stars and the vacuum,
dying out to become normal space. Behind the fighter, the portal it had emerged through
sealed itself off, rendering itself to become dark again. To Richard's pupils, the struggle to
compensate became almost too intense, but they managed to cope.
The radar screen on Richard's HUD immediately began to pinpoint the positions of
31 hostile fighters, each with three kilometers of each other, and surrounding the faint
target ahead, the Arcadia installation.
The Arcadia class of stations was a strange design, yet a familiar one. A giant,
three kilometer wide mass of immobile metal constructs, almost a rectangle with corners
and edges cut out at random. A tower stretching away from it on what Richard currently
perceived as the top of the station marked the command center and administration offices.
The most interesting part of the Arcadia was the immense hole in the center. This
hole had a radius of almost a quarter of the station itself, and was perfectly regular as it
reached through the station, until it emerged in the other side, linking the two borders
through vacuum. To signify its importance, the interior of the hull was coated with a
different metal, giving it a yellowish-gold color.
The Arcadia station was used primarily as a supply point, and the site for the
construction of cruiser-class capital ships. The framework and hull of a cruiser would be
assembled inside the specially coated interior, and that would be shipped to another point
for systems integration. Thus, cranes and platforms dotted the interior of the vast
construction zone, as well as on the outside of the station.
In real life, the station itself was armed with several laser cannons, none of which
would be used in this dogfight. The station was designated neutral, and was present solely
as an obstacle in the center of the fight.
From Richard's fighter, the station appeared desperately small. Hopelessly small,
too far away…
Five kilometers distanced him from his only hope at successfully dodging in this
clunky fighter, and his fellow cadets were now surrounding him on all sides. Two of them
were heading directly towards his fighter at far faster than the Artemis could manage, even
with afterburners.
The HUD was began to indicate a warning as the enemy fighters closed to two
kilometers.
Richard almost resigned himself to his fate of death, when a single, pervading
thought echoed through his consciousness. Divide and Conquer.
He examined the radar signatures of the fighters approaching his craft. One was a
Hercules Mark II, and the other was the old Ulysses class. The Herc, although still faster
then the Artemis, was bulkier than the Ulysses, although capable of holding more arms.
The Ulysses was a fighter chosen primary in fights like this for its speed, and razor-thin
profile which made it harder to hit. It could run circles around the bomber.
Richard sighed, and pulled his fighter around to face the Herc II dead on. Perhaps
he could force it away from interception using his Harpoon missiles. This could be
extremely difficult, as the second Richard had closed within missile range, he would also
be within the range of the Herc. And the faster Ulysses was closing in on his tail.
Targeting warnings flashed and vied for Richard's attention as soon as he closed to
within a kilometer of the Hercules, which had been designated Hadley. He had assumed
that the craft, lacking a squadron or even a wing, would be named after their pilots, and
this was confirmed here. Robert Hadley had remained obstinately at about the middle of
the class in skill rankings, and during combat Richard had known his weapons skills to be
somewhat mediocre.
900 meters, range! A triangle was projected across the pod's HUD, vectoring in
on Hadley's Hercules Mk2, running loops around the target as it strove to acquire an
aspect lock. The aspect-seeking missiles, such as the Harpoon, were much, much more
accurate then standard heat-seekers, except for the fact that without an aspect lock they
were useless. The lock usually took several seconds to find a target in an arena where
microseconds were the most precious currency.
Richard swallowed as another set of warnings indicated that Hadley had also
begun to find an aspect lock. Hadley must have chosen Harpoon missiles as well.
The comm system buzzed, and a familiar voice, Hadley's, spoke with a taunting
hint. "Bomber… huh," he chortled, "McKnight, you dumbass. What the hell were you
thinking?"
Richard had no response. It suddenly struck him how insane this was. What
devilish plan had he been fermenting? It had completely nulled now, and he was left
sitting in the cockpit of a simulated hunk of slow moving crap, and about to be pulverized
several times over by craft that obviously outmatched him in every way possible.
The triangular targeting graphic ceased looping drunkenly around the Herc, and
maintained a position solidly on the approaching fighter's nose, and Richard's headphones
emitted a solid machine tone. He furiously stabbed buttons, urging the Harpoons to
launch.
On both sides of the simulated Artemis fighter, two warheads were pushed away
from the port and starboard tubes on a blast of high-pressure exhaust. Within a sixth of a
second, the thrusters on the Harpoons kicked in, spraying yellow fumes across the prow of
the Artemis as they streaked towards their target at over three times the speed of the
Artemis.
At that exact instant, Hadley fired his two Harpoons.
Left with no alternative, Richard pulled away from the Herc coming towards him
head-on, and engaged full afterburners. The Harpoons passed each other and continued
swooping in towards their respective targets. Due to the angle, Richard could no longer
see Hadley's reaction to his threat.
His HUD was again lit with warnings. The Ulysses craft, designated Ida, was
within firing range, and attempted to achieve an aspect lock.
*Shit.*
Not even the versatile Ulysses-type craft could outrun a Harpoon missile, and
Richard obviously stood no chance of eluding it, even with burners still engaged.
On his instrumentation panel, among the arrays and rows of display readouts,
switches, and controls, there was a single button protected by a glass shielding. Richard
flipped open the glass, palms sweating, and pressed the button.
Every GTVA fighter craft has loaded on to it several dozen anti-missile
countermeasures, for use ONLY in extremely dangerous situations. Due to their limited
supply, pilots were urged to conserve them at every point possible.
Aspect-seeking missiles, however, were very resistant to the counter-measures,
and were capable of surpassing several of them to destroy its true target. Richard fired off
five of his supply, and twisted his craft around in a mad circle in an attempt to avoid the
incoming warheads.
The counter-measure system worked by utilizing a cone-shaped sensor beacon,
which in turn would project a sensor ghost to the missiles. The ghost would assume the
exact properties of their home craft, in this case Richard's GTF Artemis, in an attempt to
fool the missiles into detonating on the countermeasures, instead of the fighter.
Nature abhorred a vacuum, and scientists equipped the Harpoon missiles with
optical sensors as well as Radar, to prevent the waste of the valuable Harpoons. For
Richard's countermeasures to work they thus must assume the shape and size of the craft
in question, which was obviously impossible. For the sensor ghost to be perceived as
accurate by the missile's processors it must be at extremely short ranges, almost point
blank, to detonate before the optical sensors could override the impulse.
Richard stabbed the button five times, and pulled a high-gee left spin… unfelt in
the unmoving simulator pod. There was a vague sense of disconnected atrophy, leaving
Richard disoriented.
The pyramid-shaped countermeasure drones set immediately to work broadcasting
their dummy signal, and both incoming missiles swerved away from the Artemis. One of
them smashed into a countermeasure, instantly flaming, even in the vacuum of space as the
warhead was triggered. The other missile was knocked off course by the proximity of the
detonation, giving it time to properly re-identify the bomber _McKnight_. Richard swore a
silent curse that the warhead hadn't been demolished by the shock-wave.
The missile continued to accelerate towards the bulky Artemis, moving at a ten-
gee acceleration force, leaving Richard absolutely no time to react.
The shear kinetic force of the missile pierced both the shields and the fuselage of
the Artemis' port fusion engine pod, completely annihilating the intake values, and sending
streamers of fire and plasma through the reaction coil, the primary source of propulsion
for the port engines. If it weren't for the detonation itself, which followed a microsecond
later, the input would have continued feeding white-hot deuterium through the broken
valves, which would have been more than enough to trigger a fatal overload. As it was,
the detonation completely sealed what remained of the tubes.
For what the simulator pods lacked in gee-force acceleration, they more than made
up for in collisions. Motors underneath the pod whirred to life, and began to violently
buck the pod forward. Richard was thrown forward against his harness, with such a force
that he was sure it would leave a nasty bruise.
The Artemis spun wildly out of control with only the starboard engine active, and
the pod gleefully responded, shoving the nose of the simulator forward, and then suddenly
to the left. Richard barely managed to keep his grip on the controls; not that it mattered at
any rate, he thought ruefully.
The Artemis' stabilizer programs kicked in, reducing the starboard thrust and
attempting to bring the reserve port valves online. The harpoon had indiscriminately
destroyed everything near the impact point, including the reserves. The port afterburners
were the only systems on the port fuselage that even acknowledged a systems diagnostic.
Fortunately, they were still online, and the stabilizer programs sought it out. The burners
fired several times, reducing the dangerous spin the Artemis had accumulated, and the
starboard engine shut down to compensate, leaving the McKnight drifting towards the
Arcades station at a constant speed in the frictionless vacuum.
The stabilizer programs, standard on every fighter's emergency reaction system,
did this before Richard could even grab the controls, and their monitors blinked proudly at
him.
Richard, trying to shake the feeling that he was fighting for a cause that had
already lost, peered through his cockpit's side view, and examined the damage.
The engine fuselage itself was reasonably intact, the only tell-tale sign of damage
was a seven-meter burning hole, leaking debris, gases, and metal slag. Dammit, he
thought, it went flying straight through before it blew. The relatively little external
physical damage was overshadowed by fact that visible through the entrance puncture was
a gaping twenty-meter diameter hole. It would have been better by far for the Artemis had
the missile detonated on the heavily armored exterior, and had not touched the vulnerable
internal mechanics. It seemed little consolation that the shielding of the Artemis had
slowed the missile, preventing it from digging through the engine pod until it reached the
cockpit.
Also visible from that angle was the other two harpoons diving straight for the
Artemis. The Ulysses pilot laughed ferociously through the speakers. "You lose,
Hadley!" the vicious chuckle rang irritatingly through Richard's ears. "I get the kill!"
Richard sighed sadly as the missiles shattered the prow of the Artemis, whose
heavy hull layering could not resist the barrage. A curtain of flame washed over the
cockpit window, and the pod bucked one more time before every monitor suddenly
snapped into bleak darkness. The exterior view was replaced by midnight black.
After several seconds, the dim cockpit was lit by a single, glowing monitor.
CADET MCKNIGHT: KILLED BY CADET IDA
KILL SCORE: 0
DEATHS: 1
YOU HAVE 3 RESPAWNS REMAINING
PRESS TRIGGER TO ACKNOWLEDGE
To Richard's dismay, there was no option to change his craft choice. He resigned
himself to the Artemis, and his fate, and hit what had been the primary fire trigger.
The cockpit was once again lit by the steady glow of display monitors and control
panels. The light was almost immediately drowned out by the flash of subspace, as the
Artemis emerged from the flux of subspace.
The retinal-burning aura of the portal ceased, and was replaced by the dim specter
of the stars. Behind the Artemis bomber _McKnight II_, reality again assumed normal
proportions as the subspace flux sealed upon itself.
The Arcadia installation was still five kilometers away, directly ahead in the pod's
HUD. Not more than three kilometers away, between the Artemis and the installation, a
fierce battle raged in path. Sub-munitions from missile exploded in a violent fury,
shattered by the frequent laser bursts in a storm over four kilometers long. The
unmistakable burst of a larger starfighter's fusion coils overloading marred the background
of the void, fading away after only half-a-second in the fray.
Space there had again ceased to be a vacuum, something Richard had only seen
during the asteroid incident. It was extremely rare for such a phenomenon to occur, not
even the larger naval battles of the Great War had produced that effect.
No sensor in existence could penetrate such a maelstrom, and the simulators
reflected this perfectly. All the starfighters in the quarry had activated their full electronic
warfare suites, sending out bursts of EMP blasts that wrecked havoc with enemy sensors.
Most had already expended their entire supply of countermeasure drones, filling space
with a seemingly endless supply of scanner echoes. The radar monitor on the pod's lower
HUD gave the total number of detectable fighters as 93, even after discounting all visible
countermeasures. And that was only on the edges of the fire-fight. The center registered
as almost a solid mass on the detector screens, impervious even to the optical detectors.
Worse still, any optical sensors that Richard directed towards the firestorm were quickly
burnt out before any useful data could return. He would have to relay on his eyes and his
eyes alone, the UV and gamma rays being emitted were far too powerful, and the Artemis
bomber was not equipped with standard visible light optics. He swore another curse, one
which would have normally made him blush foolishly.
Richard quickly and wisely changed course, and told the bomber to skirt the fray
by a minimum of two kilometers, while slipping towards the Arcadia station, and powered
down his active sensors. If he relied only on his passives, that included mainly his own
vision, he might be able to fly past, unnoticed.
If.
Dammit, why did it always have to be like that?
---
The Ulysses starfighter Ida burst apart in the targeting receptacles, as fire from the
Subach HL-7 lasers shredded the fighters cockpit. Debris went spinning off into space,
adding to the surrounding confusion.
Red Jefferson smiled briefly, then twisted hard to starboard as a pair of Hornet
missiles randomly locked onto his Vasudan-designed Serapis class fighter, streaking out of
the fray.
The Serapis fighter was an agile design, quick and maneuverable, while
maintaining a modest weapons load. It was similar to the Terran design Myrmidon fighter
in those terms, but its shape was decidedly alien in appearance, sleek, and light brown.
The majority of the cadets had chosen Terran vessels, making the Serapis look out of
place in the fray.
Not that anybody could see anything.
He had been forced to put switch on the pod's light dampers to avoid being blinded
by the intense flares coming out of the massive center of the fight. His craft's optical
receptors were completely down, and standard sensors were useless with the countless
numbers of countermeasure drones and EMP packages exploding.
The fray was beginning to thin, however, as the Cadets realized their mistake in
helping to create such an epic fire-storm, and all of the fighters were now heading directly
away from it, occasionally taking pot-shots at one another. He could almost hear Fargo's
laughter, mocking them for behaving in such a dangerous yet ultimately predictable
manner.
Both incoming Hornets smashed into a countermeasure drone that had been
released by some long-dead fighter, and they ceased to be a problem. The dying
maelstrom behind now, Red reduced his visual dampers, and targeted the next nearest
starfighter. It was a Hercules Mark II designated _Bruner II_.
It was vaporized almost immediately before Red could do as much as swing his
craft around. He muttered an obscenity towards the assassin, and was about to target it
when something caught his eye.
The light from a nearby sun (this training simulation was running in a binary star
system) glinted off the shield layers of a starfighter completely ignoring everything else,
and heading directly for the Arcadia installation. He ordered a closer scan, using his last
Radar sensor reserves, and hoped he was far enough away from the EMP pulses.
The HUD displayed the results nearby the Radar indicator. An Artemis class
bomber. What kind of a dumb-ass would fly that during a dogfight? He immediately
thought it was some trick of Lieutenant Fargo's to show off, but then a full identification
was received as the distance from any EMP bombs was dramatically increased.
McKnight. *What the hell is that lying bastard up to?* He thought slyly, then
engaged full afterburners to intercept.
---
The Arcadia was less than two kilometers away when the first warnings lit up. A
Serapis fighter was about a kilometer and a half away from starboard, closing fast, and
armed with dual Harpoon missiles.
Richard inhaled sharply. He had to make it. There was no alternative. Almost
instinctively he hit his bomber's afterburners.
The Serapis was outrunning the Artemis at a depressingly fast rate. Even with
throwing a significant amount of propulsion to port, Richard realized the Serapis would
reach missile range before he could hide behind the vast metal bulk of the Arcadia. After
the last encounter with Harpoon fire, he wasn't willing to go up against that firepower
with only counter-measures again.
There was an alternative.
Richard giggled uncontrollably as he slowed to one-third throttle. It was all
insane. All of it.
Not for the first time, he regretted choosing the Artemis.
---
The _McKnight II_ was now headed directly away from Red's Serapis fighter, and…
he double-checked his read-outs for residual EMP interference… ridiculously reduced its
speed to one-third of the bomber's already pathetic thrust.
Almost made him pity the son-of-a-bitch.
The aspect-lock icon slid across the pod's HUD, zeroing in on the bomber. The
triangle took several seconds to attain a full target lock, then toned softly, compelling him
to launch. He obeyed his instruments, and two yellow-orange flares soared away from the
Serapis' missile bays, shooting the warheads away at a ten-gee acceleration.
As if in a sudden panic, the Artemis hit its full burners again, accelerating to top
speed. But before it did that, the bomber launched what appeared to be a Helios bomb,
barely accelerating away. The bomber easily outran it, and passed the bomb.
The Helios struggled awkwardly forward, the thrusters pushing it forward at a
half-gee acceleration, trailing behind it a green exhaust flame.
Red Jefferson frowned, then watched eagerly as the missiles continued to close in
on their hapless target.
He could not shake his mind from the bomb the McKnight had slowed to launch.
It was extremely out of character for Richard, he had to be up to something. He told his
instruments to scan it, and scowled at the result.
---
As Richard's Artemis sped away at full acceleration, it dropped a stationary
countermeasure off at the exact speed the Helios was traveling. The countermeasure
beacon was activated immediately, and the incoming Harpoons had quickly identified it as
a non-threat, and re-targeted the Artemis. It continued hovering next to the slow-moving
bomb.
Every countermeasure beacon came equipped with a small destruction device that
had remained a part of standard design since the Terran-Vasudan War. It was designed to
prevent the acquisition of the countermeasure technology by a foreign power that might
profit from studying the countermeasure. It was activated immediately when the fighter
left the transmitting range of the drone, or was destroyed, and it burned through anything
within a narrow half-meter distance.
This self-destruction system was also equipped with a manual trigger that was
available at the pilot's request.
The instant the Harpoon missiles reached a 100 meter radius of the Helios bomb,
Richard activated the detonation sequence. The beacon vanished in an instant puff of
flame and vaporized metal. The same flame that penetrated the warhead of the nearby
heavy bomb, and 20 ounces of modified antimatter rushed outwards to meet an equal mass
of standard lead.
A curtain of silent flame spread outwards, expanding to over 300 meters and
consuming the missiles without slowing. The twin detonations barely left a blemish in the
expanding shock-wave.
Red Jefferson shouted a wordless word, and twisted his fighter sharply to port,
bracing for the impact. Fortunately the shock-wave had dissipated by the time it reached
the Serapis fighter, and didn't give the pod's motors enough cause to give in a slight
shudder.
The Serapis drifted back towards the Artemis under Red's cautious direction, in
time to see the Artemis through the quickly thinning explosion. It ducked behind a
docking strut on the Arcadia.
Feeling the embers of revenge begin to spark, Red plotted a pursuit course.
---
Well, Richard thought, I actually got to the Arcadia, but can I pull this off? If he
died in the process, Richard knew it would be by the thinnest stroke of luck if he could
make it back again.
The apex of the starfighter maelstrom had ceased to draw any action, but it was
anything but still. Charged particles were continually rampaged by the static aftermath of
the EMP explosions. It was a virtual nebula in space now, slowly expanding. Flashes of
lighting illuminated the center as the particles leapt back and forth, and exchanged their
energies continually.
The cadets' starfighters, having since been chased away by the fantastic violence
the nebula had spawned, were now regrouping on each other two kilometers from
Richard's position aside the station. Flashes of EMP bursts and sub-munitions were again
interfering with scans, as well as several countermeasure beacons. Richard didn't dare risk
expending his precious few remaining optical receptors.
So utterly predictable. They're reforming, and going to make another one of those
damn sensor-obscuring nebulas.
On a more pertinent level, that meant that there would be that much fewer fighters
on his tail. He was reminded suddenly of this when the Serapis fighter rounded the corner
of the Arcadia, and had a direct line-of-fire on him.
Violet flashes of Subach laser fire flashed by his cockpit, and then impacted the
rear shields. There was a dangerous sizzling noise as the protective energy barriers
struggled to absorb that much power. Some of it began to nudge through the weakened
shielding, and paste themselves onto the bomber's hull.
Richard pulled up in a high-gee acceleration curve, and prepared to use the station
again to obscure the Serapis' view, and thus fire. The corner was a mere two hundred meters
away.
Green laser fire joined with the Subach fire, and nearly forced the Artemis off its
flight path. The two colors intermingled, and zeroed in on him as he shunted all of his
power plant's energy reserves to engines.
The green fire was from a Prometheus-retrofit type cannon, and coming from a
different vector than the Serapis. Quickly, Richard checked his rear view.
A second fighter, a Hercules Mk2 was angling in towards Richard, escaping the
destructive power of the central fire-fight. A familiar, grating voice emerged from the
pod's communication receivers.
"You escaped from me last time, dumbass," George Hadley taunted. "I'm not
gonna let that happen again."
It was now or never. Richard reduced his throttle to one third again, and double-
checked his after-burner charge levels.
"Giving up so soon? Can't say I blame you." Both hostile fighters closed to within
250 meters, their laser fire was deadly accurate.
Richard targeted the Arcadia station, and fired a single Helios bomb before hitting
his after-burners again. At the bomb's current rate of speed, it would impact the station in
less than ten seconds.
---
Red watched the _McKnight II's_ engines roar desperately. Again, a single bomb
was released from its bays, streaking green exhaust as it struggled to gain speed. It was
directed towards the neutral Arcadia station.
He told his Serapis to pay it no heed. It was busy. A red aspect-lock triangle was
narrowing on the Artemis, ready to fire the Serapis' load of Hornet missiles.
A Hornet missile was a slower, less powerful version of the Harpoon missile. But
it was so much more powerful when used correctly. Due to the Hornet's compact form,
up to eight of them could fit in the fighter's missile bays.
Again, the _McKnight_ dodged behind the hull of the mammoth metal construct,
cutting off the missile lock.
The Hercules Mk2 seemed to not notice the Serapis besides it. An impossibility,
Red knew, because it had come from directly behind. It probably could have taken him
out, but instead it had ignored the interceptor completely, obsessed with the Artemis.
*Notice this, jackass.*
The Serapis pulled to port, its wing sticking far out in front, and rammed the
fuselage of the Herc. Red's exterior hull was composed primary of the stronger Vasudan
alloys, and dug itself five meters into the starboard side of the engines before the
momentum finally ceased.
White-hot deuterium from the shattered valves poured liberally onto the Serapis'
wing, melting through it, and burning through what remained of the Herc's engines. Both
starfighters wobbled through space uncertainly, each caught in the other and trying to
regain control. The conflicting propulsions nearly crashed both into the metallic monster
of the Arcadia.
Red finally managed to drag his fighter's wounded wing from the side of Hadley's
Hercules. He hadn't been counting on the deuterium valves; usually they were small and
extremely difficult to locate with anything other than a complete decimation of the hull.
Bad luck.
Hadley's fighter, having taken by far the worst of the damage, fell far behind. It
floundered like a wounded eagle to regain control of its flight, before his starboard engine
shut down completely. Program redundancies and fail-safes had long since failed to
operate, and the fighter was sent tumbling away from the Arcadia.
The Helios impacted the Arcadia.
Red Jefferson saw far too late what had happened. He had just fought Hadley
over who was going to be the first to die.
A shower of flame spread upwards, vaporizing a large portion of the Arcadia's
docking platforms in an ever-expanding fury that rivaled that of the artificial nebulas. The
Serapis fighter barely left a blemish as it winked out of existence, vaporized instantly.
An new sun was formed temporarily as power cables in the interior of the Arcadia
snapped, sending a whiplash of raw energy through the hull of the station. The backlash
of both the Helios and the released power supply sent pure atomic energy racing
outwards, severing the umbilical supports between the station and the largest of the
docking platforms, tossing it haphazardly off into space. If the detonation had taken place
inside of a gravity field, an instant mushroom cloud would have formed.
The energy finally subsided, but the force did not. A violent stream of energy and
debris was thrown outwards in a shock-wave. Numerous meteorite-sized pinholes dotted
Hadley's injured fighter, piercing the cockpit and fuel storage chambers. The Herc's air
supply didn't have time to rush out before friction excited the unstable deuterium samples.
The Hercules didn't explode. It became a sheet of pure plasma, rushing in all
directions. Hadley only figured out what had happened after the pod's monitors had
snapped off, and reported his death.
The Arcadia station's hull itself shielded the Arcadia from the worst of the
explosion. It sailed away happily as Richard watched his kill score increase, invulnerable
to the destruction that he had caused.
A second or two after the last of the flames was extinguished, the communications
line was alive with chatter.
"Shit!"
"What the hell-"
"Who-"
"Helios bomb-"
"Look out! Incoming debris!"
The shock-wave washed over the stunned starfighter pilots, letting none escape
without damage as shrapnel pinpricks shot through their vital systems. Only three were
actually destroyed, however, as thick cockpit windows were cracked, leaking the life-
sustaining atmosphere away.
"You son-of-a-bitch bomber," someone laughed. Richard couldn't distinguish
who.
"It was McKnight! Sweet shit!"
"Get the Artemis," Hadley's voice roared, his fighter reincarnated.
Red just laughed as his Serapis re-emerged from subspace. "I gotta hand it to you,
McKnight. Had us fooled. Too bad you won't be able to do it again."
Richard realized that Jefferson was correct. Now that the other Cadets had seen
what he could do, there was no possible way that they were going to let themselves get
caught near the Arcadia. They weren't stupid.
"Get the bastard. Pick him off from a distance with missiles."
Still, did he need to do anything else? He had scored five kills, which was more
than enough to ensure that he would pass. McKnight thought again about Fargo's
promise, the reward of commanding a squadron wing.
"After we get 'im, don't let that peck anywhere near the Arcadia again," a thickly
accented voice said.
"Tear apart his flesh! Chew on his bones!" Hadley cried.
The vast majority of starfighter exhausts turned, pointing directly away from
Richard, and sending their owners towards the Artemis bomber. Occasionally, several of
them would take pot-shots at each other, swooping around and racing as vultures for their
prize.
Richard truly knew the definition of intimidation. He felt incredibly alone watching
the vast array of hostiles close on him, and him alone. Vultures.
What to do?
He slowed again to one-third throttle, and rigged his Helios bombs to accept an
aspect-lock. A scarlet glowing triangle rotated across his pod's screen, zeroing in on a
fighter dead ahead, the _Yoshi III_, a Myrmidon class interceptor. The Helios had a two-
kilometer targeting range, essentially meaning that he could attain a lock with his bombs
faster than any Harpoons or Hornets.
Unfortunately, the Helios bomb was useless when targeting starfighters. It had no
onboard optical receptors, meaning a single countermeasure, or slight maneuver in any
direction could throw the bulky torpedo off course.
"What the hell? McKnight's trying to lock his Helios on to me."
"He's up to something," Hadley said. "Better to turn away than risk it."
"I'm not taking orders from you, ass. This is a dogfight, remember? We both
want each other dead."
"Correction. We all want McKnight dead. Now concentrate on him."
"Screw you, Hadley," somebody else said. A minor dogfight broke out between
Hadley's Herc and another Ulysses class fighter, with Hadley emerging victorious, but far
behind the other fighters closing on the Artemis.
Richard's aspect triangle blinked as a solid lock was achieved. He fired the Helios,
the immediately opened a tight-beam communications channel to the bomb's guidance
processor, canceling the targeting information, and telling the bomb to fly on a straight
path.
The Helios bomb itself was already overloaded with the warhead itself, adding the
propulsion jets and guidance computers merely served to make the bomb more massive
than necessary. It was proposed once at the GTVA Security Council that the Helios be
driven by nothing more than the inertia of the bomber itself, but this was quickly
disregarded by the weaponry scientists. Still, the bomb was far too heavy to have anything
else loaded on to it, including a manual detonation device.
The Helios was normally detonated by the sheer kinetic impact with the hull of its
target. Anything that was otherwise ignite the explosives in the bomb would have to be
from an external force.
Richard increased his speed to match the bomb, and released one of his few
remaining countermeasure beacons. He had carefully positioned his fighter to within a
quarter meter; a very difficult task with the unresponsive controls of the Artemis, and
executed a curving upward turn that would send him away from the coming onslaught of
fighters.
A single Serapis fighter peeled away from the swarm; it was the _Jefferson II_.
Oh, but damn. He had forgotten that Red had seen this maneuver before. Richard
waited for Red's scalding voice warning the others away.
The communications line remained silent, save for the occasional idle chatter of
competing pilots.
*What's wrong, Red?* He thought. *Savoring the moment of spoiling my nefarious
plans?*
The silence was finally broken, not by Jefferson, but by Yoshi's laughter. His
starfighter has twisted slightly to starboard after firing a countermeasure. The bomb
appeared to be no longer tracking him, so he relaxed slightly. His braying laughter carried
through all the Cadet's pods.
Richard transmitted the destruction code to the countermeasure, which
disappeared in a puff of steam and debris. That explosion was instantly overshadowed by
the Helios.
Without the added power of the nuclear power cables in the Arcadia, the explosion
was several orders of magnitude smaller than the Arcadia detonation. But it could still
destroy anything within half a kilometer by a combination of the incendiaries themselves,
and a titanic energy shock-wave.
The swarm of converging fighters was very compact in form.
Yoshi was still laughing when his fighter disappeared amid a hail of energy brighter
than a star. He only stopped when his monitors turned as black as night, save for the
death indicator. Three other fighter pilots had no time for their brains to fully register the
explosion before their individual starships were transformed into a stream of boiling
plasma surging into space.
Five more cadets had time to open their eyes in a sudden horror before the flames
battered their crafts into death's submission.
Seven cadets had actual time to maneuver desperately away before the shock-wave
split them into shattered components.
As soon as the bright superstar appeared on George Hadley's forward view, he just
sat their in dawning terror as he saw the bomb consume the vast majority of the rag-tag
starfighter mob. His own Hercules shuddered violently as the dissipated wave passed over
him, and filling the pod with a low bass rumble. His own fighter had fallen far behind the
rest of the group, and was safe from the primary explosion.
The remaining fighters scattered in a disarrayed confusion, the communications
lines overloaded with shouts and desperate pleas. And the Artemis continued straight
ahead, as if it didn't have a care in the world.
The remaining fighters regrouped, united completely this time. There were no
dogfights amongst them as they closed on the Artemis, and made the final kill. Missile
after missile reduced the bomber to radioactive dust, and every time McKnight respawned,
the cadets made damn sure he never had a chance to launch a single bomb.
But it was too late; Richard had already attained the highest kill score in the
exercise.
Final Exam
---
"Now comes the fun part, hotshots," Fargo said a month later. "As a final skills
test before graduation, we are all going to engage in a simulator dogfight against each
other."
After the incident with Red, Richard had stayed clear of the any other training
group's social endeavors. When he was asked why, Richard began recounting some old
childhood trauma tale about the other kids that he made up. Such encounters usually only
lasted about 30 seconds.
The GTD Aquataine had stayed an extra month in Vega while repair crews
scoured the destroyer's surface. Now all of the Aquataine's compartments were capable of
supporting human and Vasudan life again, and the crew and passengers had recently been
briefed that the Aquataine would be leaving for the Deneb system shortly. Admiral
Bosch's Neo-Terran Front had recently registered some dismaying gains there.
The ship has taken some heavy casualties during the battle in the asteroid field, and
the crew replacements were now all onboard... all 300 of them. The field itself had been
classified by the GTVA Natural Disasters Board as dangerous to any vessels, and the jump
node itself had been sealed off. In a way, the Aquataine was lucky to have gotten through
it, because if she had been forced to take the longer route around to Vega and Deneb, she
would still be traveling.
"Now our training group is had more than thirty people in it," Fargo continued,
"Now consider that, and add to those each of those people a heavily armed fighter of their
choice, and a confined space around a simulated Arcadia-class Terran installation, and
what do you have? Cadets, you have hell in a hand-basket. We will be pulling some fairly
tight maneuvers in there."
Fargo had quickly forgotten the 'heroism' Richard had shown during the asteroid
field maneuvers. He knew it was purposeful, to now show favoritism to anybody,
especially not an ace cadet with a bad social record. Such events would spawn an overly-
inflated ego.
Richard had not yet heard anything about Douglas Remmington, and the Siren's
Call. This was natural of course, Douglas would not have contacted him even if he had
made it through the jump node to Epsilon Pegasi. However, nothing had been on the local
news broadcasts that even made a mention of a single ship trying to run the blockaded
jump node. Richard had no choice but to take it as a good omen, if Siren's Call had been
destroyed while running the blockade, the GTVA would trumpet their victory to every
reporter on Vega.
"During the mock dogfight, you will have the ability to respawn for not more than
five times after a death. And," Fargo smiled, "as an extra incentive to do well, I will fail
those three students who get the lowest kill score."
Richard had, for the most part, done extraordinarily well in his training. He now
knew the cockpit interior of any fighter like he did the back of his own hand. During
bombing simulations, it had been Richard who scored the final shot that destroyed the
simulated Orion-class destroyer. He was below average at one point though... during
combat Richard could not for the life of him figure out how to equalize energy settings
between his subsystems without being distracted.
"I did not tell of this until today, as you MUST learn that combat situations are
often times very spontaneous, occurring with little or no warning. Cadets, you have five
minutes now to get in full flight gear and report to the simulator chambers on Deck 31.
Now move."
---
The simulator chamber had little decoration, and for good reason. The walls were
a depressing shade of gunmetal gray in a square chamber 20 meters across. The air here
was cooler than the rest of the Aquataine, and a little stuffier as well. Obviously the life-
support was not as strong here, and to Richard's naked eye he could detect no vents or
openings other than the chamber doors.
What made this chamber special to the officers and crew of the GTD Aquataine
were the oval pods depressed into the floor of the chamber, and there were about fifty of
the stretched across the room. The pods were about the size of a starfighter cockpit (in
other words very small) and painted a dull red, with an opaque shielding covering each.
Various wires were cast haphazardly about the room, and the slight hum of the power
being run through them echoed off the barren walls, giving Richard a feeling of a spartan
oppression which had become very familiar over the last few weeks.
The loneliness that pervaded this room was only staged off slightly by the murmur
of Richard's cadet comrades. Richard tried his best to ignore them, knowing that in a
short few minutes they would become his bitter enemies during the dogfight.
Fargo sat on top one of the simulator pods, and waited until the group settled
down. "Okay, people, this dogfight has no set time limit. Whoever is the last flying will
be declared winner."
"I said before that the three pilots who score the worst here will be flunked out of
my class, and I stand by that. The GTVA has enough fighter pilots as it is, and command
has instructed me to only allow in those who can handle themselves in a combat situation.
However, as another incentive, the 'winner' of this sim will be given command of their own
fighter wing once they join up with their squadrons."
"I'll be observing you from within my own pod, but I will not interfere with this
dogfight. Good luck, Cadets, and remember not to take any of this personally."
The pod covers hissed open, and the cadets began to pick and chose the pods they
wanted. Richard chose the one in the corner, and snapped the cover shut around him.
The false cockpit around Richard engulfed him in pitch darkness. It was not for
several long moments that something on his instrumentation panel lit up. It was the
communications receiver.
Richard pulled his flight headset around his ears, and hit the RECEIVE button.
Another nearby display began to glow, informing him that the message was directed at him
through standard GTVA flight frequencies, standard transmission.
"Pilots, I will engage the encoding sequence as this transmission ends… now."
Fargo's transmission degenerated into a series of static bursts. Richard was familiar with
the routine, and flipped the barely visible decryption switch. The computer buzzed, and
Fargo's voice became intelligible again.
"Okay, now assume you are inside a standard hangar, and begin powering up your
fighter's systems. I will time you for speed and accuracy."
Richard looked upwards, towards the roof of his pod, and triggered three switches
on the top panel, the power lattices signal for start-up. Instead of the dull illumination that
had haunted through the pod, every panel lit up, and began displaying status reports, save
for the forward view, which remained absolutely dark. He punched the engine status key,
and began feeding test instructions into his navigation and weapons systems computer.
A blinking light attracted his attention, the secondary shield generators remained
dead. With the secondary shields, the primaries did not have the energy redundancy they
needed to deflect mass. He smiled, it was Fargo ensuring that her trainees were
completely attentive during the process, and activated the reserve generators. Shields
registered fully active.
A window that would normally give Richard targeting data on a selected ship
glowed with another light, and a menu appeared, listing the various ship types.
"Now select the craft you wish to fly during this dogfight. I have made available
over 21 types, so this should make combat much more diverse. After that, select your
weapon load-outs. What you can carry will be dependent on the fighter you have chosen."
Richard choose the GTF Artemis for the flight. The Artemis was a heavy bomber
class fighter, and moved and maneuvered slowly. However, it carried extremely high
marks for hull strength and weapon ordnance capacity. For weapons, he selected as a
primary laser cannon the Prometheus Retrofit cannon, and as a secondary laser the Subach
HL-7.
Richard hesitated when he began selected the missiles he wanted to fill his bays
with. Yes, he thought, nobody would expect this, but does that make it good? It may
catch them by surprise, but surprise alone cannot kill. He felt his brow furrow. If this
gambit worked, he would be rewarded with a remarkably high kill score. If it didn't he
would meet ridicule and several deaths, and, if his score was low enough, expulsion from
the GTVA fighter program, and it would be the end for his true mission here.
He made up his mind, and thought, *It doesn't matter whether you win or lose, it's
how you play the game.*
For two of his three missile banks, he selected the Harpoon missiles, which were
standard anti-fighter weapons. But for his third bank, he loaded it with the Helios bomb.
The Helios was an anti-cruiser weapon, a slow, bulky warhead that was meant for
piercing the hull of a capital ship with a high explosive charge. It had virtually no tracking
ability, and was thus absolutely useless against the faster starfighters.
He hit the ACCEPT key, and waited.
It was several moments before his communications panel lit up again with Fargo's
voice. "Cadet McKnight, my computer must be feeding me faulty data. It says here that
you selected a bomber fighter, and the Helios bomb as a warhead complement."
Richard opened his transmission channel. "That's correct, Lieutenant. I will fly the
Artemis with the Helios ordnance."
"Cadet," Fargo sounded annoyed, "You did listen me, didn't you? You are aware
this is a dogfight, not a bombing mission."
"I am aware."
"Suit yourself," Fargo said simply, and silence again consumed the speakers.
Another several minutes passed while the remaining cadets selected their choices.
Richard waited tensely, until finally the Fargo cut in again.
"You are now all completely flight prepped. When the simulation starts, you will
be emerging from subspace five kilometers from the Arcades station."
*Five kilometers,* Richard thought in dawning horror, *That's worse than I had
anticipated! Much worse!*
"You will begin in five seconds. Good hunting."
It was another tense ticking of the clock before the forward viewport shed the
darkness, and became the bright colors and shapes of the innards of subspace. After the
inky blackness that had presided before, it was almost blinding. Richard resisted the
impulse to shield his eyes.
The ebbs and flows of subspace gave way to the pinpricks of stars and the vacuum,
dying out to become normal space. Behind the fighter, the portal it had emerged through
sealed itself off, rendering itself to become dark again. To Richard's pupils, the struggle to
compensate became almost too intense, but they managed to cope.
The radar screen on Richard's HUD immediately began to pinpoint the positions of
31 hostile fighters, each with three kilometers of each other, and surrounding the faint
target ahead, the Arcadia installation.
The Arcadia class of stations was a strange design, yet a familiar one. A giant,
three kilometer wide mass of immobile metal constructs, almost a rectangle with corners
and edges cut out at random. A tower stretching away from it on what Richard currently
perceived as the top of the station marked the command center and administration offices.
The most interesting part of the Arcadia was the immense hole in the center. This
hole had a radius of almost a quarter of the station itself, and was perfectly regular as it
reached through the station, until it emerged in the other side, linking the two borders
through vacuum. To signify its importance, the interior of the hull was coated with a
different metal, giving it a yellowish-gold color.
The Arcadia station was used primarily as a supply point, and the site for the
construction of cruiser-class capital ships. The framework and hull of a cruiser would be
assembled inside the specially coated interior, and that would be shipped to another point
for systems integration. Thus, cranes and platforms dotted the interior of the vast
construction zone, as well as on the outside of the station.
In real life, the station itself was armed with several laser cannons, none of which
would be used in this dogfight. The station was designated neutral, and was present solely
as an obstacle in the center of the fight.
From Richard's fighter, the station appeared desperately small. Hopelessly small,
too far away…
Five kilometers distanced him from his only hope at successfully dodging in this
clunky fighter, and his fellow cadets were now surrounding him on all sides. Two of them
were heading directly towards his fighter at far faster than the Artemis could manage, even
with afterburners.
The HUD was began to indicate a warning as the enemy fighters closed to two
kilometers.
Richard almost resigned himself to his fate of death, when a single, pervading
thought echoed through his consciousness. Divide and Conquer.
He examined the radar signatures of the fighters approaching his craft. One was a
Hercules Mark II, and the other was the old Ulysses class. The Herc, although still faster
then the Artemis, was bulkier than the Ulysses, although capable of holding more arms.
The Ulysses was a fighter chosen primary in fights like this for its speed, and razor-thin
profile which made it harder to hit. It could run circles around the bomber.
Richard sighed, and pulled his fighter around to face the Herc II dead on. Perhaps
he could force it away from interception using his Harpoon missiles. This could be
extremely difficult, as the second Richard had closed within missile range, he would also
be within the range of the Herc. And the faster Ulysses was closing in on his tail.
Targeting warnings flashed and vied for Richard's attention as soon as he closed to
within a kilometer of the Hercules, which had been designated Hadley. He had assumed
that the craft, lacking a squadron or even a wing, would be named after their pilots, and
this was confirmed here. Robert Hadley had remained obstinately at about the middle of
the class in skill rankings, and during combat Richard had known his weapons skills to be
somewhat mediocre.
900 meters, range! A triangle was projected across the pod's HUD, vectoring in
on Hadley's Hercules Mk2, running loops around the target as it strove to acquire an
aspect lock. The aspect-seeking missiles, such as the Harpoon, were much, much more
accurate then standard heat-seekers, except for the fact that without an aspect lock they
were useless. The lock usually took several seconds to find a target in an arena where
microseconds were the most precious currency.
Richard swallowed as another set of warnings indicated that Hadley had also
begun to find an aspect lock. Hadley must have chosen Harpoon missiles as well.
The comm system buzzed, and a familiar voice, Hadley's, spoke with a taunting
hint. "Bomber… huh," he chortled, "McKnight, you dumbass. What the hell were you
thinking?"
Richard had no response. It suddenly struck him how insane this was. What
devilish plan had he been fermenting? It had completely nulled now, and he was left
sitting in the cockpit of a simulated hunk of slow moving crap, and about to be pulverized
several times over by craft that obviously outmatched him in every way possible.
The triangular targeting graphic ceased looping drunkenly around the Herc, and
maintained a position solidly on the approaching fighter's nose, and Richard's headphones
emitted a solid machine tone. He furiously stabbed buttons, urging the Harpoons to
launch.
On both sides of the simulated Artemis fighter, two warheads were pushed away
from the port and starboard tubes on a blast of high-pressure exhaust. Within a sixth of a
second, the thrusters on the Harpoons kicked in, spraying yellow fumes across the prow of
the Artemis as they streaked towards their target at over three times the speed of the
Artemis.
At that exact instant, Hadley fired his two Harpoons.
Left with no alternative, Richard pulled away from the Herc coming towards him
head-on, and engaged full afterburners. The Harpoons passed each other and continued
swooping in towards their respective targets. Due to the angle, Richard could no longer
see Hadley's reaction to his threat.
His HUD was again lit with warnings. The Ulysses craft, designated Ida, was
within firing range, and attempted to achieve an aspect lock.
*Shit.*
Not even the versatile Ulysses-type craft could outrun a Harpoon missile, and
Richard obviously stood no chance of eluding it, even with burners still engaged.
On his instrumentation panel, among the arrays and rows of display readouts,
switches, and controls, there was a single button protected by a glass shielding. Richard
flipped open the glass, palms sweating, and pressed the button.
Every GTVA fighter craft has loaded on to it several dozen anti-missile
countermeasures, for use ONLY in extremely dangerous situations. Due to their limited
supply, pilots were urged to conserve them at every point possible.
Aspect-seeking missiles, however, were very resistant to the counter-measures,
and were capable of surpassing several of them to destroy its true target. Richard fired off
five of his supply, and twisted his craft around in a mad circle in an attempt to avoid the
incoming warheads.
The counter-measure system worked by utilizing a cone-shaped sensor beacon,
which in turn would project a sensor ghost to the missiles. The ghost would assume the
exact properties of their home craft, in this case Richard's GTF Artemis, in an attempt to
fool the missiles into detonating on the countermeasures, instead of the fighter.
Nature abhorred a vacuum, and scientists equipped the Harpoon missiles with
optical sensors as well as Radar, to prevent the waste of the valuable Harpoons. For
Richard's countermeasures to work they thus must assume the shape and size of the craft
in question, which was obviously impossible. For the sensor ghost to be perceived as
accurate by the missile's processors it must be at extremely short ranges, almost point
blank, to detonate before the optical sensors could override the impulse.
Richard stabbed the button five times, and pulled a high-gee left spin… unfelt in
the unmoving simulator pod. There was a vague sense of disconnected atrophy, leaving
Richard disoriented.
The pyramid-shaped countermeasure drones set immediately to work broadcasting
their dummy signal, and both incoming missiles swerved away from the Artemis. One of
them smashed into a countermeasure, instantly flaming, even in the vacuum of space as the
warhead was triggered. The other missile was knocked off course by the proximity of the
detonation, giving it time to properly re-identify the bomber _McKnight_. Richard swore a
silent curse that the warhead hadn't been demolished by the shock-wave.
The missile continued to accelerate towards the bulky Artemis, moving at a ten-
gee acceleration force, leaving Richard absolutely no time to react.
The shear kinetic force of the missile pierced both the shields and the fuselage of
the Artemis' port fusion engine pod, completely annihilating the intake values, and sending
streamers of fire and plasma through the reaction coil, the primary source of propulsion
for the port engines. If it weren't for the detonation itself, which followed a microsecond
later, the input would have continued feeding white-hot deuterium through the broken
valves, which would have been more than enough to trigger a fatal overload. As it was,
the detonation completely sealed what remained of the tubes.
For what the simulator pods lacked in gee-force acceleration, they more than made
up for in collisions. Motors underneath the pod whirred to life, and began to violently
buck the pod forward. Richard was thrown forward against his harness, with such a force
that he was sure it would leave a nasty bruise.
The Artemis spun wildly out of control with only the starboard engine active, and
the pod gleefully responded, shoving the nose of the simulator forward, and then suddenly
to the left. Richard barely managed to keep his grip on the controls; not that it mattered at
any rate, he thought ruefully.
The Artemis' stabilizer programs kicked in, reducing the starboard thrust and
attempting to bring the reserve port valves online. The harpoon had indiscriminately
destroyed everything near the impact point, including the reserves. The port afterburners
were the only systems on the port fuselage that even acknowledged a systems diagnostic.
Fortunately, they were still online, and the stabilizer programs sought it out. The burners
fired several times, reducing the dangerous spin the Artemis had accumulated, and the
starboard engine shut down to compensate, leaving the McKnight drifting towards the
Arcades station at a constant speed in the frictionless vacuum.
The stabilizer programs, standard on every fighter's emergency reaction system,
did this before Richard could even grab the controls, and their monitors blinked proudly at
him.
Richard, trying to shake the feeling that he was fighting for a cause that had
already lost, peered through his cockpit's side view, and examined the damage.
The engine fuselage itself was reasonably intact, the only tell-tale sign of damage
was a seven-meter burning hole, leaking debris, gases, and metal slag. Dammit, he
thought, it went flying straight through before it blew. The relatively little external
physical damage was overshadowed by fact that visible through the entrance puncture was
a gaping twenty-meter diameter hole. It would have been better by far for the Artemis had
the missile detonated on the heavily armored exterior, and had not touched the vulnerable
internal mechanics. It seemed little consolation that the shielding of the Artemis had
slowed the missile, preventing it from digging through the engine pod until it reached the
cockpit.
Also visible from that angle was the other two harpoons diving straight for the
Artemis. The Ulysses pilot laughed ferociously through the speakers. "You lose,
Hadley!" the vicious chuckle rang irritatingly through Richard's ears. "I get the kill!"
Richard sighed sadly as the missiles shattered the prow of the Artemis, whose
heavy hull layering could not resist the barrage. A curtain of flame washed over the
cockpit window, and the pod bucked one more time before every monitor suddenly
snapped into bleak darkness. The exterior view was replaced by midnight black.
After several seconds, the dim cockpit was lit by a single, glowing monitor.
CADET MCKNIGHT: KILLED BY CADET IDA
KILL SCORE: 0
DEATHS: 1
YOU HAVE 3 RESPAWNS REMAINING
PRESS TRIGGER TO ACKNOWLEDGE
To Richard's dismay, there was no option to change his craft choice. He resigned
himself to the Artemis, and his fate, and hit what had been the primary fire trigger.
The cockpit was once again lit by the steady glow of display monitors and control
panels. The light was almost immediately drowned out by the flash of subspace, as the
Artemis emerged from the flux of subspace.
The retinal-burning aura of the portal ceased, and was replaced by the dim specter
of the stars. Behind the Artemis bomber _McKnight II_, reality again assumed normal
proportions as the subspace flux sealed upon itself.
The Arcadia installation was still five kilometers away, directly ahead in the pod's
HUD. Not more than three kilometers away, between the Artemis and the installation, a
fierce battle raged in path. Sub-munitions from missile exploded in a violent fury,
shattered by the frequent laser bursts in a storm over four kilometers long. The
unmistakable burst of a larger starfighter's fusion coils overloading marred the background
of the void, fading away after only half-a-second in the fray.
Space there had again ceased to be a vacuum, something Richard had only seen
during the asteroid incident. It was extremely rare for such a phenomenon to occur, not
even the larger naval battles of the Great War had produced that effect.
No sensor in existence could penetrate such a maelstrom, and the simulators
reflected this perfectly. All the starfighters in the quarry had activated their full electronic
warfare suites, sending out bursts of EMP blasts that wrecked havoc with enemy sensors.
Most had already expended their entire supply of countermeasure drones, filling space
with a seemingly endless supply of scanner echoes. The radar monitor on the pod's lower
HUD gave the total number of detectable fighters as 93, even after discounting all visible
countermeasures. And that was only on the edges of the fire-fight. The center registered
as almost a solid mass on the detector screens, impervious even to the optical detectors.
Worse still, any optical sensors that Richard directed towards the firestorm were quickly
burnt out before any useful data could return. He would have to relay on his eyes and his
eyes alone, the UV and gamma rays being emitted were far too powerful, and the Artemis
bomber was not equipped with standard visible light optics. He swore another curse, one
which would have normally made him blush foolishly.
Richard quickly and wisely changed course, and told the bomber to skirt the fray
by a minimum of two kilometers, while slipping towards the Arcadia station, and powered
down his active sensors. If he relied only on his passives, that included mainly his own
vision, he might be able to fly past, unnoticed.
If.
Dammit, why did it always have to be like that?
---
The Ulysses starfighter Ida burst apart in the targeting receptacles, as fire from the
Subach HL-7 lasers shredded the fighters cockpit. Debris went spinning off into space,
adding to the surrounding confusion.
Red Jefferson smiled briefly, then twisted hard to starboard as a pair of Hornet
missiles randomly locked onto his Vasudan-designed Serapis class fighter, streaking out of
the fray.
The Serapis fighter was an agile design, quick and maneuverable, while
maintaining a modest weapons load. It was similar to the Terran design Myrmidon fighter
in those terms, but its shape was decidedly alien in appearance, sleek, and light brown.
The majority of the cadets had chosen Terran vessels, making the Serapis look out of
place in the fray.
Not that anybody could see anything.
He had been forced to put switch on the pod's light dampers to avoid being blinded
by the intense flares coming out of the massive center of the fight. His craft's optical
receptors were completely down, and standard sensors were useless with the countless
numbers of countermeasure drones and EMP packages exploding.
The fray was beginning to thin, however, as the Cadets realized their mistake in
helping to create such an epic fire-storm, and all of the fighters were now heading directly
away from it, occasionally taking pot-shots at one another. He could almost hear Fargo's
laughter, mocking them for behaving in such a dangerous yet ultimately predictable
manner.
Both incoming Hornets smashed into a countermeasure drone that had been
released by some long-dead fighter, and they ceased to be a problem. The dying
maelstrom behind now, Red reduced his visual dampers, and targeted the next nearest
starfighter. It was a Hercules Mark II designated _Bruner II_.
It was vaporized almost immediately before Red could do as much as swing his
craft around. He muttered an obscenity towards the assassin, and was about to target it
when something caught his eye.
The light from a nearby sun (this training simulation was running in a binary star
system) glinted off the shield layers of a starfighter completely ignoring everything else,
and heading directly for the Arcadia installation. He ordered a closer scan, using his last
Radar sensor reserves, and hoped he was far enough away from the EMP pulses.
The HUD displayed the results nearby the Radar indicator. An Artemis class
bomber. What kind of a dumb-ass would fly that during a dogfight? He immediately
thought it was some trick of Lieutenant Fargo's to show off, but then a full identification
was received as the distance from any EMP bombs was dramatically increased.
McKnight. *What the hell is that lying bastard up to?* He thought slyly, then
engaged full afterburners to intercept.
---
The Arcadia was less than two kilometers away when the first warnings lit up. A
Serapis fighter was about a kilometer and a half away from starboard, closing fast, and
armed with dual Harpoon missiles.
Richard inhaled sharply. He had to make it. There was no alternative. Almost
instinctively he hit his bomber's afterburners.
The Serapis was outrunning the Artemis at a depressingly fast rate. Even with
throwing a significant amount of propulsion to port, Richard realized the Serapis would
reach missile range before he could hide behind the vast metal bulk of the Arcadia. After
the last encounter with Harpoon fire, he wasn't willing to go up against that firepower
with only counter-measures again.
There was an alternative.
Richard giggled uncontrollably as he slowed to one-third throttle. It was all
insane. All of it.
Not for the first time, he regretted choosing the Artemis.
---
The _McKnight II_ was now headed directly away from Red's Serapis fighter, and…
he double-checked his read-outs for residual EMP interference… ridiculously reduced its
speed to one-third of the bomber's already pathetic thrust.
Almost made him pity the son-of-a-bitch.
The aspect-lock icon slid across the pod's HUD, zeroing in on the bomber. The
triangle took several seconds to attain a full target lock, then toned softly, compelling him
to launch. He obeyed his instruments, and two yellow-orange flares soared away from the
Serapis' missile bays, shooting the warheads away at a ten-gee acceleration.
As if in a sudden panic, the Artemis hit its full burners again, accelerating to top
speed. But before it did that, the bomber launched what appeared to be a Helios bomb,
barely accelerating away. The bomber easily outran it, and passed the bomb.
The Helios struggled awkwardly forward, the thrusters pushing it forward at a
half-gee acceleration, trailing behind it a green exhaust flame.
Red Jefferson frowned, then watched eagerly as the missiles continued to close in
on their hapless target.
He could not shake his mind from the bomb the McKnight had slowed to launch.
It was extremely out of character for Richard, he had to be up to something. He told his
instruments to scan it, and scowled at the result.
---
As Richard's Artemis sped away at full acceleration, it dropped a stationary
countermeasure off at the exact speed the Helios was traveling. The countermeasure
beacon was activated immediately, and the incoming Harpoons had quickly identified it as
a non-threat, and re-targeted the Artemis. It continued hovering next to the slow-moving
bomb.
Every countermeasure beacon came equipped with a small destruction device that
had remained a part of standard design since the Terran-Vasudan War. It was designed to
prevent the acquisition of the countermeasure technology by a foreign power that might
profit from studying the countermeasure. It was activated immediately when the fighter
left the transmitting range of the drone, or was destroyed, and it burned through anything
within a narrow half-meter distance.
This self-destruction system was also equipped with a manual trigger that was
available at the pilot's request.
The instant the Harpoon missiles reached a 100 meter radius of the Helios bomb,
Richard activated the detonation sequence. The beacon vanished in an instant puff of
flame and vaporized metal. The same flame that penetrated the warhead of the nearby
heavy bomb, and 20 ounces of modified antimatter rushed outwards to meet an equal mass
of standard lead.
A curtain of silent flame spread outwards, expanding to over 300 meters and
consuming the missiles without slowing. The twin detonations barely left a blemish in the
expanding shock-wave.
Red Jefferson shouted a wordless word, and twisted his fighter sharply to port,
bracing for the impact. Fortunately the shock-wave had dissipated by the time it reached
the Serapis fighter, and didn't give the pod's motors enough cause to give in a slight
shudder.
The Serapis drifted back towards the Artemis under Red's cautious direction, in
time to see the Artemis through the quickly thinning explosion. It ducked behind a
docking strut on the Arcadia.
Feeling the embers of revenge begin to spark, Red plotted a pursuit course.
---
Well, Richard thought, I actually got to the Arcadia, but can I pull this off? If he
died in the process, Richard knew it would be by the thinnest stroke of luck if he could
make it back again.
The apex of the starfighter maelstrom had ceased to draw any action, but it was
anything but still. Charged particles were continually rampaged by the static aftermath of
the EMP explosions. It was a virtual nebula in space now, slowly expanding. Flashes of
lighting illuminated the center as the particles leapt back and forth, and exchanged their
energies continually.
The cadets' starfighters, having since been chased away by the fantastic violence
the nebula had spawned, were now regrouping on each other two kilometers from
Richard's position aside the station. Flashes of EMP bursts and sub-munitions were again
interfering with scans, as well as several countermeasure beacons. Richard didn't dare risk
expending his precious few remaining optical receptors.
So utterly predictable. They're reforming, and going to make another one of those
damn sensor-obscuring nebulas.
On a more pertinent level, that meant that there would be that much fewer fighters
on his tail. He was reminded suddenly of this when the Serapis fighter rounded the corner
of the Arcadia, and had a direct line-of-fire on him.
Violet flashes of Subach laser fire flashed by his cockpit, and then impacted the
rear shields. There was a dangerous sizzling noise as the protective energy barriers
struggled to absorb that much power. Some of it began to nudge through the weakened
shielding, and paste themselves onto the bomber's hull.
Richard pulled up in a high-gee acceleration curve, and prepared to use the station
again to obscure the Serapis' view, and thus fire. The corner was a mere two hundred meters
away.
Green laser fire joined with the Subach fire, and nearly forced the Artemis off its
flight path. The two colors intermingled, and zeroed in on him as he shunted all of his
power plant's energy reserves to engines.
The green fire was from a Prometheus-retrofit type cannon, and coming from a
different vector than the Serapis. Quickly, Richard checked his rear view.
A second fighter, a Hercules Mk2 was angling in towards Richard, escaping the
destructive power of the central fire-fight. A familiar, grating voice emerged from the
pod's communication receivers.
"You escaped from me last time, dumbass," George Hadley taunted. "I'm not
gonna let that happen again."
It was now or never. Richard reduced his throttle to one third again, and double-
checked his after-burner charge levels.
"Giving up so soon? Can't say I blame you." Both hostile fighters closed to within
250 meters, their laser fire was deadly accurate.
Richard targeted the Arcadia station, and fired a single Helios bomb before hitting
his after-burners again. At the bomb's current rate of speed, it would impact the station in
less than ten seconds.
---
Red watched the _McKnight II's_ engines roar desperately. Again, a single bomb
was released from its bays, streaking green exhaust as it struggled to gain speed. It was
directed towards the neutral Arcadia station.
He told his Serapis to pay it no heed. It was busy. A red aspect-lock triangle was
narrowing on the Artemis, ready to fire the Serapis' load of Hornet missiles.
A Hornet missile was a slower, less powerful version of the Harpoon missile. But
it was so much more powerful when used correctly. Due to the Hornet's compact form,
up to eight of them could fit in the fighter's missile bays.
Again, the _McKnight_ dodged behind the hull of the mammoth metal construct,
cutting off the missile lock.
The Hercules Mk2 seemed to not notice the Serapis besides it. An impossibility,
Red knew, because it had come from directly behind. It probably could have taken him
out, but instead it had ignored the interceptor completely, obsessed with the Artemis.
*Notice this, jackass.*
The Serapis pulled to port, its wing sticking far out in front, and rammed the
fuselage of the Herc. Red's exterior hull was composed primary of the stronger Vasudan
alloys, and dug itself five meters into the starboard side of the engines before the
momentum finally ceased.
White-hot deuterium from the shattered valves poured liberally onto the Serapis'
wing, melting through it, and burning through what remained of the Herc's engines. Both
starfighters wobbled through space uncertainly, each caught in the other and trying to
regain control. The conflicting propulsions nearly crashed both into the metallic monster
of the Arcadia.
Red finally managed to drag his fighter's wounded wing from the side of Hadley's
Hercules. He hadn't been counting on the deuterium valves; usually they were small and
extremely difficult to locate with anything other than a complete decimation of the hull.
Bad luck.
Hadley's fighter, having taken by far the worst of the damage, fell far behind. It
floundered like a wounded eagle to regain control of its flight, before his starboard engine
shut down completely. Program redundancies and fail-safes had long since failed to
operate, and the fighter was sent tumbling away from the Arcadia.
The Helios impacted the Arcadia.
Red Jefferson saw far too late what had happened. He had just fought Hadley
over who was going to be the first to die.
A shower of flame spread upwards, vaporizing a large portion of the Arcadia's
docking platforms in an ever-expanding fury that rivaled that of the artificial nebulas. The
Serapis fighter barely left a blemish as it winked out of existence, vaporized instantly.
An new sun was formed temporarily as power cables in the interior of the Arcadia
snapped, sending a whiplash of raw energy through the hull of the station. The backlash
of both the Helios and the released power supply sent pure atomic energy racing
outwards, severing the umbilical supports between the station and the largest of the
docking platforms, tossing it haphazardly off into space. If the detonation had taken place
inside of a gravity field, an instant mushroom cloud would have formed.
The energy finally subsided, but the force did not. A violent stream of energy and
debris was thrown outwards in a shock-wave. Numerous meteorite-sized pinholes dotted
Hadley's injured fighter, piercing the cockpit and fuel storage chambers. The Herc's air
supply didn't have time to rush out before friction excited the unstable deuterium samples.
The Hercules didn't explode. It became a sheet of pure plasma, rushing in all
directions. Hadley only figured out what had happened after the pod's monitors had
snapped off, and reported his death.
The Arcadia station's hull itself shielded the Arcadia from the worst of the
explosion. It sailed away happily as Richard watched his kill score increase, invulnerable
to the destruction that he had caused.
A second or two after the last of the flames was extinguished, the communications
line was alive with chatter.
"Shit!"
"What the hell-"
"Who-"
"Helios bomb-"
"Look out! Incoming debris!"
The shock-wave washed over the stunned starfighter pilots, letting none escape
without damage as shrapnel pinpricks shot through their vital systems. Only three were
actually destroyed, however, as thick cockpit windows were cracked, leaking the life-
sustaining atmosphere away.
"You son-of-a-bitch bomber," someone laughed. Richard couldn't distinguish
who.
"It was McKnight! Sweet shit!"
"Get the Artemis," Hadley's voice roared, his fighter reincarnated.
Red just laughed as his Serapis re-emerged from subspace. "I gotta hand it to you,
McKnight. Had us fooled. Too bad you won't be able to do it again."
Richard realized that Jefferson was correct. Now that the other Cadets had seen
what he could do, there was no possible way that they were going to let themselves get
caught near the Arcadia. They weren't stupid.
"Get the bastard. Pick him off from a distance with missiles."
Still, did he need to do anything else? He had scored five kills, which was more
than enough to ensure that he would pass. McKnight thought again about Fargo's
promise, the reward of commanding a squadron wing.
"After we get 'im, don't let that peck anywhere near the Arcadia again," a thickly
accented voice said.
"Tear apart his flesh! Chew on his bones!" Hadley cried.
The vast majority of starfighter exhausts turned, pointing directly away from
Richard, and sending their owners towards the Artemis bomber. Occasionally, several of
them would take pot-shots at each other, swooping around and racing as vultures for their
prize.
Richard truly knew the definition of intimidation. He felt incredibly alone watching
the vast array of hostiles close on him, and him alone. Vultures.
What to do?
He slowed again to one-third throttle, and rigged his Helios bombs to accept an
aspect-lock. A scarlet glowing triangle rotated across his pod's screen, zeroing in on a
fighter dead ahead, the _Yoshi III_, a Myrmidon class interceptor. The Helios had a two-
kilometer targeting range, essentially meaning that he could attain a lock with his bombs
faster than any Harpoons or Hornets.
Unfortunately, the Helios bomb was useless when targeting starfighters. It had no
onboard optical receptors, meaning a single countermeasure, or slight maneuver in any
direction could throw the bulky torpedo off course.
"What the hell? McKnight's trying to lock his Helios on to me."
"He's up to something," Hadley said. "Better to turn away than risk it."
"I'm not taking orders from you, ass. This is a dogfight, remember? We both
want each other dead."
"Correction. We all want McKnight dead. Now concentrate on him."
"Screw you, Hadley," somebody else said. A minor dogfight broke out between
Hadley's Herc and another Ulysses class fighter, with Hadley emerging victorious, but far
behind the other fighters closing on the Artemis.
Richard's aspect triangle blinked as a solid lock was achieved. He fired the Helios,
the immediately opened a tight-beam communications channel to the bomb's guidance
processor, canceling the targeting information, and telling the bomb to fly on a straight
path.
The Helios bomb itself was already overloaded with the warhead itself, adding the
propulsion jets and guidance computers merely served to make the bomb more massive
than necessary. It was proposed once at the GTVA Security Council that the Helios be
driven by nothing more than the inertia of the bomber itself, but this was quickly
disregarded by the weaponry scientists. Still, the bomb was far too heavy to have anything
else loaded on to it, including a manual detonation device.
The Helios was normally detonated by the sheer kinetic impact with the hull of its
target. Anything that was otherwise ignite the explosives in the bomb would have to be
from an external force.
Richard increased his speed to match the bomb, and released one of his few
remaining countermeasure beacons. He had carefully positioned his fighter to within a
quarter meter; a very difficult task with the unresponsive controls of the Artemis, and
executed a curving upward turn that would send him away from the coming onslaught of
fighters.
A single Serapis fighter peeled away from the swarm; it was the _Jefferson II_.
Oh, but damn. He had forgotten that Red had seen this maneuver before. Richard
waited for Red's scalding voice warning the others away.
The communications line remained silent, save for the occasional idle chatter of
competing pilots.
*What's wrong, Red?* He thought. *Savoring the moment of spoiling my nefarious
plans?*
The silence was finally broken, not by Jefferson, but by Yoshi's laughter. His
starfighter has twisted slightly to starboard after firing a countermeasure. The bomb
appeared to be no longer tracking him, so he relaxed slightly. His braying laughter carried
through all the Cadet's pods.
Richard transmitted the destruction code to the countermeasure, which
disappeared in a puff of steam and debris. That explosion was instantly overshadowed by
the Helios.
Without the added power of the nuclear power cables in the Arcadia, the explosion
was several orders of magnitude smaller than the Arcadia detonation. But it could still
destroy anything within half a kilometer by a combination of the incendiaries themselves,
and a titanic energy shock-wave.
The swarm of converging fighters was very compact in form.
Yoshi was still laughing when his fighter disappeared amid a hail of energy brighter
than a star. He only stopped when his monitors turned as black as night, save for the
death indicator. Three other fighter pilots had no time for their brains to fully register the
explosion before their individual starships were transformed into a stream of boiling
plasma surging into space.
Five more cadets had time to open their eyes in a sudden horror before the flames
battered their crafts into death's submission.
Seven cadets had actual time to maneuver desperately away before the shock-wave
split them into shattered components.
As soon as the bright superstar appeared on George Hadley's forward view, he just
sat their in dawning terror as he saw the bomb consume the vast majority of the rag-tag
starfighter mob. His own Hercules shuddered violently as the dissipated wave passed over
him, and filling the pod with a low bass rumble. His own fighter had fallen far behind the
rest of the group, and was safe from the primary explosion.
The remaining fighters scattered in a disarrayed confusion, the communications
lines overloaded with shouts and desperate pleas. And the Artemis continued straight
ahead, as if it didn't have a care in the world.
The remaining fighters regrouped, united completely this time. There were no
dogfights amongst them as they closed on the Artemis, and made the final kill. Missile
after missile reduced the bomber to radioactive dust, and every time McKnight respawned,
the cadets made damn sure he never had a chance to launch a single bomb.
But it was too late; Richard had already attained the highest kill score in the
exercise.