Cyber Dreams - 6.43 Maneuvers

Juliet grunted as she continued maneuvering, capitalizing on the Cherry Blossom’s powerful VTOL drives to give her lateral bursts of speed, keeping her movement unpredictable and trusting her gut to tell her when it was right to bring her guns to bear on one of her targets. They’d been in hot combat for more than three minutes now, and Alice had removed another of the interceptors from the board, but now she had two focusing on her, one of which was Montclair’s Mort. “Hang in there, Alice! Just give me a few seconds to line these guys up.”

Juliet’s instant kill of one of the interceptors had seemed to inflame the responders, and, at first, they’d all gunned for her. The Blossom was a nimble ship, though, and Juliet had a knack for moving unpredictably at just the right moment. After Alice ripped one of the other interceptors to shreds, two others had peeled off to deal with her, and now Juliet was having a much easier time with just the Trueno and one light fighter. As she killed the power to the main and VTOL drives, Juliet fired the retro maneuvering jets and performed a forward flip, bringing her nose up just in time to catch the Trueno in her sights.

She pressed the trigger, firing her six twenty-millimeter cannons in rapid succession. She avoided firing the rail gun while maneuvering; Bennet and Angel had emphasized the dangers of conflicting angular forces on her ship’s frame. The rail gun generated significant recoil, pushing the ship directly backward. The Cherry Blossom was designed to handle these forces in a straight line so it wouldn’t risk the ship’s integrity while thrusting forward. However, as she rolled with the retro thrusters and tried to maintain control, she didn’t want to contend with the massive recoil, which would easily overpower the maneuvering jets.

Her cannons rumbled to either side of her, vibrating the hull, and Juliet saw, in her zoomed-in view, bright sparks and chunks of hull plating fly off the Trueno. It wasn’t the first time she’d scored hits. Just as she’d hoped, the heavy fighter banked and accelerated. Juliet continued her maneuver, ignoring the interceptor trying to land hits on her as she carefully brought her nose around to face Alice and her pursuers.

While she was lining them up, Athena spoke through their combat group’s comms, “Crocodile’s main drive is offline, but the missile dump did its job; pursuit has fallen off. Only one interceptor remains; it’s limping back toward the WBD installation. We have enough thrust to reach the Atlas drop point on time. Torpedo primed and ready to breach the central, bottom hangar.”

“Good,” Juliet grunted, realizing her vision was turning red. She focused on her breathing and adjusted her thrust, moving the VTOLs to align with the main drive. As she leveled off and her speed ramped up, the red washed out of her vision, and she continued to concentrate on her core, squeezing and breathing to keep from blacking out. “Sending you a flight path with a countdown, Alice.”

Alice’s voice came back to her strained and tight. “Roger.”

Juliet’s HUD flashed red in the corner, and she looked to see Chevy’s vitals—he was unconscious. “Dammit! Angel, you’re on countermeasures.” They’d already fired ten percent of the ship’s store of flak canisters, but so far, the Blossom wasn’t damaged aside from some scratches in the paint and a few dents and grooves in the armor. “Aya, how you holding up?”

“B-b…barely!” she finally choked out.

Juliet looked at her readout, saw she was pushing nine Gs of acceleration, and grunted, “Just a few more seconds.” She watched her countdown—the same one she’d given Alice—and swiveled her view to see the interceptor on her tail. He was firing a near-constant stream of tracer rounds, but Juliet shifted her pitch, adjusting her flight path every time he started to dial in his targeting. It was hard to lock onto a target at her speed. “Which is why—” Juliet saw the timer hit zero, drove her stick to the left, lined her crosshairs up with the flight path she’d given Alice, and then leveled out. She killed the thrust from her VTOL drives and squeezed the trigger for the rail gun.

With the reduced thrust, this time, she felt the railgun fire, and it massively reduced her forward momentum, once again confounding her pursuer’s attempt to shoot her. The rail gun launched a quarter-meter of dense polymer at tremendous speeds. When it fired, it made a deep, buzzing zwong sound that vibrated up through the plasteel decking into Juliet’s acceleration couch, rattling her teeth as she said, “Heads up, Alice.”

Just as Angel had calculated, the railgun round ripped through one of the interceptors chasing Alice as they swerved to follow her onto the flight path Juliet had given her. This time, she was much closer when the ship blew, and Juliet saw the little wedge-shaped ship explode into thousands of pieces as the reactor lost integrity, likely punctured by the rail gun round. The cam feeds supplying her view automatically dimmed as the explosion went nuclear, and Juliet managed to keep Alice in view as she zoomed away at massive velocity.

“Nice one, Blossom!” Alice cried. “I’ve got this other bloke! Take care of your business.”

“Confirmed kill. Two interceptors and one heavy fighter left in the fray,” Athena announced into comms.

“Which one did I hit?” Juliet subvocalized.

“Not Montclair. He’s still tracking Alice.” Even as Angel spoke, Juliet was flying evasively, much slower than earlier, but still aware of her pursuit. The heavy fighter had finally come back around and looked to be planning some sort of pincer with the interceptor. Juliet was feeling antsy and irritated, and she knew it was because of Montclair’s ship making an appearance. It was throwing her off her game, making it impossible just to trust Alice and let her handle things. Even if she consciously told herself to do so, she could feel that itch in the back of her mind.

She glanced at her HUD, saw Chevy was back in the green, and said, “Aya, Chevy, brace yourselves for another sprint.” Juliet swung her nose around until she faced the interceptor, then punched her throttle, driving maximum thrust through all three of her drives. “Ever play chicken with a Takamoto gunship?” she grunted, using her cybernetic arm to gently, deftly line up her crosshairs. She saw a streak of tracer rounds coming her way but didn’t flinch. She very deliberately waited until her crosshairs were perfectly in line, and Angel changed them from white to green, then squeezed the railgun trigger again.

The only word that came to Juliet’s mind when she saw what happened to the interceptor was “pop.” It burst like a bubble of fire, and Juliet pulled on the stick, arcing up and away from the explosion, just as the rattle of much-smaller-caliber rounds pinging off her thick hull plating came to her ears. When Juliet reduced thrust and began swiveling toward the heavy fighter, Aya’s strained and reedy voice came through comms, “We took more than two dozen hits. Armor breached in three locations—one coolant leak. Um, nanites are working on the armor; I’m going to repair the leak. Can you hold it steady for a while?”

“Negative, Aya. Hold off until this fighter is down.” She switched off comms and asked, “How’s Alice?”

Angel replied, “She’s punishing Montclair’s ship. I’m not sure he’s actually resurrected himself and is flying that ship, but if so, he’s not as good as she is. Or, perhaps, the Mort is no match for the Lady Hawk.”

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“Of course, his creepy death ship isn’t any match for the Lady!” Juliet got the heavy fighter in her sights just in time to see half a dozen missiles streak away from it. To her dismay, they didn’t rocket toward her, but Alice. “Alice! You’ve got six firecrackers coming in hot!”

“Noted,” came the strained reply.

Juliet watched, half her mind continuing to track the heavy fighter while the other half warred with itself, thinking of and dismissing a dozen half-baked ideas to help Alice. She couldn’t catch up to those missiles, though she considered it. She couldn’t expect to shoot them down—not at her range and not while also avoiding fire from the gunship. She had to trust that Alice would deploy her countermeasures and outmaneuver whatever missiles got through. With that finally settled, she refocused on the Trueno and used her vastly superior maneuvering thrusters to outpace the pilot’s attempts to put her in his crosshairs.

Juliet strafed to port, rolled to starboard while tilting her VTOLs downward, then fired them so she swung down beneath the plane of the heavy fighter’s frame. With a big, exposed belly in her sights, Juliet held down the trigger for her autocannons and watched as dozens of heavy, polymer tracer-rounds streaked through space to rip it to shreds. The gunship might have survived five or six of those hits, but she landed nearly forty before the pilot reacted to her maneuver, and by then, Juliet could see she’d torn his armor to shreds.

Sparks, fluids, and gasses flowed freely from the listing fighter, and Juliet whooped when the pilot ejected. Two seconds later, another escape capsule exploded out the side of the fighter’s hull, and Juliet figured it was his copilot or engineer. “Kill,” Angel reported.

“Kill!” Alice whooped, her voice tight but enthusiastic. Juliet scanned her combat grid, hardly believing that Alice had taken out Montclair just like that. It was true, though—the only ships in local space were the Cherry Blossom and the Lady Hawk.

“All enemy vessels are off the board. Begin your approach to Ceres Station, Blossom,” Athena said. “Sorry I wasn’t any help with the Wing; I just got here.”

“No problem,” Alice replied, “But Shiro and I are gonna have to bail—I’m out of CMs and have four missiles on my tail.”

Juliet jerked her head toward Alice and used the high-powered zoom of the cameras supplying her feed to confirm what she said. Sure enough, four of the missiles the heavy fighter had sent out were still tracking her, and she was losing ground. “Fly toward me, Alice!” Then, in just her ship comms, “Brace up.” Before anyone replied, she punched the accelerator, tiling the VTOLs to drive her forward with the main drive. As her Gs ramped up north of ten, she said, “Alice, fly right under me. I’m gonna dump a cloud of flak. We’ve got this.”

“I’ll time the flak cannisters, Juliet,” Angel said.

“I was counting on it.”

“Oof,” Alice grunted into comms. “I had to burn hard to stay ahead when I turned. My abs are going to hurt for a week!”

“Juliet,” Angel said, “At their current speed, those missiles will hit Alice two seconds after we pass her.”

“Can we squeeze any more juice out of this bird?”

“No, but we’re moving straight, and those missiles are moving straight—if you can shoot the leading missile, it’ll widen the window to nearly four seconds. You have flak rounds for the—”

“Idiot!” Juliet grunted. Unable to speak in complete sentences, she quickly subvocalized, “Me, not you, Angel. I forgot about the shredder rounds for the rail gun.” Her acceleration couch was squeezing her body like a vise, and her breaths felt like sucking ice cream through a straw, but she carefully, delicately used her cybernetic arm to nudge her crosshairs into position. “Ready?”

“Cycling in a flak round…ready.” Juliet squeezed the trigger, and the ship shuddered as the rail gun fired. Her eyes went wide as the crackling mass of sparkling flak streaked away from her toward Alice and her pursuing missiles. “Shit!” she grunted, then into comms, “Alice…pull—”

She was too late; Alice had already seen the incoming, expanding ball of glittering shrapnel and pulled her nose up. To Juliet’s delight, her flak round had spread so wide that it caught two of the pursuing missiles in its cloud, and they exploded instantly. “Fly by, Alice!” she panted, then nudged her flight stick to direct her toward her friend’s new flight path.

Angel spoke into comms, taking over for Juliet, “We’re in a good position. Alice, you’re five seconds ahead of the missiles. Flak disbursal ready. Firing canisters in three… two… one… mark!” Juliet heard the thum-thum-thum-thum of the canisters launching, and then her ship shook as the plume of the Lady Hawk’s drive brushed her armor plating. Juliet pointed her nose down, and then the last two missiles exploded in the cloud of flak Angel had created. “Clear!” Angel cried.

“I’m all green lights here,” Alice said, panting. “Gimme a minute to breathe, then we can head for Ceres.”

“Negative, Lady Hawk,” Athena said. “You’re to hold back and escort the Furies’ Wing. Atlas has deployed—Cherry Blossom should burn for the station.”

“Roger,” Juliet and Alice said in near unison. Juliet had already banked toward Ceres and was pushing two Gs of acceleration toward it. She could tell from the muffled grunts behind her that Chevy was conscious again. Her timers said Bennet wouldn’t be at the gun installations for another twelve minutes, and she was timing her arrival for closer to fifteen. She had to give him a few minutes to work; otherwise, the turrets would shred her ship. “I mean, I could probably take some out with the rail gun before they hit me—”

“No!” Angel said. “You know it’s too risky. First off, your rail gun will punch through half the station. Secondly, some of those turrets are huge; they have similar effective range, and—”

“It was just a thought. Keep us heading straight, will you?” Juliet unbuckled and fought her way out of her seat, straining against the Gs. “I’m gonna check on Aya.” She knew she could contact her friend through comms and probably should, but she felt antsy, like she needed to move. As she passed by him, Juliet clapped Chevy on the shoulder. “Nice work, partner.” She said it deadpan, and he sputtered, trying to decide whether to thank her or be insulted. Luckily, her grin didn’t show through her helmet.

Her boots stuck to the decking, keeping her upright, but she still had to work to maintain her balance against the two Gs of forward thrust. It amazed her that each step with her new leg was almost effortless, but it made her think. “Angel, I should scarf something sugary before we get to Ceres. I want my batteries full.”

“They’re not exactly—”

“Power cells, then. Whatever!” She ducked into the engineering ready room and saw Aya struggling with her straps. “You good, sis?”

“No! I passed out twice. Thankfully, those nanites Athena put in my blood brought me around—” She grunted as the clasp finally came loose, and then she began struggling out of the acceleration couch. “I need to get to that coolant leak!”

Juliet reached out to offer her a hand, and Aya took it, pulling herself up. “Sorry about the rough flying.”

“It’s okay. I guess I need some practice with high Gs and maybe a pair of lungs like yours, huh? Maybe a heart, too.” Juliet couldn’t see her face, but her voice came through the helmet very clearly. She sounded a lot more stressed and weary than she was letting on.

“You sure you’re good?”

“I’m good, Lucky. Let me do my job, okay?” With that, she clip-clomped over to the ladder leading up to the main drive and down to the reactor. She began to descend, fighting the Gs, trying to pull her to the side.

“Holler if you need anything. Most of the rough flying should be over.”

“Will do, Captain.” With that, Aya disappeared below deck. Juliet stared at the empty spot where Aya had stood for several seconds, then subvocalized, “Is she upset?”

“I think she’s frustrated that she wasn’t much help during the battle. I’ll try to remind her that things would be different if you’d taken more of a beating. We’d need our engineer to get us ready for the next engagement.”

“Thanks, Angel.” Juliet sighed, then, grunting with every other step, made her way back up to the cockpit. She opened her combat group’s comms. “Anyone else joining the party, Athena?”

“No, in fact, most of the civilian vessels in the area are docking or burning away from Ceres ahead of their scheduled departures. My contacts with the CCC are confident that none of their other vessels will scramble; we’ve assured them that the matter between our group and WBD will not spread to the station at large.”

Juliet nodded, clapping Chevy on the shoulder as she slid past him to her seat. She climbed in, pulling the straps tight. “Sounds good. Let’s hope Bennet can pull his part off. How’s his approach coming?”

“Excellently. The anti-ship cannons have not attempted to engage him; his silhouette is too small to trigger their automated, defensive-fire patterns. Unfortunately, we cannot slow the Crocodile without risking our chance to drop Tanaka’s team, so they’re going to be in range of the cannons in mere moments.”

Juliet stared at her comms until Angel connected her to Bennet. “You good, big guy?”

“Lucky?” His voice sounded strange—higher pitched than usual—and Juliet wondered if it had something to do with the air mixture in the Atlas suit. She knew it had helium added to the mix by default to help with decompression and thermal conductivity. “I’m good, but between you and me, I’m also freaking out. I’m ripping through space like a freakin’ meteorite! I hope this thing has brakes!”

Juliet couldn’t help giggling at his hysteria. “It does. Just let Athena handle the flying. I’m heading in, Bennet. Please get those guns down for me, okay?”

“I will! Looking forward to seeing what this big boy can do. God! Could you imagine being this big all the time? I could really set some records in the weight room.”

“Oh, brother!” Juliet laughed. “Okay, stay focused, buddy. We’re all counting on you.”

“Roger!” His connection crackled for a second, and then he came through again, “Jee-zus! Athena just hit the brakes! Talk later!”

“Speaking of brakes…” Juliet opened her comms with Aya and Chevy. “How are we doing? We gotta flip and burn for our final approach soon.”

“I need five…four minutes,” Aya grunted.

“I can work with that. Just gotta burn a little harder.”

“I, uh, I’m good for whatever,” Chevy replied. Juliet glanced over her shoulder at him but couldn’t see anything through his mirrored visor. If she had to guess, he was probably feeling like a leaky spare tire on a truck with four good ones. Juliet touched her visor release, and her armored faceplate slid up over her head, revealing her face. She sighed as the relatively cool air of her ship touched her skin. She reached under her seat and grabbed a fistful of sugary protein bars. Grinning in Chevy’s direction, she said, “I gotta keep my batteries topped off—time for a snack if you want.”