then flipped ends, overloaded the ‘burners and shot into a vertical climb. The two enemy fighters behind me hit the edge and dropped altitude before realizing what I’d done. One of them tried to turn within the canyon instead of getting above it, and his starboard wing shattered like cheap glass as it collided with the walls at twelve G’s. I wanted to watch him spin into a fireball before exploding as his fusion core went critical, but I had number sixteen to worry about.
I pointed my nose down and dove straight for him. He came up above the canyon walls, cut his engines and rotated to get his guns pointed at me. It was a bold move, thinking to come at me head-on after I’d punished fifteen of his squad mates. After firing off a few railgun rounds, he locked a missile and fired, then surprised me by leveling his ship out, nose facing the direction we’d come from.
His engines ignited and he hit his afterburners, rocketing behind me, leaving me to face the incoming missile. I flipped my fighter on its back and cut power from the left engine, putting all I had into my right engine. The spin was to confuse the radar in the warhead long enough for my countermeasures to nullify it. I checked the threat radar again, making sure the last fighter hadn’t doubled back on me. He was still on the run, probably a wise move after I’d decimated his entire squadron.
I stayed in the high-G spin until one of my ECM’s finally burned out the warhead’s radar unit, tripping a redundant detonator. It was close enough that the warhead’s shrapnel pierced a fair amount of my ship’s underbelly armor. I balanced engine power and went full burn back to the winding canyon. The last fighter had dropped off my radar, but I had the faster ship, and more importantly, I had the kind of control that made the other pilots on voice comms begin arguing about whether I was somehow cheating, or just that good. It wasn’t unusual for a skilled pilot to take out a small squad solo, but a squadron of sixteen good, experienced pilots… was madness. Fifteen , I reminded myself as I hit the first turn and banked into it.
My nimble fighter increased in speed as I maximized the engine’s efficiency and output, something that normally was nearly impossible to do with the kind of tight maneuvering I was doing, especially at the speed I was going. A red icon appeared on the threat radar behind me. I grinned, giving mental props to the pilot for not running away. Digital pings alerted me that his railgun slugs were degrading my rear shield. I began to decelerate, slowly as to not let him be alerted too quickly, easily exchanging a nearly depleted rear shield for my last hurrah. I re-routed almost all of my remaining engine and fusion core power into the rear shield, needing only a few seconds more.
The uranium slugs encased in a plasma shell drained my shield and then began to eat into the thin layer of armor. I watched the damage meters creep into the red, mirrored by my fighter’s fusion core as it began to overheat, the slugs decimating the heat shielding around my engines. The enemy pilot realized too late how close he was to me and tried to climb. I flipped my fighter, re-routed power to the engines, turned on full afterburners, and just scraped the bottom of his ship. I overloaded the fusion core, and a bright white light blanked out my screens as my ship was atomized a nanosecond before I also logged my sixteenth kill.
The voice comms were wild, some with rage and fury, most cheering, all of them talking at once, asking me how I’d been able to pull it off. A few of the ragers were already accusing me of cheating, of hacking the system somehow. I answered the friendly questions as well as I could, praising my new computer without revealing that it was like no computer that the world had ever seen.
After another ten minutes of being called everything from The Man and Master Ace to goddamn cheating piece of shit , I told everyone it had been
I pointed my nose down and dove straight for him. He came up above the canyon walls, cut his engines and rotated to get his guns pointed at me. It was a bold move, thinking to come at me head-on after I’d punished fifteen of his squad mates. After firing off a few railgun rounds, he locked a missile and fired, then surprised me by leveling his ship out, nose facing the direction we’d come from.
His engines ignited and he hit his afterburners, rocketing behind me, leaving me to face the incoming missile. I flipped my fighter on its back and cut power from the left engine, putting all I had into my right engine. The spin was to confuse the radar in the warhead long enough for my countermeasures to nullify it. I checked the threat radar again, making sure the last fighter hadn’t doubled back on me. He was still on the run, probably a wise move after I’d decimated his entire squadron.
I stayed in the high-G spin until one of my ECM’s finally burned out the warhead’s radar unit, tripping a redundant detonator. It was close enough that the warhead’s shrapnel pierced a fair amount of my ship’s underbelly armor. I balanced engine power and went full burn back to the winding canyon. The last fighter had dropped off my radar, but I had the faster ship, and more importantly, I had the kind of control that made the other pilots on voice comms begin arguing about whether I was somehow cheating, or just that good. It wasn’t unusual for a skilled pilot to take out a small squad solo, but a squadron of sixteen good, experienced pilots… was madness. Fifteen , I reminded myself as I hit the first turn and banked into it.
My nimble fighter increased in speed as I maximized the engine’s efficiency and output, something that normally was nearly impossible to do with the kind of tight maneuvering I was doing, especially at the speed I was going. A red icon appeared on the threat radar behind me. I grinned, giving mental props to the pilot for not running away. Digital pings alerted me that his railgun slugs were degrading my rear shield. I began to decelerate, slowly as to not let him be alerted too quickly, easily exchanging a nearly depleted rear shield for my last hurrah. I re-routed almost all of my remaining engine and fusion core power into the rear shield, needing only a few seconds more.
The uranium slugs encased in a plasma shell drained my shield and then began to eat into the thin layer of armor. I watched the damage meters creep into the red, mirrored by my fighter’s fusion core as it began to overheat, the slugs decimating the heat shielding around my engines. The enemy pilot realized too late how close he was to me and tried to climb. I flipped my fighter, re-routed power to the engines, turned on full afterburners, and just scraped the bottom of his ship. I overloaded the fusion core, and a bright white light blanked out my screens as my ship was atomized a nanosecond before I also logged my sixteenth kill.
The voice comms were wild, some with rage and fury, most cheering, all of them talking at once, asking me how I’d been able to pull it off. A few of the ragers were already accusing me of cheating, of hacking the system somehow. I answered the friendly questions as well as I could, praising my new computer without revealing that it was like no computer that the world had ever seen.
After another ten minutes of being called everything from The Man and Master Ace to goddamn cheating piece of shit , I told everyone it had been
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