Chapter Three

       25 September 2404

      VFA-44 Dragonfires

       Eta Boötis System

       1251 hours, TFT

      Throughout his gravfighter training back at SupraQuito, they’d hammered away at one essential lesson of space-fighter tactics: always, when an incoming warhead reached your position, be someplace else.

      Gray had been in combat twice before, at Arcturus Station against the Turusch and at Everdawn against the Chinese, and knew the truth of that statement. There was no effective way to jam incoming warheads. The missiles used by both sides were piloted by brilliant if somewhat narrow-minded AIs, using a variety of sensor systems to track and home on an enemy target. No one set of standard countermeasures could blind all of an enemy’s sensors—heat, radar, mass, gravitometric, X-ray, neutrino, optical.

      Nor was it possible to outrun them. Turusch anti-fighter missiles could accelerate faster than a Starhawk, at least for short bursts. They operated on the tactical assumption that if they couldn’t kill you outright, they could chase you out of town, forcing you into a straight-run boost out of battlespace to where you no longer posed a threat.

      So when enemy missiles were hunting you down, the ancient aphorism about a best defense was decidedly true. You dodged, you weaved, you accelerated … but you also struck back.

      A swarm of missiles approached from ahead, brilliant red pinpoints projected by the Starhawk’s display system against the stars. Gray’s AI picked out no fewer than six enemy missiles that, judging by their vectors, were homing in on him.

      “Here comes the reception committee,” Allyn announced. “Independent maneuvering.”

      “Copy that, Blue Omega Leader.”

      He accelerated toward the oncoming missiles, hard, then threw his Starhawk into a low-port turn, as tight as he could manage at this velocity.

      Vector changes in space-fighter combat were a lot trickier than for an atmospheric fighter; they were possible at all only because gravitic propulsive systems allowed the fighter to project a deep singularity above, below, or to one side or the other relative to the craft’s current attitude. Intense, projected gravity wells whipped the fighter around onto a new vector, bleeding off velocity to throw an extra burst of power to the inertial dampers that, theoretically at least, kept the pilot from being squashed by centripetal acceleration.

      Enough gravities seeped through the straining damper field to press Gray back against the yielding nanofoam of his seat; stars blurred past his head.

      “Six missiles still locked on and tracking,” the AI voice of his Starhawk told him with emotionless persistence. “Time to detonation nine seconds … eight … seven …”

      At “three” Gray grav-jinked left, firing passive sand canisters. The enemy missiles were now a few thousand kilometers off his starboard side, using their own gravitics to attempt to match his turn. He kept pushing, kept turning into the oncoming warheads.

      Blinding light blossomed from astern and to starboard … then again … and yet again as three missiles struck sand clouds and detonated. Three down, three to go. He punched up the Starhawk’s acceleration to 3,000 gravities, turning again to race toward the planet.

      As always happened for Gray in combat, a rushing sense of speed, of acceleration washed through him, matching, it seemed the acceleration of his fighter.

      He might not be able to outrun Trash missiles in a flat-out race, but in most combat situations, outrunning them wasn’t necessary. Most missiles held their acceleration down to a tiny fraction of their full capability. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be able to match a low-G turn by their target, and they would wildly overshoot. So the remaining missiles on Gray’s tail were putting on just enough speed to slowly catch up with him.

      “Two new missiles now locked on and tracking. Terminal intercept in twenty-four seconds.”

      And that was the other half of the equation. Standard Turusch tactics were to fire whole swarms of missiles, sending them at him from all directions, until no maneuver he made could possibly jink past them all.

      “Three missiles of original salvo still closing. Terminal intercept in eight seconds.”

      Gray moved his hand through the control field and the Starhawk flipped end-for-end, bringing his particle accelerator to bear. The three closest missiles appeared as a triangle of red blips, the alphanumerics next to each flickering as range and time-to-impact swiftly dwindled.

      His eyes held one, and a red square appeared around the blip at the triangle’s apex, signifying target lock. He moved his hand and a stream of neutrons turned the missile into an expanding cloud of plasma. He shifted his attention to a second blip, and watched it explode as well.

      The third had vanished.

      “Ship!” he said. “Confirm destruction of all three missiles!”

      “Two anti-fighter missiles confirmed destroyed,” the AI’s voice said. “Negative confirmation on third missile. Two missiles of second salvo still locked on and closing. Terminal intercept in sixteen seconds. Third salvo fired, locked on and tracking. Terminal intercept in thirty-seven seconds… .”

      That was the way it worked in modern space-fighter combat … with more missiles fired, and more, and more. Worse, from his mission’s perspective, the more time he spent trying to dodge incoming missiles, the less able he would be to carry out his primary objective, which was to close with Turusch capital ships and destroy them.

      He pulled the Starhawk around until it was again traveling straight for the planet ahead.

      “This is Blue Omega Seven,” he called. “Request clearance for PCO launch on this vector.”

      “Omagea Seven, Omega One,” Allyn’s voice came back. “You are clear for AMSO.”

      “Firing PCO in three … two … one … Fox Two!”

      In space-fighter combat, Fox One signaled the launch of any of a variety of all-aspect homing missiles, including the Krait. Fox Two, on the other hand, signaled a sandcaster launch—Anti-Missile Shield Ordnance, or AMSO. An AS-78 missile streaked from beneath his cockpit, accelerating at two thousand gravities. After five seconds, it was traveling one hundred kilometers per second faster than Gray’s Starhawk and, when it detonated, the individual grains of sand—actually sand-grain-sized spherules of matter-compressed lead—were released in an expanding cloud of grains, each traveling with the same velocity and in the same general direction. Sandcaster missiles were dumb weapons as opposed to smart; protocol required requesting clearance for launch, because a grain of sand striking a friendly fighter at several thousand kilometers per second could ruin the day for two pilots, him and his unintended target.

      Over the tacnet, he could hear other Omega pilots calling Fox Two as they slammed sand at the oncoming missiles.

      In a few more seconds, the sand cloud had dispersed to the point where it created a physical shield several kilometers across. His initial velocity after his turn-and-burn with the enemy ship-killers had been just over twelve thousand kilometers per second; he increased his speed now by an extra hundred kps, slipping up close and tucking in behind his sand wall and drifting at the same speed.

      White light blossomed ahead and to starboard, dazzling even through the stepped-down optical filters of his fighter’s sensors.

      A second nuclear blast, ahead and below … this one close enough that the shell of expanding plasma jolted his ship and sent hard radiation sleeting across the Starhawk’s electromagnetic shielding.

      Gray decelerated, braking hard. Eta Boötis IV was rapidly swelling to an immense crescent just ahead, as thousands of brilliant stars flickered and flashed against the planet’s