“Five meters… Oh.”
“Gravity is almost nonexistent here,” Henry noted. “We go up the chimney on thrusters. Even now it’s only ninety meters high. We go up at one meter per second or less. We don’t need the GMS drive till we’re in space.”
“Got it in one, skipper,” the CAG agreed. “It is going to suck. But if the job was easy, anyone could do it, and then we wouldn’t need battlecruisers.”
Henry had to join in the shared chuckle at the joke.
“We’re under a time limit, people,” she continued. “We go up one at a time. Colonel Wong first, myself last. Once we’re out of the meteor, we have a bit more flexibility, but we need to get the planes into space, intact, with missiles.
“Anyone who has a problem with doing that on emergency thrusters is welcome to tell the rest of the crew they’re going to die because you lack fortitude.”
Memories flooded back in as Henry stepped into the cockpit of the Lancer. It was entirely different, of course. The last time he’d flown a fighter, he’d been immersed in an acceleration tank at the heart of the spacecraft.
And yet.
The controls were still the same. The screens and internal-interface datafeeds were the same. He’d trained in a virtual simulator for each of the generations of starfighters since he’d left FighterDiv, and spent time in each starfighter on training flights, but somehow, stepping into one intending to go to war was very different.
He strapped himself carefully into the seat, its acceleration-cushioning gel molding to his body. It was the same style of chair used on starship bridges—probably exactly the same and drawn from the same manufacturer. They hadn’t needed fighter cockpit chairs in a few generations, after all.
More displays slid in around him as he brought the Lancer to life. Energy levels, missile status, shield status…the heat-radiation level that would betray him if it got too high.
The engine status was missing, merged into the display for the shield. The gravity shield and the gravity maneuvering system were inextricably linked.
He checked everything over one last time, running down a literal checklist, and then nodded silently and activated the squadron channel.
“Raven-Eight, confirming green.”
Status reports for the rest of the fighters rippled in over the network as his command codes gave him the same data O’Flannagain had. He was, unsurprisingly, the last pilot to check in—but only by about five seconds. That was better than he expected.
“All right, Eight, you’ve got the lead,” O’Flannagain’s voice told him. “I’m in Seven. Two, you go second, followed by Three, Four and Six. I’ll bring up the rear.
“Let’s keep it nice and steady, people.”
“Eight, this is Deck Control,” Chief Anja, the cruiser’s deck officer, said in his ear. “Are you good to go?”
“I’m clear, Control,” Henry replied, years-old habits waking in answer to the old challenge and response. “You have the bouncing ball.”
“I have the ball,” Anja replied. “On the bounce, Eight…and…bounce.”
Normally, the deck’s systems would have flung him into space with a significant starting velocity. Today, he was gently tossed out the end of the deck, and he already had his thrusters firing to reduce the minuscule velocity Raven had given him.
There was almost no space around the cruiser, and he inhaled sharply as he carefully tucked the saucer-shaped starfighter up and around his girl. From there, he could actually see the damage the hits had done.
He had intellectually believed Song when she told him Raven was dead, but it was something else to see it. His ship was a wreck, her spine visibly bent around the impact points. A battlecruiser’s spine was supposed to be a straight line, not have a fifteen-degree turn in the middle.
More important right now was the gap above the cruiser, the remains of the hole Raven had cut to get this deep into the meteor. The heat radiators had kept the ship sinking deeper into the block of ice, but there’d been nothing to keep that cut open.
“Exit is eleven meters at the entry point,” he said on the squadron channel, feeding his sensor data back to the other five pilots. “Easy to get in, but we’ll see how narrow it gets.”
The maneuver thrusters answered his commands easily, aligning the Lancer with the bottom of the chasm leading toward the surface. Half-consciously holding his breath, Henry tucked his ship into the opening.
Slow and steady, he began his ascent. His proximity alarms blared warnings at him, but he was using the same sensors to guide his course.
“Channel is down to seven meters,” he reported. “Continuing to shrink as I approach the surface.” He checked. “Sensors show a clear path still. But…five meters was definitely overstating it.”
The opening at the top of the chimney wasn’t the narrowest part, if only because most of the melted material there had escaped into space. The narrowest part was ten meters below the surface, and he watched the scans carefully.
“Narrowest part of the tunnel is three point two two meters,” he said calmly. “Watch your scanners and your alignment. This is…”
He exhaled.
“This is a tight fit,” he concluded. “I’m through; exiting the surface now. Bringing up the GMS and holding position.”
Shield icons flicked from black to orange to green as he waited, his primary defense and engine coming online at the same time. Motionless, the small bubble around his starfighter would diffuse the tiny amount of heat he was giving off. Raven might be able to see the Lancer, but nothing else would.
Grav-shielded fighters were the closest thing he’d ever seen to invisible in space. That invisibility traditionally disappeared as soon as they fired their engines, but it had still allowed the UPSF to pull off some nasty tricks in the war.
And now the GMS let them keep that invisibility while they moved. Only at low acceleration, but that was going to be enough.
“This is Raven-Two; I’m clear,” Lieutenant Commander Turrigan reported. “That was a snugger fit than I like, ser.”
“You’re here, aren’t you?” Henry asked. “It’s fine.”
Four more fighters rose up out of the ice after Turrigan, each of them drifting clear of the shaft and bringing up their GMS.
“Everyone clear?” O’Flannagain finally asked. “Did we lose any sensor dishes or critical components on the way up?”
“I think I might have frozen off some critical body parts,” one of the Lieutenants quipped.
“Shut it, Raven-Three,” O’Flannagain ordered. “All right. We have the last location of Bandit Three from Raven’s sensors. We take it nice and easy, point three KPS-squared, people.”
“Be vewwy, vewwy quiet,” Turrigan quipped. “We’s huntin’ Guardians.”
Chapter Forty-Three
The clouds of icy debris that Henry’s plan had left filling most of the empty space in the meteor swarm were both a blessing and a curse. They’d cover the starfighters’ movements at a distance, but as his people approached their enemy, the trails the spacecraft left in the dust would give them away.