One Good Soldier

July 1, 2394 AD

Ross 128, Arcadia Orbit

Friday, 3:21 PM, Earth Eastern Standard Time

"Gotcha!" Karen toggled her mecha into fighter mode even as she passed through the debris field of the Seppy she had just splashed. She looked for her stand-in wingman, Dragon. The rookie was good, but Fish had flown as DeathRay's wingman for over a decade. Partnerships like that are hard to beat. Fish was as much a pro as DeathRay, and it was only a matter of time before they had new rookies that needed to be teamed up with more seasoned pilots. No matter, when DeathRay was away the Gods of War would notice the absence. Fish knew she'd just have to make up for it. Besides, wasn't nobody better than her anyway.

"Hard right, Fish! Hard right!" Dragon shouted. "Guns, guns, guns!"

"Ho, woo, shit!" She pulled back right on the stick, huffing and puffing against the g-load of her maneuver while adding throttle and slip. Her g-suit squeezed the hell out of her thighs and midsection, as her teeth clenched the mouthpiece, releasing oxygen and stims. A mecha-to-mecha missile passed way too fucking close to her plane.

"Dragon, where the hell are you?" She could see her wingman out there behind her in her DTM mindview but couldn't get a visual on the rookie pilot. The blue dot in her virtual battlescape displayed him bouncing around like a wild man. She hoped his physical stamina would hold up. Not pacing themselves was a big mistake that a lot of new pilots made in their first combat missions. Fish needed to get him to settle down.

"Fox three!" Dragon shouted as he barrel-rolled over Fish, going to his mecha-to-mecha missiles. "Ha! That's two of you mothers!"

"Great flying, Dragon. Try to pace yourself and don't make it harder than you have to," Fish ordered him.

"Got it, Fish," he panted back to her.

"We're getting pounded, Fish!" Lieutenant Commander Charles "Stinky" Allen complained over the net. "Just once I'd like to be on the side that has superior numbers. This shit is thick."

"Just another target-rich environment, Stinky," replied Fish.

"The best way to give us superior numbers is to kill a shitload more of them. Then we'll outnumber 'em and really give them hell," Lieutenant Denise "Crash" Fourier added.

"Roger that, Crash." Stinky grunted against a high g-load maneuver he was huffing and puffing his way through. "Damnit! Guns, guns, guns!"

"Dragon, you with me back there?" Fish scanned her DTM for more Seppy Gomers—there were plenty of Gnats and Stingers everywhere. She spotted a group of four Gomers moving in on Stinky and his new wingman, Lieutenant Junior Grade Song "TigerLady" Davis.

"Roger that, Fish," Dragon replied.

"Upstairs, angels ten, twelve o'clock high." She waited for Dragon to spot the bogies in his DTM.

"Got 'em."

The flight-wing missions were usually the same for the Madira pilots. The Gods of War typically kept the outer part of the ball clear and watched the backs of the Demon Dawgs. The Dawgs in turn watched the backs of the Utopian Saviors so the Marine mecha pilots could get in close with the objective, in this case an enemy supercarrier, and inflict as much damage as they could.

Fish pitched up ninety degrees and finally caught a clear visual of her wingman. Ensign Zeke "Dragon" Franklin was almost directly behind her, rolling around and around her line of flight, still wasting too much of his physical endurance. She pitched back over and then pulled in tight on his right wing, forcing him to settle into formation with her.

"TigerLady, Stinky, you've got four Gomers on your six. You'd better watch your ass before they get the drop on you."

"Roger that, Fish! I see 'em," Stinky replied.

"Stinky, these bastards are hellbent for us," TigerLady shouted. "We better do something quick to shake these motherfuckers! I'm getting pinged by a targeting tone!"

"Hold on for a few more seconds. We're coming."

Fish slammed the throttle all the way forward and pulled the stick to her stomach. Dragon stayed tight on her wing. They shot up into the higher altitudes of the engagement zone, in the direction of the QMT facility. They were already pulling six gravities, but anytime they had to juke or jink, the g-load shot up in the nine gravities range. Time was critical. If they didn't get up to Stinky and TigerLady in time to disrupt the Gomers on their six, the two pilots would be in serious trouble. Fish wasn't going to let that happen. DeathRay would kill himself to prevent that from happening. If that was what it took, that would just be what it took. Fish was beginning to realize the burden of being the squad commander. She couldn't imagine how it must feel to be the CAG.

"What's the plan, Fish?" Dragon said faintly against the added gravity.

"Okay, Dragon, we'll use DeathRay's favorite approach," Fish replied.

"Yeah, what's that?" the young ensign asked eagerly, hoping to learn some new wisdom and tactic of being a fighter pilot.

"DeathRay would say, 'All right, Fish, we fly in there, and we kill those motherfuckers.' So I think we should do that," Fish grunted.

"Uh, right. Good plan."

Spike, work the scenarios. Too bad Jack ain't here. He's missing all the fun, she thought to her AIC.

Roger that, Fish. He's probably goldbricking. A bunch of flight vectors jumped around in her virtual mindview, showing the flight paths of the Gomers, how they intercepted with Stinky and TigerLady, and where she and Dragon could converge on them and take them out. The red and blue lines twisted around and around each other in a confusing mess that looked like a sky full of multicolored spaghetti. The spaghetti was sinewy and tied up in knots with itself and was damned near indecipherable.

Remove the ones taking more than thirty seconds and all that require more than ten gees.

Roger that.

Most of the flight solutions vanished. There were three left that showed where they could get the drop on the enemy fighters if they did it right.

That one, Fish thought and made the other two go away. Give it to Dragon.

Done.

"Okay, Dragon, hold on to your ass and follow me in. Don't underestimate your kinetic energy or we'll overshoot them. We don't want to do that until we've mixed them up. Stay on my wing, but barrel-roll for the shot if you can get it."

"Roger that, Commander!"

Fish continued to push the throttle forward, but it just wouldn't go any farther. She jinked and juked through the attack pattern that Spike had laid out for her, sticking to it like a magic spell. A couple times it looked like if she stuck with the precalculated spell she'd turn into a frog, a dead bloody one at that, so she made up shit when that happened. She didn't turn into a fairy princess, but in a furball like this one she'd settle for "boat cute." If her plan worked, she was sure Stinky and TigerLady would think of her as at least "boat cute" and likely even queen of the fucking dance.

"I'm locked up!" Stinky shouted. The enemy Gnats had just about managed to drop in directly behind his six and put a bead on him and TigerLady. Seppy tracer rounds plowed through the space all around Stinky's mecha, and a few of them hit the rear portion of his empennage, rocking him pitch forward a bit, but he was lucky. His SIFs and armor plating held, and he managed to keep control of his fighter.

"You two wheel each other, damnit!" she ordered them. The two started barrel rolling in and out and around each other, hoping to confuse the enemy targeting systems. The constant barrel rolls made them look like a big wheel rotating in space out in front of her.

"They're too close, Fish!" TigerLady shouted.

"All right, goddamn it! Pull into the shortest downward bank you can stand, now!"

"Roger that! Banking down!" the two pilots shouted and grunted and cursed and grunted some more.

Stinky's mecha dove into a very tight downward turn. The g-forces on him would push him to the brink of blacking out. Fish had done that maneuver hundreds of times and she knew that about then Stinky's seat would be several inches up his ass and his butt cheeks would be clenched as tight as he could get them. TigerLady, on the other hand, barrel-rolled over and around Stinky's mecha while staying with Stinky's vector. She continued in a wheel about him, and what she did next showed brilliance, superhuman stamina to withstand ungodly g-loads, and balls the size of the Jovian moons. She went to bot mode while keeping the same wheel vector about Stinky's downward roll-out.

"Damnit, TigerLady, what the fuck are you doing!" Dragon shouted.

Fish didn't think that the young pilot could take that kind of pressure for long. One of the enemy Gnats open fired with its cannon, and tracers lanced between Stinky and TigerLady, missing them both. Then another opened fired, but missed again. It was a good thing those Seppy Gomers weren't very good pilots, or things could have been a whole lot worse. As it was, a couple rounds pinged against TigerLady's hull plating, but they were glancing shots, and did little damage. Her bot-mode mecha yawed around to face her pursuers, and she opened fire with both forearm cannons.

"Aarrrrgggh! Guns, guns, guns!" TigerLady shouted. "Get off my ass, goddamnit!"

"Lookout!" Fish screamed through her bite block as friendly tracer rounds missed the enemy Gnats and flashed just past her cockpit. "Watch your firing solutions for blue on blue, goddamnit!"

"Fox three!"Dragon yelled.

"Fox three!" Fish followed up. Mecha-to-mecha missiles twisted out from Fish's and Dragon's mechas and both of them hit home on the Seppy Gnats. Two of the enemy fighters exploded almost simultaneously in a combining orange and white plasma ball. There was no time for the pilots to eject. Fish and Dragon plowed on through the fireballs where the two enemy fighters had been, passing the other three Gnats. They came into formation beside Stinky and TigerLady, who was still firing behind them at the remaining Gnats.

"Shit!" Fish banked and rolled while trying to swallow her stomach, then pitched one-hundred-eighty degrees and yawed forty-five. "Guns, guns, guns."

"Fox three!" TigerLady shouted. A missile screamed out from the bot-mode fighter's midsection and twisted its way right into the cockpit of one of the pursuing Gnats. "Hot damn! That's one!" the young lieutenant shouted.

The two remaining Gnats continued to bank through the turn, trying to get a firing solution on any of the Ares. As the two Gomers pulled in tight behind them, their trajectories led them right across multiple firing solutions, and the four Navy aviators laid waste to the Seppies. But just before the last one crossed a firing solution, it did something that none of them had seen before. The Seppy Gnat transfigured into a bot mode and went into a Superman dive, going to guns with its forearm cannons.

"Guns, guns, guns!" Fish's railgun cannon tracers cut in across space in front of the transfigured Seppy Gnat and tracked its trajectory until it flew right through the forty-millimeter cannon rounds. The enemy fighter was ripped to shreds by a fusillade of baseball-sized, high-incendiary, armor-piercing tracer rounds, scattering debris and gas vapors from it.

"Guns, guns, guns!" Dragon followed up.

"Guns, guns, guns!" Stinky shouted.

"All wings, all wings! Be advised that the Gnats have a bot-mode! I repeat, the Seppy Gnats have a bot mode now!" Fish communicated wide, with full dispersion across all the flight-wing channels. She guessed that several others had to have seen the same by now and wondered why nobody had called it in.

"Fish, Fish, Madira!"

"Go, Madira!" Fish replied.

"We need air support dirtside! It's thick down there."

"Roger that, Madira. It's thick all goddamned over."