With the gap between her and the two craft ahead dwindling, she only had half a minute to prepare for impact. She pulled the defense menus up one more time and drilled down to the useless chaff screen. She might not be able to arm them, but maybe she could give her ship a bit of a buffer. It helped that the flankers were now in firing range of the fleet. Distracted with laser-fire from the Navy, they weren’t keeping a vigilant eye on their rears. Molly and the two missiles zipped down their wake, all three players set to meet at a single point.
Worst-case scenario: the missiles take her out just as she arrives between the other two ships. The blast would vaporize her, but it should also take her foes out of the fight. If she ended up with three dead bogeys after entering a battle with no offensive capabilities, Molly would consider it a victory of the highest order.
The best-case scenario was too much to wish for, but it had all four of her chaff canisters deploying and the missiles making impact, saving her cockpit from the blast and directing the force to the enemies on either side. It was yet another bold stunt with slim chances, but Molly decided to keep gambling while she was on a lucky streak.
As she entered the thruster-wash of the enemy, she placed her thumb over the release button. Time slowed to a silent crawl. The laser fire ahead of the flankers seemed to spurt forward like drips of red molasses. Everything moved so slowly that none of it appeared threatening, as if she could reach out and just pluck the hot plasma from outer space.
And then she was there, riding the wake of the two ships, buffeted in their thruster-wash. Her thumb twitched a command, releasing the useless chaff.
The missiles made impact, an orange glow wrapping its silent arms around her Firehawk.
And for the second time that day, Molly’s world went black.
“Molly.”
It was Cole’s voice.
Her vision returned, the black in front of her visor opening like a camera’s iris to reveal the battle raging ahead. Their Firehawk was still partly intact, the protective shell of a cockpit drifting through space with twisted hunks of metal trailing behind. Her life support readout indicated that she was dead.
“Damnit!” Molly slammed a fist into the flight controls, hurting her hand more than she did the simulator.
Cole reached his gloved hand over and patted her thigh, trying to comfort her. “What’re you so upset about? You did good, girl. Those other two ships caught most of the blast. They’re goners.”
Molly glanced at Cole. A smirk peeked out below his visor. She smiled back, a bit reluctantly. “Huh. I guess you’re right. I was hoping I’d keep getting lucky. What the hell happened to you?”
Cole tried to shrug his shoulders in the flight harness. “I dunno. The simulator said I was dead, so I must’ve been. Didn’t make sense from the damage we sustained, but nothing about this exercise makes sense. Oh, and by the way, my suit ignored the fact that I was lifeless and gave me the same Gs you took in that missile maneuver. Remind me to beat your ass later.”
She pouted. “Yeah? Did Cole get a tummy ache?”
Cole laughed and the joke lingered in the cockpit for a few minutes. On the screen, the remainder of their fleet tried in vain to stave off defeat. Gradually, the humor faded, and they started asking more questions. Serious questions. They went back to the conversation they were having before the exercise went hot, Molly more open this time to Cole’s conspiracies.
When the last Navy ship tried to flee, there were still seven fully functional enemy craft left for the mop-up. The cadets wouldn’t find out until the debriefing which race they were up against today, but Molly already suspected the Tchung. More tax dollars spent training against a non-enemy, a race no one had seen for generations.
The last Navy ship was surrounded, creating a traitorous feeling of anticipation. The end of this exercise would bring relief. Being dead and having to watch her fellow cadets struggle to extend the inevitable made Molly’s entire body twitch. It was like her right hand trying to pilot from the nav side of the cockpit. Finally, with a puff of orange pixels, the battle was over. The panorama of carnage went black, and one horror replaced another: the summation screen showing the casualty and damage reports. It wasn’t supposed to be a scoreboard, or taken as a game, but that’s how the students saw it. All but one of them were boys. Comparing anything measurable was their favorite pastime.
Molly scanned the list from top to bottom. Jakobs/Dinks sat on top with 2.5 confirmed kills, which meant one of their enemy had taken damage from another crew. They also had a wingman assist and a tactical bonus for recognizing the flow of battle and reacting properly. Subtracting their eventual death left them with 550 points. Not too bad a score, considering.
Down at the very bottom was Cole/Fyde with zero kills, an unassisted wingman penalty, three tactical violations, and a self-kill. With a score of -2080 rendered in bright red, it made everyone else look like they knew what in hyperspace they were doing.
Cole shook his head and patted Molly’s gloved fist with his. Her AC revved up to whisk away her body heat, partly rising from the shame of the score and partly—from something else.
A window on the right side of the summation screen opened up and Captain Saunders scowled back at the cadets, his round and oversized head resting on rolls of fat. “Not bad, boys.”
Molly cringed at the masculine pronoun, a military staple.
“This exercise is meant to test your endurance and teamwork. Two days of sleeping in shifts before a battle is the real deal. This is what any of you who actually graduate and fly for us can expect. We’ve been putting senior flight crews through this exact maneuver for over thirty years. Those numbers look bad, some of them especially, but you’ll be pleased to hear you’ve fared better than any other class since I’ve been here.
“Too bad you’re all dead,” he added sarcastically. “Not screwing up worse than previous generations of know-nothings means I don’t want to hear you celebrating. If more of you had recognized the real danger was the flanking craft and not the main body, we could’ve seen this scenario defeated, a feat real Navy pilots pull off in their sleep. But it’s hard to match their coordinated defense with twitchy trigger fingers on some of you and inoperable ones on others.
“The three bottom crews need to report to me immediately for a dressing down; the rest of you hit the showers then start writing up your failure reports. And I want to read what you did wrong, not excuses for why you did it wrong. The real winners today were the Tchung, so don’t feel proud for getting lucky. Dismissed.”
With that, the screens went translucent, and Molly stared out at the familiar wall of cinder blocks. Out her starboard side porthole a line of cramped simulator pods stretched out for a hundred meters. Their hatches popped open almost in unison, but she couldn’t hear them—their hatch was still shut.
Molly snapped her helmet off and looked at Cole. He held his own helmet in his lap, his face serious.
“I don’t care what they say, you did great.”
“Thanks.” Molly loaded the word with sarcasm and rolled her eyes. If she ever allowed herself to take a compliment from Cole, her face would betray the way she felt about him. It was the only thing she had in common with these boys: the need to be mean in order to keep her distance.
“I’m serious. Another thing: let’s keep the sabotage business to ourselves for now. All they need to know is that the weapons systems were off-line. They should adjust our score for that. Get rid of that bogus wingman penalty, at least.”