Maniac shifted his butt deeper into the seat, trying to buckle himself down for launch and adjust his poorly fitting Skivvies, issued by a farsighted Pilgrim supply officer. At least the Pilgrim repair crew had not screwed up; they'd done an outstanding job on his fighter. Most of the damaged thruster and reactor components had been replaced by new ones instead of the usual reman-ufactured parts; that fact alone deserved his admiration.
Okay, they fixed up my ride. It's not like I should thank them like this. Shit. I wish Zarya was here. I can't believe I miss her so much. Is it love? Or am I just horny? I need someone to talk to right now. Forget Blair. Can't talk to him. He's as big an idiot as me. The Pilgrims flash him some T amp;A and tell him some lies and they got him by the tiller. I can't trust him or the commodore anymore. I'm alone. It's up to me to take out this bitch. I do that, come out of this alive, they'll make me the goddamned space marshal…
"They say your call sign is Maniac," the flight boss said, her ghastly face a potent emetic that threatened to crack his Visual Display Unit. "Well, let me tell you something, Mr. Maniac, you try any bullshit out there, I got a friend up in fire control who will issue you an antimatter enema."
"Excuse me, ma'am, but I'm unfamiliar with the technical terms 'bullshit' and 'antimatter enema.'"
"But you are familiar with what a single round of antimatter fire can do to your day…"
"You seem uptight, ma'am. Sounds like you could use a little, I don't know, recreational spanking."
"Line up, mister!"
Maniac placed his gloved hand over the miniature camera mounted above the visual display, blocking her view. He nodded to the deck boss and followed the man's signals, positioning his Rapier between the hangar's bulkhead and the launch tube.
"Elect Five, you are cleared for launch," the old lady said, still boiling.
"Just call me Maniac, sweetheart. And have I ever told you about the time I got my tongue stuck in-"
He ignited his thrusters and lapsed into a howl that made the flight boss tear off her headset and possibly wonder exactly where his tongue had been. He didn't stop howling until he cleared the energy curtain and punched into the void.
That was ridiculous. Childish. I should grow up.
Why?
At about quarter klick off the Olytnpus's stern, Maniac banked hard to join the fifteen Rapiers in William Santyana's squadron. They flew on the supercruiser's portside, in a loose wedge or, more precisely, an old-fashioned fluid four that resembled the fingers of an outstretched hand. The rest of the Olym-pus's complement of seventy-one fighters and sixteen bombers had launched and divided into six and four squadrons, respectively. They encompassed the supercruiser and maintained the same heading. At the moment, Maniac appreciated Aristee's recruitment of equipment and personnel, and the modifications she had made to the flight deck to accommodate many more fighters and bombers than the usual twenty or so Rapiers and half dozen Broadswords assigned to Concordia-class supercruisers.
But they were still outnumbered. Each of the Kilrathi cruisers carried at least fifty Dralthi; the dreadnought boasted one-hundred and fifty herself; and the superdreadnought, well, Intell reported its fighter complement at over two hundred.
Hey, man. Take it easy. The more cats, the more kills…
The VDU snapped on. "Santi to Maniac. Welcome aboard, Lieutenant." Santyana flipped back his HUD viewer. "Good to be flying together again. At least this time we're on the same side, if not the wrong one. You kept up with me pretty well over McDaniel. For a moment there, I wasn't sure I could lose you."
Maniac thought back to that furball. He had been chasing a Pilgrim fighter and had narrowed its lead to twenty meters. The Pilgrim had leveled off, cutting through a gauntlet of fighters and bombers crisscrossing about a quarter kilometer away from the moon. Maniac had had trouble believing that the enemy pilot could navigate through coordinates so densely packed with other starcraft. That feat resulted in the jock's escape and Maniac's unfulfilled promise to find and smoke him. "That was you?" he asked incredulously. "I owe you a missile, Commander."
"Consider us even." Static cut across the display, then Santyana's dark features returned as he transmitted now on the squadron's general frequency. "All right, listen up, cowboys. We're point squadron. For those of you who missed or slept through the briefing, they'll be a bombing squadron with fighter escort targeting each of those cap ships. All we have to do is draw fire away from them. The captain assures us that the lead cruiser will cease fire in a minute or two. The others will follow."
"What's she going to do?" Maniac began amusedly. "Get that skipper on the comm and say, 'Uh, excuse me Mr. Cat, sir, but would you mind like ceasing fire for a little while so we can barbecue your god-ugly asses?'"
"Trust me, Lieutenant. Those guns will cease."
"Sir, is she using Pilgrims to do that?" Blair asked. "I mean Pilgrims who can-"
"I'm afraid she is, Lieutenant. Can't say I agree with her methods, but I don't have any particular love for the Kilrathi either. Politics and edicts aside, this is about saving our butts. And we're all pretty good at that. Stand by. Ready now? Break and attack!"
Still confused, Maniac shrugged and obeyed the order, looping back to fly inverted relative to the oncoming cruisers. He rolled upright and tensed as he surveyed the scene. The Fralthi-class cruisers had spread themselves into a wide, flat arrowhead, with the destroyer lining up behind like the arrow's shaft. The radar scope showed the dreadnought and superdreadnought positioned well behind them, spearing their way forward on full impulse. Strangely enough, they held their fire, letting the cruisers and destroyer communicate for them. And given their position, maybe they wouldn't launch fighters. One hundred and fifty from the cruisers still gave the cats a roughly two-to-one advantage.
Okay. What do we got? The battle group's flagship and an escort are hanging back. This tells me they want the Olympus intact. Of course they want the ship. They want the drive. And they'll use that destroyer to deploy boarding details. Subtle the cats ain't. Then again, that pack hunter mentality might come into play. Maybe they're driving us forward, toward another battle group that'll spring and attack. No way, man. Don't get that paranoid.
A proximity alarm squawked. Maniac frantically scanned the HUD, then rolled onto his side as a pair of torpedoes streaked by with a salvo of antimatter fire running shadow.
"Oh my god," somebody said over the general channel. "Look."
Maniac leveled off, and as he dived toward the lead Fralthi, he suddenly realized that her trio of antimatter guns had fallen silent, that her tube doors had closed, and that her bow began pitching down a few degrees. Despite that, wave after wave of Dralthi fighters fled like hungry bats from her cavernous flight tubes, as they did from the other two cruisers.
"Okay, our first bombing squadron is clear," Santyana shouted. "Let's bait those fighters."
Scanning the comm channel list, Maniac found Blair's private frequency and tapped for the link. "You mind telling me what's going on? Does Aristee have spies aboard that cruiser or what?"
"Why are you sweating the details? Just do the job. You got my wing." Blair cut the channel.
Whatever. Maniac kept Blair's Rapier in his field of view as it jerked into a high-G climb that beckoned a trio of Dralthi pulling away from the cruiser. "Got three taking a sniff," he told Blair. "Maintain that heading. I'm coming in behind to skin 'em."
"Do me a favor?" Blair asked. "Don't miss."
"Me? You've lost your memory, Ace."
An old girlfriend had once asked Maniac if he had ever grown tired of dogfights. Wasn't it the same old thing, time and again? You fly into the furball, try to get a bead on the enemy, fire, and blow him away. So what? That wasn't profound or artistic. And didn't he suffer from the cookie factory syndrome and have an aversion to flying unless it pertained to his job? And hadn't he grown tired of bragging about the missions, describing the same types of situations, using the same old words? / came in from his eleven o'clock, swooped to line up on his six, got the lock, thumbed off the safety, and wham, I'll take mine extra-crispy. Hey, can I buy you another one of those, sweetheart?