“What the hell?” Cameron mumbled.
“Oh yeah!” Jessica cheered from the back seat of the old fighter.
Tug yanked the stick back to the left and added power to his engines. “The other one’s breaking off. I’m going after him.”
“What the hell for?” Jessica argued. “Let’s just get the hell outta here, shall we?”
“He’s faking retreat,” Tug insisted. “He’ll try to come around and get behind us.”
“How do you know?”
“That’s what I would do,” Tug answered calmly.
“Okay.”
“Jess! Where did you come from?” Nathan asked over the comm-set “Is Tug with you?”
“Who do you think is flying this thing?” she laughed.
“Commander! The third fighter is a friendly!” the communications officer reported.
“How do you know?” Cameron challenged.
“I’m picking up traffic between it and the harvester,” he told her as he transferred the signal to the loudspeakers.
“Long story, skipper,” Jessica’s voice said over the comms. “I’ll fill you in later. Now head for the ship while we take out the other punk. And tell Cam not to leave without us!”
“What the hell happened down there?” Cameron wondered aloud.
“They’re flying into the warship’s firing solution,” Mendez warned. “They won’t survive a hit from their big guns.”
“Then let’s give them some cover,” Cameron said, as she cut the main engines and pulled back on the controls.
The Aurora’s nose pitched up, stopping at a ninety-degree angle to her flight path. Unable to maintain a firing solution for a point-defense field, the rail guns automatically stopped firing. The enemy warship, however, did not, and continued its relentless barrage.
“What the hell is she doing?” Loki asked as they watched the Aurora pitch up.
“That lady’s as crazy as I am,” Josh laughed.
Nathan also laughed. “She’s showing them her belly,” he explained. “It’s the toughest part of the ship.”
With no point-defense field to at least partially protect them, the Aurora was taking every shot at full force into her undersides, but it had been designed to be used for emergency aero-braking and atmospheric entry in the event of a crash landing. With three times as many layers as the rest of the ship, and much heavier structural support, Cameron hoped that the Aurora’s bottom side would protect them all long enough to recover the two smaller ships and jump away. It wasn’t exactly a textbook maneuver, but it was working.
The second fighter was now only fifty meters in front of them, as they chased him through a tight turn to port. The enemy pilot kept varying his turn rate in a desperate effort to trick Tug into losing his target lock. However, it was to no avail, as this wasn’t Tug’s first dog-fight.
A small puff of maneuvering thrust squirted out of the nose of the second fighter, just as it had numerous times over the last few seconds during the turn. This time… it was a bit more thrust than usual.
“You can’t be that stupid,” Tug mumbled.
The enemy fighter suddenly began to rapidly pitch back as it tried to do an end over to bring its own guns to bear on Tug and Jessica. For a brief moment, the enemy’s profile became considerably larger, giving Tug a splendid target and an easy kill. A single squeeze of the trigger on his control stick, and a red bolt of energy leapt from his cannon striking the enemy dead center, rupturing his fuel tanks and igniting a blinding explosion.
“What happened?” Jessica asked as the debris from the exploding enemy ship struck them like rain falling from the sky.
“Caius was always more interested in quantity than quality,” Tug mumbled.
“What?” Jessica asked from behind.
“Nothing. Let’s rejoin the others.”
“Hang on, people!” Josh yelled from the cockpit. “This ain’t gonna be pretty!”
“What’s wrong?” Nathan asked. After the Aurora had pitched up and started blocking the incoming fire, their ride had been comparatively smooth.
“We’ve got a lot of damage, and a nose dive ain’t exactly an ideal angle for a landing!”
Nathan looked forward between the partitions. Through the forward windshield of the cockpit, he could see the Aurora, not more than a hundred meters away and coming up fast. But since she had pitched up, their approach was now perpendicular to her length. There was no way they could change course fast enough to avoid smashing head-first into her flight deck. “Oh my God.”
“Tell me you’re ready, Abby!” Cameron said.
“Hangar bay! Prepare for crash landing!” Mendez called over the comms. “All hands brace for collision!”
“I’m ready!” Abby promised.
“Hang on, people! We’re gonna have to take a few more shots to the nose!” Cameron announced.
“HA HA!” Josh screamed, his eyes widening. Nathan spun his head back to his left to look forward once more.
“She’s pitching down!” Loki yelled.
“Oh I’m in love with that woman!” Josh cheered.
Nathan watched as the Aurora pitched her nose back down until it once again was pointed in the same direction as her heading. Now they had a somewhat normal approach angle, although still somewhat fast.
“They’ve launched missiles!” Ensign Mendez reported. “Six inbound! All conventional! ETA thirty seconds!”
“Standby, Abby!”
Abigail moved her hand over the large round jump button that one of the technicians had permanently wired into her console, now that it was the official Jump Control station. She flipped open the cover and turned the key above the button, arming it. “Standing by,” she answered, her finger hovering over the button.
“Here we go!” Josh announced. He pulled his nose up hard and fired his landing thrusters. Designed to provide the lift needed for atmospheric flight, other than his mains they were the most powerful engine he had and therefore the most effective at quickly reducing their forward velocity. A quick glance to his right and Josh saw Tug doing the same thing with his old fighter as he too tried to make an emergency landing right next to them.
“Let’s hope she remembered to open the outer doors this time,” Josh mumbled.
As they slid in under the flight deck’s canopy, they pushed their nose back down and extended their landing gear. But there was not enough time for the harvester’s gear to fully extend before it hit the flight deck, and the gear folded back up against the harvester’s underside in twisted heaps.
Tug’s fighter fared better, its gear extending more rapidly and locking just in time to touch down yet still with considerable force. Having suffered far less damage than the harvester, Tug’s fighter was able to use its braking thrusters to come to a comfortable and controlled stop.
The harvester, however, was not so lucky. It slid across the flight deck into the outer airlock bay, sparks flying as it careened off the starboard wall and skidded back out toward the center of the bay, nearly colliding with Tug’s fighter.
“They’re down!” Mendez reported.
“Kill main viewer,” Cameron ordered. “Jump!”
A pale blue wave of light washed out from the Aurora’s shield emitters. In a split second, the bluish light grew into a glowing ball that encompassed the entire ship, before it suddenly turned white and fell back in upon her, erasing the ship from local existence, leaving nothing but an empty hole in space for the approaching missiles to cruise through.
“Jump completed,” Abby reported no more than a second later.
“Main viewer up,” Cameron ordered. “Kaylah, get a fix on our position, and then locate that warship. And let’s try to reduce our emissions as much as possible. The harder it is for them to spot us, the more time we’ll have to prepare for our next jump.”
“Already on it, sir,” Ensign Yosef reported.
“Abby, start plotting an escape jump, open space, anywhere outside of this system.
“Which direction?”
“Don’t really care.” Cameron turned to Mendez at tactical. “Did they make it?”