At 3.5 Gs, the Davion Sparrowhawksclosed on their targets.
* * * *
Uchita had not burned. Three times she had made high-G burns to correct her vector, slowing her ship and clearing the radar-swept line between Dagger Squadron and the outbound Davions.
She was still not in visual range, but her computer had painted wire-frame plan and elevation view diagrams of her targets in green lines on her number two computer screen, while her main screen displayed the enemy squadron's arrowhead formation. The Davion fighters were easily recognizable without computer identification—six stubby Sparrowhawks,the twin lances of their paired Martell medium lasers extending forward like the antennae of some grey, squat insects. Range figures flickered across her heads-up display. Her own trio of Kajuka Type 2 lasers had a maximum effective range of over 50,000 kilometers, but she was determined to hold her attack until the very last possible second. She was at 12,000 kilometers now and closing at 300 klicks per second.
She selected one of the six targets, and locked it into her targeting computer. Behind the black reflective mask of her flight helmet visor, her lips wer drawn back in a wild rictus that she thought was a smile. Kill them!
* * * *
Space combat tended to be a drawn-out affair of maneuver and countermaneuver, punctuated by brief periods of fire-shrieking fury and fear. Lasers, PPCs, and long-ranged missiles can deliver damage across respectable ranges, but target acquisition and targeting technologies were no longer able to cope with the ranges and velocities involved. Extensive weapon firing caused ships already heated by maneuver to overheat faster than the heat pumps could handle. Expert pilots had learned to wait until they were within a few thousand kilometers to open fire, trading the slim chance of multiple, long-ranged hits for the certainty of hits at close range during rapid passes.
Red Flight and Dagger Squadron interpenetrated, then-respective velocities on opposite vectors adding to a passing velocity of over 500 kps. At such speeds, human reactions dragged too slowly to select targets or to plot vectors. Under computer control, four Sparrowhawksconcentrated their fire on one Thrush.Armor on the broad, oval disk of the fighter's wing flared white where invisible beams of coherent light scored successive hits, wreathing the Thrushin a mist of rapidly condensing droplets of molten alloy. Return fire scored hull armor and left molten slashes across fuselage and wing.
Valasquez flipped his fighter end for end and slammed his thrust control forward. Savage deceleration bucked and sang through his stubby ship, but he continued to fire at the Liao ships now receding against the green and orange disk of the Folly's sun. Another hit!
He'd had only a fractional instant's glimpse of his enemy before they'd passed out of visual range, but that view had confirmed his computer's ID of five, tight-grouped TR-7s. A combat readout flickered across one of his computer screens. At least two of the Liao ships were hurt enough to degrade their performance. He identified those two to his squadron as optimum targets, then cut in a short burst of overthrust that hammered him against his seat. For an agonizing moment, Valasquez thought the Liao TR-7s were going to ignore Red Squadron and race them for the atmosphere of Stein's Folly, but the traceries on his HUD proved otherwise. All five ships were decelerating as savagely as he was, using their maneuvering thrusters to swing them around and bring them into line for another pass. He noted that four had paired off in wingman formation, but that the fifth was alone.
Valasquez gave a long, hooting rebel yell as he lined up all four of his little ship's lasers on the lead Thrush,and triggered a rapid burst of invisible bolts of light that stitched across the target's nose and wing.
* * * *
Uchita's battlelust had grown as her instruments described to her the opening rounds of the battle. There was no indication that she had been detected. She watched one of the Sparrowhawkfighters open fire on Captain Chen's Thrush.Gently she eased her stick forward, letting her fingers caress the target acquisition controls under her unfeeling right hand. Her vector had already been set as her target accelerated, she dropped into line behind him, so close she could see his drive flare as a brilliant, diamond-sharp beacon star through the soft illumination of her HUD.
Fire! Fire!
* * * *
Alarms screeched in Valasquez's helmet speakers as his instrument display lit up with red trouble lights. He was hit!
"Red Leader, this is Red Five. Y'got one on your tail!"
"I see him, Red Five! I've got some damage here..." Damage control reports flashed across a screen. Uh oh...his starboard control surfaces were really fouled. It was a good thing he wouldn't need those until he hit atmosphere again. He'd worry about that later. His threat indicator flashed purple.
"The bogie's closing, Red Leader! Break left! Break left!"
His hand played across thruster controls. The maneuverable little Sparrowhawkflipped end-over and decelerated sharply as he swung onto a new vector. Warnings shrieked at him, and he cut them off. A combat spacecraft's most serious problem was heat build-up—heat from engines, from laser fire, from enemy hits. Each maneuver he made was making the temperature problem worse, but there was no way to shed waste heat now.
Where was the bogie? There! He fired, a snap shot without a lock, but he was certain he'd scored at least one hit. Red Five was closing on the bogie now, angling for a shot A momentary brilliance flaring about the target showed Red Five had hit Good!
Then there were more Liao fighters, two of them in tight wing formation. "Red Five, watch yourself, starboard quarter high!" His own heat overload warning lights were flashing balefully in time to a raucous buzz in his helmet phones, but he slapped the override again and triggered invisible fire from all four lasers.
"Red Leader, this is Five!" Dugan's voice was high-pitched, the youngster's battlepitch distorting his words. "The bogie's flipped again! Watch your..." At that moment Red Five exploded in white light, the silent burst punctuated by the shriek of static in Valasquez's helmet phones.
The laser fire shredded his tail stabilizer and pocked craters in the armor over his engines. He fired his thrusters to flip an undamaged flank of his Sparrowhawkinto the attacker's line of fire. Sluggish! She wasn't reacting fast enough! Metal vapor exploded into space.
He tracked a target, firing paired medium and light lasers with grim determination. His target began tumbling, its disk shape shredded and hacked by repeated bits, its thrusters silenced. Valasquez's course and speed were close enough to that of the target that he was able to fire volley after volley into the wreckage. Finally, he was rewarded by a flash that consumed the crippled Thrushin a dazzling gout of light. A kill! But his computer marked that kill as the Liao flight's leader, not the mystery ship that had attacked him from behind.