"Hardwire UDP is connected and operational. Lieutenant Candis Three Zero Seven Two Four Niner Niner Niner Six ready for duty," Jack's AIC announced over the open com channel. Then directly to Jack, Let's go get 'em, Commander!
Roger that, Candis!
Jack saluted the flight deck officer and brought the canopy down. The harness holding the fighter lowered and dropped it the last twenty centimeters to the deck with that ever-so-familiar squishing feel from the landing gear suspension. The drop always used to leave him with a lump in his throat and butterflies in his stomach because it meant that he was about to go screaming out the ass end of the supercarrier into a storm of raining and streaking Hell from all directions. Or at least it had meant that up until the Exodus and the few cleanup actions afterward. There had been merely training exercises for the better part of four years now, and Jack preferred that to the horrific sights and sounds of war.
The aftermath of the Exodus was enough to leave serious scars in any soldier's psyche and, indeed, many had resigned from service after it. But Jack was made of sterner stuff, he had told himself. And somebody had to be prepared in the case that America, the Sol System, came under attack again. With the Exodus, he had hoped that war would be a thing he wouldn't have to deal with for a while. He had trained, nevertheless.
Once again, it looked like it was time for war, and all bravado aside, he was good at it. Jack swallowed the lump, calmed the butterflies, and followed the flight deck sequence. He moved his fighter first in line for takeoff. The tricycle wheels of the little fighter squeaked against the deck plate as it rolled into launch position. Jack could feel the supercarrier vibrating from anti-aircraft fire—a deadly feeling that he had almost forgotten.
"This is double zero," Jack called over the tac-net. "This is gonna get hairy, folks, and I want everyone covering their wings and following the plan. Good hunting and good luck." He thought his faceplate down and pulled his mouthpiece closer with his teeth.
"Fighter zero-zero callsign DeathRay, you are cleared for egress. Good hunting, Commander Boland!" the control tower officer radioed. "Handing off to cat control."
"Roger that, tower." Jack went through his ritual. "Y'all just keep the beer cold, and good ol' DeathRay will be back soon enough." Jack taxied to the "at bat" slot and braced himself for the "ball" and chewed at the bite block.
"Fighter double zero, you are at bat and go for cat! Call the ball."
"Roger cat, double zero has the ball," Boland responded as the little gold catapult field alignment sphere blinked on in his DTM view, overlaying the projected launch window circle.
"Good hunting, DeathRay!" the catapult field AI announced. Jack throttled the Ares-T forward and switched to hover as the landing gear cycled and extracted. He bit down harder on the temporomandibular joint mouthpiece and eased the throttle just a little more forward so that the fighter slipped into the catapult field. His tongue worked nervously against the bite block and the roof of his mouth and he began to salivate profusely. Sweat would soon start building, but his suit would evaporate that quickly.
Swallowing hard, Jack worked his hands against the HOTAS grip, feeling the controls. The new bot-mode toggle on his right stick control was beginning to feel completely at home, although this would be the first combat the new transfigurable Ares-T fighters had seen. Jack was and wasn't looking forward to the pending opportunity at the same time. He'd been training in the new mecha for more than two years, and now he'd find out the hard way how good it really was in combat.
"Roger that. Double zero has the cat! WHOOO! HOOO!" Jack screamed as usual through the mouthpiece. The support tube for the bite block started pumping oxygen and stimulants in his face and mouth. The catapult field flung the Ares-T out of the rear lower launch deck, and Jack was thrust hard into his seat at over nine Earth gravities, accelerating the little snub-nosed, fighter-mode mecha to over three hundred kilometers per hour.
The inertial dampening controls of the fighter kept DeathRay's body from being crushed against the pilot's seat and his brain from sloshing around inside his head to the point of fatal trauma. The sleek new fighter-mode Ares-T screamed out of the cat field from zero to four hundred kilometers per hour in one tenth of a second with an acceleration of about eighty-eight Earth gravities. The inertial dampening controls reduced the effect by generating a dampening field around the aircraft that served two purposes: 1) to add structural integrity to the fighter plane as it was thrown into a hail of anti- aircraft fire and 2) to reduce the effect of the g-forces to something that human pilots could possibly withstand—twelve gravities or so. Inertial dampening fields or not, Jack was on one hell of a ride.
"Holy fuck!" Jack breathed rapidly and spat out obscenities almost as proficiently as an enlisted sailor. He grunted as the overwhelming g-forces from the catapult acceleration subsided. He shook his head and squinted the flashing stars and blood from his eyes.
Jack focused on slowing his breathing and scanned the sky and the viewscreens displaying under and behind him. At the same time, his AIC DTMed a full-scale, three-dimensional, immersive, spherical view of the space around him. He could look in any direction and see space outside rather than the interior of the fighter. The view was partially transparent so that he could still monitor other instruments and controls inside the cockpit that were not virtual.
The space around him was littered with explosions and flashes of light above and behind him; beneath him were the icy, bungled- together planetoids and the mangled array of Seppy construction. The DEGs of the supercarrier were digging major gashes out of the facility and slinging debris across the planetoids.
In his virtual mindview, Jack could see the other planes from his squadron being flung from the Sienna Madira hangar bays. His young wingman, Lieutenant Karen "Fish" Howser, pulled in beside him on his right. Jack could see Fish scanning around her cockpit virtual view for bogies. Her head whipped around wildly looking for incoming threats. Karen had seen her first combat at the Seppy Exodus and had proven herself a true ace fighter pilot. Jack had originally chosen her for his wingman because she was truly young and raw, and he thought she needed to be looked after. But he kept her as his wing because they had worked very well together and what she lacked in experience, Jack had noted on that day, she more than made up for in guts, determination, and just plain raw talent. And she took to the new mecha like a duck to water. Karen was probably one of the best aviators he'd ever seen, besides himself, of course.
Jack could also see the main gun batteries of the Madira firing in rapid succession. Missiles began to spill away from the mammoth warship, along with the DEG bursts through the hail of anti-aircraft fire coming from the Seppy facility. Some of them impacted the Seppy base's exterior hull plating and boiled off large chunks of the armor in brilliant orange and white clouds. The debris spread out in long arcs across the surface of the low-gravity planetoid and spun madly with no atmosphere to drag down its motion.