Cadet Flight Methuselah

009

Swallowing the bile that had stuck in her throat since hearing the Captain's briefing, Nim picked out Seig's transponder signal amidst the mess that was going on around the nose of the Heinlein and pulled him into a private channel using her XO override.

"What the fuck, Riptide?" he growled through the com. He hated it when people forced him into a channel, mostly because he liked to sing the Marines' hymn to himself in his cockpit like other people sang to themselves in the shower. He never did get the message that he could not sing at all. She doubted he was doing much of it at that point, however.

"Pulling bars on you Ironsight. Full stop Bifrost through to Hostile One on this vector."

"Jesus Christ you've got to be kidding me," Seig exclaimed once he saw her trajectory in his readout. "Watson and I already turned that vector into a junkyard. You hit debris at full throttle you're space swiss."

"Over your head in zero three seconds, Ironsight. Going on wing so keep it tight."

Seig picked up immediately on the seriousness of her voice and she saw in her right window that he had fixed her in a target lock. "Letting loose on flyover, Riptide. Full throttle on zero two follow first."

The moment she passed over the top of Seig's Haya she feathered her port thrusters and flipped her marauder up on its starboard wing, balancing carefully as Seig unleashed a salvo of high-speed particles from his railguns that passed barely a meter above and below her fighter and converged together in an explosion of destructive energy a hundred meters ahead of her. As soon as she saw the glittering tail end of the first salvo she waited two beats, then opened her throttle wide and pushed forward towards Hostile One at maximum speed, letting loose several volleys of her own as targets of opportunity crossed her path. She was only able to wound them, however. Chasing them down was impossible with a steady stream of fire coming from Seig's guns trapping her within an impossibly tight tunnel that would shred her marauder into shrapnel were either of their calculations off by the barest millimeter. The maneuver was one Sparrow had mentioned to her and which she and Seig had subsequently practiced to perfection over the past two years simply because it looked really cool when it was replayed in after-action reports.

They had no clue that when they were sinking hour after hour into perfecting the deadly maneuver it would end up being one they actually used for reasons other than bragging rights-and one which worked exactly as they had predicted it would. Seig's high-powered railguns, configured explicitly for shredding through the dense armor of capital frigates like the Heinlein, blasted apart everything unlucky enough to cross their path and created a clear and narrow tunnel for her directly through the heart of most of the activity in the battlesphere. Mostly what was swept away were large debris from already destroyed crabs floating dead in space, but he had gotten a few clean kills on at least three vultures she saw as the dreadnought steadily loomed larger and glossy black in her forward view.

Seig's triumphant cackle cut through the silence she had built up around herself as she plotted out a dozen different enemy vectors that could be headed her way. "That was ACE! Don't get dead and you are going to score so big at graduation showing that off!"

"I told you there's no way hell you'd shoot me!" replied Nim, sparing one final boisterous laugh while she still had enough energy to spare on expressing emotion. "Look after Home Base, Ironsight."

"No problem," said Seig. "We'll be here when you get back."

"Riptide exit channel."

Alarms wailed as soon as the computer realized she was heading straight into a solid immovable object and she switched them off by punching the fail-safe warning trigger directly behind her head. Her cockpit fell silent and eerily still as she barreled towards Hostile One with her engines at maximum output, ticking off the seconds in her head when Seig's final volley would catch up with her fighter and she could pull out of the stoop. Seeing the light in her cockpit shift as the packets of energy flew past her rear engines she pulled her marauder sharply up and killed her main engine. The speed she had built up charging the dreadnought was still carrying her into it belly-first. She had gotten a decent feel for the smash space of the dreadnought on her first flyby with Leo, so triggering the gyros fitted to her engine unit she rotated it perpendicular to her crash course and waited, using her maneuvering thrusters to tweak her breakneck fall and keep her perfectly parallel to Hostile One's hull.