The Long March by Richard Fox

Author:Richard Fox [Fox, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-06-10T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Wyman jumped into his cockpit and strapped himself in as the launch bay doors opened ahead of him. He did a double take at the lava flows on one of the nearby moons.

His crew chief tapped him on the top of the head twice and his canopy lowered. Wyman threw his helmet on and sealed it shut.

“They want us to fly through that?” Ivor said through his helmet. “The brass understand that fighters moving at high velocity hitting all that crap in the void is a bad thing, right?”

“Set forward heat shields to maximum. That’ll clear out most of it.” Wyman’s hands danced across his control panels and brought his fighter online and ready to launch.

“‘Most’ being the operative word,” Ivor said.

“Cobras,” the squadron commander, call sign Marksman, came on the air. “Daegon assault ships are within the fleet’s perimeter. Weapons free. Negative on fighters, but stay frosty out there.”

A crewman raised a pair of lit batons in front of Wyman and his Typhoon rattled as the catapult locked onto his landing gear. He braced himself against his seat and the electronic rails beneath his fighter shot him forward and out into the void.

Firing up his engines, he sped forward, feeling the impacts of tiny particles against his wings. A spider web crack the size of his palm appeared at the edge of his canopy.

“Like flying through a hailstorm.” He powered up his forward heat shields and the rattling stopped, just before his canopy HUD went berserk, threat icons appearing and disappearing all around him, and an error message flashed.

“Freak, did your HUD just shit the bed?” Ivor asked.

“Roger, Briar, too much interference for the computers to handle. We’re going to have to do this by eye.” Wyman deactivated his HUD.

“I take back everything I said about Marksman when he sent us through the sims to do analog drills,” Ivor said. “Bogies to our three o’clock. Four by my count, moving on the Orion.”

“I see them.” Wyman flicked the safety off his cannons. “Engaging.”

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