NOVEL NEXT B2 Chapter 29
As Angar's fighter ripped down the Gulson's sling-rail, Manny's nervous voice crackled through the comms. "We're up."
The launch catapulted him into the maelstrom at ridiculous speeds, the void aflame with carnage and searing light.
His blood roared, his heart slammed against his ribs, his palms slick on the controls.
As he tried steering around debris and failed, colliding with it instead, he realized piloting a fighter was far harder than he'd been led to believe.
Manny, Berta, and Rajasi's basic instructions on throttle, yaw, pitch, and not to overshoot, relayed over comms during two days trapped in the cockpit, swirled uselessly in his mind.
The fighter just wouldn't go where it was supposed to. By the time he knew he had to move, it was too late.
He was supposed to be trailing his flight, the squadron staying together. He had no idea where they were. Or how to find them.
With no friction to slow his momentum, every move had to be planned far ahead, each thrust committing him to a path he could barely predict.
Ignorant and untrained, Angar was a mote in a tempest, his sole goal to reach an enemy ship's bay, but he was moving too fast to spot what was right in front of him, never mind a specific spot on a ship.
He decided he had no choice but to spend a Skill Point, but he couldn't. Every ounce of his focus had to go into not dying at the moment.
The battle roared around him, a furnace of annihilation where lasers sliced unseen, leaving plasma trails scorching the black. Neuronaut-guided missiles carved erratic arcs, some streaking past him like firebolts.
Shielding fields blazed like pyres as imperial gunboats, destroyers, and the rest clashed with the three remaining Old Guard battleships.
His flight put the leviathan in his view for a moment. It still loomed beyond, aloof. As his view spun, the capital ship's crimson beam lanced through the void, barely missing the Zephuros, tearing through a mega-mech and shattering a merchant cutter's shields in a prismatic burst.
Debris spiraled out in every direction, causing a lethal storm threatening to pierce his fighter's hull.
Angar's probable coffin screamed through the chaos, its momentum still blazing from the sling-rail's launch.
He yanked the controls, trying to mimic the zig-zagging paths he'd seen others employ, but the craft lurched wildly, not doing anything he wanted, the inertia carrying him forward at breakneck speed.
Twisted shards of debris filled all paths he saw in his viewport. He slammed the yaw, sending thrusters flaring, and got lucky. He veered through the field, just clearing it, a few of the shards grazing his shields in a flicker of sparks.
"Manny down!" Berta's voice snapped through the comms, but the battle's madness drowned her out. He wished he knew where his flight or squadron was.
As he tried maneuvering, dozens of laser blasts shrieked past Angar's fighter, their trails searing the void.
His rear-scryer-display in the cockpit revealed an enemy squadron closing fast. He yanked the controls, desperate to shake them, his fighter lurching wildly. A single shot grazed his shields, sparking a warning across his HUD.
Neuronauts were infamous for their predictive precision. Their squadrons rarely missed, calculating every possible maneuver a pilot might make, targeting accordingly.
But their predictive calculations assumed semi-competent pilots making reasonable decisions. Angar's clumsy and erratic flailing must've baffled their systems. He'd wager his gross incompetence was keeping him alive.
As quickly as they'd locked onto him, the enemy fighters peeled away, likely reassigned to a new target.
He exhaled sharply, unaware he'd been holding his breath, wrestling the controls, trying to force the fighter to obey his will.
Then, ahead, an Old Guard battleship began filling his view, its writhing hull a fortress of living steel.
He had no idea where its bays were. There was no chance of spotting a small opening.
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Then a glowing maw flashed far down its flank, possibly releasing drones, though he couldn't be sure.
It was something.
He nudged the throttle, aiming for the breach, only to realize he was hurtling toward the ship's midsection.
Angar wrenched the controls and kept wrenching as thrusters screamed. He knew he was going to crash into it. He knew it. He wasn't turning fast enough.
His fighter skimmed the battleship's shielding field, sparking a crimson flare where they touched.
The impact rattled his teeth, nearly sending him spinning into the void. His fighter's HUD blared warnings about his shields and unstable trajectory. He was a fool in a machine he couldn't master, surrounded by a galaxy that wanted him dead.
"Berta's down!" Rajasi barked. "It's only you and me now."
Angar tried replying, but he was too busy trying to come back around. "Pull up, Gratia!" yelled Rajasi, making him wonder if they thought he was dead already.
Through the chaos, his every breath felt borrowed, and he constantly wondered if he'd even survive the next heartbeat, so he understood if they considered him so.
He wrestled the controls, his hands fighting the craft's relentless momentum. Each thrust locked him into a path he didn't want and never seemed capable of changing until it was too late.
The void continued to blaze with madness as he coaxed the fighter into a long, looping turn.
A swarm of biomechanical drones barreled at him, hard to spot in the void due to their black frames, only spotted because of a bulk hauler flying past behind them.
He knew he was finished. He tried maneuvering as his doom bore down on him, knowing he could do nothing to change his fate.
For some reason, the drones tried banking away. He found out why a moment later. An imperial fighter, probably flown by a first-timer like himself, plowed into the swarm.
The collision erupted in a spray of debris. Metal shards silently clanged off Angar's shields as he uncontrollably blazed through the wreckage, mostly unscathed.
The leviathan appeared in his view, its crimson beam carving through the battle. As it spun away, he witnessed the bulk freighter protecting the Sanguineous Sisterhood's shipper rip apart.
The shipper, still under heavy escort by gunboats and fighters, smashed into the titan.
Both vessels' shields erupted in a brutal clash of light, a supernova of blues and golds, but neither hull buckled.
That had to be a boarding tactic. He could easily see Hidetada coming up with that plan, and the Sisters zealously storming the leviathan's innards to blow its Synapse-Engine. He envied their end of flight through chaotic death, wishing he'd been assigned to that shipper's charge.
Should he aim for the leviathan now? The thought bloomed, then died as the ship spun out of view.
His fighter's relentless momentum mocked his plans.
He'd take any ship he could enter. He'd prefer that be the leviathan, but that was more up to his uncontrollable fighter than any planning.
The mission was to destroy the Synapse-Engines, a desperate bid to cripple the hivemind, and the Neuronaut could be orchestrating the enemy's flawless tactics aboard any of the ships.
As his fighter spun in a disorienting turn, trying to get any ship in his view he had a chance of flying at, he glimpsed the Zephuros. Even boarded, the leviathan was releasing missiles and beams, and one blazed past the Zephuros, barely missing it.
Hidetada's ship looked like it was out of tricks. It was limping away from the battle, damaged and sparking, scarred from enemy fire, swarmed by fighters and drones like vultures circling a dying beast.
He couldn't make out details at this distance, but something was destroying the fighters surrounding the ship. He suspected that'd be Thryna. Maybe Harc too.
The scene spun out of view. If any ship was to survive this battle, it'd be the Zephuros.
Angar wrestled with his controls, yanked hard, lights blazing past as the fighter lurched, defiant to his will.
Another debris field spun toward him. He jerked the throttle and avoided this one a little more easily. Maybe he was getting the hang of this?
A heartbeat later, an Old Guard fighter darted in, strafed his flank, its weapons searing his shields in a crimson flare.
Angar swerved, nearly clipping a merchant cutter that shattered in a flare of plasma and debris as he cleared it.
He looked around for the Old Guard fighter but saw nothing. The HUD in his ship was a useless garble of red and green dots, a mess his mind wouldn't be able to untangle in the quick glimpses he could spare to look at it.
Then an enemy battleship filled his viewport. A shipper had already crashed into it. Its heavy-class escort, the Gulson, flew away, releasing its armaments at fighter and drone swarms.
Angar tugged the controls, aiming roughly for it, but the fighter's inertia betrayed him, overshooting with every nudge.
Another flash, another released swarm of biomechanical drones, confirmed some sort of bay he could target.
He tried making micro-adjustments to point at that spot, but small inputs spiraled into wild veers. His HUD blared a different noise. He quickly glimpsed, seeing the usual warnings about erratic trajectory and low shields. And something else.
A split second later, an unseen impact jolted his fighter. The craft roared into a violent tumble, spinning in a blaze, hurtling through the void.
Angar's vision distorted. The same stars, debris, and flaring shields blurred past his viewport in a dizzying kaleidoscope again and again, so fast it was just the same blur of light, lost in the tumble.
Panic surged and he crushed it. He thought it through. There was no other choice.
He slammed the eject. The cockpit burst open as he blasted into the void.
His Crusader Armor's minor thrusters fired, but their feeble pulses, draining precious Energy Points, couldn't halt his tumbling. Oxygen depended on those points, too.
He'd be okay. Or he told himself that.
As hope flashed in his chest, he slammed into something with a bone-jarring thud.
His armor's integrity held, but the impact sent his head slamming around the inside of his helmet. The black tentacles of unconsciousness clawed at his mind, but he forced his head to clear with an iron will.
Blinking through disorientation, he realized he clung to the battleship's hull, its biomechanical surface writhing strangely beneath his gauntlets. The void's silence screamed in his ears, broken only by the intermittent crackle of his comms.