Tyler

The hatch seals behind them as the flight crew quickly goes through their start up checklist. The spacecraft was new, but the ritual was familiar to the one experienced aviator and his experienced spacer companion.

The young man in the forward position, the pilot’s position, was Lieutenant Tyler Sarkin, and joining him for this flight was his new Weapons Systems Officer, commonly called a Wizzo, a Seramali woman, Flight Officer Cascade Verderian who preferred to be called Cassie. She stretches her wings happily just in the corner of his eye, clearly still getting used to the new equipment the humans called a flight suit, and the small set of survival gear that came with it. He’d expected a lot of weird things when he’d signed up, but crewing with a literal angel wasn’t one of them.

The blonde beauty he was splitting a cockpit with was BMC 2/100 #3, and what it translated to in English was freaking angels! Tall, universally gorgeous, even by alien standards, women, with massive feathered wings. With mostly fair skin and light eyes, if you hid the wings, tail feathers, and legs that transitioned from smooth looking skin into scales and a pair of brutal looking raptor talons you could almost convince him they were a very lost tribe of Amazon warrior women.

Except. For one small detail. Four eyes. Arranged two to a side, the outer pair was optimized for viewing objects from far away, and were either matched to their inner eyes, or in what the Seramali consider a desirable trait, a golden color that reminded Tyler of Earth hawks. The inner eyes were optimized for close viewing. He’d asked Cassie to explain how her species’ vision worked, and the complexity of the imagery her mind processed from its four optical devices was more mind bending than FTL navigation.

Tyler shakes himself back to reality and quickly finishes his checklist, ending on powering up their engines.

“Three lit and in the green. Cassie, how are we looking?”

“Weapons coming up, passive sensors coming up, holding off on active sensor activation till we’re clear of the hangar but all systems are optimal. Activating heating systems for mechanical components. About half of our munitions are loaded... primary weapon’s spooled and ready."

Sarkin nods to himself. “Right, let’s see what this bad girl can do Cassie.” He flicks the switch to bring him onto the frequency for the flight control for the UCV Crimson Tear. “Tear control, Valkyrie 101 checking in, loading ordnance now.”

“Copy Valkyrie 101, your call sign is Ghostrider 1-1. Discontinue loading ordnance. Scramble and interdict hostile small craft. Vector is 310 from the ship. Your SWACS controller's call sign is Raven.”

“Scramble and interdict enemy craft, Valkyrie 101.”

Red lights flash in the hangar outside of the brand new Huscarl class gunship. It was an inspired design, lead by some of the Dauntless’s science team and Wichen Bridger, it was very much a human design, but it incorporated numerous alien tech and weapons to produce a peerless combatant craft, all built around an update of the venerable GAU-8 Avenger cannon. Now firing an ultra high velocity 40mm shell, the heavy autocannon was more than prepared to shred through the hulls of light combat vessels, and carried a variety of energy and missile weapons to ensure they had variety to play with when they weren’t at appropriate ranges for the big cannon.

The gunship was a mean, slightly bulky design that retained a S/VTOL capacity. Heavily armored, its most distinctive feature besides the massive rotary cannon was the complete lack of a visible cockpit. The shape was there, but there was nothing but armor. Instead the cockpit view was provided by cameras that gave them a nearly 360 degree view, even letting them look through the hull itself, a major benefit in the multidimensional world of space combat. Then there were the dorsal and ventral turrets, a quad arrangement with a pair of laser cannons paired with a pair of plasma cannons. Small balls marked the location of laser point defense systems at the wing tips and four various spots along the fuselage.

Finally, the heavier plasma and laser cannons were mounted under the short wings and more of the heavy energy weapons were mounted directly into the fuselage. Then, if all that wasn’t doing the job, there was an internal weapons bay with a pair of rotary racks that could carry a wide variety of ordnance ranging from heat seeking missiles to sensor guided missiles optimized for anti-spacecraft or anti-ground target work, though some of the latter weapons were “muddy”, meaning they could only be launched in atmosphere.

Hellfire IIs were another new human weapon for Cassie to learn about. Based on an anti-tank missile from back home, the large Hellfire IIs were optimized to bore through armor, using a concentrated plasma penetrating charge to open the tender interior of a ship or station up to the penetrator behind it and its explosive payload. All of which made them rather intriguing to the talented warrior woman turned investment banker turned WSO.

There were even provisions to carry truly heavy ordnance externally, space for a pair of either anti-ship torpedoes, or cruise missiles, including ones rated for orbit to surface strikes. A magic volume of fire power if you asked anyone involved, and one that had Captain Bridger’s special operations troops rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of calling in CAS.

“Looks like we got two of the Great Phoenix and two Super Sidewinders. Not exactly our full payload, but we have a full load of cannon ammo, and the power plant will give you plasma and laser fun till your trigger finger gets tired. External power is disconnected. Confirmed launch ready.”

Their eyes glow green briefly as their HUDs light up, beamed directly into their eyes and overlay everything around them as a button on Sarkin’s console lights up. “Control, Valkyrie 101 is space flight ready. Launch us asap.”

“Copy 101. Venting atmosphere. Opening the external doors... stand by... launching.”

Sarkin throws the throttles forward to the firewall as an unseen controller triggers the magnetic accelerator that flings them forward and out of the Tear’s hangar bay. They could have taken off normally, but when launching small craft into battle, velocity was everything. So launch rails were the name of the game in most of the known galaxy where fighters and similar combat craft were used at all.

The acceleration briefly slams them into the back of their chairs until they find themselves in the comforting embrace of the void, racing away from one of the military hangars at the aft end of the Crimson Tear.

“Data link from the Tear’s hot, our sensors are live... tally six bandits.”

Tyler can practically hear Cassie smile quietly to herself.

She’d told Tyler earlier how excited she’d been to find out she’d have a chance to link up with humanity in the guise of the Undaunted. Considering how much fun she’d been having so far it was an excellent choice clearly. She’d been a gunner among other things in her home world’s military, running weapons on slightly larger craft than this mean little gunship, doing smuggling interdiction and the like before she’d been mustered out.

One career as a banker later and she was more than ready to be a warrior full time again. Banking had been good work, and done well by her, but it didn’t satisfy her warrior spirit, and Tyler could certainly understand that. That she was finally ready to settle down and do some husband hunting was unspoken between them, but Tyler assumed it was on her mind.

Even if he believed her when she said it was the Undaunted’s ideals that appealed to her most. That those ideals came with a hunk buffet from her perspective probably didn’t hurt her decision to take a much lower paying position at the bottom of the military totem pole.

Clicks fill his ears as her fingers fly over her keys as she starts to index targets and work their weapons systems, slaving the direct fire weapons and missiles up to Sarkin’s control console and its associated joystick before she starts working her magic with the Huscarl’s turrets. Her chair spun and rotated in line with said turrets, with her control panels moving with her, an ingenious set up that apparently was a human standard from further back in their history.

“Ghostrider 1-1 to Raven, tally six bandits, we’re engaging. Keep the home fires warm for us.”

“Copy Ghostrider, give’em hell.”

“Talk to me Cass, what am I looking at?”

Cassie scans her screens, flipping through a few controls as she starts priming the ship’s offensive and defensive energy weapons. “Looks like two gunships, Yagona class, and four escorting fighters... looks like Uglies. They’re a clusterfuck of parts that somehow manage to function together, keep it tight, the type of pirates crazy enough to fly those things love packing in weird surprises.”

“In that case, let’s even the odds a bit. Because outside of birthday parties, sex, and free guns or bottles of decent booze I hate surprises.”

Tyler swings his gunship through the void, using maneuvering thrusters to allow him to move laterally in ways that mere conventional aircraft could never dream of, even as the inertial dampeners that were one of many blessings of axiom allowed him to soar as if he was in atmosphere. He cycles through his weapons with a practiced ease. The stick wasn’t that different from the one he used to play flight sims, and that in turn had been based on the fighter he’d been flying back home before he’d volunteered for the Dauntless.

He indexes the appropriate setting for the equivalent of a radar guided missile that had its own seeker head with a flick of his finger. Just like the simulations. Albeit the tech in the new weapons made the old AIM-120s look like bottle rockets.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

He picks out a fighter he likes the look of least, and waits for a hard tone before gently caressing the trigger.

“Ghostrider 1-1, Fox three.”

The advanced seeker head locked on immediately, pit bull, the stage at which the weapon had locked on to it’s target and was handling all it’s own guidance was theoretically as long as it had fuel, though it would exchange telemetry with its mother ship to increase accuracy unless the data link was shut off to prevent electronic warfare interference. A quick manipulation of the controls locks up another target and a quick press of the trigger drops another missile free of his craft’s belly as he gooses the throttles forward.

“And fox three again.”

Freed from things like the friction or drag found in the atmosphere and with massively increased ranges common to stellar warfare, the new missiles had ridiculous engines that let them move at incredible speeds. They’d been working on jump missiles, but the sizes involved rendered those more into the cruise missile range. These missiles were more than fast enough anyway, crossing through the void in a blink and slamming home into two of the Uglies and rendering them into clouds of shrapnel. .

“Splash two. Looks like they didn’t have much in the way of axiom shields, not that those do much against kinetics in the first place. Warheads tore through whatever armor they might have had, like it wasn’t even there. I think some of the shrapnel might have even damaged one of their wingmen. One of the other fighters has slowed massively and seems to be maneuvering erratically. I... shit! Splash three.”

“Hah! That’s what I like to see! Yeah baby yeah!”

Sarkin grins viciously as the third fighter explodes into a small star after taking critical damage from the death of its wingman and quickly fades as he cues his weapons systems over to lasers.

“Highlight one of the gunships. I want to give them a light show as we come in to give our new cannon a try.”

The system locks up the faster of the two incoming gunships with a deft manipulation of the controls by Cassie, and Tyler drags his cross hairs onto it and switches to the heavy laser cannons.

“Sunbeam”

With a word, and a slow steady squeeze, the cannons begin to stream coherent death down range, stitching it across the enemy’s hull as they continue to maneuver closer.

Tyler begins to bounce their gunship around, using the maneuvering thrusters to keep them changing their orientation and angle, probably leaving Cassie very thankful for the artificial gravity and inertial dampening keeping her stomach from rebelling violently. He knew from training together she was gutting through aggressively. It simply wouldn’t do to “punk out” as some of the humans called it. Certainly not in front of a man! That would add to the shame greatly.

“Cass, BDA.”

A quick glance at the sensors and the angelic alien switches over to a visual sensor. “No penetration, the target gunship is very heavily shielded as expected. I expect the fighter will be too. It looks fairly heavy and could easily mount the appropriate equipment.”

“They could stand to make it look a bit less ugly while they’re there, I know it doesn’t have to be aerodynamic if it’ll never enter planetary atmosphere without crashing, but blood of the Marne that thing’s hideous.”

The enemy heavy starfighter looked more like what helicopters had always been called when he was in flight training back home. A million parts rotating rapidly around an oil leak waiting for metal fatigue to set in.

With all it's random jutting angles and hard edges the only way he could think to describe it was the results of the Goth kid in high school assembling a spaceship entirely out of safety razors then letting it sit outside and oxidize a bit before hitting it with some random sprays of gaudy colors.

"Shit, it just lit off a booster of some kind!" Cass nearly shouts.

Tyler would have called it adrenaline getting to her, but apparently aliens didn’t have that. What she was, was excited.

The unseemly creation burned hard towards them, moving significantly faster than it appeared capable of. If they had been in an atmosphere Tyler suspected that it would tear itself apart entirely.

It comes in fast and it comes in guns blazing, its various energy weapons pulsing merrily in the dark and doing little to harm their shields till they hit plasma range. That pirates avoided using ordnance based weapons had been an interesting piece of tactical information confirmed across the bulk of the EFL and more than a few captured pirates that weren’t on such good terms with humanity.

Energy weapons had theoretically unlimited ammo, missiles and the like could be expensive, and no pirate wants to cut into their bottom line. Which of course gave the Undaunted some extra things to play with courtesy of being part of an actual stellar military. He attempts to take a few return pot shots with a half hearted report of the brevity code “Solar flare” to indicate he’s discharging plasma weapons.

‘Good manners’ like brevity codes were even more important in the stellar environment when even light laser weapons could reach across a solar system under the right conditions, as was a very, very good targeting computer.

“Cass, set’em up with the turret.”

The gunship jostles slightly as plasma grazes the outer shields and Tyler throws them in a violent series of maneuvers that would hurt to watch for the controllers back on the Tear. Eventually cranking the gunship through an impossibly tight loop that involved using maneuvering thrusters to rotate the ship on its lateral axis as much as actually physically looping around.

All the while Cass blazes away with whichever of her turrets can get its guns on the enemy, automated systems and the natural limits of the turret mounts preventing the gunship from trying to fire through itself. At one point in their rotation Cass takes the opportunity to blaze away with both turrets simultaneously ripping through the shielding of the heavy fighter and mulching a large chunk of its hull.

Tyler indexes a super sidewinder, the space intercept missile that uses a very updated infrared heat seeker. Back home they were for close range, but with how heat worked in space you could make hits at a surprisingly long range by stellar standards provided you could guide the weapon part of the way in like the old radar guided weapons systems used to need. Immediately the gunship’s cockpit is filled with the tone of a hard target lock.

“Ghostrider 1-1, Fox 2!”

The missile is launched free of the ordnance bay and streaks home with a vengeance, it’s axiom enhanced warhead turning what had once been a hideous collection of spare parts into the heart of a miniature sun for about half a second before fading to reveal a shower of minor particles and waste metal.

Immediately Tyler adds a little engine power to increase their momentum and swing the heavy gun onto the closest of the two gunships per his more limited sensor station.

"Guns guns guns!"

He calls across the radio as he depresses the trigger on his stick and the ship begins to vibrate.

Long bursts of high velocity 40mm cannon rounds scream through the void, silent, for all the violence of their motion. The experimental Trytite/tungsten alloy armor penetrator serves its purpose brilliantly and shreds through the shields and the hull of the powerful gunship. The explosive charges flash boil metal to liquid and detonate the atmosphere within the small craft, tearing the gunship open like hitting a tin can with a .50 cal.

“Shit they must have been running nearly pure oxygen. Cass, get me a vector on the last gunship, I want...”

“No, I think that’s enough. End simulation.”

An unfamiliar voice from nowhere says.

The universe goes black before the cockpit canopy starts to lift and bright white light fills the simulator cockpit. Tyler rubs his eyes a touch, letting them adjust to see Captain Bridger and some of his staff waiting for them.

“Shit sir, did we do that badly?”

Captain Jeremiah Bridger grins down at Tyler and Cassie, broad smile framed by the beard he’d been growing recently.

“Not at all Lieutenant, I just felt like I didn’t need to keep both of you from liberty any longer to continue to prove a point you’ve already made. You’re easily the most proficient theoretical flight team across the Undaunted in the Huscarl class gunships, and it pleases me you haven’t let a little thing like the first one not being finished...”

Bridger theatrically checks his watch.

“Until tomorrow sometime, slow you down. Incidentally that gunship will be the one you just simulated, Valkyrie 101, and I suspect she’ll be your ride going forward. Effective immediately Tyler Sarkin, you’re promoted to Commander, and unless you have some reason to decline, will be taking command of the 103rd Gunship Squadron, Valkyries. Flight Officer Verderian, I don’t have such lofty command authority to offer you, but I will be progressing you in grade to full Lieutenant and offering you the management of the 103rd’s Wizzos.”

Cass reacts before Tyler gets a chance to, smoothly stepping out of the cockpit and stretching her carefully folded wings for a moment before snapping to and saluting the skipper. “It would be my pleasure sir, but was my performance really good enough to skip Lieutenant Junior Grade?”

“I’ll be honest Lieutenant, your prior experience alone was good enough that we were intending to promote you expediently as is. Barring some flaw or conflict between your previous training and our own standards that has yet to present itself we are underpaying you by a massive amount. You’ve so far proven to be an exemplary spacer and a very talented Wizzo. Some of that is certainly natural raw talent, and an approximate fifty years of prior experience as a gunner and whatever your home world’s naval militia calls a wizzo, I’ll be honest, I looked it up, but I can’t pronounce that after an hour of trying. Regardless, we’re lucky to have you, and I remain honored to be the first human to receive one of your people’s warrior oaths.”

“It is my pleasure, Captain.”

Tyler takes the moment to consider the weight that had just casually been dropped on his shoulders. A promotion from full lieutenant to commander, his first command leading a squadron of brand new gunships off a modified freighter in deep space with an angel running his sensors and operating some of the more complex weapons for him. A smile slowly starts to creep over his face. Like hell he was going to miss out on a chance like this! The young pilot extracts himself from the simulator and comes to the position of attention, snapping off a parade ground perfect salute.

“Commander Sarkin, commanding the 103rd Gunship Squadron, Valkyries, reporting as ordered Captain.”

“Commander Sarkin, it’s a pleasure to have you aboard.”

Bridger returns Tyler’s salute, then firmly shakes his hand. “Your first task is to select the rest of your pilots and wizzos for your squadron besides the three other teams we already have. Currently we’re anticipating six Huscarls, but I’m lobbying for eight total birds. Plan for whatever number of craft we have plus four complete flight teams. So if we get eight, I want twelve ready and able flight teams who can roll at a moment’s notice. To keep life interesting for the off crews, you’ll also be doing more normal flying in various shuttle craft. Maybe even provide pilots for the spec ops teams going on infiltration on a volunteer basis only. That’s an evolving discussion with the Admiral, but keep all that in mind when you’re making your selections. I’ll forward the appropriate dossiers to your personal terminal. However... do all that tomorrow, you’re both on a twenty four hour pass as of now... and we have the galley throwing together some pizza for everyone. Seems we all did damn well in our sims today.”

Both human and alien snap to this time, saluting in unison with a crisp “Aye aye sir!”.

Pizza was a good motivator like that, even if the alien had no idea what it was. Yet anyway.