The second of her right that Hitomi Sullivan sold was her right to speech. The day after, a bot version of her had begun talking to other bots online. There was no point in keeping that right. Nothing but bots online to talk to anyway.

With the money, she had put a payment on the Starseeker and paid Dom’s first month's stipend. With what little was left, she enrolled in an extension course run by an ex-Wing Commander. The course had lasted forty-eight weeks and had been nights listening to people have sex in their bunks interspersed with days trying to perfect high orbital combat. The fundamentals of which -- of combat, not sex -- could be boiled down to three simple rules.

One: Slow is dead. Moving targets are hard to hit. Targets moving at a small fraction of light speed are nearly impossible.

Two: Fast is dead. High-speed cornering could put enough G-force on the human brain to liquefy it against the back (or front, any direction, really) of the skull.

Three: Never get attached to anyone.

That third rule could be applied to any number of circumstances -- including sex -- but seemed especially relevant to being a fighter pilot.

The first two were in full effect as Tomi banked the Seeker around the freighter, a stream of red-hot pellets flicking past her cockpit. She strained as her flight suit pressurized in a bid to keep the blood from pooling in her feet. Probably four G's on that turn. Lethality started at six.

"Lead, Bankshot. Escort group is turning back!"

Six Pact Zeta fighters, little more than cockpits and weapons, skipped past the freighter. They slowed momentarily to take a set of potshots at its hull. The same magnetic fields powering their coilguns deflected most of the pellets.

"Cargo Three!" she shouted into her comm, "Estimated time for turnaround?"

The reply was delayed, coming back panicked. "We need a full ten seconds for a one-eighty, then another ten to get back up to speed."

Slow in the head and the ass. Awesome.

The Starseeker circled the freighter, coming up behind the passing Pact squad. Grendel and Wolfsbane split off two and one, respectively.

"Lead, Bankshot! Requesting cover fire!"

"Bankshot, squad is being flanked by two wings."

"Just the three of us, boys." Grendel sounded almost excited.

"Four, dipshit."

They could all run. They could, at the very least, lead the Pact ships on a merry chase if it wasn't for the cargo ship drifting leisurely along beneath them. Let the Pact get their hands on that ship, and they might as well sign up to toil in the mines right there.

There's only six of them.

"Listen up." Was her voice authoritative enough? Could they hear her hands shaking on the sticks? Was the ship still flying straight? "This is a standard interference run. Try to draw them into the civvy guns."

And they'll kill all of you if you're not careful there, Wing Commander.

"Hey, Crackpot or whatever you call yourself, they're not paying us to shoot. This is Cargo Three, by the way."

"If you don't want to get to Earth in a Pact prison transport, you're doing it pro bono," Tomi shot back.

The cannons on an Atlas freighter were half to show off to pirates, half for chaffing incoming missiles. Tomi doubted they could fire fast enough to damage a fighter, but it would give the bastards one more thing to worry about and maybe shave a bit off the seven-to-four advantage.

One of the Pact Zetas loomed in her display. The pilot's rookie mistake of not jittering made him an easy target.

Lead it to adjust for the power transfer from the engines.

Tomi adjusted so the coilguns' crosshairs flirted just ahead of the engines and squeezed her index fingers on the stick triggers. The capacitors whined, and a stream of brilliant red lanced out from beneath her.

By charging pilots for ordinance, we're ensuring they won't get trigger-happy. So a one-second burst will run you about three hundred and twenty dollars.

The Zeta kicked as pellets impacted its tentacle-like starboard manoeuvring engine. Tiny target, difficult shot, but the least shielded part of the Zeta's anatomy. Shuddering, it spun away uselessly into the void, unable to right itself. Tomi broke off from the main group on her isolated prey. Her display buzzed, power shunted from the thrusters into the guns.

What are you waiting for? Scratched Zeta will net you almost ten grand.

Tomi exhaled. She'd done it before. Her fingers loosened momentarily and then squeezed the triggers again.

Bright white lit the darkness as the Zeta's fusion reactor tore open. In anoxic space, it was little more than a pop, ignition of the small amount of atmosphere in the cockpit followed by a blue halo of radiation—Six hundred and forty dollars worth of ammunition for one destroyed Pact ship.

The Starseeker brushed through the debris. A thud against the hull that might be a hand or a skull.

And one dead jock... Who was too green to even jitterbug. Goddamn it.

The first time had been bad, gut-wrenching. But now... it did not bother her as much as she had expected. In fact... even in the midst of the adrenaline spike, she could feel her heartbeat slowing just a little in relief. The ECG agreed.

It felt like... glory. A surge of it. Glory surge.

"Bankshot, scratch one."

"Red flight," comms squawked. "this is Nightguard. I've got three additional inbounds. Bogeys. Configuration I've never seen before. Fighter sized. Fast."

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"Nightguard, Lead. Friendly?"

Tomi could hear the headshake through the comm. "No answers to hails. Assume hostile. Visual in ten seconds."

"What kind of dancing d'you think they like?" Grendel mused.

"Concentrate on the partners you've got." Tomi watched as Grendel narrowly avoided a burst of pellets. "They'll jitterbug just like the rest of us."

She slid in under the freighter, leading another Zeta on. The Seeker rocked beneath as she shook its tail, trying to prevent any target lock. She rose just under the Atlas’s starboard cannon. The Zeta followed and got a taste of shrapnel. White gas puffed from nearly a dozen holes. Its hull had been punctured. Not deeply, but enough that it was venting atmosphere, throwing it off course. The pilot had maybe two minutes of air, enough to get back to the launch platforms if he turned back immediately.

Exhilaration surged in her breast. This run could turn a profit if she played her cards right.

"I bet they like to rhumba," Wolfsbane chuckled.

"Red flight, this is Nightguard!" The communication was frantic. "Visual! I'm not seeing any cockpits!"

Tomi's mouth went dry, and the feeling of elation was promptly replaced by sweaty unease.

"Oh shit," Grendel whispered. "They do the goddamn robot."

Tomi blinked, nearly missing an incoming Zeta.

Drones.

Remote piloting fighters had been unfeasible since 2074 when large vessels like the Pact towers and the Leading Edge started scrambling high-speed communications. If the Pact was fielding drones, they had to be mounting resource-intensive ship-based AI with no squishy human organs that could liquefy with sudden acceleration.

Say goodbye to rule two. Slow was dead; fast was for predators.

"D-don't panic," was all she could manage.

This was wrong! The Pact ran things the same way UAR did. Ninety percent of AI development went into large-scale logistical models that thought ten, twenty, even a hundred years into the future, carefully mapping the course of history to ensure their side eventually sat on the throne of Earth. If that technology was going into fighters, something about the war dynamic had fundamentally changed.

"Concentrate."

A burst of static ripped into her ears.

"...sbane. Hit... comm-"

The garbled text disappeared with a burst of blue radiation from behind Tomi's head. She blinked.

Five to three. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why we never get attached.

"Grendel. I've got a missile lock. Zero one out."

Grendel might be an asshole, but he was spending the big bucks today. An explosion and a blue flash.

Four.

"Red flight, this is Lead. Nightguard has been destroyed. Two bogeys will hit starboard flank in fifteen seconds. Remaining contact is heading toward Cargo Three."

Blood drained from Tomi's face.

"Valkyrie has been hit!"

They're coming this way! For one ship? Why? Why the shit would they do that?!

"Zephyr is down!"

Whatever these new ships were, they were tearing through the convoy flank like toilet paper in a shitstorm.

"This is Cargo Three. What do you want us to do?" The man's voice was loud but breaking around the edges.

"I..."

Shit. What did she want them to do? There were still four Pact fighters to deal with, but as long as they couldn't focus long enough for a missile lock on the transport, it was reasonably safe. But the new contacts had made short work of at least three other Seekers.

According to the display, the new contact was two minutes and some change away, between them and the squadron. If they tried to regroup, they'd be running right towards the wolf's mouth, and who knew if anything would be there when they arrived. The Leading Edge was a long, lonely six minutes away.

She banked sharply, and a big, blue glow filled the port side of her cockpit. At first it evoked thoughts of another reactor going nova. But it was something else entirely. Earth. It was only two minutes off. Through the gaping jaws of death, true, but intel said that the Pact launch towers had a combined capacity of thirty-six ships. Thirty were in play, twenty-four of which were engaged with Red Flight.

The towers' mounted cannons were slow, designed to fend off more significant threats that the fighters couldn't. And for a few seconds they wouldn’t be able to fire for fear of hitting their counterpart.

"If we go between them." Tomi breath shook. "This is stupid. Really stupid."

Twenty seconds to turn the Atlas. Two minutes to atmosphere. Maybe thirty seconds in the jaws of death. UAR ground defence could give them some cover fire if they hit low orbit. Depending on how badly they wanted whatever the hell was in Cargo Three. Badly enough to assign four jocks to it? Badly enough that Pact drones were coming after it?

We can do it. We can make it.

"Cargo Three." Her voice seemed to be coming from someone else. "Pull another one eighty. Between the towers. We can make low orbit in a minute and a half." Hopefully, they didn't know she was fudging her numbers.

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

Yeah. This is all one big joke. Nyuk, nyuk.

She swallowed. No sense in backpedalling.

"Grendel, Bankshot. I need you to keep those last fo-"

A pop. Blue light.

"Bankshot, Grendel. Three."

"-Fighters off us for one minute and then run like your mom chasing dick."

Are you really doing this? This is your life you're talking about.

If I lose this ship, I'll be so deep in the red, Mom and Dad will be shitting blood.

"I'll take Cargo Three in."

Guess we're doing this then, Dublin.

The sheep glared back at her, gobsmacked.

There was silence over the comm. "Shit. No argument here, Bankshot."

Good. Grendel wasn't going to fight her over it. His assholery was coming in handy for once.

The Atlas was already wheeling. The display showed a minute forty-five until drone contact. Over her shoulder, she could just make out the other two Starseekers locked in a circle of death with the three Pact Zetas.

Hitomi shoved her sticks forward, feeling the embrace of her pressure suit as the acceleration forced the blood into her stomach. A single Pact fighter loomed in her display. She kept in tight on it.

The Atlas was nearly finished its turn.

The missile lock buzzed, crosshairs flashed, and Tomi slammed her thumb down on the launch button. A grey streak flew from the Seeker's starboard wing.

"Bankshot. Zero-one out."

There's a half-a-million-dollar goodbye present, asshole

The Zeta wheeled away, breaking off pursuit of Grendel. Hitomi spun the Seeker into a one-eighty, taking a moment to appreciate the panicky feeling of her heart thundering and the edges of her vision dimming. That was a good five G's. The engines fired and she had to grit her teeth, breathing shallow and quick as the Seeker rocketed back toward the Atlas.

Her blurred eyes flickered toward the sensor display as she came out of the turn.

One minute fifteen to contact. The Atlas would pass between the Pact towers in one minute. In front of them: five fighters and cannons massive enough to turn even the Leading Edge into Swiss cheese. Behind them: an inhuman enemy. And they would all come together for a nice, friendly forty-five-second chat in less than a minute.

"Godspeed, Bankshot." Tomi barely heard Grendel's voice through the blood squirting through her ears. "You're gonna need it."