• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

There was no answer. He hadn’t expected any. The pilots of Red Flight were on their own. He switched back to Red Flight frequency. “Announce readiness. Leader had two lit and in the green.”

“Two standing by, one hundred percent.”

“Three, ready for a furball.”

“Four is green-lighted.”

“Up on repulsors.” Wedge suited action to words by bringing his Blade-32 straight up two meters. Ahead of him, at the hangar exits, mechanics’ crews cheered, but whether it was for Red Flight’s success or merely for the fight to come, Wedge didn’t know.

“What’s our first order?” Wedge asked.

Tycho’s voice came back immediately: “ ‘Whatever they expect us to do, we don’t do.’ ”

“Correct, Two. Red Flight, come around one-eighty degrees.” He swung the nose of his Blade around until it was pointed directly toward the thin sheet-metal rear of the hangar. “Arm missile systems. On my command, fire your missiles and all speed forward. Ready—fire.”

Four missiles flashed instantaneously to the rear of the hangar and blew the sheet-metal panel into oblivion.

Wedge kicked his Blade-32 forward and began climbing as soon as he emerged through the hole.

His lightboard sensor data was confused, made erratic by the tremendous smoke cloud he was climbing through, but it clearly showed a half-dozen Blades hovering over the hangar, noses depressed, pointed toward the exit. Had Red Flight emerged the way they were supposed to, they would have done so right under the guns of this ambush party.

Wedge switched his weapons control to rear lasers—then switched them back again. “Red Flight, hold your fire until we’re clear.” He put his attention into climbing as fast as he could.

Had he fired and missed, had an ambusher Blade been hit and exploded, collateral damage would have punched through into the hangar, toward the front, just where the Lovely Carrion Flightknife mechanics waited.

His lightboard showed his pilots tucked in so close that he couldn’t detect them as individual signals. Below, the ambushers above the Lovely Carrion Flightknife hangar were breaking up, beginning their climb in Red Flight’s wake.

Other groups of flyers, circling at some distance, were turning in toward Red Flight. Two high-altitude formations began descents. Altogether, Wedge counted at least thirty enemy aircraft arrayed against Red Flight.

Thirty against four. In the past, he’d bullied his way through such impossible odds, usually through use of stratagems set up well in advance. Here he had nothing like that working in his favor.

Red Flight was barely a thousand meters up when the first enemies, two separate half flightknives, neared attack range from overhead. “Loosen up the formation,” Wedge said. “Remember it’s me they’re likely to concentrate on. Tycho, stand off, we’re not in a normal wingman situation here. Fire at will.”

The dozen enemies screamed down at them with lasers blazing—eight or nine of them concentrating fire on Wedge. Wedge returned fire with his lasers but mostly concentrated on evasive maneuvering. He juked and jinked from side to side, set his Blade into an axial rotation to constantly change the image he offered to enemy lightboards, and fired by reflex as targets presented themselves.

He saw his lasers shear through one incoming Blade and stitch scoring marks on the fuselage of a second. He felt his own craft shudder as lasers hammered at his fuselage. Then he was past the diving wave of enemies, seeing them—seven, not twelve—turn in his wake and follow. Behind him, Reds Two, Three, and Four followed in very loose formation.

Ahead of his flight path at several thousand meters was another blip, diffusing into a new squad of foes. Below, the fighters who had intended to ambush Red Flight at the hangar were now joining the Blades who had just exchanged shots with them.

“I have an idea,” Wedge said. “Two, Three, Four, pull back and climb. Stay within a half kilometer of me. Set one missile each to detonate at a proximity of two hundred fifty meters. On my