RavensDagger

  Chapter Sixty-Five - It's Art

  There are certain art forms that appear and disappear with the waxing and waning of teology. These are often held in high-esteem by a certain type of person. The same type of person who might be nostalgic for a time before their birth and whose uanding of something is plete, but only in the academise.

  Knowing the name of every steam engine ever made does not mean that they ought to return.

  Dogfighting was one such art. The afiados of the art would oetic about their favourite aces of the sed world war as though those young men gave a shit about anything but surviving and putting their enemy into the ground.

  Fortunately for these fans of a dying art, it made a resurgence.

  There came a developmehe middle of the sed inter-system war. The advent of the snub-fighter (so called because it was like a snub-rifle, a shortened version of popur military-grade standard rifles, and because the term was stolen from some old sce-fiovies). Snub-fighters were simple. Sp an engine in front of a cockpit, give it a gun. Easy.

  Was a snub-fighter better than a drone?

  In some ways, surprisingly, yes. A drone could be hacked, fooled, could be suborned and reprogrammed.

  Sure, drones didn't o eat or drink and could be left out in space for weeks at a time, but fresh-faced eighteen-year-olds were cheap by the middle of the sed inter-system war, and the programming o keep those drones better than their petition was not.

  So the snub-fighter was born. First used by the Martiahen quickly adopted and mass-produced by the Earth Alliance. Even the Jovian moons got in on it. The first fighter aces gained mass accim. Propagandists on both sides salivated at the image of a strapping young man or woman who'd taken down the enemy in close-quarters space warfare. Boys and girls everywhere wao be that ace.

  Snub-fighters grew and ged, pig up neon systems, growing tougher and faster and mile, but always keeping to the same initial mentality. They were small, easy to deploy ships that could move with a degree of independence much greater than a droh a human in the cockpit.

  Of course, when two flights of snub-fighters from opposing faet, they o fight.

  Dogfighting, a lost and a art, made its triumphaurn at long st.

  Ivil had seen her share of dogfighting. She'd never participated in it herself. Not unless sweeping aside entire squadrons of pesky Earth Alliance ships ted as participating.

  This wouldn't be the first time she was in a ship being attacked, even. Ivil closed her eyes and allowed her seo spread far beyond the bounds of their shuttle. Soon, everything within a bubble a hundred kilometres wide was within her sight, including the four snub-fighters rushing their way.

  She hovered her attention closer. They were professional-looking craft. Three of them were identical, small ships with a ft, triangur body that was lumped out to make room for a pair of small ehey carried internal magazines filled with smart missiles and a small mae gu just uhe cockpit opy. It was mounted on a swivel, able to turn and traything ahead of the fighter.

  The fourth ship was quite a bit longer and frankly, rather ugly. A long tube of a ship with a ft 'face' on it. The vessel had a stubby pair of wis near its front and was very much the kind of design that happened when someone who prized utility above all else was hired.

  Stil, its cockpit was rge enough for two, which is what it held. The ship had a huge raissiles within it, some sixty four of them pointed 'downwards' through a closed hatch, and there were three small turreted guns spped onto its body.

  Less a snub-fighter, and more a pocket gunship, then. It looked like it had all of the manoeuvrability of a drunken ra stu an air vent.

  Pixie caught on to their presence almost as soon as Ivil did. Or maybe she was already keeping an eye on the formation and whewitched towards their shuttle, she was ready.

  For now, her fighter stayed its course. She was flying in their shadow, far back, in the wash of their engines. Ivil imagi was somewhat turbulent back there, and likely dangerous, but with her ship running quiet it would also be a very stealthy pce to hide.

  Ships always gave off heat, and so dete in space often relied on pig up infra-red signatures in the dark. A ship with good enough cooling and with something to mask their warmth was as good as invisible. It could be done up in polka-dot pinks and fluorest paint, and a modern warship might still miss it.

  That had happened in the past. The Lunatijoyed modifying their ships to a wild extent, and that ofte letting their rger ships run a lot hotter than necessary while bleeding off heat into the void behind them. A perfect pce to hide a smaller, more subtle vessel.

  "Evelyn," Aurora said calmly. "The captain just pinged me. Did you know about them?"

  "The four?" Ivil asked. She didn't want to give all that she knew away just yet.

  Aurora ightly. Twenty-Six and Pepper were in a discussion about statioiquette, of all things. Ivil appreciated that Aurora didn't want to worry them just yet.

  "I noticed them, yes," she said.

  Aurora let out a long breath. She gnced over to Pepper, then leaned in close and whispered, almost subvocally. Her lips barely even moved. "They're going to attack us, aren't they?"

  "Probably," Ivil admitted.

  "Then what are we doing?" Aurora asked.

  Ivil shrugged. "Pixie's taking care of it. Just rex. We're not going to be involved. This isn't ht."

  "And you're sure Pixie hahis?"

  "Of course."

  The fighters moved closer, and Ivil watched as their engines lit up and they surged ahead, closing the distaowards their shuttle. The formation turned into a V, with the three snub-fighters moving ahead and the gunship trailing after them.

  Ivil watched as they aimed to intercept their shuttle at some point a few hundred kilometres ahead. They were probably, teically, within firing distances already. Ballistic trajectories ted for a lot in the void of space, but their shuttle had shields and if it threw itself into evasive manoeuvres after they got plinked for the first time, then it would bee expoially harder to hit them.

  So their best bet was to get in close, unch a few cheap missiles, then sptter a few hundred rounds against their shields until they broke apart enough to let those missiles slip in.

  Pixie seemed ready to do something about that. She peeled out of the engine's wake like a shark ing out of the darko p on some unsuspeg fish.

  She was fast. Faster than the fighters could react to for the moment. Her Nightshade flipped up, rolled around, then opened up with four smart-missiles that screeched out into the void.

  The shuttle's kxon sounded and the lights in their went red.

  "Whoa! What's going on?" Twenty-Six asked.

  "The shuttle's likely reag to its sensors seeing a missile," Ivil said. "Don't worry. It's not heading our way."

  Ihe four missiles were streaking across space towards the snub-fighter and their esc gunship. There was quite some distaweeill, enough that they had more than half a mio see their death's ining.

  The snub-fighters unched chaff, and two of them opened fire in the dire of the missiles with their nose-mounted guns.

  The third peeled off, and judging from the ungainly way it did so, the pilot anig in that moment.

  First ohen a seissile burst apart iy space. Another veered off, caught iig glimmer of the chaff they'd thrown.

  The st found a home buried into the belly of that third snub-fighter.

  The explosion robably detectable for quite some ways, Ivil judged. That ship must have been full on fuel.

  Pixie rushed forwards towards the fighters, ung a trio of missiles, then awo seds ter. And then she ening fire with her main guns, streaks of light zipping across towards the snub-fighters.

  In terms of raw power, her ship had muns than all three of her remaining adversaries bined.

  But they still had numbers.

  One ship started to spin, spitting chaff even as it started evasive manoeuvres that still let it take some pot-shots at Pixie. It let some missiles fly as well.

  The gunship did likewise, vomiting out a small torrent of missiles that arced down and around. Pixie, if she wao survive this, would first o break through a wall of ining explosives.

  Ivil felt like maybe she was capable of just that.

  ***

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