As I spoke, a Scythe ship rocketed straight up directly in front of us.
My finger was firing the laser cannons before I’d even processed the fact that the ship was there.
It was gone seconds later, my starfighter blasting through the debris field like a bullet through a cloud of glitter. I didn’t blink. Barely even breathed.
“One down, two to go.”
Alex grunted. “That was visual only. There could be more.”
Good.I didn’t say it aloud, but I thought it. Killing babies was not cool. I was in autopilot now, the hours and hours I’d spent in the gaming chair making each decision and twitch of my body a reflex rather than a plan. The pounding pulse and adrenaline rush? That, too, was all too familiar. I didn’t have to think, which was good. All I had to do was hunt, and the Valor was an excellent hunter.
Our ship cleared the debris field, and I flipped us ninety degrees into a dive, doing a visual scan for the Scythe ships as I went.
“Velerion, this is Gamma 4. Shields have failed. Repeat, shields have failed.”
“Gamma 4, this is Velerion. Understood. Shields have failed. Commence lockdown.”
“This is Gamma 4. Lockdown order received.”
There was no answer from the frantic man who’d been updating his home world that his base was under attack. I hadn’t thought about reporting in to Velerion or Gamma 4 until now, which was stupid, so I opened a comm channel.
Alex immediately shut it down. “No. No comms. We’ll lose the element of surprise.”
“But they think they are going to die.”
“Let them. If you use comms, the Scythe fighters will be able to use our comm broadcast to pinpoint our location through their jammers.”
I’d never used anything but line-of-sight laser communications between ships in the game. This was different, but it made sense. “Fine. We go in quiet and take them out.”
“Agreed.”
“Kill box is mine.” The words left my mouth automatically, and I cleared my throat.
“I’ve heard that before,” Alex said. I’d recorded that command into the game, that and about a hundred more. Just like he had. I knew his voice. Apparently he also knew mine.
The screen in front of me had a large square grid that usually lined up with my actual field of vision. That square was my kill box. Anything I could see, I could hit with my laser cannons.
The rest were Alex’s to deal with, keep off us, or track until I took care of the immediate threat in front of us. With the advanced jamming systems on most of the fighter ships, scanners and tracking systems were useless in combat. If you couldn’t see it with your own eyes, you couldn’t kill it.
I completed the ship’s turn, and we were pointed down on top of both the small section of base that stuck out from the rocky front of the asteroid and the two Scythe fighters lining up to take their kill shots.
“Now!” I pushed the ship to top speed instantly, laser cannons firing on the ship directly in front of me. Its partner I trusted Alex to take care of. Which he did, landing a short-range, manually guided missile seconds after my laser cannon turned the Scythe fighter I’d targeted into space debris.
With all three Scythe fighters destroyed, I brought the Valor around and headed toward Gamma 4’s docking station and opened comms. “Gamma 4, this is Starfighter Valor. Scythe fighters have been destroyed. Repeat, Scythe fighters have been destroyed.”
I waited, expecting a shocked shout of thanks. Nothing.
“Gamma 4, this is the Starfighter Valor. Do you copy?”
More nothing. Damn it.
“Why aren’t they answering?” I asked Alex.
He didn’t look up, checking his data monitors. “The jamming signal is still in place.”
“How is that possible?” Unless…
An explosion rocked through the back of the ship, and I checked my controls. “We’re hit. They burned out the control panel for our rear-facing missiles.”