Operation Chimera by Matthew S. Cox, Tony Healey Page B

cargo pod, are you certain we should be fir”―clank― “Wow. Spaaaace.” Keg stuck against the canopy, small clamp-hands pressed into the glass. “It’s sooooo dark.”
    Clank.
    Keg shifted to ‘look’ at him. “Dammit, boy. Why you keep hittin’ on me like that. I say, one of these days y’all are gonna go one step too far and”―clank―“What?” Keg shifted back and forth. “We launched? Turret? Oh, heavens…” The boxy droid hovered up out of the co-pilot seat. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. I’m on it, sir.” Six feet behind the seats, he zipped upward through a round portal in the ceiling, leaving a puff of dust billowing out on the floor beneath him.
    Liam shook his head as he brought the Manta’s main guns online. Neutron beams were the longest ranged weapon in the Fleet arsenal, even if they did lack the destructive power of particle cannons. They penetrated better, but did not inflict the same catastrophic mangling on impact. He yawned as he squeezed the trigger; four dark azure streaks of light connected the axe-wings to the virtual cargo box several times.
    “I can hear you yawning,” said Michael. “Relax, it’s not a test of skill. We’re evaluating the weapons.”
    From above his head, red flickering pulse-laser blasts seared through the black. Keg had the turret going as fast as the lasing chamber could cycle.
    “Is this good?” he asked. “Am I doing it right?”
    “Yes, yes. Looks fine.” Liam tapped at the readout, watching capacitor levels fluctuate. “Come on back down.”
    The turret ceased firing. Keg floated through the ceiling hatch, ignoring the ladder as a legless, hovering droid should, and glided to rest on the co-pilot’s seat once more. Liam punched it in the side.
    “Ouch.” A little robot hand rubbed the spot. “Why did you do that?”
    Liam squinted at the droid. He sounded sane again. “Oh, nothing, I just got tired of the sycophantic bit.”
    “Sycophantic bit? What are you talking about?”
    Michael tracked the virtual target, opening fire with the main particle cannons first. Streaks of orange-yellow light sailed off through space, surrounded by crackling lightning. He let off the trigger after the first blast. The readouts showed normal, the weapon capacitor crept back up to full charge as expected. He fired again, watching the charge drop from eighty-four percent to forty.
    “Hunter, Zavex, you seeing sparks on your partie-beams?”
    “Yes,” said Zavex. “Perhaps an unforeseen interaction with the energy here?”
    “Looks like ionization.” Aaron fired again. “I don’t get anything weird on the sensor; it’s probably just a visual disturbance.”
    “You won’t know for sure until you hit something solid,” said Emma. “It might strengthen or weaken the effect. If the beam is bleeding off energy to that static, the particle cannons may be less effective than lasers here.”
    Zavex perked up. “Are you suggesting atomic friction? Perhaps the particles are being slowed by collisions with the nebula gases.”
    “It’s possible,” said Michael. “We’ll have to keep our eyes on it to make sure they’re still tactically sound in this sector.”
    The voice of operations came over the comm. “Attention all wings. Formation change inbound.”
    On the Navcon, the hexagons representing the fighter wings moved farther out in a wider circle, almost double the previous distance from the
Manhattan
. Green Wing maneuvered into their designated position, now too far away for naked-eye visual on their carrier. Wing by wing, other squads reported all clear and nothing on sensors.
    “Green Wing reporting all clear,” said Michael.
    Liam broke the silence. “Dragon, I think I have something on scan at two-seven-two degrees, distance of about fourteen thousand kilometers.”
    “I ain’t seein’ it,” replied Michael. “Anyone else got it?”
    “The Manta has beefier electronics,” said Emma. “We might be out of range.”
    “Hold on,