'Paladin'.
Chapter Twelve
Through the multispectral display in his flight helmet, the planet looked angrier now. The shafts of radiant heat breaking through the clouds from the planet's high-pressure core stabbed at its moons and the ships in high orbit.
From his fighter, waiting outside the carrier, Jordo saw three figures in the junk's cockpit below him. Two of them had the heat signatures you'd expect from a living human in an exosuit. The third looked slightly different, but Jordo had to look closely at the lack of variation across the false color image of the figure being strapped into the pilot's seat in order to discern that the suit was actually empty. There was no pilot inside. It was just a pressurized exosuit with the heater turned on.
There would be no pilot inside the junk Marquis when she flew. Dana Sellis said the boat would aviate and navigate by a simple script running on the flight computer. It would fly towards the 4th moon and achieve orbit, deaf dumb and blind to everything around it. All it had to do was fly at the fourth moon along with the Dingoes and make this look like a real attempt to land.
Hardway came over the North Polar Region of the planet with all her junks flying. The torpedo bombers made a cone out in front of the carrier like the point of a spear and the gunnery junks deployed to defend them. It was the formation the Squidies would expect. The carrier and its junks steamed straight at the Squidies' cruisers on the other side of the gas giant.
Over the limb of the planet and through the shafts, the alien ships rose. There were five of them now. The Squidies had reinforced with a pair of ships not quite the size of the two cruisers, but they had the same towers and on top of them were even bigger main guns.
Jordo and Paladin and the rest of the Lancers flew with the QF-111 drones. They hid among the Dingoes, at the back of the pack. Only Lancer 2-1 and 2-2, Jordo and Paladin, rode at the front, leading the drones in. F-151s were really just Dingoes with cockpits so if the Squidies didn't look too closely, then it might work. The pack Jordo and Paladin led at the fourth moon was supposed to look like 2 Lancers and 75 Dingoes.
After catching the first junk and the fighters trying to get to the fourth moon, the Squidies had guessed why Hardway was here and they wouldn't leave that moon unguarded, but just as Ram Devlin and Asa Biko had predicted, once the Squidies saw the Dingoes and the junk making for the fourth moon, they pressed their superiority again.
" Hardway AT to Lancer 2-1, you have the reins, 2-1. Make your move."
"Lancer 2-1 to Hardway AT." Jordo's voice cracked. "Roger." He thumbed into squadron comms. "You all know how to do this. Hold with the Dingoes until I give the signal. If you break away before it's time...if you loose your nerve, it won't just be you that's screwed."
"This was a shite idea," Paladin said.
"And you're still here. I guess your dumb ass got the right name. Alright, Lancers," Jordo said. "You're going comms dark because you're Dingoes and Dingoes don't talk. Thrusters on my mark. And... mark." He blasted forward with Paladin on his eight o'clock and the eager Dingo pack concealing the Lancers on his six.
The decoy junk without a pilot was already on its way, and he adjusted his course so the Dingoes would more closely escort it on its scripted flight. Two minutes later, as the flashes from Hardway's battle with the cruisers lit up the starry blackness far off to port, the cloud of alien fighters rose over the cratered 4th moon.
The red bandits came barreling in bold and fast over the polar cap. They came in flights of three like before and already they were forming up into what Jordo now recognized as an intermediary stage between their regular flying formation and the one they'd used to massacre the drones a couple of hours ago – the one like a saw-blade.
The Squidies' formation strung out into a line of three-plane
Chapter Twelve
Through the multispectral display in his flight helmet, the planet looked angrier now. The shafts of radiant heat breaking through the clouds from the planet's high-pressure core stabbed at its moons and the ships in high orbit.
From his fighter, waiting outside the carrier, Jordo saw three figures in the junk's cockpit below him. Two of them had the heat signatures you'd expect from a living human in an exosuit. The third looked slightly different, but Jordo had to look closely at the lack of variation across the false color image of the figure being strapped into the pilot's seat in order to discern that the suit was actually empty. There was no pilot inside. It was just a pressurized exosuit with the heater turned on.
There would be no pilot inside the junk Marquis when she flew. Dana Sellis said the boat would aviate and navigate by a simple script running on the flight computer. It would fly towards the 4th moon and achieve orbit, deaf dumb and blind to everything around it. All it had to do was fly at the fourth moon along with the Dingoes and make this look like a real attempt to land.
Hardway came over the North Polar Region of the planet with all her junks flying. The torpedo bombers made a cone out in front of the carrier like the point of a spear and the gunnery junks deployed to defend them. It was the formation the Squidies would expect. The carrier and its junks steamed straight at the Squidies' cruisers on the other side of the gas giant.
Over the limb of the planet and through the shafts, the alien ships rose. There were five of them now. The Squidies had reinforced with a pair of ships not quite the size of the two cruisers, but they had the same towers and on top of them were even bigger main guns.
Jordo and Paladin and the rest of the Lancers flew with the QF-111 drones. They hid among the Dingoes, at the back of the pack. Only Lancer 2-1 and 2-2, Jordo and Paladin, rode at the front, leading the drones in. F-151s were really just Dingoes with cockpits so if the Squidies didn't look too closely, then it might work. The pack Jordo and Paladin led at the fourth moon was supposed to look like 2 Lancers and 75 Dingoes.
After catching the first junk and the fighters trying to get to the fourth moon, the Squidies had guessed why Hardway was here and they wouldn't leave that moon unguarded, but just as Ram Devlin and Asa Biko had predicted, once the Squidies saw the Dingoes and the junk making for the fourth moon, they pressed their superiority again.
" Hardway AT to Lancer 2-1, you have the reins, 2-1. Make your move."
"Lancer 2-1 to Hardway AT." Jordo's voice cracked. "Roger." He thumbed into squadron comms. "You all know how to do this. Hold with the Dingoes until I give the signal. If you break away before it's time...if you loose your nerve, it won't just be you that's screwed."
"This was a shite idea," Paladin said.
"And you're still here. I guess your dumb ass got the right name. Alright, Lancers," Jordo said. "You're going comms dark because you're Dingoes and Dingoes don't talk. Thrusters on my mark. And... mark." He blasted forward with Paladin on his eight o'clock and the eager Dingo pack concealing the Lancers on his six.
The decoy junk without a pilot was already on its way, and he adjusted his course so the Dingoes would more closely escort it on its scripted flight. Two minutes later, as the flashes from Hardway's battle with the cruisers lit up the starry blackness far off to port, the cloud of alien fighters rose over the cratered 4th moon.
The red bandits came barreling in bold and fast over the polar cap. They came in flights of three like before and already they were forming up into what Jordo now recognized as an intermediary stage between their regular flying formation and the one they'd used to massacre the drones a couple of hours ago – the one like a saw-blade.
The Squidies' formation strung out into a line of three-plane
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