"This is 1-K. We've been tackled by a group of Federalist fighters. That wasn't in the plan, Lin."

  Io hunched over the MFD and listened intently as the rest of her class fell into a V formation behind her. They'd doubled back towards the Academy, but it felt like a tentative matter. There was a loose thread now, and something in her gut told her it was unraveling.

  Lin replied coldly. "It's still within calculations, 1-K. Can you handle them on your own?"

  The student on the other end whistled in frustration. "...I took one of them down with an RGM, but they're shooting back. We could be stuck here for a good minute. No guarantees we can stop the beam frigate from firing again."

  "—Hey, this is Primrose; 1-P. Heads up, our Filiality has got a flak cannon; looks like an 88mm. Don't let your gunships get closer than 5 li. You'll never get out of its way."

  "1-H here," Io spoke into her headset. She couldn't help but check over her shoulder at Remy's Phoenix, a pang of concern choking her voice. "Ours didn't have anything like that."

  "See, that's the thing with these lemons, you never know what you're gonna— Oh, crap!"

  Io winced as she heard an ear-splitting burst of static on 1-P's end. Her heart pounded—did she just hear another student go down?

  "—This is 1-P. I'm still dynamic, but my railgun isn't responding."

  Oh fuck me. That's even worse.

  The public channel descended into chaos with students talking over each other. There was no cohesion now; the plan had split wide open.

  "...Our frigate's pulling away; looks like it's gone into supercruise. Shit, is anyone in a position to slow it down? Knock the conning tower out. Anything!"

  The disinterested voice. "—Alice Specter here. Our little Black Adder has broken away from the furball—I'm presently pursuing him like the rat he is, but his engines top out at quite a clip. I might be a moment..."

  "—This is Vineta, 1-C. We're too far out, and one of the elites is engaging us above the site." Vineta's voice wavered: the usually confident heiress was genuinely out of her depth here. "Lin dear, did you say you had a backup plan? I seem to recall you'd arranged a ship with a reaction load. Maybe now would be a good time..."

  Io's fingers curled around the throttle lever without thinking—but before she could move a single inch, the radar warning beeped from behind—just like it did when Nausicaa challenged her before.

  "I wouldn't do anything hasty, hoss."

  ...She was starting to notice a pattern with these girls.

  Her number 2 had broken formation and centered herself between the legs of the 'V', having switched her IFF to a different side. A massive RGM illuminated Io's tail from its sponson on the offending craft, its iridescent radome gleaming in the sunset.

  "Ema..." Io growled. She felt her pulse pounding in her temples as her body tensed on the controls. "There might be someone alive down there," she said, scowling. "We can't let Lin use the nukes."

  "You heard the chatter, hoss. The Feds took the dig site from the ground," Ema said grimly. "How do you know they haven't just been shot?"

  Io shook her head. "Ema, take the rest of the class and help 1-K with those fighters." She inhaled sharply. "That's an order."

  "...Listen, Io. We settled on you because you had the most combat hours out of all of us, but if you're gonna fuck off on your own—"

  Ema... Before the other girl could finish her sentence, Io pulled back on the airbrakes and pulled the yoke back to the hilt. The horizon vanished and blood rushed to her head as her craft's belly flattened against the wind. Red alerts bloomed across the glass cockpit's surface: Over-G, Over-G, Wing Load, Stall.

  Io was home now, back in the Guard. Her mind stilled like a pond.

  "...then we have nothing... to...? Wha—"

  Her Arrowhead sailed above the rest of the formation, having burned off several hundred knots of speed in a tight wash of vapor. Gritting her teeth, she pulled the nose back up into Ema's tail and squeezed a quick burst from the rotary cannon into the girl's flight path so that she'd see it. She observed Ema's panicked wobble, then banked into the clouds and broke away for good.

  The sun dipped below the horizon. Tyumen's moon was high in the darkening sky as the stray frigate's engines resolved on the infrared. Io's afterburners screamed behind the cockpit as she raced after the straggler. The engine temperature was borderline—whether or not the FX was a 'deathtrap' as Ema had described it, a multiple-overhaul was probably in the works.

  They weren't far away from the Academy. The surrounding rock pools reflected the glow of its idling engines. If that beam frigate fired again, Lin wasn't sticking around.

  "I'm gonna aim for the exposed pitot tube on the port side," Io reported to Lin. "That'll slow it down so that one of the other gunships can move in for the kill."

  "Ancestors, strike me down." Lin breathed, exhausted. "You'd better know what you're doing."

  Alert. The console whooped. Another craft illuminated her from the front. Io tried to remember if there were any other students opposed to her plan, but came up blank. This time, it could only have been a Fed.

  If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  Lin spoke again, a rising urgency in her voice. "Io, turn back right this instant and wait for further instructions. Fuck, that's the Black Adder!"

  "There's no time."

  "You can't—"

  Io reached over the console and muted the bridge.

  It was all quiet in the cockpit now. All she could hear now was the rumble of the engines, the rush of air over the winglets. She slowed her breathing and settled her fingers over the yoke, watching the black fighter's range diminish in the HUD. They were approaching each other head on.

  At 5000 m, she heard contact from the enemy.

  "All alone, little girl?" Klaus chuckled, clearly amused. "This is too low, even for me. I'm going to give you ten seconds to turn back and regroup with your buddies. Ten... nine..."

  2000 m. His blip went red as the avionics acquired him. Still flat on the throttle, Io's thumb flipped the polyimide cover on the yoke and loosed a missile before he could finish gloating.

  The two fighters roared past each other, the rocket almost grazing him as his verniers jetted him to the side in the nick of time. Well, it was worth a shot.

  "...You're not a Houser, are you? I'd heard they'd taken one of those serpent-worshipping ascetics from the unbound Spines. Well, I hope you have a pleasant afterlife."

  She could see him banking over her shoulder, the air cradling his fighter through the turn. Here we go. Io didn't know what would happen when she did this, but she knew she was dead without it. She clicked the stability augmentation off and pulled to the left.

  Immediately the nose derailed from her direction of travel, the yoke loosening too, the force-feedback mechanism unraveling. This is insane— the yoke had never been this slippery even in vacuum. The four nozzles surrounding the cockpit came unstuck and fired to the right, briefly blinding her before she realized not to look at them.

  She squeezed the cannon as soon as it swung over Klaus, but his ship's thrust vectoring worked together with the verniers in the nose to jump him sideways past the whip of fire. Io's blood turned to ice as she saw his nose wink back. She jerked the yoke sideways and strafed away from the incoming stream, only to wince as he zoomed past in a deliberate, deafening boom.

  Stall warning. The nose tipped down in the unsettled air. Stability augmentation restored.

  C'mon, c'mon—Io punched the afterburners and tried to get back up to speed. But just as the air settled over the winglets, she saw him curling back around for another pass and unhooked the nose again.

  Whenever she did this, he'd accelerate and fire back as she bled speed. But there was no chance in hell for her to keep up with his turn rate if she stayed on the throttle and tried to work with the air. Io could feel his contrail constricting around her as she lost energy and couldn't gain it back—like a snake. All she could do was try to clip him with the gun, but he'd always dodge it by inches.

  Her gut was failing her through the tight spins: she barely held back something acidic from welling up her throat. It felt like a finger was jabbed into her solar plexus. How long could she keep this up?! Lin said to wait for Alice Specter—that girl had better be quick, because it was was only a matter of time before Io slipped up and—

  "W-Woah!" she cried as a molten flash struck the glass cockpit. A thunk echoed through the frame as a bullet chipped into the Arrowhead, jolting her against the harness. One of the panels in the glass cockpit went black, its corresponding camera destroyed by the explosive charge.

  "...You're not one of them," Klaus admonished her. "Why do you fight on their side, drifter? People like you and I aren't even human to them."

  Io gulped. Sweat streamed down her brow in rivulets as the yoke went slick in her palms. There was no chance. Klaus's vast wingspan clawed at the air, whipping him around corners with little wasted energy. In contrast, her Arrowhead labored to turn—even if it was the FX, it could rotate on a dime but had difficulty redirecting its velocity.

  Alice wasn't coming. Think... Think! She had to get some kind of unfair advantage on him, or else it was curtains. What was something that an Arrowhead could do—a lawn dart of a fighter that flew in spite of the wind—that Klaus's Adder couldn't?

  There was the obvious: hers handled better in vacuum, but what was she going to do, break away and punch it into orbit? Another idea: FX was a VTOL and his ship wasn't. Fuck, she didn't know if she could stomach any more weird braking tricks. Her throat still burned from throwing up in her mouth.

  Lawn dart—

  In spite of the wind—

  That's it!

  Her eyes darted around the clouds looking for the beam frigate. The duel hadn't wandered more than a few li to the east. She pretended to unlock the nose again, get him in another turn fight—but just before she'd normally pull the trigger, she instead dipped the nose to recover energy and plugged the afterburners straight towards the frigate.

  Klaus breathed sharply as he pursued her. "What do you think you're doing...?"

  He had a full guns picture now. Io tried to stay dynamic, but rounds plowed into the back of the FX all the same. ALERT. Oil pressure. She grit her teeth as one of the winglets exploded in a burst of shrapnel. The shredded stump rattled in the wind.

  Good. Won't be needing that. A cone of vapor rippled over the glass cockpit as gravity and the engines accelerated it past the sound barrier.

  Taking a deep breath, Io steered into the beam frigate's engine wash and braced for impact.

  A wall of hellfire licked the cockpit—All of the cameras on the left side went dark, blinded forever. Io fought to bring the nose back under control, her ears ringing from the immense roar of a thruster the size of her entire ship. The FX bucked from side to side, but quickly settled: its poor interface to air kept it arrow-straight through the turbulence.

  Klaus must've thought his craft would handle the same, but it didn't: those massive wings turned into a kite and flung him into a spin. As his craft tumbled, Io flipped the Arrowhead around and flipped up the launch buttons with a shivering thumb. In mere seconds, she threw everything she had at him: IR, radar guided missiles, even the cannon rushed towards him in a tangle of contrails.

  C'mon, c'mon—

  That's when two puffs of light escaped the tail of Klaus's craft—and then another pair, until he had a peacock-tail of fire that drew all of the trails towards it like the story of the Piper. Everything whipped through the space he'd just occupied until his path straightened again.

  Io's jaw went slack. She bashed her forehead into the console. How did she think she had a shadow of a chance against someone whose closest rival had a 3-digit kill count? Had it just been her ego talking?

  "Well played, drifter. You got me to pop flares." Klaus sneered. "But this ends now—"

  Before he could finish gloating, a burst of cannon-fire grazed him from the side before a forked grey shape blew through the space between them, its twin engines blazing.

  "What, who—"

  Oh no. There was a very limited set of people who could be at this time and place in a Vestan Gemini.

  As the twin-hulled fighter curled back for a second pass, she got a very good look at the flattened yellow pole that took up two hardpoints on its belly, so huge that it could be mistaken for like a third hull. What the hell was that?

  But, before she could process what had happened, another interloper appeared: an Arrowhead whipped past, going the opposite direction. 1-H's markings. That conservative flying style. Ema's fighter.

  Ema's voice cracked as she angled towards the Gemini and chided it. Something was terribly wrong. She'd never sounded this urgent.

  "Diane, NO!"