Tales from the Service: The Skirmish Line Testbed

2949-11-16 – Tales from the Service: The Skirmish Line Testbed 

While there has been no full scale battle here at Berkant, there have been several skirmishes along the Fifth Fleet outer defensive perimeter. Most of these are engagements between enemy strike units and our own, with occasional participation by picket cutters and frigates, but on two occasions, a lone Tyrant cruiser has attempted to bull through the pickets, requiring in a response by Confederated light cruisers and destroyers. On both occasions, the enemy cruiser was damaged and forced to withdraw back to Hallman, though losses have been suffered by our forces as well. 

What’s interesting about these skirmishes is that the enemy seems to be using them as controlled test environments for new weapons. We’ve seen a trio of new enemy fast frigate analogue make their appearance in these skirmishes, though little is known about these vessels that I can relay. Perhaps these three are the only ones that exist to date, but I think we can expect to see more if the enemy likes their performance here. Their main role seems to be hunting assault cutters, and they’re probably intended to take on Fifth Fleet’s stealth cutters as well. 

More concerningly, in the second cruiser-level incursion, the light cruiser Drachenblanche briefly tangled with the enemy intruder and discovered that it was not armed along the lines of the standard Tyrant model. The inclusion of a heavy kinetic prow cannon to this new variant (already being referred to as Tyrant-B) is probably intended to introduce weapons capable of threatening total destruction of the eight Confederated battleships of the Fifth Fleet line. 

While this is probably the objective, single cannons firing on fixed arcs, even of the largest caliber, still present little threat to our battleships. 

[N.T.B. - Drachenblanche got lucky. This was probably a prototype weapon, but I imagine the enemy has got something on their slipways that will carry more than one of them.]  

Captain Lukas Sorrentino felt his ship shudder even through the inertial isolation field as a pair of warheads detonated in its shear-screens. With the first salvo from Drachenblanche's launchers already on the way to the opposing cruiser and the missile-room crews hurriedly reloading for another volley, he had little to do but hold onto his console and wait to see the result. 

Though he refused to let the command part of his brain focus on the thought too long, Lukas knew Drachenblanche was hideously outmatched. Though his cruiser was nimble and carried a lot of firepower for its weight, the single Incarnation “Tyrant” heavy cruiser which he was dueling with outmassed him by almost two to one and had an arsenal to match. Drachenblanche could weather a few more salvos at long range before its defenses degraded too far and it suffered a hit, but once it did, he’d be forced to withdraw. The ship’s chance of survival if that first hit crippled the screens or gravitic drive were effectively nil. 

Fortunately, Lukas wasn’t fighting alone. Drachenblanche had moved out to engage the probing enemy ship with a trio of destroyers in the van and a fire-support frigate in close escort position. As the fight unfolded, the frigates and cutters along the picket line were also beginning to trickle in, adding the long-range firepower of their railguns and launchers to the ordinance hurled at the incoming cruiser. All those other ships equalized the tonnage situation and almost made up for the firepower discrepancy, as long as Drachenblanche itself could weather the full force of the hostile cruiser’s main weapons. 

“Aspect change.” The voice was that of Commander Biskup, skipper of the destroyer Zeman. “Advise enemy cruiser is opening hangars.” 

“Understood. All ships, start railshot denial on probable attack vectors.” Lukas started a timer, and a red sphere began to billow out from the enemy ship’s position on his display. Coronachs were notoriously hard to detect in open space, even with their tiny gravitic drives burning at full gee, so the computer would keep track of any place they might be until the squadrons were spotted. If the cruiser carried the rarer Jericho strike bombers, they would be somewhat easier to find, but also somewhat more dangerous to his ships.  

As each ship in the growing melee diverted several of its rapid-fire light railguns to spraying ferroceramic slugs into space in the hopes of catching the incoming strike squadrons unawares, something occurred to Lukas. Though the Tyrant type had a sizable launch hangar within its hull, its hangar doors were quite small. Their opening should not have been visible at long weapons range. “Zeman, please confirm. Opening hangars?” 

After a few seconds courtesy of the speed-of-light signal flitting from Drachenblanche to Zeman and back, Lukas heard the reply. “Aye, Captain. Visual observation confirmed.” 

Before he quite understood why, Lukas switched channels. “Helm, full evasive. Now.” 

To her credit, the officer at the helm didn’t hesitate. The hum of the reactor feeding power to the gravitic drive went up an octave and the little wireframe of Drachenblanche pirouetted in Lukas’s display. Courtesy of the inertial isolation systems, he felt none of the violent acceleration. 

“Evasive engaged, Captain. What’s-” 

The cruiser rocked and the lights flickered as a short-lived star bloomed into being not far from the ship’s port quarter. Lukas noted with grim satisfaction that the explosion, only thirty kilometers away, was right where his ship would have been, had he not ordered evasive action. Evasion didn’t fool missiles and torpedoes, but sensors could track their approach – this was something different. 

“Relativistic cannon. A big one, too." Lukas answered the incomplete question, as much for himself as for the helm officer. Up until that point, Incarnation ships had generally lacked kinetic armament, and so his ship, like most Confederated warships, had long since dispensed with standard evasive maneuvers during battle. “Continue evasive and advise all ships. This Tyrant isn’t the standard model. Commence evasive maneuvers.” 

 

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Tales from the Service: The Kingfisher Surprise

2949-11-23 – Tales from the Service: The Kingfisher Surprise 

“Come on, Vitali.” Commander Adam Roubio, the squadron commander, slapped Vitali Borja on the shoulder, nearly causing him to inhale his mouthful of vaguely chicken-flavored stew substitute. 

Swallowing hurriedly before his body could begin coughing to expel the small amount of food which had managed to worm its way down his windpipe, Vitali held up a hand for Roubio to wait as he recovered. Expecting the man to wait, he realized as he stood up and turned around, had been a bit silly. Roubio was already halfway across the mess hall, giving the same treatment to another member of the squadron’s flight crew. Fortunately for most of the unit, Vitali’s hacking coughs had served as a warning that Roubio was in the compartment. 

Stuffing his mostly-untouched tray into a return receptacle, Vitali hurried after the whirl of activity caught in Commander Roubio’s orbit. He didn’t know what it was this time, but if they were being scrambled without a carrier-wide alert, it wasn’t the big battle everyone was expecting. That was itself a sort of comfort, but dying in a low-level pre-battle skirmish was just as fatal as dying in a proper stand-up fight of cruisers and battlewagons trading salvos across the beaten firmament, and smaller ships brawling in the space between for the right to disrupt the big ships' operations. 

The dozen-odd personnel, most still asking various flavors of “what’s going on?” at odd intervals, followed Roubio out of the mess hall. They received no information for their troubles. Vitali, seeing that his commander had not collected the whole roster, instead hung back and tried to divine the commander’s intentions from the people he’d gathered. Rik Baines had been chosen, but his better half (at least in looks) Margurite had been left in the mess hall. Dour T.K. Jager, the most experienced strike gunner in any squadron on Fidelity, had been left scowling into his coffee, but the rookie pilot of his rig, one Van Houten, was close on Commander Roubio’s heels. He’d picked eleven, all pilots of their respective Magpies, and no gunners. 

Since Roubio himself piloted the squadron’s lead rig, that meant he wanted something – twelve somethings – flown, but probably not taken into a proper fight. Going into a battle against agile Coronachs in a Magpie with its guns under strict control of the main targeting system was not a good survival strategy on the best of days, and even the ever-energetic Roubio was not suicidal enough to try it unless he had a very good plan. Most likely, Vitali concluded, they were needed to ferry a few of Fidelity’s ready spare Magpies to one of the other Fifth Fleet support carriers. 

As it turned out, Vitali was almost correct. After a quick stop in the ready-room to switch from their uniforms to their flight suits, the commander led them onto the carrier’s main hangar deck and up the boarding ramp of a boxy personnel shuttle. 

“Strap in, ladies and gentlemen.” Roubio gestured to the seats along either bulkhead. “We’re heading for Rietveld.” 

Vitali took a seat next to Baines as the ramp retracted and the pressure doors clamped shut. If they were riding across on a shuttle, the rigs they were ferrying would be their ride back. Rietveld was one of the carrier’s tenders; it was functionally a hauler with its forward cargo bay converted into a low-grade hangar. It was strange that they’d be flying spares off the tender to Fidelity, because the carrier’s squadrons fresh from a long stint at Maribel, had full complements of spare rigs available. He didn’t bother trying to puzzle it out in further detail, though. With battle looming, he could hardly blame command for wanting an over-abundance of reserves. 

“Borja, you look like you’ve got something figured out.” 

Vitali looked up to see Lieutenant Jessica Tollemache fixing him with her icy stare. The squadron executive officer had been assigned to Roubio’s squadron only recently, but nobody could argue with her experience, or with the blue-green and white Centaur Cross emblem on her lapel. She’d been one of the few survivors of a squadron cut to pieces at the first Battle of Berkant, back when the Incarnation’s tactics and equipment were still very much unknown. 

“Looks like we’re doing a ferry job to me, Lieutenant. What’s to figure out?” Several of the others, including Baines, were watching him, and Vitali didn’t like being the center of attention. 

Tollemache managed to chuckle without smiling or lowering her gaze. “You’re missing something, then. You should have guessed already.” 

“Guessed what, ma’am?” 

“Since when has the Commander been so excited about a ferry job?” 

Vitali glanced sidways at Commander Roubio. Now that Tollemache had pointed it out, he could see more than the man’s usual frenetic energy powering his incapacity to sit still. Roubio seemed hardly present as the shuttle bumped free of its clamps and headed for the hangar hatches, as if he was already somewhere out there, in the cluttered hangar aboard Rietveld. 

“Is he up for a new rig, Lieutenant? Something wrong with Redtail?” Redtail was Roubio’s Magpie, a command variant with better comms and computer systems than most. 

This time, Tollemache smiled. She rarely did, and Vitali decided quickly that he preferred it when she didn’t. “You're up for a new rig too.” 

“Oy, there’s nothing wrong with Grigor V. Just had a full over-” 

“Wasn’t saying there was, Mr. Borja.” 

Vitali leaned back, frowning. Why would the Navy replace perfectly good Magpies? It had been barely two hundred flight ops hours since their last total overhaul, and most of the squadron’s rigs had been replaced back at Maribel anyway. 

Tollemache nodded her encouragement. “I can’t tell you, but if you guess now, it won’t hurt anything.” 

Vitali closed his eyes for a moment. If the batch of Magpies they’d been issued was defective, they’d be flying off eighteen units, not twelve. This had to be an upgrade worth junking twelve perfectly good Magpies, and that meant it wasn’t just a rollover from one incremental model to the next. “We’re getting something newer. Something way better.” 

Tollemache said nothing, but her single raised eyebrow told Vitali he was right. Several of the others, having listened to the exchange, began talking all at once, exploding with speculation as to what they would be picking up when they reached Rietveld. 

Fortunately, they didn’t have long to wait. The shuttle entered the tender’s bay and bumped down to the deck less than twenty minutes after it cleared Fidelity’s hangar doors. The moment it touched down, Roubio loosed his restraints and sprung to his feet. “Follow me, pilots. I’ve got something to show you.” 

The commander paced in front of the pressure doors until the tender’s hangar had repressurized, then squeezed out before they’d even fully opened. The others, having heard Vitali’s speculation, were close behind him, but Vitali himself hung back. If there were twelve pilots, there would be twelve rigs, after all; he hardly needed to rush. 

“Patient. I like that.” 

Vitali turned around to find Lieutenant Tollemache still languidly unhooking her restraints. “Seems pointless to rush, Ma’am.” They were alone in the shuttle, now, except the pilot behind his sealed cockpit door, and somehow without the presence of the other members of the squadron, the woman wasn’t nearly as intimidating. Still, he squirmed under her undivided attention; Tollemache was a notoriously strict enforcer of regulations and military discipline. 

“Sure is, but excitement gets the better of even the Commander sometimes.” She didn’t smile, but her icy-blue eyes flashed with more mirth than any smile could. If he didn’t know better, Vitali might think she was making fun of the boisterous squadron leader. “From what I hear, the new Kingfisher Gunships are going to be a real treat to fly.” 

“Kingfisher, eh?” Vitali’s imagination seized on the name. It was a good name, at least as the Navy named its strike classes. “I haven’t heard anything in the rumor mill.” 

Tollemache walked past Vitali to follow the rest of the pilots down the ramp. “Well, you’re about to. Come on.” 

Last week we published a story of Incarnation innovation in the pre-battle environment here in Berkant. Far be it from us to imply that the Navy is not also making improvements. 

Limited numbers of the new Kingfisher gunship have been introduced into the battlespace. Though not as powerfully armed or as durable as the Magpie, this strike unit is designed to penetrate escort screens and shred formations of strike bombers and other slow, cumbersome strike-scale units. Squadrons composed of both Kingfishers and Magpies are theorized to be the perfect counter to Jericho Bomber raids escorted heavily by Coronach interceptors. 

There are other weapons and systems being tested out by the Navy in this theater, though Naval Intelligence is rather tight-lipped about most of them for obvious reasons. The Kingfisher program, designed by a joint team of Kosseler Premium Products and Centauri Naval Yards technicians, is the first major weapon system brought from point zero to full field testing in this war, but it is hardly going to be the last. 

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Tales from the Service: The Kingfisher Trial

2949-11-30 – Tales from the Service: The Kingfisher Trial 

Despite numerous skirmishes here in the Milian system, the Incarnation fleet stationed at Hallman has yet to make a move toward Berkant. The Fifth Fleet picket line has suffered a number of small vessels damaged and destroyed in these skirmishes, but no major warships have been removed from the fleet’s order of battle, while it’s expected that at least two of the Tyrant heavy-cruiser analogues sent to probe the fleet screen have been damaged sufficiently to render them not suitable for future combat. 

Of course, the enemy fleet at Hallman has at least thirty-five ships of that type remaining in good order, and a number of auxiliaries, including troop ships. Admiral Zahariev’s staff indicates that they think this force insufficient to defeat Fifth Fleet in open battle, but also worries that Hallman is a trap, and does not want to go on the offensive until more intelligence is gained. A few scouting flights have been made (Tales from the Service: Watching Hallman), but the enemy is increasingly learning to keep these prying eyes at a safe distance. 

With the civilian population of the system largely evacuated, and extensive ground-side defenses on Berkant, there seems little reason to remain on the defensive, but Admiral Zahariev seems to be taking a methodical approach. I for one don’t blame him; if the enemy retreats from Hallman, they open themselves up to a disastrous rout in open space, and if they remain, their fleet remains pinned down and incapable of taking the offensive elsewhere. 

As reported last week, a few squadrons in Fifth Fleet have been equipped with the new Kingfisher strike gunship; this sleek, high-tech war machine built with the assistance of Kosseler designers is meant to outperform enemy strike formations in ways the rugged, dependable Magpie could not. There have also been rumors of a revised Magpie variant being tested in less active theaters of the conflict, though most likely the two projects are intended to be complementary rather than competing for the same role. After brief training cycles with the new machines, I am told that the first Kingfishers saw action only a few days ago on the Milian skirmish line, and all indications are that their first taste of combat went quite well. 

Vitali Borja scanned the cockpit displays in his new gunship rig. Only nine days before, he’d ferried the shiny new Kingfisher gunship from a fleet tender, and though all twelve of the new rigs had been out on training exercises every day since, he still hadn’t gotten used to the streamlined displays and their adaptive holographic control surfaces. Every time he sat down, he still looked for the bank of switches and buttons that controlled the startup sequence of a Magpie, instead of focusing on the main display, where a series of virtual controls and timing indicators would walk him through the sequence. 

Fortunately, the one thing that had survived a mad Kosseler engineer’s fixation with adaptive controls was the twin-stick piloting arrangement common to most strike rigs. Vitali couldn’t imagine going into a fight without the feel of physical triple-axle control sticks, and the controls of the Kingfisher felt all the more solid for being some of the only hardware controls in the entire cockpit. 

“Dorsal guns are go.” Cadeyrn Landon, one of Vitali’s gunners, snapped his attention away from the feel of the inactive controls. Vitali could tell the phrase “dorsal guns” was still new to Landon, who’d previously operated the single portside quadmount turret of their Magpie. Now, he had a battery of four weapons to manage – two rapid-fire railgun mounts, and two high-tech but short-ranged plasma cannons. 

 “Ventral guns are go.” Sandeep Patel, a squadron rookie with only a few dozen hours of combat ops, had taken to the arrangement of the new Kingfishers far more quickly. “Ordinance bay is go.” Vitali had high hopes for Patel; he was a natural in the gunnery role, but he needed a few more missions of real combat to knock the green off. 

“Flight systems...” Vitali scanned the board and started the warmup sequence for the twin gravitic drive units that would hurl his craft through space at speeds he preferred not to think about too hard. If the inertial isolation system failed during a combat maneuver, he wouldn’t really have time to think about it before he was reduced to a gritty pink paste anyway. “Flight systems are go. Onboard datasystems are go.” 

Vitali also ran a quick diagnostic on the beam cannon built into the Kingfisher’s nose, though he didn’t bother to report the results to his compatriots. The bow cannon, controlled by a trigger on one of his control sticks, was the least important weapon on the whole rig, especially in combat against nimble Incarnation Coronachs. 

Vitali glanced at a screen to his left, and hurriedly reached up to tap a yellow control there, which immediately switched to green. “Fisher Three reporting a green board. Awaiting launch clearance.” 

“Roger, Three. Hangar depressurization is ongoing. You’ll be second in the launch order.” Fidelity’s hangar ops chief, the silky-voiced Commander Amalberti, stood silhouetted in the hangar observation deck as she replied over the squadron’s comms channel. “Head out on vector two-zero-five, one-ten.” 

“Two-zero-five, one-ten.” As Vitali repeated the instruction, one of the secondary screens lit up and displayed a wireframe of Fidelity and the indicated course vector leading away from the hangar doors. He didn’t know if the onboard computer had loaded the course from the carrier’s datasystems, or parsed the radio transmission, and it didn’t really matter. 

Across the hangar’s broad deck, a launch platform lifted a sleek Kingfisher several meters above its fellows, allowing it to gently nudge forward and upward against the pull of the carrier’s A-grav. As soon as it lifted off, his heads-up display marked it as Fisher Two, Lieutenant Tollemache’s rig. The Kingfisher turned to orient itself with the elliptical maw of the still-closed launch doors. Tollemache probably didn’t have clearance for the rapid-launch she was lining up, but Vitali doubted anyone would reprimand her for the maneuver on a combat mission. 

When the bay finished its depressurization and the doors yawned open, Fisher Two surged forward, passing out into open space before the big armored iris had opened all the way. Vitali couldn’t help but be impressed; the Lieutenant’s rig had cleared the doors with less than two meters to spare on either side. For that needless risk, the squadron executive officer might earn a reprimand from Commander Roubio, but Vitali doubted it would be a terribly forceful one. Roubio had a soft spot for daredevils. 

With a bump, the platform carrying Vitali’s craft began to rise, and he decoupled the landing gear latches. With the slightest nudge on the sticks, he brought the Kingfisher off the rectangle of hangar deck and oriented it with the doors. Another nudge, and he sailed through into the infinite black of interplanetary space. Milian, the local star, drowned out all others, though the adaptive viewpanels dimmed its fierce light considerably. He set the autopilot, then sat back as the craft oriented itself on his authorized departure vector and began accelerating away from Fidelity. 

Within minutes, all twelve Kingfishers and six Magpies of Fisher Squadron had launched and formed up behind Fisher One, Roubio’s rig Bluetail. Vitali slaved his helm controls to the squadron commander’s channel, then checked his systems one more time as Roubio led them all away from the carrier and toward the fleet picket line. 

“Stay sharp, everybody.” Roubio still, Vitali suspected, thought that phrase improved morale, even though everyone else thought it archaic and meaningless. “Two flights of Coronachs are harassing one of the picket frigates up ahead.” 

Vitali winced; even with the fire support of a frigate, their sixteen gunships would be facing at least twenty of the enemy flyers, possibly as many as thirty. For their first action in the new rigs, those were hardly ideal odds. 

“What caliber of pilots are we expecting, Commander?” Tollemache, cool and collected as always, interrupted the incomfortable silence that ensued after their leader’s announcement. 

“According to the frigate’s estimates, these guys are average at best. No Immortals.” 

That, at least, was a relief; Vitali and his compatriots hadn’t yet tangled with the rare but all-but-unbeatable bionic super-pilots the Incarnation sometimes employed, but they’d all heard stories of squadrons who had been bested by one or two of these elite strike flyers. If the Coronach pilots ahead weren’t particularly skilled, and Fisher Squadron stuck to the tactics it had been working on for the last week, the fight would be at least slightly in their favor. 

“You’d think they’d find something soft for us to cut our teeth on.” Landon grumbled on the gunship’s intercom. 

“They probably did.” Patel replied before Vitali could reprimand the comment. “We’ll be fine, Cade.” 

As the smart viewpanel magnified infinitesimal flashes ahead to show a wildly maneuvering warship being chased by a swarm of darting pinpricks that could only be Coronachs, Vitali hoped the rookie was right. 

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Tales from the Service: The Kingfisher Melee

2949-12-07 – Tales from the Service: The Kingfisher Melee 

While I have had a number of requests in our inbox asking us to speculate in greater detail what the Incarnation fleet is doing at Hallman, I don’t think it’s reasonable to do so at this stage. Simply put, we don’t know much more now than we did a few weeks ago when we spoke to Captain Kirke-Moore and Colonel Durand. Both sides are using the skirmishes here to test new tactics and weapons, but the need for a testing ground can’t possibly be the only reason the Incarnation has invested so heavily in this offensive. 

That the ultimate goal is Berkant itself seems obvious, but given that the planet is entirely evacuated at this point except for a strong garrison, and even the farming machinery that tills the fertile Berkant soil has been removed, there seems little immediate value in the place. 

This week, we continue from the account of Vitali Borja, one of the first pilots to fly the new Kosseler-derived Kingfisher Gunship into battle. 

“Lead, how do you want to do this?” Lieutenant Tollemache’s calm, clear voice broke the silence as the squadron closed in on the battle ahead. The frigate Gottfreid Muraro was the only participant visible to the naked eye, but its wild evasive maneuvers and the molten-orange clouds of railshot thrown up by its batteries hinted at the multiplicity of its foes. 

“Like we practiced, Two.” Commander Roubio sounded excited, and for once, Vitali didn’t blame his commander’s exuberant energy. The few dozen Coronachs ahead wouldn’t know what hit them; the sleek new Kingfisher gunships most of the squadron had been equipped with hadn’t been used in battle before. “Make them come to us.” 

Vitali slid his hand along one display and switched his controls from cruise mode to combat mode. Unbidden, the status indicator for Fisher Four, his wingman, appeared next to his own in one of the secondary screens. Like the older Magpies, Kingfishers were not meant to fight alone; an isolated gunship could be quickly outmaneuvered and cut to pieces by agile opponents like the Incarnation’s Coronachs. “You with me, Four?” 

“Right behind you, Three.” Rocco, the pilot of Fisher Four, sounded tense, and his tone sobered Vitali up a bit. They would be outnumbered two to one at least, and their Kingfishers weren’t really optimized for tangling with Coronachs, but they could hardly be expected to avoid the innumerable interceptors on the battlefield. Kingfishers’ real prey was supposed to be the Incarnation’s more valuable, less common bomber, the so-called Jericho, but to get to those targets, one always had to slice through a swarm of agile Coronachs. Today, they would merely be proving the Kingfisher’s ability to do the latter, more dangerous task. 

“Fisher Squadron, this is Muraro.” The frigate’s skipper sounded young, inexperienced, and terrified. In theory, her ship could tangle with twice as many Coronachs for much longer than it had been under attack so far, but being under fire and relying on theory for one’s safety was a comfortable experience for very few spacers. “You’re on our boards. We’ll clear your approach.” 

A moment later, the frigate spun on its axis and a new cloud of glowing railshot erupted from its side, forcing a trio of Coronachs to break off from an intercept course with Fisher Squadron. Coronachs, with their fragile frames and close-range plasma weapons, were easiest to fight if kept at a distance. 

“Landon, Patel, start marking your targets.” Networked with the gunners on Fisher Four as they were, Vitali’s gunners could fire complex patterns of railshot to herd enemy inteceptors into the path of a pre-planned killshot from the other gunship. If the enemy got too close, the gunships’ heavy plasma weaponry could vaporize a Coronach with a single direct hit. 

“All gunners, weapons free.” Commander Roubio’s grin was fully audible over the audio channel. “Kingfishers, stay close.” 

Even before their leader had finished speaking, the railguns on all the Kingfishers began to spew railshot ahead, creating a cloud of murderous ferroceramic projectiles to lead the way into the melee. This, Vitali knew, was not intended to kill the enemy, only to open a path for the squadron. The killing would mainly take place as the squadron slashed through the circling Coronachs, and as those same enemy ships pursued the gunships. 

The six Magpies still attached to Fisher Squadron slowed and fell back as the new rigs accelerated. Vitali didn’t envy those pilots or their gunners; their role in the battle was mainly to watch and only to intervene if their experimental compatriots got into trouble. 

“Two incoming! Damn, how did they slip past the net?” 

Vitali heard the computer’s siren wail as a Coronach targeting system locked onto his ship. With a reflexive flick of his wrist, he rolled to starboard and engaged the lateral thrusters to juke in what he hoped was an unexpected direction without slowing his forward progress. Behind him, the plasma cannons cracked out a reply to the slashing Coronach’s bow cannon, and then it was over. The intercepting Coronach made a desultory pass against Fisher Seven, but by the time it had recovered from this, the whole squadron was past it. 

“Where’d the other one go?” Rocco called out. 

“We bagged him.” Tollemache’s reply, as cool and matter of fact as if she’d been talking about passing the salt-shaker in the mess hall aboard the carrier, made Vitali smile. 

“Gunners, watch your timers.” 

Vitali glanced up to see the bulk of Muraro already looming large ahead. Commander Roubio’s assault run took them on a tight pass along the frigate’s aft quarter, and in the heads-up display within his canopy glass, orange indicators already bracketed several Coronachs which would pass within range, indicating the ire of his gunners. As the timer crawled toward optimum weapons range, Vitali gripped his control sticks, listening for the wail of another target lock, and praying that his rig would emerge on the other side of the fracas in one piece. 

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