David Gunn - Maximum Offence

It is a bad way to go. We know it without needing to see it on screen.

‘Behind us,’ shouts Haze.

Slipping to the left, the B79 shudders as something glances off its side. Retros fire, and we stabilize again. ‘Neat,’ says the SIG. ‘Though I say so myself.’

The vessel it dodged tumbles once, slides sideways and blocks our exit. It’s bigger than we are, a lot bigger. We’re staring at the general’s launch.

Emergency routines are running in the hangar. If a whole hangar has to be sacrificed that’s what will happen. The troopers nearest the exits aren’t stupid, they know that. That is why they’re gripping on for dear life, while scrabbling over one another to get out.

A sergeant fails to make it through a door.

We get one half, from shoulder to knee, which is sucked towards the broken wall. The rest of him disappears inside the elevator. It’s not going anywhere because the lift shafts have already sealed themselves. ‘Clear our way,’ I tell the gun.

‘My pleasure.’

Launching a fourth missile, it fires a fifth just for the hell of it.

As the general’s little liner shatters, a lieutenant is sucked off his feet, his hands scrabbling for anything to grip. As we watch, he’s dragged across the deck and disappears. Just one of a hundred.

‘You know how to fly this?’ demands Colonel Vijay.

‘Of course.’

Haze looks surprised.

‘Flew a skimmer round the landing fields,’ I tell him. ‘At Bosworth. How different can it be?’

Opening his mouth to answer, Colonel Vijay realizes it’s a joke and shuts it again. Leaning across, he offers me his hand to shake. That is how I know he expects to die.

Acceleration welds my combat arm to the chair and squeezes air from my lungs. As we roll, my ribs creak and my shoulders try to dislocate. Everything around me is turning black and white. Only there is no around me , because all I can see is directly ahead.

A shrinking circle going fuzzy at the edges.

‘Seven g,’ says the gun. ‘Twenty-five seconds.’

Colonel Vijay is unconscious. Other than me, only Haze is awake, and he looks terrified. Turning to forward again almost breaks my neck.

‘Nine g,’ the gun tells me. ‘Thirty-two seconds.’

It hesitates.

‘Say it . . .’

‘Going to kill them,’ the SIG says.

‘No, they’ll pull through.’

‘Not those two,’ the gun says. ‘That lot.’

A screen flickers to show me Rachel, Shil, Emil, Neen and Franc . . . They are twisted into the bulkhead. Far from helping, the curve of the crewpit seems to be forcing them into a single mass. One of the straps holding their net has snapped, another cuts so deep into Rachel’s arm it is bruising already.

‘Thirteen g,’ says the gun. ‘Thirty-seven seconds.’

‘What’s the tolerance . . . ?’

‘For them?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘For this ship.’

The SIG feeds me a figure so high we will be slop in a bucket long before I can shake the engines off this thing. As always, the limits are our own.

‘They’re human,’ says the SIG.

‘So am I.’

It laughs, darkly. ‘You really believe that?’

I’d nod, but g-force glues my skull to the seat. So I grunt, ease back a little and roll a turn. We just miss a Z7x fighter, which explodes as our rocket hits.

‘Five,’ says the SIG.

My gun is firing, the combat AI target-spots, and I fly. Should be Haze, but he’s away with who knows what. So far the combination works. Hekati is behind us. A bloody great ring hanging off the edge of a mined-out-

‘Concentrate,’ says my gun.

Another fighter explodes in front of us.

Out here, you don’t get sound; you don’t even get shock waves. You just get a burst of light and endless high-speed shrapnel. The trick is to outrun the shrapnel, or slide it off your force field like flat stones off water. Easier to describe than do.

My screen shows a fighter coming up behind. No way is it going to miss from this distance. As I roll the B79, the Silver Fist fighter fires, and the SIG burns each of its rockets in turn with a short pulse of cannon.

Rolling again, I loop my own path to take the Z7x from the rear. It goes up in a ball of flame, and enough shrapnel to make me twist viciously.

‘Sven,’ says the gun.

‘What?’

‘You’re killing the Aux.’

‘If I don’t do this,’ I say, ‘they’re going to be dead anyhow.’

‘Well,’ it says. ‘Perhaps they’d rather be killed by the enemy.’

‘How are they going to know?’ I ask, checking a screen. ‘They’re all unconscious anyway.’

The gun says nothing. Probably not a good sign.

Taking a slow curve, I see the edge of the asteroid belt.

It is that jumble of rocks, slashed like a broken line inside my screen. Should have thought of it before. 1500 klicks. We can do that .

‘Behind you,’ warns the SIG.

There are two of them, fighters in tight formation. And then, when I check again, I see it is three. One waits higher than the others, further back. That one intends to kill me. The others are just along for the hunt.

To unsettle me.

‘Incoming,’ the SIG says.

Yeah , I’ve seen them. The outriders sweep in behind me.

They intend to cross, which means they’re flying staggered. Although both open fire at the same time. Give me a knife, and I’ll take down anything. But this, slamming around inside some bloody machine, it’s not natural.

If I’m going to kill someone, I want to see their eyes.

Firing the retros makes Haze double over and lose the contents of his gut direct into his lap. Proves he’s still alive, at least. The SIG swears, but that’s only because it is flipping across the crewpit to hit a screen.

Somewhere in the middle of that, the SIG thinks cannon , and reduces both fighters to shards of metals, exploding gas and a flash of blinding light. ‘Ungrateful bastard,’ it snaps, when I remain silent.

But I’m too focused to answer.

Anyway, the third Z7x is beginning its run. The pilot is spooked, which makes him careless. This isn’t what he expects. Coming out like that in a group of three, only to be alone. Now, me . . .

I was alone to start with.

And here he is, chasing an enemy towards the edge of the asteroid belt. An enemy who’s just killed both his companions. It is not a big jump to deciding he’s next.

The fighter comes in fast, and I loop, with darkness eating at the edges of my vision until the world becomes a tiny circle of straight ahead . What I need is to get behind the enemy pilot and let the SIG do its thing.

How hard can that be?

As the Silver Fist opens fire, I pull up and it flicks below me. Looping takes all of my concentration, and as we level out again the SIG starts firing. You can see pulse cannon in space. It burns green. Don’t ask me why.

This guy is good. He twists away, and I follow. As he jerks up, I begin to follow him into a loop and suddenly he isn’t there, because he’s out of the loop and back on his original heading. Any moment now, he’ll do a second twist and roll himself behind me.

‘Wait,’ I tell the SIG.

Slipping sideways, I flip the B79 and fire boosters. The kick nails me to the chair and turns my vision to a tiny island of light surrounded by waves of blackness. As we level out, the SIG sights.

Looks like a clear shot to me.

‘Targeted,’ the SIG says.

‘Take it.’

Warnings obviously fire inside the fighter, because the pilot weaves from side to side and then rolls into a dive. There is no gravity out here, but that dive instinct still kicks in.

As we go for a kill, the pilot kicks in extra boosters.