“Watch your ass! They’re coming around!”

The radio crackled.

“There are too many! I can’t—”

Static.

Friendly markers were winking off the tactical net faster than anyone could count them.

Five Scimitars ran hard into the teeth of it, the squadron the Devastation called the Aces, arriving too late to a fight that had already turned into a slaughter.

The two pilots at the point of the formation had flown together long enough to think in the same breath.

Lieutenant Jaydan va’Lahr, callsign Joker, sat at the edge of engagement with his hand aching on the throttle. They were close. Close enough that if they leaned on acceleration, they could be in there right now, dragging pilots out of the fire.

Lieutenant Terowyn Cearbaill, callsign Exile, led the Aces.

“Negative, Ace Two.” His voice came back measured, unhurried, the calm of a man who had decided a long time ago that panic was a luxury. “We’re no use to them if we can’t maneuver.”

Two more green markers winked out.

Joker watched them go. Somewhere in that scatter of dying lights were people. Maybe strangers. Maybe pilots he had shared a mess table with. Maybe someone who had laughed beside him two days ago and was nothing now but a fading circle on a display.

That was as far as his thinking would go. Wait for the clean approach and there would be no one left to save.

“Fuck this.” Low. Almost to himself. He keyed it over the net so they would know, then leaned on the throttle and let acceleration pull him at the fight.

Sunuva—

Terowyn bit the curse in half and moved with him. If they were doing this, they’d do it his way.

“All Aces, form on Ace Two and engage.”

“Ace Three, roger.”

The rest answered in kind.

The squadron surged.

They accelerated into a formation Terowyn had designed and command hated. Too close, by the manuals. Too risky, by half the instructors who had reviewed it. At high burn their overlapping profiles smeared into a single confused return, five ships wearing the sensor-shadow of something larger. It cost them: heat in the plating, margin in the turns, disaster if a missile ever found the center of the pack. They flew it anyway.

The lead hostiles hardened from yellow to orange across every display at once.

“Aces, this is Ace Two,” Jaydan called. “Break and attack!”

The formation shattered beautifully. The other four peeled into clean attack lines, each locking a separate hostile as the combat net carved the targets up between them. Jaydan took the fifth. Missiles flashed. Energy fire pulsed across the black. Two hostiles came apart almost before the kills registered.

The three short-range Gladius they had come to save turned back into the fight the instant the pressure lifted, flying with the fury of men who’d been moments from dead and had only just realized they weren’t.

The pirate scabs broke under the combined weight. Ugly hulls, mismatched and overbuilt, stitched from scrap and dead military parts. Numbers, but no discipline. The Aces gave them no time to find any.

Two more orange markers blinked out.

“Ace Two, on me,” Exile called. “We take the group left. Aces Three through Five, cover those fighters.”

Exile broke hard left, Joker glued to his wing, the fishhook dragging both their noses across faster than the body wanted to follow.

“Not letting you beat me to it this time, boss,” Jaydan grunted.

Ahead of them, Exile’s lock went solid. The firing tone chirped across the squadron net.

His missile streaked off the rail.

A white flash erupted off his port side.

Blinding.

Too close.

Exile’s Scimitar shuddered, and every light on it died.

Jaydan was screaming before he knew he had keyed the mic.

“EXILE! DO YOU COPY?”

Static.

“Exile, respond!”

Nothing.

Was he alive? What the hell had hit him? Why hadn’t the countermeasures even twitched?

He forced his eyes to the display. Exile’s missile hadn’t found its target. Worse, there was no trail at all. Nothing for the sensors to chase.

And the three hostiles they had been closing on were no longer three.

They were eight.

Trap.

He dragged the stick hard right, his mind catching up to what his hands were already doing. He loved bad odds. Lived for them. But eight to one wasn’t courage. Eight to one was just a slower way to die.

He risked one look back.

Exile’s Scimitar was drifting dark. No lights. No comms. No power.

“Damn it,” he breathed.

Then he ran.

· · ·

Nomad scanned his display.

Ahead in the pocket, two Gladius fighters he didn’t recognize. To his right, Bear. Behind, Sphinx, limping, bleeding warnings across the squadron link.

“Sorry we couldn’t make it sooner, boys,” Nomad called over the open channel to the unidentified friendlies.

Then he switched back to squadron comms.

“This is Nomad. Damage assessment.”

“Bear’s one hundred, minus some ammo.”

“Sphinx is critical. I’m no good here.”

“Roger, Sphinx. Bear, provide cover and get back to the Devastation.”

“Roger. Bear has the package.”

The UGAF Devastation waited far behind them, one of the United Galactic Authority Fleet’s four supercarriers. Too valuable to push into an unknown skirmish. Close enough to recover survivors, launch support, or turn the whole sector into a cautionary tale if command decided the risk was worth it.

Nomad flipped back to open comms.

“Alright, lads. Who do we have, and what’s your status?”

“This is Archon. Seventy and pissed.”

“Oberon here. Eighty-five.”

“Roger. Form on me.”

Nomad pulled his ship around and shifted to longer-range scanners, dragging the two Gladius into the squadron net as a pair of unfamiliar green tracks. They were still too far for short-range secure comms to reach Exile or Joker.

He’d just finished integrating them when an alarm tore through his cockpit.

“THIS IS JOKER, DO YOU COPY? EXILE’S BEEN HIT. I’M RUNNING MULTIPLE HOSTILES.”

Nomad’s eyes swept from his display to the cockpit glass.

There.

Far ahead, ion fire flashed in the dark. Not one weapon profile. Not two.

Three. Four. Five. Six.

“Alright, boys,” he said, voice tightening. “Hate to do this, but showtime. Try to keep up.”

He slammed the throttle forward. Acceleration pinned him into the seat as his Scimitar surged. Behind him, the Gladius lurched after, slower to respond, but moving.

He squinted through the distance. The firing pattern was ugly. Too many angles. Too much movement. Joker was alive because he was fast, not because the situation was survivable.

This is gonna be rough.

He keyed the open channel.

“Archon, Oberon, welcome to the fight. Break right and flank the trailing three. I’m about to force-feed the front ones some lead.”

Old reference. Ancient weapons. Still clear enough.

The two Gladius broke right on his display.

Nomad punched up Joker’s flight path and set himself one hundred eighty degrees off.

“Joker, three greens inbound,” he transmitted. “Do not alter your angle. Only your spin.”

· · ·

Do not alter your angle?

Then Jaydan saw the vector.

“Oh shit,” he muttered. “He’s setting me up for a slingshot.”

He kept the spin going, evasive and ugly, letting his speed do most of the work. The pirates chasing him were slower, but there were enough of them to make the space behind him feel crowded.

He adjusted the tow beam to its farthest forward position.

Then he saw Nomad. The other Scimitar came screaming toward him, nose-on, closing so fast the distance barely looked real.

Jaydan flipped on the gravity link, locked both hands around the stick, and pressed himself deep into the seat.

I hope he’s ready.

The catch hit like a wall. His body slammed into the harness as the tow beam grabbed both ships and tore the momentum out of them in one violent instant.

He shoved the stick forward and cut throttle. His Scimitar whipped around Nomad’s belly, slinging nose to aft in a tight, vicious arc. The moment he cleared the line, he killed the tow beam and punched back to full power.

He shot past Nomad and took the lead on raw speed.

Behind him, Nomad’s Scimitar wallowed, still bleeding off momentum, drifting wide off trajectory.

At that speed, the catch could’ve knocked him cold. Can’t think about that now.

Jaydan switched to the wide-array energy cannons. Power hungry. Messy. Perfect.

Two explosions bloomed among the rear pirates.

He didn’t know why, and didn’t have the time to wonder. Two fewer guns. That was the opening.

He pulled hard left and threw the maneuvering thrusters into the turn. His Scimitar entered a spiral attack, rolling through its own line of fire as the wide-array cannons came alive. Energy fire sprayed in a controlled storm, stitching across the two lead pirates from bow to stern.

Both came apart.

Four ships a side now.

Better.

Two pirates broke hard right. A third whipped around onto his aft quarter. Off to his flank, the two unfamiliar Gladius were tangled with the last of the rear pirates, all three snapping through a tight, desperate dogfight.

Nomad’s ship was still sliding away to the left, on full burn, unanswering.

“Nomad, this is Joker. Can you hear me?”

No answer.

Jaydan threw his Scimitar into evasives as the pirate on his aft found its angle.

· · ·

You cannot treat this like a simulation. This is real life at all times. People will die.

Terowyn’s eyes fluttered open.

His instructor’s voice rang through his head, old and sharp and unwelcome. For a moment, he had no idea where he was.

Then the cockpit came back in pieces. Dark screens. Dead controls. Amber and white emergency life-support lights pulsing in the gloom.

He grabbed the flight controls and rocked them.

Nothing.

Throttle.

Nothing.

If you do nothing, then you are nothing.

Terowyn started flipping switches, checking systems, backups, relays, anything that might drag his Scimitar back from the dead. His hands moved fast, then faster, until he forced them to slow.

Panic killed sequence.

Sequence kept pilots alive.

He leaned toward the cockpit glass and scanned the darkness.

There. Explosions. Something was happening out there and he was blind to it. Dead screens. Dead board. No way to know who was winning.

He struck the console once. Stopped himself before the second hit.

“Come on,” he whispered.

Not to the ship. To himself.

He let his hands rest where they were and breathed. Eyes open. Always eyes open.

Then he saw the missile trails. Two of them. Growing brighter in the distance.

He couldn’t range them. Couldn’t time them. Just two lights swelling in the dark, and no telling how many moments they bought him.

He was alone. No comms. No goodbye. No final clever thought. No last order. No heroic maneuver. Just the dark, the amber pulse of emergency life support, and two weapons coming straight for a dead ship.

So this was where it ended.

Then a Scimitar flashed past close enough to rattle the canopy. Countermeasure flares bloomed in its wake. One missile dropped low and lost the lock. The other climbed high, veered, and chased the fleeing fighter instead.

An explosion flashed from the direction the missiles had come from.

Then another.

Hope came up hard in his chest.

Do not trust it.

The pursuing missile detonated.

His chest went hollow. Missiles did not explode unless they found something.

He flipped a few switches again. Not that he expected anything. Doing nothing felt worse.

Still no power.

Two smaller Gladius fighters slid into view and rotated outward into defensive positions.

Then the Scimitar drifted back, sliding in above his cockpit, inverted directly over him. Close enough for Terowyn to see the pilot through the canopy.

Jaydan. He raised a fist.

Terowyn closed his eyes for one breath.

Just one.

· · ·

“Wooo, he’s alive!” Jaydan whooped over the radio.

Nomad clicked his mic once in celebration. That was all he managed.

Jaydan flipped his ship into position, lining the gravity link with the nose of Terowyn’s disabled Scimitar. The salvage connection took longer than a normal beam-to-beam link. Terowyn’s ship had no power to answer with.

The indicator flashed dark blue.

Then steadied bright.

Locked.

“Alright, squad,” Jaydan said. “We’ve overstayed our welcome. Time to go home before we attract more attention.”

“Roger,” came the chorus.

He switched to strike laser comms. Safest way to reach Devastation. Fastest too, once the handshake completed. Useless in a dogfight, but they were finally steady enough to try.

“Devastation, this is Ace Two. Over.”

He waited.

“Ace Two, this is Devastation… uh.” The operator paused, audibly wrong-footed. “Stand by for comms.”

Jaydan shifted in his seat.

That pause had teeth.

“Ace Two, this is Devastation-Actual. Sorry for your loss. Exile was a good man. Report.”

Devastation-Actual?

The commanding officer himself.

Jaydan hesitated a fraction too long. For one stupid moment, protocol tangled with reality. The squad leader was not reporting because the squad leader was a dark hull in tow behind him.

“Devastation-Actual, you misunderstand,” Jaydan said. “Exile is down, but not out. Coming in tow. Unknown injuries. No comms. Request emergency docking and medical crews ready. Over.”

Another pause. Shorter. Still awkward.

“Ace Two, this is Devastation. Glad to hear it. Permission granted. Medical standing by. Bomber Bay Two. Out.”

Bomber bay. Jaydan glanced at the tow telemetry. Larger space. More clearance. Closer to medical.

Makes sense.

“Uhhh, Joker?” Nomad called.

“Go ahead, Ace Three,” Jaydan answered.

“Where are our two new friends?”

Jaydan’s stomach tightened. He scanned the targeting display.

Two green dots. Himself and Nomad. Terowyn’s ship wouldn’t show with no active power.

But the Gladius should have been there.

They weren’t.

He flipped to long-range scanners.

Nothing.

Trace gas sensors.

There. Two thin exhaust trails, already fading. They had peeled away the moment the group started back for Devastation.

Jaydan stared at the display.

Where the hell did two short-range fighters even come from?

He switched back to laser comms.

“Devastation, this is Ace Two. Over.”

“Ace Two, this is Devastation. Go ahead.”

“Devastation, we recovered two Gladius fighters from the skirmish. We no longer have contact. Request known capital ships in the area. Over.”

A beat.

“Ace Two, no other ship signatures on radar. No capital ships in area.”

Jaydan went cold.

He snapped back to squadron comms.

“Ace Three, tell me you pulled ship data from the squadron configuration.”

“Negative, Joker. I’ve been looking since I noticed they were gone. There’s no record of those ships in the package.”

Laser comms cut back in.

“Ace Two, this is Devastation. Did you copy my last?”

Jaydan switched channels again.

“Devastation, this is Ace Two. Roger. Heading home. Out.”

He kept his hands steady on the controls. The tow home stretched long and quiet.

Behind him, Terowyn’s dead Scimitar followed in tow. Ahead, the UGAF Devastation grew slowly in the cockpit glass.

Jaydan watched the carrier get larger and felt the question settle into him like shrapnel.

What the hell is going on?