TEXT: BATTLECORPS
  PITCAIRN STAR
  By Kevin Killiany
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Pitcairn Star • Page 2
  Dormandaine 
  Outworld Alliance 
  September 16, 3063
  It took a lot of turbulence to buck a fifty-
  ton Lightning. Jared’s rattled like a 
  reed in a windstorm.
  “Not too late to sit this one 
  out.” Darin’s voice crackled 
  over his headphones.
  “No, I’m fine,” Jared an-
  swered his flight partner. “But 
  you might want to go back 
  and guard the DropShip while 
  we tend to business.”
  Third Squadron of the Lone Wolves 
  had deployed at speed from a Leopard 
  CV carrier on fly-by. Their DropShip hadn’t braked as hard as the 
  others, pulling ahead and passing on the far side of Dormandaine 
  from the rest of the rescue force. And the pirate raid. There was an 
  outside chance the pirates thought it was an out-of-control over-
  shot, but it wasn’t too likely.
  The squadron had arched over Dormandaine’s pole, slingshot-
  ting through the gravity well. Now they slashed in from the north, 
  edging into the atmosphere at near orbital velocities. The plan was 
  to hit the deck fat and catch the pirates from below as they braced 
  for attack from above. But at these speeds the thin gasses of the 
  upper atmosphere were like a wall of molten steel. If they weren’t 
  on their toes turbulence would do the pirates’ job for them.
  “First blood,” Darin predicted.
  “Yours or theirs?”
  “Three-three, three-four, pipe down,” warned their supervisor. 
  Her voice weary with repetition.
  Jared grinned. He and Darin had been one-upping each other 
  since Columbia Academy. One-two at every competition they’d 
  entered, whether organized or–more often–impromptu. Barracks 
  gamblers had long ago decided who was best at any given time 
  had more to do with wind direction and barometric pressure than 
  anything else; they were that evenly matched.
  
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  Pitcairn Star • Page 3
  Today’s competition was certainly impromptu. It had been blind 
  chance–or machinations of the deity the people of Dormandaine 
  worshipped–that the two of them along with the rest of Third 
  Wing’s Second Regiment had been en route to jump point, head-
  ed for a martial aerobatics competition on Alpheratz when the 
  refugee JumpShip appeared, screaming about a pirate raid on 
  Dormandaine. As a result they’d come in-system hours behind the 
  raiders instead of days. Quickly enough to support the nadir re-
  charge station in holding off pirates remaining at the jump point. 
  Not their fight. DropShips belonging to most of Second Regiment 
  had been sent to head off the raiders. A two-week horserace from 
  jump point to planet—the pirates too committed to their course 
  at that time to change, and too far ahead for the Lone Wolves to 
  engage. Actually, given the number of pirate DropShips, it wasn’t 
  at all clear the Second would have automatically won the engage-
  ment if they had closed. 
  It still wasn’t a sure thing, but in atmosphere the edge definitely 
  went to the defenders.
  Common sense, Jared knew, would have been for the pirate 
  DropShips to head back for jump point; try to force the defenders 
  away long enough to for their JumpShips to juice up and get out 
  before reinforcements arrived. Instead, they seemed bent on pull-
  ing off their raid; gambling the rest of the Dark Rain wing wouldn’t 
  be in position to follow to Dormandaine. Or, more likely, betting 
  the wing wasn’t going to leave Ramora unprotected. 
  As it happened, both were good bets, but the pirates would have 
  no way of knowing that for sure. Jared wondered what was on 
  Dormandaine worth that kind of risk. As far as he knew there was 
  nothing but cows and Islamians—or whatever they were called. 
  Neither commerce nor theology had ever interested him.
  At last Third Squadron was deep enough in the atmosphere for 
  their Lightning’s control surfaces to grab. They leveled, hanging 
  high enough to minimize air drag as they closed on their hope-
  fully unsuspecting quarry. If the pirates behaved as expected, all 
  their sensors would be focused on the forces closing from above. 
  Inside the atmosphere, their greatest threat of detection would be 
  someone looking out a view screen and noticing six fiery arrows 
  slashing in from the north.
  “Telemetry coming in from main force,” someone said.
  Sure enough, on his secondary screen a zenith view of the de-
  ploying pirate forces appeared. Jared thought of it as an active 
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Pitcairn Star • Page 4
  map, with a golden arrow showing the Third’s projected attack 
  vector. They were going to cut through their heart.
  On the topo projection, Jared saw the target area was a city 
  tiered up the steep hills around a bowl-shaped bay. The DropShip 
  landing field was spread out to the east, hidden from the city by a 
  screen of low mountains.
  “Three-one to Three Squadron,” said the supervisor. “First pass, 
  target their landers.”
  Made sense, they’d be moving too fast to engage targets as 
  small and nimble as other fighters. The pirate fighters would not 
  get off anything other than harassing fire. 
  “Three-three and three-four break east over land, the rest form 
  on me, west loop over the ocean.” 
  Jared nodded at the plan. They’d come back in a basket-weave 
  that would strip the raider’s aerospace cover out of position trying 
  to cover everything at once. By then the First and Second should 
  be hitting them from above. From that point it was just a matter 
  of time.
  “Program your ef-cees.” The supervisor’s voice cut across his 
  thoughts. “I don’t want to loose anyone to machismo.”
  “You know us, Supe,” said Darin in a hurt tone.
  “Precisely.” 
  The flight computers, safe in the center of the Lightning’s mass, 
  could be programmed to pull the plane out of a high-gee turn if 
  the pilot blacked out. 
  “Contact in thirty seconds,” Darin said. “Mark.”
  Checking the overhead view of the pirates and their own geolo-
  cator numbers, Jared shook his head.
  “Thirty-thee,” he countered. Still he held his breath until the thir-
  ty seconds passed.
  “You win that one,” Darin conceded as their targeting screens 
  went live at thirty-four seconds.
  “I always do, Bro.”
  “So explain again why you are my wing man?”
  
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  Pitcairn Star • Page 5
  “The way you fly,” Jared programmed primary and secondary tar-
  gets as he spoke. “I want to stay where I can keep an eye on you.”
  “Well then by all means, Bro,” Darin laughed. “Watch and learn; 
  watch and learn.”
  Jared only had time for a snort of derision before battle was 
  joined.
  The Third Squadron’s first pass gouged across the bottom of the 
  pirates’ descending formation so quickly the enemy was nothing 
  more than a momentary blur against the indigo blue of high air. 
  Jared relied on his computer to target and fire all weapons, then 
  accepted its testimony it had scored two direct hits and a partial.
  He peeled left, toward the east and deeper into the atmosphere 
  on Darin’s wing. Now the real fighting–and real flying–began.
  Jared was pressed forward against the restraint harness as the 
  thicker air dragged against his Lightning. Around him the fighter 
  seemed to buck, then settle in; the stick became more lively in his 
  hand. Now it wasn’t the cold numbers of thrust and gravity direct-
  ing his flight, but the currents of the living wind. 
  Intellectually he knew he was at the bottom of a gravity well 
  plowing through gasses at a fraction of the speeds the Lightning 
  attained in open space, but somehow atmospheric flight felt like 
  freedom. In the air his ship came alive. He know other pilots felt it, 
  too. It was something known but never discussed.
  Angular acceleration threatened to pull the blood from his brain 
  as they completed their tight turn. His vision tinged with red as he 
  held on to consciousness.
  “Still awake?” Darin asked.
  “What?” Jared feigned a noisy yawn. “Are we there yet?”
  Battle chatter filled the Wing’s general channel. The main forces 
  had come together above them.
  “Heads up,” Darin’s tone became crisp. “I tally two bogies, both 
  solos, vectoring to meet us.”
  “Got ‘em,” Jared shed the banter as quickly. “I make it a Slayer at 
  eleven o’clock and a Shilone at twelve.”
  “Confirmed,” said Darin. “Need a little more practice before 
  the meet?”
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Pitcairn Star • Page 6
  Jared had been training in anti-Slayer tactics for the last several 
  weeks. The squadrons from the First Wing they were slotted to be 
  up against in the opening round of the competition relied on the 
  heavy fighters. 
  “Sounds good,” Jared accepted the target assignment and 
  veered left. “I’ll come bail you out when I’m done.”
  “Got it backwards, Bro,” Darin countered. “I’ll try not to be too 
  long.”
  Jared grunted, focused on the oncoming Slayer. 
  The heavy fighter outweighed his Lightning by thirty tons and 
  had enough firepower to take on fighters twice his size. Something 
  to think about and something he could use. Slayer pilots loved 
  their knockout punch. Nine out of ten would fire a full salvo at their 
  weapons’ extreme range, enough to blow most medium fighters 
  to flinders. The trick was to hold steady enough for them to think 
  they had a hard lock, trick them into thinking you were a sitting 
  duck, then get out of the way a microsecond before they fired. 
  Jump too soon and they’d follow your jig and nail you; wait ‘til 
  they fired and you wouldn’t live long enough to learn from your 
  mistake.
  Alarms warned him the Slayer had a lock.
  Hold. Hold. Now.
  Jared snapped his ship left in a barrel roll just as five medium la-
  sers lashed out, boiling the air where he had been. No autocannon? 
  Jared’s confusion lasted less than a breath. The pirate brought 
  his heavier craft around pulling it through a few degrees, tracking 
  Jared’s general path before launching a rack of missiles. LRM-15s; 
  a variant. Jared pulled the nose of his Lightning up, slowing to a 
  near-stall. As it started to lose air, he cut in the afterburners and 
  the medium fighter leapt upwards. 
  The pirate had played the odds, directing his spread ahead and 
  below the Lightning anticipating a dive-and-run. The flight of mis-
  siles flashed harmlessly beneath Jared’s wings.
  As the pirate passed, he drove his Slayer down and around, driv-
  ing through a horizontal loop to come up behind Jared. Jared 
  pulled his stick back and kicked the rudder. On full thrust, he pulled 
  the Lightning through a tight loop inside the larger plane’s turn.
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Pitcairn Star • Page 7
  “This is a Ramora Lightning,” Jared told the pirate. “You don’t 
  out-fly this.”
  His guns came to bear on the upper hull of the steeply banked 
  Slayer. There wasn’t enough lead for the autocannon slugs to hit, 
  but his medium lasers were line-of-sight and speed-of-light. Three 
  ruby beams chewed into the armor behind the canopy and raked 
  along its stubby left wing.
  The Slayer tried to hit him with its rear mounted laser but couldn’t 
  elevate. The two ships held the spiral for a half-dozen heartbeats, 
  Jared overriding heat lock-outs to keep firing, targeting the left 
  wing. Then the pirate had the wit to pull out of the loop and run 
  for it.
  Jared’s first thought was to let the lone fighter run and get back 
  to the battle. But leaving an essentially undamaged Slayer free 
  to double back was too big a risk. Opening his throttles wide, he 
  gave chase.
  A straight running fight let the pirate’s rear laser bear on Jared, 
  but it also gave Jared’s autocannon the lead it needed. He rocked 
  his fighter from side to side, spoiling the pirate’s targeting solu-
  tion and letting his heat sinks cycle.
   Targeting the Slayer’s left wing and tail, Jared cut loose two 
  quick salvos of cannon fire. He accepted a single laser blast scorch-
  ing across his cowl as a fair trade for destroying the Slayer’s left 
  aileron and rudder.
  At that point it was over, but Jared hung on a moment longer, 
  his lighter craft harrying the wallowing fighter like a mockingbird 
  on a crow. He piled on damage until the pilot ejected, sending 
  the other craft spiraling into the ocean below. Then checked his 
  combat computer. Total time from first shot to last … he shook his 
  head. Two seconds longer and it would have been called a draw. 
  He was going to have to work on his efficiency if he wanted to get 
  past the preliminary round against First Wing.
  But as he circled back, above and ahead, high over the landing 
  field to the southeast, were the tiny flashes and motes of smoke 
  to remind him of today’s competition. The high altitude air battle. 
  One of the wisps of smoke became a trace, then  grew to a streak 
  as something fell toward earth.
  Climbing as he approached the coast from the northwest, Jared’s 
  perspective was distorted. It took him a moment to realize the size 
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Pitcairn Star • Page 8
  of the object falling east-to-west across the sky; something strug-
  gling to fly as it fell. 
  A DropShip. 
  Stepping up his magnification he confirmed it was Leopard—not 
  a CV like Third Squadron’s, but a ‘Mech carrier. Smoke trailed from 
  a dozen hull breaches and the dorsal turret was gone. Only one 
  engine seemed to be working, but it was apparently at full boost. 
  Too much thrust. Jared checked the flight computer, confirming 
  in a second what his instincts already knew. The DropShip would 
  overshoot the landing field.
  “Scratch one–” Jared broke off as the final trajectory of the falling 
  DropShip registered. It was going to hit the upper tier of the city, 
  at the rim of the bowl of mountains. At that angle it would slide 
  down the hillside into the bay. Eighteen hundred tons of metal, 
  gouging the earth and dragging hundreds of buildings–and how 
  many lives?–with it into the sea.
  “Three-four to Three-one,” he reported quickly. “Supe! We have 
  a situation over the city.”
  “Don’t worry, Bro.” Daren’s voice, cutting across the squadron 
  channel.  “I’ve got it.”
  A Lightning came boiling up from the east, on the deck and al-
  most directly on the same course as the falling Leopard. It had to 
  be Darin, returning from wherever the dogfight with the Shilone 
  had carried him. The fighter pulled up at full burn, overtaking the 
  DropShip as it rose.
  “Lone Wolf Three-three, break off,” Supe ordered. “Darin, pull 
  out.”
  No answer.
  A Leopard was an aerodyne, a blunt but effective lift body designed 
  so the air currents rushing around it in flight bore it up. But for the 
  flight dynamics to work, there had to be a leading edge, a wedge to 
  slice through the air. Without that wedge the face of the DropShip 
  became a sail and the air that had supported it a brick wall.
  Darin’s Lightning drove up under the bow of the Leopard at full 
  throttle. A fifty-ton battering ram, it tore through the DropShip, 
  splitting the vital wedge, and bursting from the bridge as a flam-
  ing arrow of twisted metal.
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Pitcairn Star • Page 9
  The hypersonic wind caught at the ragged edges of the gash, 
  drag pulling the nose of the DropShip downward. The ship up-
  ended. The powerful engine that had been pushing forward now 
  shoved the Leopard down toward the barren base of the moun-
  tains. 
  Well short of the landing field. The city.
  Jared didn’t watch the fall. Had no interest in the inevitable de-
  struction of the pirate DropShip. His eyes were on the spear of  
  metal still rising—impossibly—on engines that should have been 
  destroyed on impact.
  Their flare fluttered and died even as he coaxed his Lightning 
  onto an intercept course. It wasn’t all of Darin’s fighter. In the one 
  hard glance he gave it, he saw the spine of the endoskeleton, the 
  engine pods, and perhaps remnants of the wing anchors still ris-
  ing on a shallow, ballistic arc.
  “Three-one to Three-four–”
  Jared cut off his Supervisor’s voice with a click.
  As the port city passed behind and the ocean opened up before 
  them, Jared feathered his throttle, taking tight wing position as 
  the silver spear began its long final descent.
  The underbelly of his Lightning clipped the wave tops as the last 
  of Darin’s fighter tumbled into the water. He flew level for a mo-
  ment, then keyed his lancemate’s channel one last time.
  “You win, Bro.”
  Pulling the stick back into his gut, he plunged upward into battle.
  
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