37

A three-hour patrol in a nova fighter was nothing to Kira or the other trainers, but by the end of the loop, she realized it was potentially too much for the first time she’d put the trainees in a real spacecraft.

The formation in her squadron was getting sloppier as she brought them in on approach to Shadow Ward. They were still holding it well enough with a few corrections here and there, but she could see fatigue in their maneuvers.

“Group One Trainers, report in,” she ordered. “Positions and status.”

The reports were trained and automatic on the part of her people. All of them were still over ninety-five percent fuel and they were all in various approach vectors to the landing field.

“Understood. India, Juliet, adjust your vectors back; you’ll have to come around on a second loop,” she told them. “Hotel, Golf, increase your deceleration by twenty percent. Foxtrot, Echo, increase your decel by forty percent. Charlie, Delta, increase by twenty. Bravo, form on my Alphas.”

A hundred-plus starfighters swung through space to answer her orders. Increasing the deceleration meant that the various sets of squadrons would come to a halt away from the station, requiring further maneuvers to bring them into landing after Alpha and Bravo had landed.

The trainers were adjusting their own fighters immediately as they passed on their orders—and some of the pilots were matching the trainers’ changes without waiting for the order.

Some weren’t, and Kira’s stomach lurched as she realized that two of Golf Squadron’s fighters were still coming in on a hard approach, the pilots lost to tunnel vision of their existing plan.

“G-Three, G-Seven, report,” she snapped. Then she swore as she realized the fighters weren’t directly linked to her channel—she was linked to the trainers and Alpha Squadron. “Golf-leader, get those planes in formation!”

The two fighters were still hurtling forward on landing vectors—and four entire squadrons of starfighters in front of them were now decelerating hard. There should have been enough space…except that they’d all been on a course for a landing field barely two kilometers across.

Golf-Three finally broke off, the pilot slamming their deceleration to full as they finally caught up with what was happening. They’d screwed up to get where they were, but they reacted correctly once they realized what was going on. Their vector went sideways relative to the rest of the training group as they accelerated away from the other planes.

Golf-Seven’s pilot woke up and flipped their fighter, going to maximum acceleration—just as Charlie-Four realized there was a problem and tried to maneuver out of the way.

Space should have been too big for them to collide, but the Devil Murphy plays no favorites. Charlie-Four dodged into Golf-Seven’s new vector, and the two Dexter interceptors slammed into each other at several hundred kilometers per second.

Pieces of starfighters went flying as one fighter cut through the other, and then containment failed on both fusion reactors. Two of Kira’s trainees vanished in a single blue-white fireball.

* * *

“All planes, max deceleration now,” Kira barked. “Move away from the danger zone; clear a path for search-and-rescue.”

“I’ve pinged search-and-rescue,” Cartman promised, her voice sounding ill. Charlie was her squadron, even if all of this was Kira’s problem. “Shadow Ward is launching support shuttles, ETA five minutes.”

“Thank you, Nightmare. Everyone, get the trainees clear and sweep for survival pods,” Kira ordered her trainers. “They’re automated. There’s… There’s a chance.”

Two of Redward’s multi-million-kroner starfighters were gone, but there was still a chance that the pilots had lived. Not a large chance, but a chance.

The trainees were following orders exactly now. Kira and her trainers were issuing exact courses and she was seriously considering taking direct control of the fighters—there was more reason than one that no pilot would voluntarily fly a nova fighter with a training module installed.

For now, though, the trainees seemed to be awake. Fear and adrenaline burned away fatigue. Grief sharpened attention.

Even as the S&R shuttles arrived for the fruitless chase, Kira was forcing herself to remember who the two trainees had even been. With three hundred students, few of them registered as more than a file and maybe a face…but these two, she was going to have to remember.

Charlie-Four had been Kyauta Maina, a name Kira did have associated with a face. The young woman had been the darkest-skinned person Kira had met across a dozen worlds, with pitch-black hair and warm brown eyes. She’d been eager and intelligent, but that covered all three hundred of the trainees.

Golf-Seven had been Lucja Colt, a dark-haired and sharp-featured woman who Kira had barely encountered. She knew nothing about Colt except what was in her file and image, and she hated herself a little for that.

She’d watched the accident. There was no way either pilot had survived. There were no survival pods on her heavy fighter’s scanners. No life signs. Just debris and radiation.

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