Mako (The Mako Saga: Book 1) (44 page)

“Just a second, Captain…”

“Leeeeee…” Ryan warned.

“Flight, this is Daredevil… I’m droppin’ the hammer!”

“Negative, Daredevil, I want—”

The Mako’s afterburners went ablaze in full-white as it sliced its way upward into a max burn, 90-degree climb into the starry heavens; all the while Lee Summerston sat smiling beneath the canopy glass, now in total control of the giant machine which, only minutes ago, had felt as cumbersome as an axe in the hands of a child. With an instinctive flip of his wrist, the fighter spiraled gracefully toward its pirouetted climax before flipping completely over into a brief dive, then rolling once and leveling out into a screaming, fiery sprint back to the carrier ship.

As the others cheered behind her, Mac just smiled.

“How’s it feeling out there, Daredevil?” she asked.

“It’s indescribable, Mac!” he answered, his voice drenched in adrenaline. “I’ve never experienced anything like it. It’s absolutely unbelievable.”

“Looks like your boy knows what he’s doing after all,” Ryan said, turning to her with an impressed smirk.

“Looks like,” she smirked back.

Over the next several hours, each of them took turns in the Mako’s cockpit, first battling the same state of awkward, clumsiness that Lee had encountered before eventually settling into a decent rhythm at its controls. By the end of the day, everyone was up to speed well enough for a Mako of their own, and by the end of the week, they were already flying in formation.

As had been the case with the Threshers, Lee quickly established himself as the class of the field, usually taking point on most of their missions and outgunning the others by a solid two to one in simulated enemy kills. Meanwhile, Danny and Hamish held their own, while Link struggled to keep up. To no one’s surprise, however, Mac was the only one among them who ever came close to rivaling Lee’s instinct in the air, and all-around panache behind the stick.

By day six, ACMs were in full effect. This marked the return of many of the same one-on-one, squadron, and skirmish drills the group had encountered before; though this time with an all-new sense of realism, thanks in large part to the addition of automated drones—which were alarmingly good in a fight—and holographic weapons fire, which came in thick, heavy spreads from all directions.

During one particular instance, as Lee drew in tight on a fast-evading Danny ahead of him, Lee was suddenly forced to withdraw as a pair of green tracers shot past his canopy, just ahead of a hard-charging Mako that had apparently been waiting patiently for the right moment to strike.

“Direct hit, port side, aft,” chanted his fighter’s alert system, and Lee’s jaw tightened at the familiar cackle that followed it.

“You bushwhackin’ little sh—”

“Hey,” Mac cut him off. “Don’t hate… appreciate. Maybe next time you’ll watch your own six instead of fixating on someone else’s.”

“Wise words, Daredevil,” Ryan agreed from flight control. “You’d be smart to listen to the lady.”

Sitting back in his chair, the captain clasped his hands and watched in quiet amazement as the dancing spectacle of fighter lights and holographic fire continued across his scopes.

“Hey Doc?” he asked, turning to Reiser, who, as usual, scrambled to document everything he was seeing. “I know you had your projections for the kind of results you hoped to see at the end of this whole thing, so how do these guys stack up?”

Fidgeting with his glasses, the doctor gave a modest reply. “Honestly, I thought something like this might be possible, with the right people, anyway,” he admitted. “Having said that, I don’t know that we’d be seeing these kinds of results were we dealing with another group. I’ve watched these five for some time now, and from the beginning, I knew there was something special about them. True, a lot of that has to do with pure natural ability, which they obviously have, but it goes beyond that with these guys. They’ve known each other for so long that they practically know each other’s thoughts out there. That’s why they have so much success as a team, because they can go out, learn what they need to know as individuals, then come back and put it all together toward a singular, collective end.”

Seeing his point, Ryan looked to Noll in the corner, who offered a shrug.

****

At the conclusion of their next-to-last day of flight school, Mac watched from her cockpit as the Makos of Danny, Link, and Hamish disappeared back into the Praetorian’s flight deck.

“Northern Star, you are cleared for landing,” said an officer.

“Copy that, Flight,” she replied. “Northern Star is on approach.”

No sooner had she said this than Mac’s alert screen flashed hot red.

“Direct hit, port thruster,” the computer warned in its modulated tone.

“What the…”

Looking over her shoulder, Mac watched Lee’s Mako slice past hers in a blaze of white.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t there something we were supposed to settle out here?” he chided. “You know, pilot to pilot?”

“
Oh, hell no!
” she growled, spying him swoop around for another pass. “That was a stone-cold cheap shot and you know it, Summerston!”

“Don’t hate, appreciate, right?”

“Okay, fine!” she muttered. “You want a spanking out here in front of all these nice people? Well, get ready to drop trou, Professor Boy, because you’re about to get one!”

Snapping the stick to the right and hammering down on the throttle, Mac ripped her Mako around to port in pursuit of her adversary, who exploded into the distance.

“Yeah, you’d better run,” she snarled, spinning up her fire controls and checking her scopes.

Back aboard the Praetorian, having heard the exchange on the comm, Danny, Link, and Hamish jumped from their fighters and sprinted across the flight deck toward the small stairwell leading up to flight control.

“I’ve got a hundy on Lee!” Danny blurted as he swung open the stairwell door.

“Oh I’ll
so
take that action,” Link shouted past him on the way through. “She’s gonna crucify him for that!”

Spying Mac’s lightning-fast approach on his radar, Lee readied himself for the coming conflict as his friends reached the control room just in time to hear a surprisingly interested Ryan give the order to put the comm out to speakers and the radar telemetry up on the main viewscreen. Seeing her now-furious charge almost upon him, Lee ripped the stick forward and hard right, sending the Mako into a tumbling, downward barrel roll, much in the same fashion that Layla had done with Link on their first day. Mac dipped evasively to pursue, and Lee leveled out and slammed down on the throttle, as their friends back on board the Praetorian looked on with heated excitement.

Slicing ahead at a 65% burn, Lee ripped the fighter right into a looped pitchback maneuver, but Mac was having none of it, battling instead for a weapons lock on his tail. Unable to do so with missiles, she flipped the switch atop her stick to go to guns on him, causing Lee to roll hard to starboard and straight into an inverted dive, resulting in a direct hit on her nose as he blazed past her.

Incensed at her inability to hang with him, not to mention his incessant teasing over the comm, Mac fell back to regroup as the others listened to their radio chatter aboard the carrier.

“She’s totally buggered,” Hamish chuckled.

“Oh she’s pissed, alright,” Danny agreed. “If Lee beats her though, we’ll never hear the end of it.”

“Yeah,” Link scoffed back, “because if she wins, she’ll
never
say a word.”

“Fair point,” Danny grinned, his eyes fixed on the ballet of speed and firepower on the screen in front of him.

Feeling the need to shake things up a bit, Lee set a course for Aura’s moon and knifed his Mako into the canyons below while Mac raced to follow. Having managed another hit on her port wing during their descent, dropping her armor beneath the 50% mark, Lee could sense he was getting to her, something that wasn’t usually easy to do. While Mac was not above talking smack, she was generally pretty cool under fire, so the fact that she wouldn’t shut up right now was a pretty clear indicator that he’d rattled her cage. As such, he knew full well that something was up when both the comm and his alert system went silent.

“Now, where did you run off to, Mac?” he murmured, searching his instruments for any sign of her as he exited the canyon into the clearing ahead.

Reeling to avoid a collision, Lee jerked the stick hard right and up when the opposing fighter exploded across the clearing toward him, its afterburners wide open on an intercept course from an adjacent tunnel and its weapons poised for an assault.

“Direct hit,” chirped Lee’s alert system.

“
Now it’s a party!
” shouted Mac, as Link took a high-five from Hamish back on the flagship.

“Nice move,” Lee gasped, soaring his Mako away from the moon’s rocky surface and back into open space where he’d be free to work unimpeded. “Real nice.”

“Come out to the coast… we’ll get together, have a few laughs,” Mac sniped in her best John McClane, then falling into pursuit behind him.

Checking his instruments to rocket away from her, Lee took stock of his armor, which held strong at 76%, a good figure given the Diamondback missile he’d just taken to his starboard nacelle. On the other hand, that meant hers had to be dangerously low by now, particularly on her port side, where he’d intentionally focused the bulk of his attacks thus far.

“Alright, playtime’s over,” Lee thought, pretty much over her antics by this point and ready to finish it. Laying in a course back to the Praetorian, where he planned on making his last stand, he listened as she mocked him from behind.

“Oh, c’mon, hon! Don’t take your ball and go home!”

Mac was good, of that there was little doubt now. So beating her would require a little bit of piloting creativity on his part, and giving a final check of his thruster controls, Lee had just the move that would do it.

Disengaging his starboard engine so as to create the illusion that she’d dealt him a heavier blow than she actually had, Lee eased off the throttle and allowed her to close the gap between them.

“Why don’t you wait right there so I can come finish the job!” she barked, thundering away with her guns and completely oblivious to the fact that she’d just given away her ability to use missiles for the sake of seizing on an offensive position. Still, as his armor status continued to fall, Lee held the line and waited.

“Armor reserves at 69%,” the alert warned. “61%... 56%.”

“
Turn and fight, already!
” Mac yelled, looming behind him now as her guns went awash in pure green.

Still, Lee held.

“47%... 40%... 36%.”

“Dude, she’s crushing him,” Link said to Danny, sensing that something was up.

“Just wait for it,” Danny replied, already wise to Lee’s plan.

“31%... 28%... 21%”

Seeing his armor dip below 20%—her Mako all but on top of him—Lee pursed his lips and keyed the comm.

“Mac, you ready?”

An enraged snarl bristled back at him.

“That’s what I figured.”

Slamming the throttle forward for a sudden, bone-jarring burst of speed and yanking back hard on the stick, Lee ignited the small maneuvering thruster below his nose, sending his Mako into an explosive, end over end backward spin, leaving Mac to watch helplessly through her canopy as she blew right under him.

“
OH C’MON!!
!” Link roared in disgust.

Firing his stabilizing thrusters and reigniting both main engines, Lee fought the frenzied, fish-tailing machine long enough to level out onto an intercept course of his own. With his opponent now wildly on the defensive ahead of him—slicing and weaving to escape—Lee dialed up one of his Devastators, took aim, and squeezed.

“Direct Hit,” said the modulated voice. “Armor Reserves at 0%. Please return to base.”

“You have
got
to be kidding me,” Mac droned, snatching her oxygen mask from her face and slamming it against the dash.

“And that,
sweetheart,
is how we do it in
my
yard.” Lee declared, rocketing his Mako past her canopy en route back to the flagship.

“Nice show, you two,” Ryan applauded through the comm. “Now if you don’t mind, I’d like my birds back please.”

“Copy that, Captain,” Lee beamed. “Daredevil and Northern Star are on approach.”

Still disgusted with herself for having been lulled into such a compromising position, Mac billowed a sigh as Lee’s Mako disappeared into the hangar ahead. Losing to him at anything was bad enough, but the fact that she’d practically handed him the win with her lack of foresight was downright embarrassing.

This would suck for a while, she thought miserably.

Alas, it was what it was, and taking hold of the stick to follow him in, Mac swallowed what little pride she had left and began her approach toward the Praetorian’s flight deck, and the hardcore ribbing she knew awaited her there.

****

Stroking his thick, silvery beard beneath the red bridge lights of the Alystierian flagship Kamuir, Commandant Alec Masterson’s stormy gray eyes narrowed at the impressive display he’d just witnessed in the room’s main viewscreen. He’d heard whispers that the Aurans were developing some kind of revolutionary new fighter and for that purpose, he’d dispatched a reconnaissance probe to the Auran moon for observation. Still, he’d never suspected that they could be this far along in the process, and it angered him that such a crucial piece of intel could be so horribly outdated.

“Colonel Troy?” Masterson said, turning to his first officer with a tone that was both icy and calculated. “How is it that I’m familiar with every ship, freighter, and basic trash dispenser in the Auran fleet, and yet I find myself staring completely and utterly dumbfounded at what we just witnessed?”

Visibly intimidated by the ghostly pale commander down front, Troy loosened the collar of his gray uniform and frowned.

“I’m not exactly… sure, sir,” he stuttered. “According to our latest intelligence, there have been rumors that the Aurans were working on a new fighter, but—”