He pressed it, and felt the low rumble echo through his craft and his suit as the engines came to life, and they began their calibration sequence. His plane�s locks disengaged, and the craft rolled forward. The others followed suit, and they soon all faced the large steel door in front of them.
Red light flashed throughout the hangar, and deppressurization began. When all of the air had been cleared out of the room, The large door began to open. It bisected horizontally in the middle, and the two halves repelled each other. Black void replaced the parts of the door that had been removed, and stars began to show. David could just make out Sol, as it crept behind the shadow of another ship.
A large clunk anounced the door�s locking into place. He looked to his right and left at William and N�tn�see, and he got thumbs up signals from both of them. His hand reached for the throttle, and pulled back as far as the lever would go. A slight grin erupted on his face as the g-forces pulled him into the back of his seat, and his plane fired exaust and flame into the hangar.
The trio of M-13s shot out of the hangar and into space. David rolled the ship to starboard, and then yanked back on the control stick. Now, Mars came into view off in the distance. He keyed his mic on the private frequency he�d set aside for communication with Jean.
�Black Hawk, this is Raven One, do you read me?� A fraction of a second ticked by.
�Roger that, Raven One. I have encrypted this frequency on encryption cycle Tango Zeta Gamma.�
�Good work� David replied. �Anything special we should know about yet?�
�Negative sir; I shall keep you posted. Black Hawk out.� The mic clicked off, and the connection cut. He accessed the frequency for the rest of his team, and the connection jumped back to life.
�Ravens Seven and Twenty Four, regroup under flight pattern Nero Falcon.� Instantly, N�tn�see�s ship was above him by a hundred meters and William�s flew point, just under him and fifty meters in front of him.
David glanced down at his ThreatDar scanner, and saw only the three blips of his squad. So far, so good he thought.
The trio flew for twenty minutes before they got within a million kilometers of Mars, when finally his ThreatDar pulsed red. He glanced down at it, and keyed his mic again.
�Ravens, we have a target on the dark side of the planet. Adjust course one point zero zero three degrees starboard.� Before he finished his message, more targets appeared. One of them moved.
�Cancel that ravens, we�ve got live targets out here. Take them down at will.� The afterburners of William�s and N�tn�see�s planes burned ever brighter and they shot forward from David. David picked the target that caught his eye; a small drone, lightly armed.
He activated his port thrusters, scuttling to the side on a horizontal plane in relation to his target. Its AutoTarget systems didn�t compensate quickly enough to correct for David�s maneuver, and a stream of bullets whizzed silently by twenty meters from David�s hull.
David�s implant received the impulse from his brain and interfaced with his HUD, locking on to the drone and giving him a firing solution for his Vulcan canons. His index finger drifted around the control stick and onto the MG trigger, and he squeezed.
Ten quick shudders went through his ship as a short burst of rounds silently left his ship and soared at 2000 meters per second towards the drone. The first four rounds went wide, but the last six struck true. Its hydrogen fuel pack took a hit, and the craft erupted in a short lived explosion. It tumbled off into the gravity well of Mars, burning up in the artificial atmosphere.
An alarm blared through his cockpit, and out of the corner of his eye he saw the tell-tale flash of a missile. He rolled left and faced the missile, but did a barrel roll and converted into a twenty G turn to his right. The AntiGrav technology that enveloped his cockpit comforted the extreme maneuver, and it felt like a mere four G turn. The ship�s sudden turn toward the missile and then away from it was more than the small missile�s maneuvering thruster�s turning radius could compensate for. It went into a high arc, and started the turn to face itself back towards David.
He sent more impulses to his implant, and his ThreatDar showed him the enemy fighter that had launched the missile. The pilot was obviously a rookie, but David didn�t have the time for pity. The missile was right behind him now, and he was only two hundred meters from the enemy craft.
He engaged the ship�s emergency thrusters located on the roof of it, dropping his craft�s vertical altitude just meters under the enemy fighter. The hull passed over his honey-combed reinforced glass canopy, and he quickly yanked back on the control stick, sending him upward. The sender of the gift now lay directly between the missile and its target, but the missile wasn�t set to evade any targets.
The orange glow of an explosion reflected off of David�s insrument panel as the rookie was destroyed by his own missile. He felt both pity and disgust for the amateur, but he had to get back to work.
His ThreatDar was perplexing to look at now, as the enemy tried to confuse his scanners.
�Black Hawk, this is Raven One. Can you estimate hostile count?�
�Aye sir; you have about a dozen more live targets, and twice that many drones. Here sir, I�ll send in the latest patch on their jamming sequence.�
�DOWNLOADING� COMPLETE� appeared across his HUD. He sent it through the rest of his team�s network, and his ThreatDar cleared up. Instead of the the hazy red blotches appearing all over his screen, about sixty distinct crimson dots stood in their place.
�Thanks, Black Hawk. Returning to mission.� The transmission cut. David moved to his next target, engaged in a dogfight with another rookie and his wingman, took down a pesky follower that was annoying William, and shot down another dozen drones. The space around his hull was filled with space junk, which slowly began to drop into Mars� gravity well.
�Mission complete, Ravens. All craft, RTB� David said. It felt good to take down the enemy like that again, with no innocent lives lost nor teammates sacrificed. It felt good to truly win.
