Dulce Truths

A thin line of laser fire shoots out from the front of the craft. Mark uses their trails to adjust the craft’s direction, firing all the while. Then he connects with one of the alien ships in front of him, hitting it first on the side where he’d normally expect a wing to be, then further into its center. One… two… three hits and it starts wobbling… four… five… six!

BOOM!

“Woo-hoo!” Mark shouts as the ship in front of him explodes, showering the craft next to it with debris, though not enough to damage it much or force it from the fight.

“That’s one,” Walter says from the back, “now just three more.”

“It might help if you roll down the window and start taking pot shots at ‘em with that Colt of yours,” Mark says, rolling his eyes and shaking his head. That elicits a few chuckles from the men in the back, but a moment later Mark’s all business again as he tries to zero-in on the craft that’s still in front of him. What’s more, the two behind him are now beginning to fire.

“Hang on!” Mark shouts, then pulls sharply on the controls. The skimmer goes into a spin. Outside, the laser fire from the opposing spaceship narrowly misses them.

“Oh, God… I think I’m gonna be sick!” Bennewitz says from the back.

“Better’n dead!” Mark calls back, but before anyone can get a word in he hits a few more buttons, taking them out of the loop and putting them right back into the barrel rolls. Mark also jerks the controls over to the left, taking them into a sharp turn. On his radar he can see that one of the remaining three craft is ready to zip by him. Mark jerks the controls the other way, reversing their turn, and just in time to come up right on the ship’s tail.

“Abduct this, big eyes!” Mark shouts, then hits the ‘fire’ button once again.

ZAP! ZAP! ZAP! BOOM!

Two misses and then the third shot landed just right. The alien ship simply explodes in a fiery ball.

“Two left,” Mark calls back. “Now we just gotta—”

BOOM!

Mark’s words are cutoff as they’re hit. Loud beeping begins to sound, just as the interior lights in the craft switch from their faint yellow to a dangerous red. Mark looks around with wide eyes, and just as their craft begins to flounder and fall, losing altitude as well as control.

“Uh, Mark… please tell me we’re alright,” Bennewitz calls up from the back.

“We’re alright!” Mark shouts back, wishing that was the case. The control panel is telling him that his speed has dropped about 100,000 miles while radar is telling him that the last two craft are lining up behind him, coming in for the kill. Besides that their stolen ship seems to be doing alright, despite the hit they’ve just taken. Mark begins to think fast, his countless hours of training in various fighter craft on Earth and off-world coming back to him. He gets an idea.

“Boys, you might want to hold on back there… things are gonna get real bumpy here, and real fast.”

There are some groans to that, mainly from Bennewitz, but the three men in the back say nothing, just grab their seats and hope for the best. Mark hopes too. Looking at the controls he knows he’s at a serious disadvantage. He can’t match the aliens’ speed nor their fast moves, not after taking that hit. One more like it an he’s sure they’ll be out of the fight, if not blown apart entirely. So Mark flips through his mental notebook of aerial combat maneuvers, and finally settles on the only option he really has — the scissors.

The move is quite simple, really, and one that Mark pulled off countless times in Vietnam… even though the move was frowned upon then, and had been ever since the Korean War days. It just wasn’t adequate anymore with the advanced fighters and the various thrust-to-weight ratios and wing loading that made it almost a given that anyone trying the scissors maneuver would be shot down. But Mark figured the aliens he was fighting didn’t know that, and had never seen the move. Well, he was hoping that was the case, and started into it.

Continuing on in the barrel roll, mark started the move for the rolling scissors. With one of the alien fighter craft on top of him now, and the other one not too far behind, Mark began to roll in such a way that one second the alien was on top of him, then two seconds later below him. It was that second in between that counted, that brief moment when the two craft were lined up. The problem was that currently they were side-to-side. Mark knew he had to get behind that alien craft, if only a little bit. To do that Mark initiates a pull-up into vertical, causing the alien ship to overshoot him a bit and pull ahead. Mark then rolls his craft, increasing the speed of separation for a brief moment. Now the alien fighter is ahead of him further, and just enough, he hopes. Glancing at the radar, Mark can see the other alien fighter is right behind him… and about to lock on.

“Here goes,” Mark says quietly, and then pulls the kicker.