War of Alien Aggression 3 Lancer Read Online Free PDF Page B

spotted them where he thought they'd be when Holdout slipped out of position. For half-a-second, he had to pretend he didn't see Gusher and Holdout there, rolling in on him. Then, he pretended to panic. He pushed and pulled the sticks and visualized the defensive barrel roll that he could almost do all by himself now. His 151 spun around its direction of travel like it was flying down the outside of a pipe.
    They slowed in behind him and tightened up even more. Holdout was so close on Gusher's tail that if she slipped to starboard, she'd cross his exhaust.
    Marchett came at them from over the pole. He attacked high on their 3 o'clock and when they saw him and they saw he'd have Holdout lined up for the kill in just a couple of seconds, Gusher must have called for a defensive split because Holdout veered up and left while Gusher went low and right to try and come in on Marchett's tail as he chased her.
    Holdout went evasive and after Colt turned in on Gusher's 4 o'clock, both of the 'enemy' fighters were on the defensive.
    While Holdout flew like mad to evade him, Marchett changed targets and spun his Bitzer, pitch, roll, and yaw until his cannons pointed at Gusher who was still on the run from Colt's guns and tightly pinned in the bottom of a high-gee turn.
    Marchett had him. He fired a gratuitously long blast and hosed down Gusher's starboard side and cockpit with practice rounds. Burn called out: "Kill. Kill. Kill. Gusher you are dead, bloody meat."
    Holdout finally realized Marchett had broken off her and tried to bring her guns to bear. Marchett was still rotated out of his line of travel and the only way to keep from getting dusted was to change direction, but that meant applying lots of thrust outside his path of travel and pulling some dangerous gees.  
    Marchett hit the thrust hard and begin to pull through it, but halfway through the maneuver, where the gees were heaviest, the fighter faltered. It broke from its path for just a fraction of a second. That was enough to tell him that Marchett had passed out. Marchett was now unconscious and the 151's AI had taken over complete control of the craft.
    Holdout spun her fighter on its jets like a top, chasing Marchett with her stream of fire. She peppered his Bitzer with practice rounds, but she'd made herself an easy kill with the same mistake. Less than a second later, Colt buzzed her within a few meters of her cockpit, so close that he could see her face in her helmet lit up by all the sparking practice rounds bouncing off her canopy. "And...that's a kill," Burn confirmed. "J, when your sorry-ass wingman wakes up, tell him his new name is Snooze."
    "Snooze?"
     The whole squadron said it once on comms themselves like they were trying it out to see how it felt. It fit. Snooze was always willing to pull a high-gee maneuver he couldn't take and have himself a nap. He did it a couple times a day now. Even if Marchett was awake, he wouldn't have gotten to say anything about his new name, but as it was, Snooze was still out cold.
    *****
    Nobody even noticed the nosebleeds anymore. Snooze always got the bleeds after pulling hard gees. After today's exercise, he sat on his steel bunk and leaned his head back while the blood dripped on the front of his exosuit. Other pilots were showering, but Snooze looked like he needed to rest more than he needed to be clean. He shook his head while he pinched his nose. " Snooze ." The man certainly didn't like his new name much. Colt thought it might have been because Marchett had been working so hard to deceive them and his new nickname didn't do much to help him get away with it. 
    It wasn't just that Snooze was always ready to pull an extreme, high-gee maneuver that was guaranteed to knock him out. Some of the not-so-extreme maneuvers were too much for him. He'd managed to cover that up so far by making sure that if he was going to lose it, then he'd lose it doing a hardcore maneuver, pulling over 30 gees instead of something he'd be