TEXT: BATTLECORPS
  Gravity Poisoning
  by Loren L. Coleman
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Gravity Poisoning • Page 2
  New Avalon System, Federated Suns 
  15 November 3066
  Gravity lurched in a sicken-
  ing twist as the Excalibur-class 
  DropShip Blue Corona powered 
  through a tight turn. Subaltern 
  Eric Domingo breathed sharp and 
  shallow. Warning klaxons rang 
  inside the launch tube. Lights 
  dimmed to emergency, wash-
  ing his F-92 Stingray in a bath of 
  bloody red. Navigation blinkers 
  on the leading edge of the aero-
  space fighter’s forward-sweeping 
  Canard wings flashed amber on 
  the left, crimson on the right. 
  Eric 
  counted 
  the 
  flashes. 
  Tightened his grip on the joystick. 
  He felt the blast panel lever up behind him, shaking the launch 
  tube as it slammed into place. Eric pinched his throat mic and 
  locked it open. 
  “Afterburners,” he said, goosing his throttles wide open. The 
  launch tube filled with a bright, torch-light burn as his drive flare 
  splashed against the thick ferrosteel blast plate and shattered into 
  yellow-orange flames. 
  The Blue Corona had barely completed its roll when the order 
  came. “Ready-five, Ready-six, launch.”
  He braced for it, which he knew did no good whatsoever. Then 
  his spine slammed deep into the cushioned crash seat as the 
  DropShip’s catapult system grabbed his Stingray and yanked the 
  sixty ton fightercraft down the short launch tube in one quick, vio-
  lent thrust. He noticed a second drive flare emerging parallel to his 
  as his wingman was also ejected into space.
  Darkness, pierced by distant stars. His cockpit’s polarized glass 
  glowed with a gray haze and he glanced up. The local sun blazed 
  regally at his twelve o’clock, just peaking over a planetary hori-
  zon�New Avalon, wearing a fiery crown. He “fell” up towards its 
  atmosphere, still pushing the momentum left by the Blue Corona. 
  Once oriented, Eric pulled his “Slantback” craft over and around, 
  turning away from the capital world of the Federated Suns. 
  
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  Gravity Poisoning • Page 3
  Shoving his throttle full forward, he quickly ate up that momen-
  tum and then raced back to the fight he had hoped so desperately 
  to avoid. 
  Prince Victor Steiner-Davion had come to New Avalon. 
  And Katrina’s loyalists were in retreat.
  No one in the Twenty-second Avalon Hussars, Eric’s unit, had 
  doubted that Victor would come. Not even Marshal Donna Iona, 
  as staunch a loyalist as one could hope to find, dismissed it. The 
  Hussars saw too much heavy fighting, lost too many good men 
  and women while battling their way across the Federated Suns 
  to come to Katrina’s defense, to believe that Victor’s camp would 
  suddenly lose heart. When Tikonov fell during the sixth wave, the 
  Hussars had been mopping up remnants of the Seventh FedCom 
  RCT on Talon. Victor’s video address arrived and was quickly 
  broadcast by subversive news channels all over the planet. In it, 
  the rogue prince once more laid out his reasons for the civil war. 
  Why he continued to fight.
  Why it was worth the cost, no matter how painful, “to tear away 
  the veils and expose tyranny where it has dressed itself in self-
  righteous garments. We began this journey knowing the costs 
  would run high. We continue it now,” he promised. “Whatever can 
  be done must be done, and will be done, to see this through.
  “And to Katherine,” he’d said directly into the camera, “my sister. 
  Murderess. Usurper. Tyrant.” He nodded. Once. A curt promise. 
  “Your end is near.”
  The following riots in most major cities on Talon had kept the 
  Hussars busy for weeks.
  Everyone heard Victor’s conviction. They talked about it openly 
  in the mess halls and at strategic planning sessions. But though 
  he did not talk about it, Eric Domingo worried that he heard the 
  faint stirrings of something else in the prince’s words.
  Truth.
  But truth wasn’t going to armor him against the hostile lasers 
  and missiles of Victor’s aerospace corps. Eric’s wingman pulled 
  his own Stingray alongside, feathering his engine to keep just off 
  Eric’s wing. The two of them joined a host of loosely-spread two-
  fighter elements, scissoring back and forth through vacuum.
  Eric’s heads up display was a jumble of icons and information 
  tags. Gold for forces loyal to the Archon-Princess. Red for Prince 
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Gravity Poisoning • Page 4
  Victor and his allies. Fightercraft of both persuasions swarmed 
  in a large tangle ahead, creating a wall that divided the retreat-
  ing loyalist DropShips from the recently-ended WarShip battle. 
  Through the middle of that knot plowed an Avalon-class cruiser, 
  the FCS Melissa Davion. Prince Victor’s flagship. The prince led 
  his invasion fleet forward, pushing the massive dogfight ahead of 
  him. Toward New Avalon’s atmosphere.
  “Lucifers,” Subaltern Patyr Orullian warned. “Breaking away 
  from the pack at eleven o’clock high.”
  “Keep them off us,” their flight commander back aboard the Blue 
  Corona ordered. The DropShip was one among several dozen 
  running for the safety of New Avalon, their massive drive flares 
  cutting across the blackness of space.
  Hundreds of potential targets clouded his HUD. He was sup-
  posed to find…there! Two red comets with stubby tails, angling 
  down at him. 16K Lucifer II’s according to the data tag. Too far 
  away for their standard lasers, the fighters spread out in front of 
  them an umbrella of long-ranged missiles. A warbling tone rang 
  through Eric’s cockpit as missile-lock grabbed his Stingray. 
  Pitching down sharply, saving his countermeasures, Eric then 
  rolled back up into a steep line of attack that slid him and his wing-
  man under the missile barrage. From long range, he probed out 
  with the extended-range PPC built into the nose of his craft. An 
  ionized stream of particles flashed out in a burst of ball-lightning, 
  reaching for the lead Lucifer. 
  Patyr relied on wing-mounted lasers instead, slashing angry red 
  knives at the exposed underbelly of his target.
  “First blood,” Patyr called out as his lasers splashed armor away 
  from the undercarriage. Eric’s particle cannon missed.
  The allied craft adjusted their attitude, pitching down to slash 
  at the rising Stingrays. Head to head, the sixty-five ton Lucifers 
  owned a slight advantage with their assault-class missile systems 
  and a better array of close-in weaponry. Eric’s edge was in range, 
  so he tied his lasers and particle cannon together for a second 
  distance shot, then toggled for a full spread as the fightercraft 
  flashed toward each other like bullet trains on the same track. 
  His lasers cored into the lead Lucifer’s starboard wing, right be-
  hind those of Patyr who had rightly judged that combining firepower 
  might help bring down one of the fighters quickly. Patyr’s PPC scat-
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Gravity Poisoning • Page 5
  tered arcs of energy along the underbody. Eric smashed his ball of 
  manmade lightning right into the Lucifer’s nosecone. The erupting 
  energy tore long rents down the Lucifer’s smooth lines. 
  Globules of molten composite splattered back over the cockpit’s 
  ferroglass. 
  More by instinct than plan, Eric dampened his engines and chan-
  neled extra plasma through his forward attitude jets. Yanking back 
  on the joystick, he pulled the nose up in a zero-gravity reverse 
  pitch just as the Lucifer’s weapons hammered into him. Missiles 
  cratered the armor beneath his portside wing and stabilizers, shak-
  ing the Stingray with short, sharp jabs. A fury of large and small 
  laserfire sliced deep into the nose and underbody, burning away 
  armor but unable to penetrate with such a widespread damage 
  pattern.
  And then Eric was standing vertically in relation to the Lucifer, 
  flashing beneath it, still reaching to flip the Slantback fightercraft 
  onto its back as he triggered his full weapons spread.
  Lasers ripped open the Lucifer’s underbody, and ionized energy 
  poured into the rents as his PPC hammered in the deathblow. White-
  hot lightning carved into the fusion reactor, shattering containment. 
  Golden fire erupted along seams and burst out of popped rivets. It 
  filled the cockpit with an unearthly light, and then was quickly extin-
  guished as the vacuum of space doused the reaction. 
  A blackened, dead husk rode momentum forward in the lead 
  Lucifer’s place. Its wingmate banked away, running for the safety 
  of the allied fleet.
  “Burned armor and some aileron damage,” Patyr reported as 
  Eric pulled his Stingray through the reverse pitch. The Lucifers 
  had divided their fire, and their effectiveness. 
  Pushing his throttle half open, trimming his craft, Eric swallowed 
  dryly and did a quick three-point check. Gauges: good. Armor: 
  burned but adequate. HUD: “Roll out!” he yelled.
  Patyr peeled away left, Eric right. Between them a crippled Stuka 
  tumbled past, end over end, bleeding sparks from its savaged  
  underbody. 
  Separated on divergent paths, both Stingrays dove into the body 
  of the advancing dogfight. Lasers flashed by with sharp, violent 
  edges. Particle cannon jettisoned one ionized ball of energy after 
  another. Missiles launched in haste were just as likely to throw a 
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Gravity Poisoning • Page 6
  deadly screen over one of your own fighters, as Eric learned when 
  a loyalist Chippewa dumped a flight of LRMs into his path. 
  He smashed through the wall of warheads and shrapnel, juking 
  left and right to spread the damage evenly over his front profile. 
  On the far side he attempted to slide back around onto his wing-
  man’s trail, but a sheaf of short-ranged missiles stuttered into his 
  tail as a V20 Corsair latched onto his six. 
  Rolling through the firefight, trying to shake the allied pilot, Eric 
  felt a cold weight settle into his gut. This was it. His dues for stay-
  ing with the Hussars after Talon, even when he was no longer sure 
  he believed in the cause for which they fought. How close had he 
  come to making a decision against Katrina? Not forty-eight hours 
  ago he had stood in formation with his mates of the Thirty-second 
  Tactical Air Wing, assembled in a large aerodrome hangar while 
  Commander Saule Rosenburg pepped the team. 
  Against a backdrop of last-minute welds and aerospace fighters 
  being ranked in row after row of flight-ready birds, she relayed news 
  of other loyalist victories on Dalkeith and Hesperus II and Acamar. 
  “No word from Tharkad, yet,” the White Witch said, “but the Royal 
  Guard aren’t about to let the Lyran capital fall, and the Twenty-sec-
  ond Hussars will help keep New Avalon under its rightful rule as 
  well. We’re here for the Archon-Princess. We’re here to hold Victor 
  Steiner-Davion off…this…world.”
  Applause thundered through the hangar, echoing back from the 
  open rafters. Eric clapped along with the rest, but glanced around 
  cautiously wondering if he was the only one not caught up in the 
  fervor. He saw two others also taking a surreptitious look around, 
  but  he couldn’t know how many were searching for kindred souls, 
  and how many were taking names. Word had it that Marshal of the 
  Armies Jackson Davion now sat under house arrest in the palace 
  compound. And there were rumors, credible ones, of officers and 
  enlisted personnel disappearing from the ranks. 
  Eric applauded harder. 
  He had also thanked his stars when he drew position as one of 
  the Blue Corona’s back-up ready pilots, ready to drop out at a key 
  tactical point or—fates defend the Archon-Princess!—to cover a 
  retreat. Eric had silently wished for Victor to give up, pull back 
  from the New Avalon system, even though he knew the prince 
  would never do it. 
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Gravity Poisoning • Page 7
  Now he’d pay for that cowardly thought with his life. Eric tasted 
  a metallic dryness at the back of his throat. Dead man flying. That 
  was him.
  But instead the Corsair wavered, tried to break away, and then 
  exploded into a small, tight ball of burning metals and incandes-
  cent gasses.
  “Coming down in your six,” Patyr said, spiraling his Stingray 
  through the Corsair’s devastated remains. “Where away?”
  A flush of relief tingled on his skin, though it did not penetrate far 
  enough to remove the lead weight from his guts. Eric wrenched his 
  stick over, yawed for a tighter turn, and quickly powered forward 
  to bleed away momentum while searching to point his nosecone 
  at the nearby planet. His flightsuit pressured up around his legs, 
  restricting blood flow.
  “New Avalon,” Eric said. The two Slantback pilots raced forward 
  under full thrust, edging out onto the dogfight’s leading front. New 
  Avalon was a dark body floating out in space with a blue-green 
  crescent thickening up on the equator as the sun fully rose above 
  the horizon. The retreating DropShips had already made their de-
  celeration turns, and were falling into atmosphere.
  “We’ve given the Corona enough of a head start.” And staying far 
  out in front of the advancing WarShip might actually prolong both 
  their lives another day. They could slingshot around the horizon, 
  and work on their decel maneuvers once out from under the big 
  guns.
  A plan which nearly survived to planetary orbit.
  In space-born combat, speed was everything. Too little, and you 
  were laser-bait. Too much poured on for too long, and maneuvers 
  stretched out on such grand, arcing paths that you’d get one fly-by 
  and then be out of the fight for several long minutes. But if your 
  only goal was to harass a retreat started far in advance of your 
  position, a pilot simply juiced his engines and poured a long ac-
  celeration burn into the velocity bank. 
  Which was how four Corsairs raced up from behind the FCS 
  Melissa Davion, speared through the still-roiling dogfight, and 
  slammed onto the tail of the two Stingray fightercraft before they 
  could react. “Lock. I’m locked,” Patyr had time to yell.
  Four pair of large lasers chewed into the aft section of his 
  Slantback, slagging armor and exhaust ports, probing deep into 
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Gravity Poisoning • Page 8
  the propulsion system with angry, red knives. A ball of red-gold 
  fire engulfed the back of Patyr’s Stingray, chewing its way forward 
  as the fusion reaction ate up anything that even remotely resem-
  bled fuel. The burning was no less terrifying to Eric for its silence. 
  A shockwave. A roar of flames. Anything that might have warned 
  him of how lucky he’d been. Except for the flip of a coin, that could 
  have been his fate.
  Still could be. Two of the Corsairs pulled into a high orbit of New 
  Avalon while two others yawed around to face their burners toward 
  the planet, decelerating to match speeds with Eric’s fighter. Their 
  lasers sliced through the empty heavens, crisscrossing in front of 
  his nose, his cockpit, missing on the high-speed deflection shot.
  Eric clenched his teeth so hard that his jaw muscles pained him. 
  He nosed his Stingray up, pulling his crosshairs over one of the 
  Corsairs. His PPC blast caught it in the forward fuselage. His lasers 
  sliced deep into the starboard wing, boiling armor into a gray mist. 
  The Corsairs drifted too far forward, out of Eric’s weapon range. 
  His hand hovered over his throttle. No. They continued to decel-
  erate, trusting their two-on-one tactics. Eric should have been 
  turning for an atmospheric insertion burn as well. New Avalon 
  grew very large in the window. He waited, crosshairs burning a 
  steady red imprint, then flashing between red and gold as he ac-
  quired partial lock. He gave it three heartbeats.
  It wasn’t supposed to be Patyr! His wingman had saved his life 
  even after Eric had all but given it up. The Hussars had been run-
  ning for home. Had it truly been necessary?
  Yes. In a civil war, every life cost both sides deeply. But a life 
  spared hurt double on the day after, or the next, when there is one 
  more laser or missile system pointed back at your side.
  Eric squeezed into his shot just as the targeting reticle burned 
  a deep golden tone. His nose-mounted particle cannon tagged 
  the Corsair again, this time blasting a large jagged scar down the 
  nosecone, while the lasers on each wing worked the main fuselage 
  without mercy. Something slipped through the Corsair’s armor. 
  Its drive flare sputtered, then died. It raced ahead of its partner, 
  which continued to decelerate. 
  In the clutches of New Avalon’s gravity, the wounded Corsair 
  sped toward its inevitable, fiery death. There was nothing the al-
  lied pilot could do except fall into the planet’s embrace.
  
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  Gravity Poisoning • Page 9
  Pilots called it “gravity poisoning.”
  Eric stood on his port thrusters, spinning his Stingray on its hori-
  zontal axis to start a belated decel burn. He hit his afterburners, 
  poured it on, and nine gravities of weight pinned him into his seat. 
  His shoulder blades and neck ached with high-G stress. The air 
  bladders in his flight suit maxed out to keep all the blood from 
  flowing south, but still his vision tunneled down to a blur of instru-
  mentation lights and stars. 
  The allied pilot, with maneuvering velocity, bracketed him with 
  lasers and then missiles. The Stingray bucked and shook, but its 
  armor held up. 
  Then it slammed ass-first into the upper atmosphere, and it felt 
  as if a giant hand had swatted the backside of Eric’s brain. 
  A board short-circuited inside an instrumentation panel, shoot-
  ing white-hot sparks into his lap. Several burned through the legs 
  of his flight suit, stinging him like angry wasps. The ozone stench 
  of carbon and melted insulation filled the cockpit, doused a mo-
  ment later by acrid flame retardant sprayed by his automated 
  systems. Several status indicators went dark as Eric lost naviga-
  tion lights, his IFF transponder, and landing gear. 
  Wrenching over, standing on his thrusters, Eric pulled his craft 
  around to get the belly pointed downward before the thickening 
  atmosphere tore his fighter apart. He was still coming in hot. A 
  reddish-orange nimbus glowed at the edge of his wings, up along 
  the fuselage, danced at the fore of his cockpit hatch. He wrestled 
  with both hands on the stick, fighting the turbulence of transition 
  between space and atmosphere. Reverse thrusters helped him 
  bleed off more momentum.  
  His airspeed dropped, and the shaking lessened. 
  Eric switched over to atmospheric flight, using tail, elevators and 
  ailerons now instead of thrusters and attitude jets.
  Far, far below, New Avalon’s northern continent rolled over into 
  morning. Eric took an eyeball reckoning, and turned onto a new 
  glide path which he knew would eventually bring him in over 
  ocean and then Rostock’s Drilands. He’d have to crank open his 
  landing gear manually, or at worst suffer through the humiliation 
  of a bellyflop touchdown, but such efforts paled after a shaky re-
  entry. Eric began to breathe a bit easier.
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Gravity Poisoning • Page 10
  And then a hammer fell out of the sky, slamming hard into the 
  fuselage just behind Eric’s cockpit.
  The remaining Corsair, dropping down from above Eric, latched 
  onto his tail with the tenacity of a Lyran-trained pit bull. Lasers 
  struck out again, splashing armor into a fiery rain that trailed back 
  from his wounded Stingray. A six-pack of short-ranged missiles 
  corkscrewed in on twisted contrails of gray smoke. Eric dumped 
  over, rolling out of their immediate path and then pointed his nose 
  at the pastel-blue beneath him and dived.
  Bloody-minded Davionist! 
  It wasn’t enough that Katrina’s loyalists were in retreat or that 
  the four-Corsair team had claimed another life just short of at-
  mosphere. It didn’t matter that Eric regretted launching from the 
  Corona, and even setting foot on New Avalon when something 
  deep inside him had argued against any further involvement with 
  the civil war. This pilot wanted another kill. He was willing to chase 
  Eric down into atmosphere to get it.
  Eric didn’t plan on making it so easy, though. Not after Patyr 
  paid blood price for coming to his rescue.
  Fighting against new tremors as turbulence and another brace 
  of lasers shook the Slantback fighter, Eric gave himself a slow 
  count of three and then dug into the thin atmosphere with his 
  elevators. Metal spoilers flared, grabbing for purchase, and the 
  Stingray wrestled its nose up. He twisted over, banking away from 
  the Corsair’s path. 
  The other pilot glided out into a nearly parallel course, drawing 
  away for distance and then snapping back to cut at the Stingray on 
  an oblique angle. His shots went wide off the mark, but Eric did not 
  give his counterpart the chance to correct. He dived, snapped over 
  to the left this time, leveled off, and then dived again. Working his 
  way down through the atmosphere, shedding kilometers and buy-
  ing time.
  Again and again the Corsair re-latched, far more maneuverable 
  than an old Slantback. It was the PPC built into Eric’s nosecone. The 
  heavy weapon pulled the nose down toward the ground, forcing 
  Eric to fight gravity as much as he fought against the other pi-
  lot. The forward-swept Canard wings helped even out the balance 
  somewhat, putting more weight toward the rear of the craft, but 
  did not completely do the job. Aerospace pilots called dogfights in 
  the lower atmosphere of any planet “fighting in the soup.” Being 
  
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  Gravity Poisoning • Page 11
  pulled down into the soup was another form of gravity poisoning, 
  especially for a heavy fighter being ridden by a lighter, more ma-
  neuverable craft like the Corsair. 
  Like Eric felt, mired in the politics of civil war, being chased down 
  by a growing feeling of uncertainty. A lead weight sitting heavy in 
  his gut, poisoning his thoughts, dulling his reflexes.
  No matter what he tried, there did not seem to be a way out. Not 
  from the dogfight, not from the situation he’d cornered himself 
  into by throwing support behind Katrina’s claim to the throne of 
  the Federated Suns. The one was currently more pressing than 
  the other just now, but both weighed on him heavily. 
  Eric snap-rolled right, then pulled back into an Immelman. The 
  Corsair scissored away and latched again before Eric turned out of 
  his inverted roll. Lasers probed at his exposed underside, scarring 
  new damage into the fighter’s armor. 
  He dodged out again, and again. The thicker air slowed him 
  down, but allowed for tighter turns. For the Corsair as well, which 
  darted past him on one run, then another. 
  “Got something to prove,” Eric said, nodding. “Got to keep push-
  ing, or—fates help us—we might all start thinking.”
  Below, the coast of Rostock flashed by a welcoming wave of am-
  ber beaches and rugged, green coastline. Eric held a few seconds 
  lead on the Corsair at ten kilometers, then seven, then four. Always 
  lower, always fighting for ever-extended maneuver in hopes of 
  shaking this persistent devil. 
  A missile slammed into the seam where his hatch sealed to the 
  fuselage, and ferroglass shrapnel erupted into the cockpit. Several 
  shards ticked and scratched off his helmet. He felt a sting and then 
  a flush of warmth to the side of his neck, his shoulder, and knew 
  he’d been hurt. A bitter wind whistled sharply through the cockpit, 
  stinging his eyes. His mask provided enough breathable airflow to 
  prevent blacking out. 
  Then he dropped below three kilometers, and thin air was no 
  longer a problem. 
  Just the Corsair.
  Laserfire probed and splashed away armor from his wings, run-
  neling molten composite into the damaged gaps of his starboard 
  aileron. Airflow cooled the composite, and jammed the control 
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Gravity Poisoning • Page 12
  vanes against lifting. An amber indication light flashed its warn-
  ing on the control panel. Eric tested his ability to roll out to the left. 
  The wing vibrated violently, and the entire craft turned sluggish. 
  Snapping back to the left, Eric pitched into a series of barrel rolls, 
  avoiding the Corsair’s weapons for another few seconds. Sweat 
  beaded and ran from his brow, stinging at the corners of each 
  eye and staining his lips with a salty taste. Trapped. Caught in the 
  grip of his choices, like desperate hands clutching at his ankles, 
  trying to pull him under. He didn’t want to die, not out over the 
  Drilands during Prince Victor’s return. The Corsair pilot was giving 
  him little to say in the matter, though. No doubts on that score. If 
  Eric wanted a second chance, he might have to buy it with the al-
  lied pilot’s life. 
  Eric had altitude and time for only another trick or two. He had to 
  make the call soon, or it would be too late. Still worried about the 
  choice, he pushed his stick forward and hammered his nose down 
  toward the Drilands. 
  A hundred meters disappeared with each heartbeat, and the 
  painted desert rushed up fast, fast. The Corsair followed. 
  Slowly, painfully, the Slantback’s nose tucked itself past vertical, 
  began pushing up to complete an inverted loop. Eric’s vision nar-
  rowed as blood rushed to his head, causing his sense of timing 
  to waver, slip. By instinct more than decision, he rolled out right 
  and pulled into a tight bank that looked like the start of a reverse 
  Immelman, but actually pulled him around in a tight, spiraling turn. 
  The Corsair slashed by off his right shoulder, and Eric dug into his 
  elevators hard enough that the Stingray felt as if it might fly apart 
  at any second. But it yanked him around in a tighter corner, and 
  when he leveled off only a thousand meters over New Avalon’s 
  Drilands, he had the Corsair by its six. Perfectly framed. His thumb 
  on the main triggers.
  Maybe the allied pilot had the right of it. Maybe Prince Victor’s 
  cause was the more just.
  Maybe Eric should have paid the price for Patyr, and not the oth-
  er way around.
  But in a civil war, momentum was all you had to go on if you 
  wanted to survive. And Eric’s choices, right or wrong, had brought 
  him here. As certain as gravity’s pull, he knew that he had no 
  choice now but to live, and learn.
  
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  Pulling into a full salvo of weapons, Eric dug into the Corsair’s 
  starboard wing with the coruscating lightning of his nose-mount-
  ed PPC. A long, jagged rent scarred the armor from turn to tip. 
  Lasers sliced in after, finding the weakened joint where wing met 
  fuselage. The other pilot tried to pull up, jumping above the line of 
  fire, adding more stress to the damaged wing, which tore free like 
  shredded paper-machè. 
  The Corsair dumped over into a death-spiral, trailing smoke and 
  burning hard into the desert below. A fireball roiled up on a pillar 
  of soot-stained flames. 
  Eric’s Stingray flashed overhead, churning the smoke into a dis-
  persed haze. He searched the skies to either side of him…hoping. 
  The lead weight in his stomach grew heavier, until he saw a sky-
  blue parafoil cross against the red rock of the Drilands. The Corsair 
  pilot had bailed out safely.
  Eric pulled around in a slow arc, scanning the desert floor. No 
  signs of life, or roads to promise any nearby habitation. A dry 
  lake bed stained the painted dunes three kilometers to the north, 
  stretching out in an oblong expanse of dark clay. Coming at it from 
  northeast to southwest he could land there. He would. And if he 
  could prevent the downed pilot from taking a shot at him with 
  whatever sidearm might be stored under his ejection seat, the two 
  could talk, and might be able to work their way out of the desert 
  together.
  He’d leave the Stingray on the ground.
  One final offering to gravity.
  
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