No Way to Start a War (TCOTU, Book 2) (This Corner of the Universe) by Britt Ringel Page A

for port action.”  He studied the plot
further.  Looks like the fun starts in about an hour , he thought as he
settled himself in for a long, tense afternoon.
    *  *  *
    No
sooner had the F-3 stopped in its stall than the cockpit opened and Ensign
Gables sprung out of her Pup to storm around to the rear of the craft.  The black
scorch marks on the aft port side of the fighter indicated a major
malfunction.  PO2 Rhodes pried open a maintenance panel to reveal the twisted
mass of melted alloys that had been her fighter’s rear port thruster.  The
destruction extended down to the Pup’s undercarriage and Gables marveled at the
damage as her flight commander casually walked up to her.
    Gesturing to her Pup,
Gables angrily spat, “Look at the crap they put us up in.”
    Walker
coolly appraised the landing struts of her Pup.  “Hard to say how much of that
was smashed up with one of your landings, Denise,” he chided.  Walker’s thick
New London accent granted his words a formal air.
    Gables’
landing had been rated satisfactory, barely, by the landing officer’s grade of “yellow.” 
“I slept through it so I wouldn’t know,” she retorted as she moved away from
her Pup.  “By the way, you’re going to get a complaint from a bus pilot on the Blue
side.  That thruster went out while we were dogfighting.  I had just lined up a
pass and I couldn’t maneuver away.”  Gables relived the near collision and shuddered.
 “Whoever it was, we ran up on each other closer than exercise regulations
allow.”
    “It
was VF Twenty-two’s squadron commander,” Walker replied.  “He was quite upset and
told me that you were a reckless and dangerous sort without any consideration
for safety.”
    Gables
winced at the rebuke but Walker continued with a sly smile, “Then he said he
hopes you run on the Hollies in precisely the same fashion.”
    “He
clearly wishes me dead.”

Chapter 9
    Admiral
Hayes was smiling.  That’s a switch , Heskan thought as he looked at the
faces of the officers of Task Group 3.1.  The after-exercise debriefing was
wrapping up and, overall, the fleet had done very well.  Once the Avocets had
detected the incoming fighter waves of the Red Force, Avenger had
launched her six squadrons, which met them 9 lm from the fleet.  The Red Force
fighters, carrying cumbersome training anti-ship missiles, had been forced to jettison
their ASMs to defend themselves adequately.  Even with maneuverability parity,
the Red Force possessed only their single GP lasers while the Blue Force
fighters had flown in with training anti-fighter missiles.  The AFM-2 was the
latest iteration of the navy’s sleek, maneuverable dogfighting missile capable
of turning at the incredibly high G’s required to intercept a small and agile
fighter craft.  With overwhelming numbers and their AFMs, the Blue Force lost
just seven Pups while annihilating the entirety of the Red Force fighters.  The
lesson was clear; fighters rigged for an anti-ship strike could not fight their
way past an organized fighter defense.
    The
elimination of the missile threat from the Red Force fighters cut CortRon 15’s
job in half but a twist remained.  The computers aboard Avenger , which
ran the remaining virtual Red Force fleet, proceeded to conduct a standard
missile attack against the task group from the opposite direction.  After some
tense minutes spent repositioning to defend against the new threat, CortRon 15
acquitted itself very well and stopped the first wave of three hundred twenty
missiles outright.  Heskan had felt the tension on the bridge spike when the
initial number of vampires became apparent, but the calm brought about by
following well-practiced standard procedures reasserted itself quickly as point
defenses were unmasked and targets assigned to each defensive battery.  The second
wave of three hundred fifteen missiles had been neutralized as well, and only
four of the final three hundred sixty missiles of the