Free War of Alien Aggression 3 Lancer by A.D. Bloom Page A

He felt like he was rising and falling a micrometer ever microsecond.
    "Feels like this thing's givin' the de-luxe massage," Snooze said.
    F-151s tore out of the bays above and to the left and right as Jordo blasted out into the radiant beams. While most of the Lancers took a defensive position over Hardway , waiting for their signal, Jordo rolled and pulled his nose down and around the forward launch bay module until he was flying parallel with the underside of the carrier. Snooze followed him through the split-s and rotated and stopped with him under the closed, belt-iron doors. On a private channel, Jordo told his wingman, "After we pick up the Dingoes, we're going straight down from here. Follow me through an easy turn onto vector. Stay on my wing and match my maneuvers. Don't pull any fancy moves and go taking a nap." Silence on Flight Two comms. A couple of seconds after his wingman still hadn't responded, Jordo said, "Snooze?"
    Snooze said, "Wilco, 2-1. Will comply."
    Jordo thumbed through channels until he was talking to Hardway . "This is Lancer 2-1. Open those doors and loose the Dingoes." Jordo flew in a circle under the ship as six bays opened on the bottom side. 50 of Hardway's 111 drones poured out along with another 72 that had come with them from Arbitrage . Jordo half expected them all to to ignore him and fly around looking for Squidy warheads to kill. "Here we go." Jordo put his 151 in a dive away from the carrier. "Snooze, spin on your jets for me and make sure those Dingoes are following us."
    A second later, Snooze said, "Yeah. They're all right behind us. Looks like all of them, anyways. Bays are empty. Doors closing."
    "Alright spin back around. I'm about to maneuver." Jordo flew to his 12 o'clock high – towards the set of three Squidy cruisers now breaking the limb of the planet like a set of enormous dogs' teeth biting through it. This was the first time he'd ever seen an enemy warship this close. They looked like gigantic, armored fangs with gun towers. They left a ruddy trail behind them in the vacuum. "There's the enemy. They're coming."
    "I wish that were all of them," Snooze said. "Those junks down below us are going real low, almost hitting the planet's atmo. Look. 3 o'clock low, way low."
    The junks had flown down towards the gas giant. They'd bring those torpedoes to the Squidies around the blind side of the planet and launch them from where the aliens could now only guess since their satellites had been dusted. Shafter had said that would force the Squidies to send their fighters out, but before they arrived, while the convoy of 27 junks was down low and out of the Squidies' sight, three of them broke away.
    Three junks near the rear of the convoy rolled and blasted away from the rest and away from the engagement with the Squidies. Those junks were going somewhere else...towards whatever we came for on the 4th moon.
    Jordo zoomed in on them just in time to see the little charges blow. The fronts of the first two junks' ore carrier modules blew off with sparking puffs. The metal plates tumbled down towards the planet's clouds, falling in and out of the beams like scraps of paper. A second later, the two boats decelerated using forward-vectored thrust, and a pair of Staas F-151s that had been hidden in each junk's containers shot out from where they'd been concealed under the bow.
    The two junks that had delivered the 4 fighters veered away without pause as Lancer Flight One formed up and rocketed towards the objective escorting a third, well-armed junk. The redsuits said it was filled with United Nations and DIA spooky types and Staas Company geologists.
    "Thirty seconds to our way-point," Jordo said.
    The junks launched torps early and cleared out. 96 warspite torpedoes flared as they came up at the Squidies' cruisers from under the planet's curve. The cloud of them left thin IR trails across the black. It was a salvo bigger than any capital ship could throw and already, the junks that