Shit! What are we waiting for, then?
DeathRay slammed the throttle all the way to the stop, accelerating the fighter to top speed. The g-load pushed him into his seat at nine gravities. He rocked the HOTAS left slightly to line him up with the enemy carrier. It was moving toward the QMT facility very fast and would reach there long before the Madira made its run across it.
Jack! I'm getting a DTM hail from Nancy Penzington!
What? Can't be. She's dead. Jack had seen the ship that she was in blow up. How the hell could she still be alive? he wondered.
Well, then it is her ghost, because her verification code pans out. It is her.
Patch her in.
Boland? Are you there?
I'm here, Penzington. We thought you were dead six years ago.
Yeah, well, I'm not. Listen, Deanna Moore is aboard the enemy supercarrier here.
Yes, I know. I'm here to get her.
Well, you better goddamned hurry, because we are QMTing back to Tau Ceti in seconds!
Shit! Can you get to her?
No, not in time. Try to get here, fast!
Roger that, Penzington. You do what you can to keep her safe. I'm coming.
Hurry then.
"CO Madira! DeathRay!"
"Go DeathRay!"
"Sir, our missing package is on that supercarrier! I also have confirmation that Operation Bachelor Party is in play! Repeat, Bachelor Party is in play, and our package is on that enemy supercarrier! Bachelor Party has made visual confirmation."
"Understood, DeathRay!"
Jack pushed at the throttle more, but it was already against the stop. He wasn't sure he could take the g-load much longer anyway. He sure as hell couldn't keep talking and do it. Any further communications would have to be DTM or from his AIC only. Then he started taking on anti-aircraft fire from the Seppy supercarrier.
"Warning, enemy radar targeting signal detected. Warning, take evasive maneuvers," the Bitchin' Betty chimed.
"No shit!" he screamed back at it. Jack killed the throttle and yanked the HOTAS left and down and then in a corkscrew inward toward the ship. Orange tracer rounds the size of racquetballs tracked all around his flight path, but he managed to keep out of the targeting solutions. The AA rounds kept coming. His best chance to keep from getting shot down would be to get inside the range of those things. The only way to do that was to get really, really close to that enemy ship. That fit into his plans perfectly. The problem was that the enemy ship was a long goddamned way off, and he was running out of time.
As the enemy ship drew closer and closer to the QMT facility, Jack continued to struggle against the AA fire while trying to keep the most time-efficient vector to the QMT jump-intercept point. Jack was still way outside range of the QMT sphere that would appear.
"Fuck the AA. We either make it or we don't!" He pushed the throttle back down to the forward stop, picking the acceleration back up. At that high thrust, the evasive maneuvers put extreme g-loads on him—upward of thirteen gravities at times. But Jack had to persevere and beat that QMT before it was too late. He had no idea how he was going to slow down and not slam into the enemy ship if he got there, but first things first. He had to make it through the gate, or slowing down was a moot point.
"Come onnn!" he shouted. Several AA rounds hit the forward hull armored plating, but the SIFs held. The impact rocked the fighter's nose upward slightly, and Jack fought to correct the pitch. More AA tracked him, and he jerked the HOTAS left and right, tossing the mecha around like mad. His stomach retched several times, and he heaved into his faceplate. Only bile managed to make it out. He choked his stomach back down as best he could and fought against the wild ride. The fighter spun and pitched and yawed, with each evasive maneuver putting him under near bone-crushing pressure. Then a big sphere of light formed over the QMT pad and rippled inward.
"Mooove, damnit!"
The Separatist supercarrier accelerated into the QMT gate that opened and vanished in front of him. Jack held his throttle against the stop while he grunted and squeezed every muscle, fighting as best he could against blacking out.
We're not gonna make it! Candis shouted in his mind.
We're gonna make it! Jack thought.
Jack, we're not gonna make it!
We're gonna make it!
His vision began to tunnel in front of him, and everything went dark around him briefly. Jack grunted and fought blacking out as best he could. He squeezed his legs and abs. The pressure suit constricted around his body like a prey-crushing anaconda. It was all he could do to breathe. He forced his breath like a woman in labor with triplets. He bit so hard on his TMJ bite block that he thought he would bite through it. The biting action triggered more fresh oxygen and stimulants into his mouth. The stimulants helped him hold on to the tunnel vision a second or two longer.
"Aaarrrggghh!" he grunted in a most guttural scream. He would have pissed on a sparkplug if it would have helped and he could've actually moved to do it.
Kill the throttle, Jack! Kill the throttle!
Two things immediately went through Jack's mind. The first was that the rings of the giant gas planet filling the sky out in front of him were beautiful. They reminded him of Saturn. The second thing was that the supercarrier rapidly rushing against him was way too fucking close.
Reverse throttle, Jack!
"Warning, collision imminent. Brace for impact. Warning, collision imminent. Brace for impact," his Bitchin' Betty chimed.
"This is gonna hurt!" Jack yanked the throttle all the way to the reverse stop and then pitched the fighter over tail first toward the supercarrier. The propellantless drive of the mecha pushed him in the opposite direction of the relative speed he had with the supercarrier. But it wasn't going to be enough to prevent a catastrophic collision. And the maneuver made him vomit into his helmet. "Fuck!"
He gurgled and heaved a few times more as his suit cleared the faceplate by absorbing the stomach material into the organogel layer. He put his left hand on the eject handle but didn't pull it.
Give me a countdown to impact, Candis!
Roger that! Nine! Eight! Seven . . .
Jack kept the fighter's ass end to the ship right up until the last second. The supercarrier was all he could see, even though he was still several hundred meters away. At those speeds that was only seconds. He pitched the nose back over, placing the cockpit away from the supercarrier's hull. The seconds ticked slowly since the gravity load was well above ten gravities. Time crunched by slowly, but the deceleration was working.
Three! Now!
Jack brought down the nose of his fighter and shouted "Eject, eject, eject!" as he pulled the handle. The ejection couch fired its thrusters just as the fighter slammed into the hull of the Seppy supercarrier. Jack's fighter spread out into an orange and white ball of hot vaporized metal plasma. Then the ordnance and the powerplant blew, making the explosion even more spectacular.