Cover art for “Fangs Out: Aerial Combat Chronicle”

The science fiction anthology Fangs Out: Aerial Combat Chronicles is available now. It features my space combat short story “The Jupiter War.”

For five years a mysterious adversary in Jupiter’s atmosphere has been attacking human colonies on three of Jupiter’s moons. Today a defense pilot called Irish finds out why.

The action starts above the moon Callisto where Tango Squadron including hotshot pilot Irish has yet another encounter with a group of alien fighters called “pups” delivered by a mothership referred to as a “whale.” While Tango successfully fights off this latest attack, Irish in attempting to follow and destroy the last few alien pursuit vessels is accidentally captured by the whale space craft.

Trapped inside, he has only one hope left: contacting Ganymede’s space defense group during a close flyby. But even if by some miracle he can be freed, can Irish and the other moon’s air support force discover the reason behind these relentless assaults?

Here’s an excerpt from my short story “The Jupiter War:”

After twenty minutes of silence, he finally sent, “Shalosh, what were you trying to do? Why didn’t you defend yourselves.”

All Irish heard in his headset were overlapping transmissions from the few remaining Ishia fighters still engaging the pups. Then another voice yelled, “Five of them are in pursuit. Ishia didn’t stop them all.” He checked his scopes and confirmed five incoming bogies.

“Steady, Abinoam,” replied Shalosh. “Stay on course.”

“They’ll be on us in less than thirty seconds,” Irish sent.

“Chami ordered us to stand down,” said a tense sounding Shalosh.

“For all we know, the Ishia fighters are all dead,” said a man’s voice.

“Cut the chatter, Eliab,” said Shalosh. “You have your orders. Implement evasive pattern Foyle.”

“The hell with that.” Irish pushed his yoke away from him accelerating into a dive. “I’m taking this to the deck.” His fighter fell from space like a stone.

“Damn it, Lewis,” Shalosh cursed.

“Seventy seconds to impact,” taunted Irish. “How many pups do you think I can get to follow me?”

“Group Tet,” shouted Shalosh. “Continue evasive action. Disperse, disperse!”

Irish took a moment to see the four Tet fighters scramble across wildly disparate trajectories trying to save their lives. One fighter took a direct hit dying in a brilliant flare.

“Group Ishia, this is Shalosh sending.” Shalosh groaned between every few words as she piloted her fighter into a complicated set of maneuvers. “Five pups are attacking our group. Can you spare any assistance?”

“Three pups,” Irish corrected her. “I’ve got two of them on me.”

“Command base,” another woman sent. “Group Tet in distress. Can you read?”

“Base has no other fighters prepped, Beatrix,” said Shalosh. “We’re on our own.”

Irish’s eyes widened as he checked his altimeter. “Impact in forty-five seconds.” He launched a volley of flares and then pulled back on the yoke nearly blacking out. The fighter’s hull and stabilizers moaned under the stress as he watched his altitude go below ten kilometers.

“You sons of…” Irish gritted his teeth. “Keep coming. Don’t give up on me now.” The fuel indicator was visibly dropping. His fighter’s dive was becoming shallower but it would be as much luck as skill if he didn’t pancake onto the moon’s surface.

One pup overshot him and then started to climb while the other was closing in directly aft.

“Five kilometers to surface and closing,” he said. “Let’s have a real good look at the beautiful landscape, huh?” He launched more flares and chaff hoping to distract the pursuing pup. The other had climbed a kilometer to port and was circling for another pass.

If Irish had been flying on visual, he might have been blinded by the reflective terrain beneath him. The icy surface was covered with intersecting ridges and grooves, some of the peaks reaching nearly a thousand meters high.

“Now there’s the ticket,” he said. His velocity was down to seven-seventy kph as he leveled out and then climbed over one of the ridges. He slipped the fighter into a groove which twisted maze-like in unanticipated directions. “Come and get me,” he said.

The one pup followed him negotiating the turns in the narrow gully like a dancer.

“Damn.” He watched the reactant volume approaching the red line way too fast.

Irish rose at a complex intersection and then chose another groove at random. The pup following him couldn’t make the change fast enough, climbed, and veered off.

“Now I’ve got you.” As the pup tried to recover, Irish rose out of the groove and then looped. The pup’s port side was exposed just long enough for a target lock. Irish pressed the trigger and a satisfying stream of high-energy particles struck the center of the pup’s mass. The target burst into a bloom of destruction.

Too late did he remember the other pup which was now diving toward him from behind. A series of plasma bolts narrowly missed him as he jerked his craft to starboard and into a shallow crater. The pup leveled off and then turned trying to reacquire him.

Irish’s low fuel alarm shrieked at the same time as his right rear stabilizer began to shimmy in its housing.

“Oh, isn’t this damned terrific,” Irish complained.

He climbed over the far edge of the crater and saw the beginning of a deep canyon only a few kilometers ahead. He reversed thrust killing his forward velocity and throwing him against his restraints as he descended toward the darkness. The all-too-thin atmosphere along with clouds of water ice whipped around the fighter and two of his scopes went out. Then his ship lurched like it had hit a wall as a plasma bolt struck, blowing his primary power couplings.

Irish yanked the lever on his emergency systems activator as his crippled fighter bounced across the canyon floor and began to break up.

Read “The Jupiter War” and the other exciting aerial combat stories in Fangs Out: Aerial Combat Chronicles today.