The Forgotten Elite

Aisha shook off the question, she didn’t have time to worry if Ace was a coward or not, she had to focus on the task at hand to make sure she would have someone to worry about later.

Ace ran down the passage way and through the already open door to the hanger he slapped the controls without slowing down snapping the door shut. Vaulting up into the cockpit he started the power up sequence, doing an abbreviated pre-flight check. Strapping on him self into the pilots couch, he keyed his com, “Open the hatch now Gilliam!”

The reply was almost instant, “But that would cause and explosive decompression in the...”

“I know I know!” Ace snapped back, as he slid his helmet on, “Just do it you giant hunk of scrap metal!” Gilliam decide to respond by simply opening the door. Ace felt rather than heard the atmosphere in the bay explode out ward sending his ship along with it, as soon as he was clear he cut in his thrusters and headed towards the largest group of fighters.

‘Let the heavy wights slug it out, go after the more manageable and annoying light weights, destroy the fighter support before they get to you home ship, once that's done go ahead and harass the fat boys, this is the only way to win a space battle,’ his trainers words came to his mind as clear as if he was saying them now, ‘Now, dive through the thickest part, break up their formation, than pick them off. Kinda demoralizing when your flight gets destroyed by one or two fighters.’

Ace understood this method, and even thought it was nearly suicidal it worked. Relaxing Ace became a part of his ship, he felt it as if it was an extension of his body. Moments latter he heard a piecing alert of missile locks, “That’s right, give me something to shoot at,” he said with a feral grin, he pulled a trigger he released a wave of HARM missiles that where made exactly to target ships that have achieved active locks. The enemy wave released their own regular missiles as well and the two volleys passed each other in space a few hitting one another creating balls of soundless fire that disappeared as soon as they appeared. Throwing his fighter into a series of maneuvers Ace managed to doge all of the incoming fire while the enemy wasn’t so lucky. Several ships vanished with multiple impacts. The remaining ships scattered when Ace’s fighter shoot through them gun pod blazing causing several more explosions and crippling a few other fighters, leaving them to float silently on what ever trajectory they where in when they lost power. Pressing a button Ace transformed his ship into guardian mode, which resembled a costume one might see at an amusement park, the body of a plane but arms and legs of a robot. He tracked one fighter with the gun pod in his ships hand and locked onto a little more than a dozen others by focusing his eyes on them, he released a cloud of smaller, yet more agile missiles decimating his targets. The led the other fighter and squeezed the trigger and watched quite contently as the fighter disappeared in a burst of bullets, pressing another button he shot off again as a fighter. He fought and fought and fought checking every now and then to see how the Outlaw Star was holding up, he was glad to see that it was relatively unscathed while numerous hulls drifted near by.

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Aisha glanced at a side screen and saw that the only thing out there that was smaller than the grappling ships was Ace’s fighter which was moving up behind a bigger ship, ‘Guess he wasn’t a coward’ she thought as a grin spread across her face.

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Ace hit the third button on his mode console and turned his fighter into a robot, it finished the transformation a split second before he impacted on the hull of the ship, flipping a switch on his flight stick, a blade ejected from it's housing under the muzzle of the gun pod, which he jammed into the ship beneath him, carving a ragged hole into it he shoved the muzzle of the weapon into the hole and fired 3 short bursts, jumping clear just as the hull was ripped apart from internal explosions. He moved from one ship to the next destroying the larger ships in any way he could, crushing the view ports of a bridge here, firing missiles into another's engines, even going as far as attempting to slicing one in half which he almost succeed in doing but and explosion blew him away before he made it all the way around the ship. “Damn it, that was a long rage shot,” he muttered as he looked as his sensors, he say a red blip at the furthest extent of its range. "That lil son-of-a-bitch," he said as he drifted amongst the wreckage of what had been a ship moments before. Anchoring him self behind a huge plate from the hull he brought down a scope which automatically switched his gun pod to snipping mode he centered on the ship, it was nothing more than a huge gun and it’s tip glowed as it charged for another shot, “No, not this time” he said as he aimed for one of the accelerators on the side of the ship, firing he sent 6 rounds down range so fast they seemed to be a single shot, and they where right on target. The ship shuddered and than exploded as the captain tried to fire with the accelerators out of sync. Glancing around Ace saw no more targets and the last ship being blown away by Gene. Ace hummed the Ctarl-Ctarl Elite him as he flew through the battle area, looking at the bodies, well what was left of them, float silently through space, shimmering drops of frozen blood around them like their own set of little stars. It was all quite pretty, to people who where used to war and needed to find some beauty in the harsh world that they lived in.

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Shadow-C'mon man.
Ace-Fuck you dude.
Shadow-You suck, your abandoning your best friend to a fate worse than death.
Ace-Yea whatever, I'm still not going to your psycho mom's apartment for dinner.
Shadow-I swear she wont try to stab you again.