Chapter 1

Lt. Colonel Ray Walker sat back and rubbed his eyes, trying to will the headache away that he could feel starting behind his eyes. He had been studying the data on the screen for too long and what it told him was not good. Realizing that he wasn't going to solve this problem right now he saved his work and pushed away from his desk.

"Stow my desk away", he told the room's AI "and get me an aspirin and an iced tea please."

"You're tea and medicine are in the replicator", the AI replied even as he heard a chime from the kitchenette in his quarters.

"Thank you" Ray replied, feeling suddenly foolish as he did so. He just couldn't get used to the idea of saying thank you to a computer, but he couldn't stop either. Ray swallowed his aspirin and took his tea into the lounge area of his quarters. Lying back on his sofa, Ray pondered his current predicament.

He is the commander of the first wing of the Confederacy's newest aircraft, the Swift fighter. The Swift is a three-man fighter capable of atmospheric and low-orbital flight. The Swift carries the first aircraft mounted weapons to come out of the new Research and Technology Center on the colony world Azahar. In fact, much of the technology for the Swift was developed there and most of it was developed by human scientists. As commander of the wing, he had no problem with the aircraft, in fact, it's an awesome fighter. But that was the problem, the Swift is too awesome for its crews.

The Swift testing had started out so promising. The first wing had been delivered to Tulakat for combat testing at the beginning of April. A marine contingent was sent down to the surface to bait up a large force of dickheads so that the firepower and maneuverability of the Swifts could be tested. The Marines set up an observation post overlooking a cleared area with a few buzz-saw mines and a radio transmitter. About 5 minutes after the transmitter was turned on, a small squad of dickheads showed up to investigate. The first buzz-saw got all but two of them and the Marines let the survivors hang out just long enough to call their buddies before knocking them out. True to form, the Sa'arm moved in on the location in large numbers, about 500 all together. As soon as the Sa'arm were located the Swifts were called in.

Five hundred dickheads were wiped out in about 20 seconds. It was an impressive sight, to say the least. The Swifts came in low and straight and the twin gunners on the fighters tore them up. The new BLiPP (Ball lightning phased plasma) guns were devastating, burning or exploding the Swarm that were hit directly and electrocuting any other dickheads within 10 meters of the point of impact. Complete and total success.

Every testing run for the first month was the same. The Swifts were a killing machine unlike anything the Confederacy had put in the air before. The pilots and their gunners averaged 95% kill ratios on groups of Sa'arm up to 1,000 individuals. Training missions even had to make sure that the flights of Swift aircraft were rotated so that all the pilots and gunners would get a chance at live targets. If the groups were too small the flights in the rear wouldn't have any targets left to hit. Yes sir, things were looking great ... until the dickheads started shooting back.

The first two Swifts were lost before they even opened fire. The dickheads knocked them down with handheld lasers. The rest of the flight was finished with their strafing run before they even realized they were missing two aircraft. It caught the Marines by surprise because the Sa'arm had never before reacted to the Swifts until they were fired upon. Apparently it finally got through their collective heads that the flying machines were dangerous. After that mission, it got harder and harder for the Swifts to be effective, for several reasons.

The first major problem encountered was that once the pilots started using evasive maneuvers to avoid the fire of the dickheads, the accuracy of the gunners dropped below 15%. Apparently the gunners and the firing computers couldn't keep up with the rapid turns and dives of the plane, some of which were made at greater than 20 G's. Added to that, the Sa'arm changed their tactics and spread themselves out, eliminating the chances of large scale massacres by the fighters. And lastly, the Sa'arm became deadly accurate with handheld and small mounted anti-aircraft weapons. The military analysts theorize that they are using their collective thought processes to triangulate the positions of individual Swifts and are sending that info in real-time to their gunners.

Ray sighed and sat up from the sofa. This problem with the Swifts was driving him crazy. He couldn't believe that such an incredible fighter could be neutralized so easily by the Sa'arm.

"Damn it!", Ray said aloud, "If only our gunners could manage to target those bastards while maneuvering." The maneuverability of the Swift prevented the Sa'arm from hitting them, but the gunners couldn't track them well enough to hit anything effectively while undergoing such quick and abrupt maneuvers. Not even the targeting computers could keep up with the juking and diving of the aircraft. But if the pilots leveled out to allow the gunners and opportunity the fire the Sa'arm shot them down in droves. Ray decided to let the problem go for a while and relax.