The force pushed Cam back into the seat. The launch tube’s lights flashed in unknown patterns as he passed through. Before he knew it it was done and he was in outer space. He was the rightmost of half a dozen fighters flying together in the same direction. Two more sets of six were right behind them making up the first squadron. His radar showed that the other two squadrons were launching as well.

He grabbed the flystick and did a few small experimental movements, making sure to give the other fighters plenty of room. It handled exactly like he thought it would. More like an aircraft than a spacecraft.

“That’s good, flyboy,” Tophet said. “Let’s activate your I-Flight. We have a few seconds before we’re on the field. This might sound strange, but picture yourself as the ship. Like it’s an extension of your body.”

“Me as the ship?” Cam asked. “Like my arms are wings or something?”

“Not exactly. Like your consciousness inhabits the ship, not your body,” she said. “Look, just relax, envision it, and push the big red button on the left side of the control stick.”

Cam found the button. It was labeled “Immersive Piloting.” The rest of the squad had started forming up, but the two Aluvius ships were on the far side of the battleship and so Cam had some time before any engagement. He tried to do what Tophet said. He relaxed, envisioned himself somehow as the ship and finally pushed the button.

Immediately he felt the change. It was a strange feeling. His consciousness expanded, no longer bound by his body, but instead in grew into the entire ship and beyond into its extensive sensors. His vision became clearer, and encompassed all directions. He could sense things about the ship that his instruments had told him just moments ago. More than even his sensors had said. Every weapon he could feel and could activate with a thought. He again did some experimental movements of his ship, it handled even better now. Every motion was controlled by him, and every detail of motion could be known. His ship had a maximum safe acceleration of eighty meters per second squared, a soft cap of maximum speed of nine hundred meters per second. Just over eleven seconds to hit the soft cap from stationary, and from there his acceleration would decrease. A full circle at that speed and acceleration would have a radius of ten kilometers and take seventy seconds to finish.

“Let’s bring it in Calvera,” Tophet said. “We got work to do.”

“Acknowledged, Tophet,” he said. Or at least his voice said over the comm system. “How does this I-Flight work? I mean how am I speaking to you? How am I flying with my thoughts?”

“You ask that when our real bodies are sitting in pods in some house somewhere on earth? How were you even existing in that in game body of yours? How were you moving it around? This is just a little different because it’s not a human body, but you’ve been controlling a body that isn’t your real one since you’ve been in game.”

He nodded—or did the mental equivalent of a nod at least. It made sense. This felt more foreign to him since the ship didn’t have four limbs and a head, but he could sense the ship in its own way. It had its organs in its ship systems, its body in the fuselage, its blood the circuits, and so on. He was the brain, controlling it all.

He maneuvered his ship behind Tophet’s. It felt natural. The ship turned where he wanted it to all according to his thoughts. He even felt the motions; how the g-forces would feel on the ship. Once in formation he looked out at the space around him. He could see his allied ships with their shields, armor and hull integrity. He could pull up more specs on their ship loadout if he needed, but he wasn’t too concerned about that at the moment. Each set of six ships formed up in what Will had called Drill formation. It was a three dimensional version of a classic aeronautic formation. Will took the lead, with his wingman slightly behind and to his left. The other two pairs of craft formed their own spokes with the lead craft ahead and the wingman slightly behind and to one side. It looked like a drill tip with three groves, hence the name. It was more designed for fighter on fighter combat, but it was a good default formation for most situations.

The fighters’ launch trajectory had been starward from the battleship, but Will had already came around and oriented them towards the enemy crafts. They were spaceward, or away from the central star of the system they were in. One of the two initial ships had been shot to pieces by the Engra but six more enemy ships had appeared in the meantime. Three were cruiser size and three destroyer size.

Cam took a second to orient himself. There was no true up and down in space this far from a large celestial object, and generally the coordinate system a side used was largely up to that side. All you needed was a central point and orientation to set up a coordinate system. Looking at his telemetry it appeared that the standard Codiem Caelestis was using was the star as the central point, orientated on where and how the battleship jumped into the star system. From the star to the battleship was the zero longitude and what had been horizontal plane for the battleship when it arrived was zero latitude. It worked for small engagements in unestablished territory. In systems where Codiem Caelestis already had a presence, they would probably orient off of a specific planet or space station, but this worked for this engagement.

“Alright, pilots,” came Will’s voice. “We’re going to do a pass on the destroyers. Approach is at six hundred meters a second and slow once you’re under its guns. Slingshot back at max speed and form up again. Each squad has their target. Red has the leading destroyer. Blue and Gold, your targets are marked. Don’t stick around if you’re getting shot at, but lets bag a few before their fighters show up and things get harry.”

A target marker showed up on one of the enemy destroyers. Their primary target. They were the perfect targets for squadrons. The Engra would have trouble hitting the destroyers at the distance they were maintaining and a full squad should have the firepower to take one out if they could get close enough. Each squad broke to a slightly different path, finding a good attack angle that would expose them the least as they approached their individual targets. Fighters were small compared to most but their advantage was they could maneuver fast and were tough to hit by larger ships.

Even as they approached their target Cam saw more ships jumping in. The Engra had regenerated some of its shields without the battlecruiser pounding into her, but Cam wondered how long she could last. The jump here had been merely a pause in the battle. Cam had to trust that Will knew what he was doing when deciding to come here.

A flash behind the Engra made Cam feel at least a little reassured. In the attempts to surround the Engra one of the Aluvius battlecruisers had not checked their surroundings. They jumped into the asteroid field and were immediately hit by several asteroids that got through its shields as it phased in. It was still partially functioning but had severe system damage from the impacts and wouldn’t be firing on the Engra any time soon. Cam saw it all from his odd three hundred and sixty degree vision, even as he looked at the target ahead.

He launched his drones as they approached and sent them ahead to start damaging the ship. Each one cost six Psi Power to activate and maintain. The drain again was minimal. He could only control two at a time because of his limited Psi Power but he had a third in his drone bay. They were the smallest ship combat drones, but they could move even faster than a fighter. They surged on ahead of the squad to engage the target destroyer. Cam felt his perspective shift as he launched the drones. His awareness became spread out over them as well. In I-Flight it honestly didn’t feel as bad as it had been fighting in the corridors. Maybe because his consciousness already felt so different that adding more points of view it centered around wasn’t too much of a stretch.

“Drones?” said Tophet. Cam could hear the disgust in her voice.

“Yeah, I put some of my starting points into them,” Cam answered matter-of-factly. He wasn’t one to apologize for how he played his character. “Might as well use what I got.”

“You better be half as good as Quinest said,” she muttered. “Just don’t focus so much on them that you forget about doing your job as a wingman. If I die out here I’m going to come back and haunt you.”

“But you’ll just respawn,” he said.

“Yeah, back at base away from the action. Just fly smart, flyboy.”

They were closing in on the destroyer so Cam decided not to respond. He needed to focus on their approach. That was the most vulnerable time for the fighters. It was much easier to line up a shot against the small craft that were coming towards a ship than one flying across its broadside.

Will had maneuvered them on a path that would keep their angular velocity high as they approached. They would come around the rear end, below the engines and start the strafing run around the far side. Destroyers were by no means large ships but they housed up to a couple dozen crew, much larger than a fighter. A large fighter was maybe ten meters long. A destroyer was only about fifty meters. Their attack run would be less going down the side of the destroyer and more orbiting real fast to avoid shots from its guns. Still, they had to be quick. The longer they stayed in one location the easier it was for the enemy to get a lucky shot. As they approached, the destroyer’s guns fired and Cam sensed the other ships in his formation move to dodge the shot. He followed suit easily, with the fighter reacting to him almost before he could think the command. The guns were firing hardened shots, more shrapnel than slugs, designed to sit in the path of small craft and do damage as they barreled through it.

His drones has reached their maximum firing range from the destroyer and he ordered them to open fire with the ship. Their shots only did minor damage to the shields, but Cam could see that they were doing something. It was strange splitting his consciousness like this. At the same time he saw his ship as the destroyer continued to fire shots at the fighter formation. Two more shots spread shrapnel in their path but Will was directing them through it with ease. They were almost in range when Will shouted an order.

“Break!” he yelled over the comms. An alert flashed up at the same time. Cam reacted, but was too slow to come out unscathed. As he turned his craft, the last shot fired right where the squad would have passed through a moment later. He skirted the edge of the blast, hitting through a portion of the bullets spewed out on their path. He was bounced around with the impacts. Notifications of damage popped up on his vision and quickly faded. He felt a sting with each blow.

“That hurt,” he said over the channel to Tophet. Apparently he felt ship damage like pain in I-Flight. The pain faded a moment later, but the memory of it remained with him. It was worth the tradeoff to use I-Flight, but it was something to watch out for.

Tophet didn’t respond with words, but he felt an acknowledgement come back along with a gentle reminder that they were not out of the woods yet. Apparently they didn’t need words to communicate ship to ship.

Looking back at the last few shots Cam noticed what Will had seen. The first shots were designed to force the squad along a particular path, narrowing their predicted trajectory with each cycle of their weapons. That allowed the guns to fire the last shot where it knew Will’s squad would be flying towards. It was better than trying to out guess where they would be in a few seconds. Will had spotted it just early enough to shout the order. It was a smart tactic against the small fighters. Force them into a tight space and then just light up the whole area with as much firepower as you could.

They had made it but not unscathed. Cam’s shields were down to half. Other ships also had glancing blows, but nothing made it through the fighter’s shields. The shields would regenerate slowly, but he directed some of his ship’s power to increase that rate. He hoped they would be back up to full before he took another shot like it. If he had flown straight through the fire his ship would have been filled with holes and torn to pieces for sure.

It all only took him a few moments to process. It wasn’t that time felt slowed as much as he had access to so much information that things that made sense just clicked. But he didn’t have unlimited time to process everything. An alert showed up in his vision, indicating a location in space. It was odd to see overlayed on his surroundings, but then again he was flying as if his mind was part of the ship. The alert was marked as coming from Will as a rendezvous spot along with a trajectory to be on. A second alert came from Tophet with a suggested path to that point.

He followed it as tight as he could, and soon the pilots were back in the drill formation ready to begin their run. They were under the destroyer’s guns now and close enough that other enemy ships would be hesitant to take shots for fear of hitting their own.

“Let’s burn this down,” Will said over the comms. “Get the shields down and the other flights will finish it off.”

Acknowledgements came from the squad. Cam wondered how many were players and how many were npcs to fill in the gaps. He doubted he would ever want an npc for a wingman.

The other two flights were several seconds behind them. Flight one had drawn most of the fire, but the destroyer was bring its guns to bear on the third flight. The second one was already close enough to not be worth wasting the shots on. Will ordered them to flatten out their formation as they entered a tight orbit along the flank of the destroyer and they slowed down as much as they dared.

They began the attack run. Cam felt a small shake along his ship as he ordered the projectile weapons to open fire. Their heavy slugs impacted into the shield, delivering kinetic energy that the shields had to counter. His laser fired and partially penetrated the shields, but was less effective against the armor of the larger ship. He adjusted the laser’s wavelength to have it hit the shields and not pass through. It turned into a literal light show, as it blasted against the shields in many colors and also lighted up the shields with different colors of its own as it reacted to the lasers. There may be times for penetration weapons but the flight’s mission was to take down the shields.

The drones had been easy to control so far. He could see the pass from their perspective. They were orbiting the destroyer as close as they could, firing at its shields. They had taken down the shields just a percentage point or so before the squad had opened fire. Cam directed them to continue firing and meet the squad at the far side of the run.

The projectiles were hitting the shields for two hundred ten damage each every three seconds, and the laser was hitting for one eighty five every two. He didn’t fire his missiles. He only had two of them and they were designed for taking down other fighters. He couldn’t tell how many hitpoints the destroyer shield had, but his Combat Perception allowed him to see the percentage it was at. The shields dropped fast. Ninety and eighty were gone in a blink of an eye. It dropped down to seventy, then sixty. As they orbited Will adjusted their path so that they would fly along an unpredictable trajectory. At fifty percent they reached the far side of their path around the destroyer and started accelerating again. Guns fired as other enemy ships found angles to take safe shots, but nothing came close to hitting the flight.

As they continued their pass the Flight Two entered firing range and the shields dropped faster. Within a few seconds the shields were down and they started working on the armor. They angled the ships closer and dared to not accelerate for a few precious seconds. It would have them come out slower but allowed them to add some extra hurt to the destroyer’s armor. Cam felt his projectile guns pound into the armor. His lasers hit too, doing less damage than they had been to the shields. The squad focused on several spots along the way. The armor was reactive--behaving more like tiny nanoplates than a solid sheet of armor--and could move to fill in gaps if given long enough time, however focused fire could pierce into the hull. Flight Two was firing at similar focus spots on the other side.

A warning alarm blared while they were still in range of the destroyer. Cam saw missiles flaring out from all three destroyers. No five destroyers. More had jumped on the field. They had all fired simultaneously, launching over four dozen missiles in the sky. Some were coming from behind while others were aiming forward along their flight path. All were heading towards Red squadron’s trajectory back to the Engra. Back to safety.

“Spread formation, keep your eyes out for anything,” Will said. “Let’s get as many of them to follow us so Flight Two and Three can finish the job.”

Their run was all but finished anyways. Cam fired one last shot at the destroyer as he pulled back into the drill and then drifted to give Tophet some room. She in turn spread out from Will. Everyone started accelerating. Cam gave his drones an order and let them shoot off in two different directions.

“What’s your max speed, Calvera?” Tophet asked, as he kept pace with her.

“Nine hundred soft cap.”

“Alright, stay two klicks back and keep the missiles off my tail for now. When I give the signal floor it and don’t let up until I say or you’re at the battleship.”

“Let’s do it.”

The missiles behind them started acquiring their targets. Cam saw four of them lock onto him. They weren’t the ones to worry about. Chances of them hitting were slim. They were there to box them in. Force them into a line towards the missiles in front. The front missiles had time to match speed and go in for the kill. The enemy fleet had determined to focus one squadron, even as it left the three destroyers to their fate. The first one was all but crippled and Gold and Blue squadrons had started their attacks on two of the other destroyers.

He dropped back to two kilometers distance and let Tophet do her thing. She angled away from the other fighters in their flight. Will and the third lead pilot angled away from each other as well. This way they could get more of the missiles to target them. Six of the ones in front were locked onto Tophet. They were smart and had adjusted trajectories to cut her off no matter which way forward she went. For a few seconds she just kept her speed up and flew with what seemed random minor adjustments to her path.

“Target one down,” came a voice over his radio. Cam was too focused on following Tophet to follow up on it.

When they were less than five seconds from an impact she finally angled away from the missiles. She flew up and then to her right, which took her to the outer edge of the cluster of missiles. The one closest had just accelerated in the wrong direction to catch her. Cam realized her random adjustments had been to find an opening. He wasn’t sure if she knew what each maneuver would do to the missile AI or if she had truly been flying random to look for an opening, but it had worked. She flew past it, and fired her guns as it tried to adjust course to follow her. The missile exploded. Cam, who had been trying to follow as closely as possible had to swerve to avoid the explosion.

He swerved again back towards Tophet to see the other five missiles on her tail. She would only have a few seconds before they caught her. He pulled up to create an angle for a safe shot and fired. The lead missile exploded, taking out another that had been too close. The other three flew around, but were back to Tophet’s tail a moment later. Her guns swiveled to her rear and took out the next one.

As he fired on another one, a proximity alert let him know that he had missiles of his own on his tail. He missed his shot as the missile itself started doing evasive maneuvers.

“Get out of here Flyboy! I got this.” she shouted.

He immediately shot forward, not bothering to try the hero. He was the newbie pilot out here. Tophet also shot forward and outpaced him, flying far faster than his maximum speed. He angled slightly away from her so that they would have room to maneuver without running into each others missiles. She shot the next missile and he watched it explode. He didn’t have time to track the last one because he focused his attention on the missiles behind him. There were three, but they were closing in fast.

“Target two down,” came a voice from Gold squad.

Cam reached his maximum speed and felt his acceleration drop. He fired at the first one and missed, but kept his guns cycling. The missile was moving to avoid the shots, but it was slowing it down. A glancing hit on the missile took off its shields, but left no damage to any of its systems. He focused his laser on it, trying to burn away the plating at the tip. The laser tracked slightly better and two seconds later the missile exploded.

He fired again at the next missile and realized it was the last round in the magazine of his projectile guns. They started the cycle to reload, but the lead missile would hit before the cycle would finish. He aimed his laser, hoping it would be enough. He adjusted the frequency to penetrate the shields as much as possible. The laser was still diminished going through the shields, burning slowly through the armor. Soon it was apparent it wouldn’t work. The missile only had minimal armor, but it was still enough to to protect it until it hit Cam’s fighter. He watched as the armor dropped too slowly, but he was unable to do anything more. At this range any maneuvers would let the missile catch up faster and put him deep into the explosion radius that much quicker.

“Target three down.”

“All pilots regroup at the Engra,” came Will’s voice. It sounded strained.

Suddenly a swath of fire came from above. A few shots hit his shields, but most hit the missile. His ship was already too close and the explosion peeled away his shields and took a small bite into his armor. His systems were all still fine, but a direct hit from the last missile would finish off his ship. It hurt for just a few seconds, like his top layer of skin was set on fire and then doused.

“Pedal to the metal, Cam!” Will said.

Cam didn’t need to be told that. Even with the pain he felt, he still was accelerating as fast as he could. They were getting close to the Engra, but the missile would hit before he could make it. He saw Will’s fighter back off.

“You going to take another shot?” Cam asked. “It’s been avoiding too many of mine.”

“If I did you’d get caught in the explosion.”

“Better than a direct hit!”

“Just trust me,” Will said.

Cameron swallowed. Or whatever the mental equivalent of that was. His guns couldn’t hit the missile this close. Trust. He didn’t really have much choice.