"What do you think, Captain?"

  Trigger doesn't answer the man at his side right away, still taking in the beautiful sight before him with an appraising eye.

  In the spacious hangar is a new, immaculate X-02 Wyvern multi-role fighter jet, the same model of plane that nearly killed him in the skies above Castle Shilage during the war.

  "Captain?"

  Trigger's feet move on their own, his boots lightly scuffing the floor as he walks around the jet.

  The profile of the machine is the same as he remembers, but during his duel with Mihaly, the infamous "Mister X", every detail of the menacing bird was burned into his brain. This isn't the same plane. Not by a long shot.

  It still has the angular, inward-swept wings, and Trigger spies the seams on the inner edges that allow the wings to fold in, turning the jet into a nightmarishly fast delta shape. It still has the upward canards along the cockpit, like the whiskers of a tiger. It still has its two underbelly intakes, to feed a pair of twin ERG-1000 thrust vectoring engines.

  The similarities make the new additions stick out like sore thumbs.

  All along the plane and nearly invisible in its radar-absorbent hide are what look like reaction control systems, tiny maneuvering thrusters, far too small to make much of a realistic performance difference. Just behind the front canards, the two most visible thrusters are set facing downward in the frame.

  The engine nozzles are likewise unusual, with beefed up actuators that look as if they can turn the nozzles ninety degrees upward as well as downward. The engines, upon a second look, aren't the usual ERG-1000s. They're too large. It's not much, but there is more mass, as if there is more than meets the eye.

  Ah, that explains the thrusters by the canards. A VTOL conversion.

  Around the canopy of the cockpit, the edges and sealing are thicker to better shut out the outside world, and the canopy itself is thicker.

  Trigger's hand reaches out, and he lightly presses a finger to the plane.

  The feel of the plating isn't quite right, and it stubbornly rejects the warmth of his touch.

  "You made this plane space-worthy," Trigger finally says, not asks.

  There is a sharp intake of breath from the man beside him. "...You pieced that together just by looking?"

  Trigger finally turns and looks at his companion.

  His glasses glinting in the light of the hanger and a tablet computer clutched to his side, one Doctor Schroeder stares uneasily back.

  Schroeder… During the war, the scientist played a key role in making Trigger's life difficult. Schroeder was a star in the now defunct Grunder Industries, having several PhDs in everything from biology to robotics, and it showed in his work producing the AI used to pilot the drone fighters Erusea is so fond of.

  Huginn and Muninn, the most advanced drones deployed in the final days of the war, were Schroeder's masterpieces. Armed with AI based off of the Ace of Aces, Mihaly Shilage, and the most advanced airframes to ever see the sky, the pair of drones killed dozens of Trigger's fellow airmen.

  Trigger downed them both in his F22 without a scratch, even chasing one into the cramped bowels of Harling's Space Elevator as it desperately tried to relay the data it gathered from him to the nearest drone factory.

  As his types often do, Schroeder escaped prosecution for his actions in the Lighthouse War by instead offering his services to the Osean government. Now living under constant scrutiny, the Belkan scientist who nearly turned the Lighthouse War into a world-wide disaster puts his mind to use for the Osean military, building things like the fighter before Trigger.

  'At least he seemed remorseful for nearly starting a never-ending robot war.' Trigger allows himself a thin smile. Then he holds out a hand to Schroeder. "The specs, please."

  Schroeder hesitates, then gives his tablet to Trigger, who begins to read.

  Long used to reading tech manuals for planes, the Osean Ace homes in on all the relevant info.

  He was right. This X-02 was built from the ground up for high atmosphere and even space missions. Life support, zero-G maneuvering surfaces, a secondary ion-based propulsion system for in-vacuum burns, everything.

  He reads further, into the nitty-gritty.

  The fuel system was totally reworked with bleeding edge tech, likely Belkan in origin. Low-Orbit Magnetoscooping sounds Belkan at least. The idea of collecting particles in low-orbit with an electromagnetic ramscoop, ionizing them and compressing it into fuel seems wild, but drones outflying humans was equally wild a few years ago, so Trigger moves on.

  The pulse-laser weapons of Huginn and Muninn have replaced the cannon of the X-02S, and upon further reading, it looks like 'pulse laser' was just dressing for the less tech-minded brass. The actual weapon uses charged muon pulses. The now more-matured assembly should be good for hundreds of thousands of shots, and can re-arm with the plane's Magnetoscoop.

  The final huge change actually forces a blink from Trigger.

  X-03S "Stratos Wyvern"

  Advanced Multi-Environment Fighter Orbital Mission Profile Approved

  Mission Ready Armament:

  XMC-2A Muon Cannon

  AIM-9Z Multipurpose Vacuum-Ready Missile x300

  AGM-88X/A "8AAMS" Multi Lock Vacuum-Ready Missile x125

  Gen 2 EML x100

  Support Systems:

  Directed infrared countermeasures (DIRCM)

  Integrated radar jamming

  Microflare/chaff multiplex launcher (zero-g compatible)

  Early Warning and Predictive Threat AI

  Trigger reads it once more just to ensure he got everything right, then he slowly turns his head to Schroeder. "How did you fit all of this in one jet?"

  The scientist fidgets under Trigger's stare. "A breakthrough in Armament Displacement. It's still off the record."

  For the second time today, surprise flashes across Trigger's face.

  Armament Displacement, the name given to the space-bending tech that allows fighters to carry far more munitions than they should be able to, has been a black-boxed mystery for years. It was too power hungry for small scale applications, and rapidly hit diminishing returns when scaled up, but found its sweet spot in machines the size of jet fighters. Armand Yusef, the Belkan scientist who pioneered the tech, was killed in the Belkan war of 1995, and his discovery remained in its infancy ever since.

  "You really are something, aren't you, doctor?" Trigger asks with a tilt of his head.

  "That's not all," Schroeder says with a small frown, accepting the tablet back from Trigger. "We've been experimenting with Yusef's technology now that we've cracked it, and the results are promising. So promising that the Osean military wants to make a display of another prototype."

  Trigger gestures for Schroeder to continue.

  The doctor looks down at this tablet, swiping to a new page. "How familiar are you with Einstein-Rosen Bridges, Captain?"

  "You're joking" are nearly the first words from Trigger's mouth, but he thinks better of it. "Space bent and connected in two places is the general idea; a wormhole, correct?"

  Schroeder nods, eyes flicking between Trigger and the tablet. "That's the general idea, yes. But we're not talking about theoretical physics anymore. We're past that."

  He swipes again and turns his tablet around. The screen shows a glowing ring encasing a fighter silhouette, trailing lines of telemetry data. "Yusef didn't just theorize about wormholes. He left behind a fragment of something else. A way to open them, in very controlled, very short-lived bursts. Until recently, it was too unstable to use outside of lab conditions. But with the miniaturized field regulators we've developed, that's changed."

  Trigger's eyes cut over to the jet, then back to Schroeder. "You're saying this tech doesn't just store weapons anymore."

  "Correct." Schroeder looks up. "We've figured out how to project a localized displacement event—a short-lived, traversable bridge between two points on Earth. Think tactical-scale teleportation. Not orbit-to-surface. Not orbital insertion. I'm talking real-time redeployment of strike craft mid-air, anywhere on the globe."

  He turns the tablet back around, types an input, and turns it back toward Trigger. On the screen, simulation runs: the X-03S vanishing into a swirling distortion above Osea, then reappearing over Eursea less than a second later, engines flaring.

  "Three seconds of stable transfer time," Schroeder continues. "One-time use. Each jump costs millions of credits and burns out a superconductive core the size of a soda can, but it's enough. You could launch from Oured and be over Farbanti before they even pick you up on radar. No warning. No flight time. Just—arrival."

  "We're calling it Stratos Deployment," Schroeder adds. "The Osean top brass wants to show it off at full scale. You'll be the first."

  Trigger is silent for a moment, pondering all the things shown to him. Once more he looks upon the jet, his stare locking onto the tail of the plane.

  There, his personal insignia, a wolf clutching a revolver in its jaws, stares back with its usual frenzied gaze.

  Only after the war did the insignia feel fitting, for its how every Eursean pilot looked at him: an animal lunging for their throats with teeth bared.

  A jet that must have cost billions of credits to produce, a proud, trumpeting military display of wormhole asset deployment, and all with him, Osea's Ace of Aces, at the helm.

  Someone else might take it at face value, but after all his time in war and the ugly politics therein, it's clear what this all means.

  Foes of Osea, you have nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide. Not even space is safe.

  Trigger nods slowly, crossing his arms. "Impressive stuff, doctor. Impressive stuff."

  The city of Oured gleams under a clear, sapphire sky. Flags ripple along rooftops, children weave between legs holding toy planes, and the streets pulse with fanfare. Brass bands march in lockstep with tanks and APCs, their music reverberating between government buildings like triumphant thunder. It's been a year since the Lighthouse War ended, and Osea is determined to celebrate the peace.

  Dr. Schroeder shifts his weight under the formal OADF uniform, watching from the command platform near the plaza's edge. His eyes, however, are fixed not on the parade, but on the slate-gray tablet in his hands. The device feeds him a live stream of telemetry, its interface a dance of colored bars and fluctuating readouts. To anyone else, it's gibberish. To him, it's everything.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Stratos Deployment is online.

  This is the moment. If this works, then he'll have redeemed himself, both in his own eyes and in the eyes of the Osean brass.

  He watches as the LRSSG prepares to jump—eight fighters on standby at an airbase several hours away. The cores are charged. The bridge is stabilized. Phase distortion readings stay well within safety margins. Everything is green.

  The parade announcer crackles to life through the plaza loudspeakers:

  "Citizens of Osea, please direct your attention to the skies… presenting the heroes of the Lighthouse War—the Long Range Strategic Strike Group!"

  Schroeder sucks in a breath.

  A visual ripple distorts the air high above. It lasts less than a second, just a shimmer, like heat haze bending light, and then seven jets streak across the Oured skyline in perfect formation.

  The crowd erupts. A wave of awe and applause surges through the plaza like a living force.

  Schroeder frowns.

  He counts again.

  Seven jets.

  Not eight.

  The lead position—Trigger's position—is empty.

  A subtle shift passes through the crowd. It's slow, but the ones who notice the problem whisper to their neighbors, who whisper to their own neighbors. The applause continues, but the energy warps, confused. Everyone is smiling, but it's with uncertainty.

  High above, Count, Trigger's 2nd, moves his Flanker-D to the lead position in the formation, then guides the rest of the team in a long holding pattern, circling the parade like a flock of uneasy birds.

  Schroeder's tablet lights up with alerts. His phone vibrates in his coat pocket. Messages from upper brass begin flooding in: "Where is Trigger?" "Explain the deviation." "Is this intentional?"

  Count's voice cuts through the radio static from the holding pattern above, crackling through the radio on Schroeder's belt.

  "Hey, uh, command? Where's Trigger? Don't tell me this is some last-minute stunt."

  A pause. Then again:

  "Command, I'm not playing around. Where the hell is Trigger?!"

  "He didn't get left behind, did he?" Jaeger, another LRSSG pilot asks. "I hope not. My son's down in the crowd. It would be kinda embarrassing for us if he saw a flub…"

  "That's assuming Trigger didn't get turned into paste by whatever quack-tech the Belkan cooked up…" Húxiān, hothead of the LRSSG mumbles.

  "Don't say that!" Count shouts her down.

  "I knew this was a bad idea." Húxiān speaks again, heedless of Count.

  Schroeder answers none of it. He taps in a call to the control room at the LRSSG staging base. It picks up immediately, too fast, and a voice on the other end is panicked.

  "Doctor! W-we saw them off, sir! They all deployed clean, the whole squadron, just like the model said except-!"

  "Except what?" Schroeder growls.

  "There was a decimal, small one… One of the bridge field parameters drifted. We caught it after ignition, but Trigger's plane… we're not getting a return signal. No transponder. No pingback. He's just… He's not here."

  Schroeder's hand tightens around the tablet. His stomach drops out. The data doesn't lie, and the absence on the readout is worse than failure—it's silence.

  No error flags. No crash report.

  No wreckage.

  Just nothing.

  Trigger is gone.

  To say Mila is having a bad time is a bit of an understatement. Honestly, this entire mission has been a disaster.

  Inside her junky V-16 Sparrowhawk fighter, the mink woman pulls a hard roll that makes the entire frame groan, and just in time, as a bolt of plasma flies so close it sears the paint off of her left wing. Another bolt steaks by overhead, and she curses when the bright light makes spots dance in her vision.

  God damn this cheap hunk of shit and all of the cost cutting. Who doesn't polarize a cockpit canopy in this day and age?! Ugh, how did she even get into this mess?

  It seemed like a simple gig for a fledgling freelancer like herself. Escort a merchant transport ship filled with drinking water to a station a few sectors away. Pays like crap, but even the modest amount of money will keep Mila's stomach full and her ship fueled for a few more days. The route was easy, so the merchant, a duck lady named Deb, was willing to take her and a few other freelancers loitering around a nearby shipyard for work.

  Then a pirate frigate with eight fighters trailing it ambushed them, demanding everything they had.

  When they were told that "everything they had" was just regular water, the pirates decided to space them instead.

  Mila downed two, and her three, one-time teammates managed to take down two more pirates between them before they met their gristly ends. The merchant ship, totally unarmed, has been of no help, leaving Mila in a desperate 4-on-1.

  'Even if I do shoot down these guys…' Mila casts a look of despair at the pirate frigate, a swooping 200 meter thing with wing-mounted engines and point-defence turrets trained on her. 'I'm not getting away from this one…'

  It seemed like a great idea at the time, joining her planetary militia for training, then leaving with just enough cash for a down-payment on a 2nd hand fighter. She dreamed big unlike other girls. She grew up alongside her brothers listening to stories about James McCloud and team Star Fox, and the second generation of Star Fox helmed by Fox McCloud has already surpassed the first, so how hard could it be for her to be a rich and famous star pilot?

  Mila's HUD flashes in alarm as a plasma bolt nicks her wingtip. She looks down at her radar, resignation making her stomach cold.

  There are two blips behind her and one each coming from her sides to box her in. Mila shudders and grips her flight stick so hard that her claws cut into her palm.

  'I'm going to die.'

  Her radio crackles, and a comm feed opens on her HUD, showing her the smirk of a self-satisfied bulldog with a cracked, yellowed tooth poking out from his underbite. "Its nothing personal, girly." He says with a smoker's laugh. "Its a, uh, whadua call it? A policy! A no witness policy."

  His smirk falls into a snarl. "'specially after you smoked Rodney and-!"

  Without warning, the feed cuts out in an explosion, and one of the blips vanishes from Mila's radar.

  The other pirates flail for a moment. "What happened?! Frank just got spaced!" One of them exclaims over open radio.

  Mila checks her radar again, and she sees it.

  Something faint, with the radar footprint of a gnat, is coming in fast. If not for its speed, she would have missed it.

  A flash of white flies by at impossible speed, turning and missing Mila's flank so closely that her Sparrowhawk actually shakes from the engine wash. A flash of pink reflects off her canopy, and another pirate is turned into space debris.

  "Jacky!" One pirate laments.

  "You no-good bastard! You're fucking dead!" The other remaining pirate screams in fury.

  Both of them break off from Mila to chase the white flash.

  Or they try.

  The pirates are flying HR-G11 fighters, sometimes called "Hurg!"s from their vomit-inducing lack of inertial dampeners. Cheap, fast, decently maneuverable at the expense of any safety or comfort, they're more than a match for any Sparrowhawk, and an ace pilot can be a menace in one.

  Despite their speed and agility, neither can get a bead on Mila's mysterious savior.

  The white blur zips through space with the speed of a comet, pulling turns that would make even a military grade inertial dampener scream. The pirates groan in pain over the radio with each harsh maneuver they fail to match, and the white fighter never lingers for a moment, not letting them line up a shot. That doesn't stop the furious pirates from holding their triggers down, sending plasma bolts flying out into the expanse of space.

  Mila turns wide, angling her ship to watch with wide, disbelieving eyes.

  The unknown fighter pulls into a steep ascent, baiting the pirates with a textbook feint. They chase, guns blazing, too eager. Then, without warning, the craft flips, not just pitch rotation, but a full vectoring reversal. Its engines swing forward, thrust-vectoring nozzles flaring as they counter the ship's momentum with precision that only comes from practice.

  In atmosphere, that move would be called a post-stall maneuver, the kind of thing only the best can pull off. In space, it's harder. There's no drag, no lift, no natural stall to exploit, but this pilot pulls it off with maneuvering thrusters and engines alone.

  For one impossible moment, the fighter flies backwards, nose-to-nose with its own velocity vector, before the main engines flare in an afterburner pulse, hammering the ship to a dead halt.

  The pirates scream past him, their inertia betraying them, and for a moment, Mila can finally see the ship.

  Angular is the first word she thinks of. The white fighter is flanked by two inward-swept wings made of harsh angles, like a raptor forged from steel. Its rear is taken up by a pair of massive cylindrical engines with equally massive intakes on its belly, harkening to the pre-spaceflight days.

  'Must have some crazy in-atmo moves,' Mila thinks to herself, looking at the cockpit.

  Inside the fighter, a figure clad in a dark flight suit and full helmet sits easily, too easily, like this is routine.

  The figure's head turns to her, and Mila shivers, swearing she feels eyes lock with her own.

  The moment, which is in reality only a second, passes. The unknown pilot then calmly rolls back into pursuit, now behind the pirates, right where he wants to be.

  Both of the pirates curse and split up, with the unknown fighter remaining glued to the tail of one of them.

  The pirate fighter banks hard, weaving in jagged, desperate bursts as its pilot tries every evasive trick in the book, but it's like the white raptor is stuck to him. No weapons fire. No comms. Just presence.

  Mila narrows her eyes.

  Why isn't he shooting?

  The pirate's panicked voice crackles over open comms, half-choked with fear. "I-I'm breaking off, pulling away! Someone get him off me!"

  No one answers. The other pirate hesitates and doesn't pursue.

  Still the white fighter doesn't fire.

  It dances instead, every adjustment calculated, graceful, pacing just outside striking range. The pirate jinks left, hard, and the white fighter follows. He yaws right, cuts thrust for a stutter brake, and the white fighter follows. Every move mirrored half a beat behind.

  Not just chasing. Studying.

  A chill runs down Mila's spine.

  She's seen plenty of pilots. Drunks, hotshots, burnouts with death wishes, but this… this is different. It's almost clinical.

  Or instinctual.

  Like a cat watching a mouse before the pounce.

  She doesn't realize she's been holding her breath until the pirate's voice cracks again, rising in pitch. "Fuck this! I'm out!"

  The pirate hits his main thrusters, trying to break away on raw speed.

  The white fighter responds in kind, one fluid push of engine bloom, and it closes the distance effortlessly. It slips under the pirate's belly, rotates on a yaw-axis spin, and plants itself directly in front of the enemy's nose.

  "Help me! Someone help-!"

  Then, and only then, it fires.

  One burst from a cannon Mila doesn't recognize, one with sharp, pink light, and the pirate ship blossoms into a brief, silent explosion.

  The last pirate fighter says nothing, he just turns and flares his engines into full-burn.

  Turning on a dime, the white fighter goes to rush the fleeing HR-G11 down, only to juke into a roll and dodge a barrage of fire from behind.

  'Shit! The frigate!'

  Mila looks back towards the pirate vessel, which is firing every gun it can angle at the mystery fighter, filling the space around them with multicolored flashes. With only one fighter left, it looks like they've given up any reservations about accidentally striking one of their own.

  However, Mila's savior refuses to be denied his prey. A weapons bay opens on the fighter, and a missile streaks out towards the fleeing pirate even as the fighter wildy weaves between energy bolts. Then he turns and beelines for the large ship trying to swat him down.

  The final pirate fighter fails to dodge the missile silently screaming towards him, and in a blast of debris and a truncated sound of pain over the radio, is no more.

  Although the pirate frigate's comms aren't open, their panic is plain to see with how frantically they fire on the white fighter.

  The white fighter closes in, directly from the front where incoming fire is thinned out to a single turret.

  Flash!

  Or it was a single turret. One blast of the fighter's pink energy cannon reduces the hardpoint to slag.

  The sleek fighter slows to a casual cruise, then its underbelly bay splits open, revealing a long, cylindrical weapon that begins to glow.

  A moment later, every screen on Mila's panel screams with a warning.

  EM Spike Detected!

  WARNING: Systems Disrupted!

  "What the hell?"

  She winces, shielding her eyes as her HUD glitches and momentarily whites out, blotted by a hard bloom of electromagnetic static. Through the dazzle, she catches sight of the weapon now fully extended from the fighter's belly, glowing with an ominous, pink-white corona of charging energy.

  The noise over comms cuts to static for a second, as if reality itself hiccups.

  Then the shot fires.

  A horizontal pillar of energy lances forward. Mila doesn't even see it strike, not truly. One second, the pirate frigate is intact. The next, there's a smoking hole bored clean through its spine, from bow to stern. Inside, internal bulkheads split like paper as air, fire, and corpses spill out into the void.

  One shot is all it takes for the frigate to die. Its lights flicker out in silence, and its engines go dim, shuddering to a halt. Without any power for its control surfaces, the frigate begins to drift away aimlessly.

  Mila stares, unblinking.

  "...Was that a railgun?" she asks herself. "On a fighter? Who puts a railgun on a fighter!?"

  Out in the void, the white fighter begins a slow roll, as if searching for more targets. Finding none, it banks away from the wreckage without a sound as its railgun retracts. Not a word over comms, not a boast, nothing.

  Mila exhales shakily, realizing she'd stopped breathing. Just her own breath sounds like thunder in the silence that follows.

  "Who are you?"

  Then her comms crackle back to life, and a message on all bands goes out.

  "Thank you, thank you so much!" The voice of Mila's client blasts from the merchant entirely too loudly. A moment later, a video feed of the dramatic duck also pops up on Mila's HUD. "That was dreadful! Horrible! I can't believe our escort failed so utterly! I knew I should have hired those anteater fellows at the docks!" She says pressing a feathered hand to her forehead dramatically.

  Mila frowns mightily. "I did shoot down two of them, you know!" she snarks. "All for pretty lousy pay, I might add!"

  "Goodness, one of you made it?" Deb's sounds surprised and annoyingly put out. She looks over at Mila, finally seeing that her vid feed is up. "Well, you have my thanks, dear," Deb sniffs dismissively. "Now, may I meet my dashing savior?" She says, obviously talking to the white fighter.

  For a long moment, there is no answer, and Mila begins to fidget. She stares down at one of her blank side monitors, the glossy blank surface showing only her own reflection. Her nervous face, with her red eyes, sweaty yellow fur, and disheveled blond hair is all she sees in return. 'I could really use a shower after all this.' The mink thinks to herself. 'Who knew fearing for your life would make you sweat so much?'

  Then a new video feed opens up.

  On the other side, a vaguely simian face unlike any species Mila has ever seen stares back with flinty eyes. The mystery person's skin is pale, and his hair is hidden under his helmet. His mouth is set into a severe frown as he flicks his eyes between Mila and something else, likely Deb's video feed.

  The man takes a deep breath, then pinches the bridge of his nose with two fingers. "God-damned Belkans…" He mutters.

  …What's a Belkan?