As the brakes engaged, Shahim throttled back and almost immediately his fighter started to stall, amidst a squall of alarms, as his engine struggled against the steep climb and sudden loss of thrust. Without the power it needed to counteract its steep angle, Shahim’s plane quickly lost momentum and started to fall, and he allowed the plane to turn downward as its weight took control. His two pursuers stared in disbelief as they raced up toward the stalling fighter above them, and the leader broke off immediately, angling right in an inverted curve to bring him back to the perpendicular. But Pelishar Five powered onward a moment longer, veering slightly as he sliced toward the other jet, the nose of Shahim’s plane falling lazily downward toward him.

In a flash, Pelishar Five thundered across Shahim’s view, the other plane’s jet spasming fire as it surged past. Shahim was ready for it. His plane’s 20mm Gatling gun lashed out like a claw, forty bullets slicing a line down the other plane’s belly in half a second, striking home at extreme close range. The big air intake under Pelishar Five’s cockpit erupted as the plane was ripped apart, the pilot screaming as a bullet tore up through his thigh, shattering his hip bone as it speared up his side. Within a fraction of a second, the large lead bolt had powered up through his torso, popping the poor man’s ribs in quick succession as it made its way up and out of his shoulder, flying out through the reinforced glass dome above him even as it splattered his blood across it.

As the last of the bullets broke into the ballistic plane’s combustion chamber, it released the superheated fuel from its confines and the plane consumed itself in fire. Within a second of opening fire, Shahim was already hundreds of meters below his first victim, angling downward and falling fast now as his engines sucked in new air and his plane regained its legs. His mind deftly assessed his remaining targets.