Space maneuvering was pushing the envelope to the nth degree, and for a pilot like himself, it was the height of his craft.

“We even changed the airframes three times, so they just sort of look like the original Angels.”

“Atmospheric fighters?” The phrase awakened a sense of horror in her. “You flew these against your own people?”

We’ve been taught that the Others often warred amongst themselves…but to see proof of it? Milla shuddered at the thought of this magnificent machine mowing down the very people who had built it. People like this. We would probably have been better off if they had stayed on their own be-damned planet.

Stephanos caught her reaction and the little shiver that ran through her body—a reaction that he was used to, in all too many ways. His face hardened, the way it always did when someone questioned the morality of his choice to serve in the military. “When we had to. These planes were built for one reason—defense. Millions would have died if these hadn’t been built. Billions more would be under the oppression of a dictatorship. Don’t get too caught up in moralizing before you learn the whole story, lady.”

Milla swallowed her revulsion for the moment; it would do her no good here. “Tell me more, Stephan.”

“That’s ‘Stephanos.’ It’s a call sign, not my name. Fighter jocks use call signs as a badge of pride in their abilities.” Stephanos turned his attention back to the fighter in front of him. “The Archangel fighter is the fastest, most maneuverable plane we’ve ever devised. We normally measure aircraft speed by multiples of Mach, the speed of sound through our atmosphere, but the Archangel is a little different. The designers learned early on that the Archangel wasn’t limited to the same factors that its predecessors were. A good pilot could bring an Archangel fighter to speeds measured in fractions of light-speed—even in Earth’s atmosphere.”

“Light-speed!” Milla was shocked. Fractions, or even near light-speed, inside an atmosphere were possible, but she’d never heard of a pilot who could keep control at those speeds. Perhaps in a very high atmosphere, but at lower altitudes the pilot’s first mistake would be his last—and, most likely, take a considerable number of people with him when he hit the ground with the force of a nuclear detonation.

“Yeah, the CM field systems that give the ship its VTOL—that’s vertical takeoff and landing capabilities—also allow the pilot to create a vacuum pocket around the fighter. Sort of a bubble that the air slides around so you don’t get the friction that would normally destroy the plane,” Steph said.

Like all pilots, Stephanos was required to know almost as much about his plane as the people who had built it. Knowing just which doodad had to be attached to which thingamajig had saved more than one pilot.

“The same thing also prevents any shock waves that might be caused by something flying at those speeds.” Stephanos smirked. “In practice, though, we don’t go much above Mach Ten…”