Being nervous was fine. Flying nervous was not.

Brute’s sheepish chuckle echoed in his flying as Archangel Eight smoothed out and resumed its original intercept course.

Steph smiled. “Better, Brute.”

On their scanners, the Archangels watched as one of the alien vessels altered course toward them.

“You think he’s going to swat us?” Brute said.

Even Stephanos snickered at the irreverent smirk he heard over the tac-net.

He was cut off abruptly when Brute let out a shocked yell and his fighter rocked violently in space. “I’m hit! The cam-plate mods were useless!”

Commander Stephanos cursed under his breath, linking his HUD into Brute’s systems and checking the other plane’s diagnostics. In a flash, he found the problem.

“Brute! Calm down, have your system analyze the frequency and readjust. The fighter isn’t using the same frequency as the capital ship!” Stephanos watched the Archangel shudder in front of him, reading the fear and panic in the plane’s demeanor, just as he would have read it in the pilot’s face. The hit didn’t look bad; luckily, Brute had managed to evade a continuous beam.

Stephanos tapped in a few commands, bringing his own cam-plate modifications up and then setting the computer to automatically control the system.

Originally adapted from active camouflage technology, the cam-plates used on both the Archangel fighters and the Odyssey itself really came into its own as a laser defense. By adjusting the absorption and reflection properties of the nanometer-sized particulates in the coating, the plates could alternately absorb or reflect energy on various bands with efficiencies exceeding 98 percent. With old-style single frequency lasers, as had seen heavy use at the beginning of the war, a prepared cam-plate defense rendered the area it was protecting effectively invulnerable. Of course, the power levels the Odyssey and the Angels were now encountering were so far beyond the upper limits of the plates’ stress testing that it was really anyone’s guess as to their effectiveness.

Too bad.

So Stephanos and the rest of the Archangels would have to entrust their lives, yet again, to the computer’s adaptive capabilities.

Well, it’s better than nothing, Stephanos thought as the program self-tested and flashed all green across the board. “All fighters, switch to auto-adapt combat programs.”

“O…okay,” Brute stammered a bit as his hands flew over the controls, almost of their own volition, reacting instinctively, activating the analysis programs and algorithms that connected them to the plane’s armor plating.

Stephanos was relieved to see Brute’s plane smooth out as the computer adjusted its cam-plates to reflect the incoming laser attack. He was considerably more relieved when Brute’s wing stopped smoking as the automated repair system put out the small electrical fire and rerouted the area’s circuitry.

“Angel Lead, missile away.”

The rocket flared briefly under Stephanos’s wing and flew away from the plane, accelerating toward the first of the enemy fighters. The alien ship had barely begun to react to the attack when the missile impacted and delivered its payload.

The oddly spherical explosion that was unique to zero gravity blinded both pilots and sensors for a moment before it cleared.