EIGHT WEEKS OF SPECIAL TRAINING HAD FAILED TO PREPARE HIM for the silent insanity of space warfare. Disintegration and silent death, the pinpoints of distant light that were laser beams locked on to his ship, the stormy marriage of anti-particles, the grotesque beauty of short-lived spherical explosions…
Rick Hunter fired the VT’s thrusters as two Battlepods closed in on him from above the relative above, at any rate, for there was no actual up or down out here, no real way to gauge acceleration except by the constant force that kept him pinned to the back of his seat or pushed him forward when the retros were kicked in, no way to judge velocity except in relation to other Veritech fighters or the SDF-1 itself. Just that unvarying starfield, those cool and remote fires that were the backdrop of war.