Camilla swore as the Αστραπή Strike zipped past Sparr, and then left her Gladiator behind. So much for textbooks. She edged her foot on the throttle, bringing her speed up to par.

"Dammit, kid. If you were out in the woods with knife and a grizzly charged at you, would you run at it?" 

[i]“Cam, twenty bucks says I have to save his ass. Ten says I have to do it while Katya blames me for it,”[/i] came Sparr's voice in her ear.

"No deal. Your money's mine, and I'm in no objection to that scenario."

A blip sounded and the dots appeared on Camilla's own radar screen as the objects came into  the computer's range. Her C3i suite displayed the rest of the Ghosts and their respective visuals. Some of her squad were certainly taking their time waking up. 
The bogeys were still dots in the distance, but seconds passed as their silhouettes became less hazy. Camilla thought she spotted the bobbing of a radio antenna, the glint of a frame optic, and that's when her early warning system screamed.

A flash of light sparkled from the three frames, growing closer faster than Camilla could process.  
“Contact front!” she barked, wheeling off to put a low ridge between her frame and the aggressors. 
"Not bogeys anymore, Troy!" The warhead zipped after her, then altered course in a wild arc as chaff full of metal particles confused its electronics. It collided into the ground nearby, spraying dust over the Gladiator.

Camilla righted herself, popping her autocannon over the hill crest and letting loose 27 mm rounds in a staccato of gunfire. The shots weren’t so much aimed to kill, but suppress: any pilot worth their salt would leap to cover in the face of oncoming fire. Unless they were extraordinarily brave or stupid, maybe.

“22B, your friends are hostiles! We’re engaging!”
“Copy, we’ve got eyes on at this time. Positive ID on hostiles: three Racers.”

[i]Racer[/i] was the Jovian code for XBM-21s. Cronians. Stavros cursed silently. The trio had broken off their head-on approach and veered into a series of low dunes on the outskirts of the area. They were still moving at decent speed, wasting no time closing distance. The crests of the dunes made it difficult to get an accurate sight picture, but Camilla kept up her suppressive fire in bursts. An occasional reply of autocannon rounds answered back, raking the hill in front of her.

“They’re getting real fucking close,” she muttered. “Let’s get a perimeter up, people! Stop them dead!”