Having survived another launch from the catapults, Mino fell into formation with Irry, following her orders. The long-range missiles only composed half of his capacity—he had made sure never to leave without proper, short range, dogfight missiles. He broke into a short, downward spiral as a number of Invid barreled past and demonstrated marksmanship even shoddier than his own. Mino glanced in the mirrors he had set up in his canopy and throttled forward to engage. He had just managed his first kill when a voice came over the radio.

“Wex to squadron. Bandits on my one. Engaging, someone cover me.” Mino looked over and found Tash in the distance, angling, ‘down,’ into a pack of shock troopers to his right.

	 “Copy, Wex, make way for missiles.” He brought the nose of his craft around as she made her strike and began the lock sequence. Once Tash broke far enough away from the Invid to give Mino a clear shot, he began to cycle through the targets he had lined up, gifting each with a pair of missiles before they could scatter too far. He nudged his Alpha into loose roll so that he could check his underside and rear as he awaited the results of his attack. [i]Glad I didn’t waste all the fireworks on that first wave,[/i] he thought as the missiles hit home. One of the shock troopers began to pull away, before it collided with the debris of its fallen allies whom had been launched by the blasts. “That got ‘em, where to next?” Mino asked as he rocketed into a supporting position near Tash.