This post was inspired by a prompt in the Worldbuilding Community - Worldbuilding Prompt #621 - Twinkling Lights. Enjoy !
Kovatski adjusted the controls on the panel in front of him. He did it almost absent-mindedly, he knew every worn dial and button by heart, his hands moving with the speed of long-practiced muscle memory. But his real attention was focused outwards, scanning space to starboard, waiting for the moment to come.
His ship was an old fleet-surplus Mirage Miracle, a stubby little one-person fighter. It was ugly as hell but superbly effective. A nice mix of durability, hard-hitting firepower and incredible agility. A proper scrappy dogfighter, famed as "the ship that built the Empire", it was that much of an ancient design. Even now, updated variants served in second-line and planetary defence squadrons.
This one had been his. He'd flown it when he served in the Demon Wings Squadron of The Gilann Planetary Guard. As a border world, they'd seen a lot of action, and Kovatski was a multiple ace, the best in his command. When he'd finally been invalided out, they let him keep the wreck of his fighter, the craft he'd flown and finally been shot down in.
They called it a write off, and they were correct. It had taken him ten years to find all the parts he needed and rebuild it. But he hadn't repainted it. The stubby fuselage and wings still bore most of their original yellow paint, faded and worn. Just how he liked it.
Now, he wanted to do something for the colonists he'd protected and who in turn had made the scarred and part-cyborg ex-fighter pilot so welcome in their community. It was a "thank you" to them, and a "f**k you" to the authorities who had refused to let him rejoin his squadron after he'd been healed and rebuilt.
"Younger blood" they'd said they wanted. "Someone less jaded", and "someone with fresh ideas and imagination." Well, he'd show them imagination.
There they were, just coming into view to starboard. He used his eyes, not needing to rely on instruments.
In the distance, a string of twinkling lights was just visible, growing brighter by the minute. The inhabitants of Gilann called them "God's Tears" or "The Necklace". A string of comets that came around once every eighty Gilann years.
They might once have been a single celestial body, but gravity or some other force had torn them apart. Whatever had happened had imparted incredible velocity, they orbited faster than anything else in the system, and were a single string of dozens of comets all remaining close to each other.
As they swung in closer to the star that gave light and life to the system, they started out-gassing, forming their distinctive tails. This is what Kovatski had been waiting for, hanging here silently in the dark for several days.
When the tails had merged into a single bright stream punctuated with the glowing orbs of heated ice, he started his engines. Accelerating hard, he matched velocity with the lead comet. Up close, it was a massive jagged mountain of ice venting plumes of white gas. A terrifying contrast to the simple glowing dot they would look like on the planet below.
Flipping the fighter over, Kovatski rolled it behind the comet and into the tail, a hail of white hydrogen, oxygen and water vapour.
Flipping a switch activated a modification he'd fitted to the fighter. Understandably, they hadn't let him keep the weapon systems, but that had freed up a huge amount of weight. Some of it he'd used to boost the engine power. The rest was for a pair of optional long range fuel tanks he'd fitted under the wings. But there was no fuel in them. Instead, they started spraying copper sulphate crystals out into the comet's coma.
Swinging to port again, he curled the fighter around the next comet, a mere ten miles behind the first. And then the next, still dropping crystals into the swirling gases. The next four comets were easier; they were further apart, and a series of graceful "S" curves gave him just the course he needed.
On and on it went like this, two hours of intense flight, until he emerged from the tail of the last comet. Then he accelerated hard, back to the first comet. Diving into it's tail, he released the last of his copper sulphate.
Then he ignited his booster.
The fighter leaped forward, skimming just above the comet's surface. But the tail of plasma it left behind ignited the gases in the tail. The flame spread rapidly down the length of the merged tails of all the comets, and the copper sulphate crystals did their work.
On the surface of Gilann, they had the most incredible display anyone had ever seen. It wasn't the usual series of white dots and feint white tails that came around once every eight decades. No; the heavens were bridged like a rainbow by the twinkling white lights of the comets linked by a great streak of bright blue fire.
It was legendary.
Kovatski got into so much trouble with Planetary Space Traffic Control, but the public reaction made it impossible for them to do anything serious to him.