Chapter Twenty-Six Arturo
Twenty-Six
Arturo
“All ships,” I said, “lift off and fly low across the canopy for ninety kilometers. On Nedder’s signal, pivot and fly to the station in diamond formation.
” Behind my seat, Dayan was harnessed in and crunched up.
We were hoping they wouldn’t be recognized on the station, as they were wearing one of Alanik’s flightsuits and had covered their hair with a kerchief.
Suki sat at the dash, and Naga had tucked herself inside Dayan’s harness and snuggled up to them for support.
I had no idea if Dayan found this supportive—they kept looking at Naga like she might bite them—but when I tried moving Naga to her sling, she immediately teleported herself back into Dayan’s arms. I didn’t know how to tell her that maybe we should ease Dayan into close contact with aliens, so I let it go.
We all lifted off and flew away from the city, right above the tree line—high enough to be maneuverable if Ivy’s drones attacked, but low enough to minimize the number of civilians who might spot our ships.
Sadie had Hoid and Twist in her ship for this flight, while Nedd and Gilaf took Nope and the weaponslugs—Squeeze and Wham—in their ship.
Alanik shared her cockpit only with Bob.
“Nedder,” I said. “Report?”
“No drones yet,” Nedd said. “Monitors indicate a few up near the space station. Approaching turn point.”
On Nedd’s mark, we turned our noses upward.
“Here we go,” I said to Dayan as the flight began to climb. The purple-brown forest shrank beneath us, and the city became visible in the distance, a white circle set against the deforested brown hill.
“Damn,” Dayan said. “That’s a long way down.”
“That’s not where the danger comes from,” I said.
“Danger comes from!” Naga agreed. I looked over my shoulder and found Dayan with their arms wrapped around Naga.
Maybe Naga did know what she was doing when it came to acclimating Dayan to alien life.
“Drones are descending now,” Nedd said. “Set to intercept before we reach the station.”
“Switch channel to hypercomm now,” I said. “Sadie, take the lead. Everyone else, no chatter.”
We all switched to the hypercomm. “Ivy, do you copy?” Sadie said, taking over for me to give the illusion that she was our leader. “This is Sentry, chief bodyguard to Inspector Zuzen. We are en route to your location. Taking a bit of a detour to avoid alerting your populace.”
“I appreciate your discretion,” Ivy responded immediately.
“We look forward to meeting you!” Sadie said. “I assure you my human and UrDail associates will be under control at all times. You need not worry. They are very well trained.”
“Is she serious?” Dayan asked in my ear. We’d equipped them with a headset, but they spoke off radio, so only I could hear them, and barely so, over the noise of my boosters.
“That’s how they talk,” I said.
“Unfortunately,” Suki said, “the flightleader is correct.”
“Fantastic,” Dayan said.
As we neared the station, I could see the drones approaching above us. Beyond them, I got my first real look at the space station—I’d envisioned it like one of our platforms, rectangular and flat, but it was shaped more like a pipe, round and long with open mouths at either end.
“Inhibitor field begins fifty kilometers from the station,” Alanik said.
“Copy,” Sadie said. None of our cytonics would work once we reached it, but we weren’t using illusions to hide our identities, so we should be okay unless Ivy decided to detain us.
In that case, we’d have to either launch a ground assault to take over the station or use our ships to flee.
Boarding the space station gave us an opportunity to find answers, but I still would have preferred to fly out and come back for answers with an armada of ships at our back.
“More drones approaching out of the debris,” Nedd said.
Scud. I could see them on my monitors. There were ten of them, all moving directly toward us.
“Those ships are merely an escort, meant to welcome you,” Ivy said. “Pay them no mind. I look forward to your arrival.”
“Thank you for the warm welcome,” Sadie said.
“I think ‘warm’ may be an overstatement,” Suki said off radio.
I agreed, but at least Sadie was doing a good job playing the part.
There were more drones ahead, hovering around the space station. Dayan leaned against the side of my seat, trying to make sense of my proximity monitor.
“Why are there so many ships up here?” Dayan asked. “What are they doing?”
“If you can discern that,” Suki said, “you will be doing better than we have done.”
“As far as we can tell,” I added, “this planet is completely isolated with no one spacefaring to fight. These are uncrewed drone ships. Their pilots control them via hypercomm, so they may be on that station, or they may be somewhere else in the galaxy.”
“And the inhibitor,” Dayan said. “What does it do?”
“It makes it so we can’t use hyperdrives or hypercomms. But Ivy’s ships will have the code to the inhibitor, so they can use cytonics within it even when we can’t.”
“Do you have access to one of these inhibitors?” Dayan asked.
“We do,” I said. “But the field ours produces is much smaller. We could use one to keep ships from hyperjumping in close to us, but as far as I can tell, these particular drones aren’t equipped with hyperdrives.”
“Can’t you throw up an inhibitor and make it impossible for nearby drone pilots to talk to their ships? Wouldn’t they all just stop?”
That was…incredibly astute. “We’ve tested that theory,” I said.
“Doesn’t work that way. Their inhibitor stops the powers from the point of origin.
If we want to use an inhibitor of our own to stop the hypercommunication, we’d have to catch the station’s hypercomm in the radius.
And we can’t do that if we can’t activate our inhibitor close to the station. ”
“Which you can’t do because their inhibitor stops you,” Dayan said.
“Exactly. The point of origin for our inhibitor would have to be outside the enemy inhibitor range, and in this case, ours is so much smaller that it won’t work.”
As we neared, Sadie spoke to Ivy again. “Which docking facility would you prefer we use?” Sadie asked. “Please advise.”
That was a nice, covert way to say we’d never seen a station shaped like this one and we didn’t know where to land.
I assumed the landing pads would be found at either end of the cylindrical structure, but I couldn’t be sure, and if this was a common layout for a Superiority outpost it was possible Inspector Zuzen’s bodyguards should already know.
“Landing zone B would be most convenient,” Ivy said. “Farthest from your entry point. I can meet you at that landing pad upon your arrival.”
That probably meant we should fly the length of the station and approach the other end. We sped closer.
“Flightleader,” Suki said off radio, “those drones are closing in.”
Sure enough, the ten escort ships on our six steadily closed in. The ones clustered around the station—I could see five, but I couldn’t confirm that there weren’t more hiding behind the hulking structure—also approached, as if coming out to greet us.
“Thank you for the welcoming party!” Sadie said over the radio. An edge of hysteria crept into her voice, and I hoped that was only obvious to those of us who knew her.
“Steady,” I said aloud, though I didn’t dare express over the hypercomm that my supposed commander needed reassurance from me.
“Is this really a thing they do?” Dayan asked. “Send armed ships to greet you? Because it’s intimidating as hell.”
It was. More so as we approached the edge of the inhibitor, slipping beyond the point where Naga, Twist, or Alanik could pull us out.
“Here we go,” I said. We had to land on that station.
We needed answers and a way off this planet, and we weren’t going to find it anywhere else.
I had to hope we could talk our way through this and end with a free ticket to fly home and regroup, with a better understanding of what we were up against and a whole lot more firepower.
But my hopes were dashed when one of the ships in front of us opened fire.