Chapter Twenty-Seven Arturo
Twenty-Seven
Arturo
Several things happened at once. My flight immediately broke formation and switched to evasive maneuvers.
Many other ships also opened fire, destructor blasts raining around us.
I threw my ship into a sharp dive, angling beneath the station where fewer ships were waiting to ambush us.
My GravCaps kicked in, absorbing g-forces and preventing Dayan and me from blacking out—though stars, even with the GravCaps, their body was going to take a punishment like no other as I started taking sharp turns at high speed.
The GravCaps overloaded, and my head pounded as the blood in my body rushed to my head. Behind me, I heard Dayan scream.
I pulled out of my dive and my head cleared, the force reducing. “Suki, check on Dayan,” I said.
“Still conscious,” Suki said, twisting in her seat, “though I think they threw up.”
By instinct, my flight had broken into two wingmate pairs, Alanik following me into my dive and Sadie and Gilaf both banking right, leading the other ships out of the inhibitor field.
“Ivy!” Sadie shouted over the hypercomm once she was clear of the inhibitor. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding! This aggression is unnecessary! We are here to bring word of your good work to our superiors!”
“I know what you mean to do here,” Ivy said.
Scud. Had we given ourselves away somehow?
“Amphi, watch out,” Alanik said, and I rolled, dodging a spray of fire from a ship that dove under the station and came flying at us.
“Follow me,” I said to Alanik, and I flew directly at the enemy ships, spinning to avoid being hit by their fire, and then shot out behind them, moving away from the station on the far side.
“What the hell was that?” Dayan asked from behind me, their voice sounding pained.
“G-forces,” I said. “Sorry. They’re tough on the body when you’re not used to them.”
“They are tough even when you are,” Suki added.
“We don’t require a demonstration of your station defenses!” Sadie called. “I promise I’ve already provided a positive review of those in my report!”
“You think you can skulk around my planet without permission,” Ivy said. “I am its protector, and I will not allow you or your superiors to put it in danger.”
Oh, scud. Oh, scud. Ivy hadn’t found us out.
She was trying to kill us because she thought we were an investigation force from the Superiority, and she didn’t want the Superiority officials to know what she was doing on Blightfall.
Stars, that was why she had so many ships here, and why she’d attacked us on sight when we arrived on the planet.
She had been preparing for such an occasion, and now that she thought she’d been discovered, she’d hastened the progress of the games, ready to kill us off and then close up shop.
“We went about this all wrong,” I said.
“And I wrote such a beautiful report,” Suki said, sniffing indignantly. “Now she doesn’t even want to see it.”
I threw my ship into a reverse switchback, winding in an S formation to get my ship turned around and facing the station again.
Stars, we were in trouble. Gilaf and Sadie had flown past the station, doubling back outside the inhibitor field.
The ships waiting out there were pelting them with destructor fire, but so far their shields had held.
Wham’s concussion blasts were useless against uncrewed ships, but Squeeze launched shards of psychic energy at the enemy, his mindblades creating a cloud of invisible death in front of Gilaf and Nedd’s Dulo.
Three ships flew into it, and each was cut into pieces and immediately spiraled apart from the force.
Two ships came at me from the sides and I threw my ship into a barrel roll, prompting a guttural moan from Dayan.
More ships swooped in around Sadie and Gilaf, but they stayed together, sticking to the area outside the inhibitor.
Sadie provided cover for Gilaf as he worked to get close enough to the enemy ships for Squeeze to take them out with his mindblades.
“Ivy!” Sadie pleaded over the hypercomm. “I promise, we aren’t here to hurt your planet, we don’t—” She cut off as she took a hit to her shields, then another. One more and her shield would go down.
Ivy didn’t respond.
I pinged Sadie on a private channel. When she answered, she sounded like she was crying. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I tried to reason with her, but—”
“It’s not your fault,” I said. Stars, I regretted putting this on her, even if she had been the best member of our team for the job. “This ambush was waiting for us because we chose the wrong cover story. Nothing you did would have changed it.”
An enemy ship bolted in front of me, so I straightened my ship out and showered it with fire.
“What do we do?” Sadie asked. “Do we run?”
I didn’t know what was waiting for us on that station. I didn’t know what Ivy was hiding.
But if Ivy wasn’t a Superiority agent siphoning off Blightfall’s best warriors, what was she doing with them? We needed to know.
Three ships bore down on Alanik, and I turned my ship, covering her while she twisted away and turned around to pummel them with her own destructors.
Caught between us, one of the ships took severe damage to its shield, then lost part of its dome-shaped hull, spinning out of control in the direction of the planet.
“We’re not going to run,” I said. “The only way to find answers is to board that station.” Varvax were competent pilots, but the ones we’d met face-to-face were cowards, so afraid to appear aggressive that they couldn’t hold their own in a ground fight.
We had sidearms, ground training, and one of Blightfall’s best hand-to-hand fighters ready to take them down.
We might be outnumbered on that station, but if we ran and hid, we wouldn’t have any answers, and our remaining option would be to walk blindly through the nowhere portal beneath the arena.
We wouldn’t be able to use cytonic abilities there either.
Three out of our four ships were equipped with cytonic hyperdrives in the form of Twist, Naga, and Alanik, so we were well positioned to fly outside the inhibitor and hide on the planet again if the need arose.
I still liked our odds better here.
“Are you sure about this?” Suki asked.
“Yes,” I told her.
I couldn’t guarantee that Ivy wasn’t listening to this channel, but I had to take the risk.
I needed to give orders to my flight. From my current vantage point, I could see a landing pad inside the pipelike end of the station.
“We’ll land on this end of the station instead,” I said to Sadie.
“Hopefully they’ll be less prepared for us there.
Pass the word to Ghost. We need to take that station. ”
“Hell yes,” Dayan said from behind me, though they sounded a bit disoriented. “Let me at them.”
“Glad you’re still with us,” I told them.
I opened a general channel with my flight—a new one, hoping Ivy wouldn’t immediately trace the frequency—and waited for them all to pick up.
“Angel,” I said, “help me distract the enemy ships while Sentry and Ghost make a landing. Sentry and Ghost, once you’ve landed, try to cover us while we come in to join you.
If you encounter extreme resistance on the landing pad, pull out immediately. ”
“Copy,” Sadie said, though it took Gilaf a moment to answer the same.
“We’re doing this?” Nedd asked.
“Yes,” I said. We were committed now, and we needed to see it through.
“Angel,” I said, “should we try a rat chase?”
“Copy,” Alanik said.
This was a maneuver we’d learned from Alanik and Gilaf, a common tactic they used in the ship-based sporting league on ReDawn.
I accelerated toward the nearest enemy ship above the landing pad until I was flying right on its tail.
The ship executed a series of evasive maneuvers, trying to shake me, but I stayed on my target with a single-minded focus.
“Ready,” I told Alanik. While I was chasing, she’d positioned herself alongside another nearby enemy ship. Without warning, she threw her ship into an Imban turn, coming at the second ship from the side.
The ship reacted defensively, rolling away from her, which drove it right toward the ship I was targeting. I went into a spin, launching myself at the first ship much the way Alanik had with hers—
And that ship turned sharply, nearly colliding with Alanik’s prey.
They both had to straighten out to avoid collision.
While they were disoriented, Alanik and I switched places, weaving around the ships in a spiral to keep them from getting a bead on us.
In the confusion, one of the ships flipped a turn and pivoted around to face us, shooting wildly.
With one deft turn, Alanik swung toward the second ship and pelted it with fire—driving it up into the line of the other enemy ship’s destructor fire.
Before either of the ships knew what was happening, one downed the other, and Alanik and I focused our fire on the remaining one, dropping it out of the sky.
“Well done,” I said to Alanik, though my sensors were flashing, letting me know that Gilaf and Sadie had kited with them most of the remaining enemy ships, all converging on our location.
Alanik and I had to make targets of ourselves to keep the fire off Sadie and Gilaf while they landed.
“Cover me,” I said, whipping around toward the opening in the end of the tube-shaped station.
My GravCaps flashed and Dayan echoed the sentiment, but I met the oncoming enemy head-on, weaving between them in a quick twin-scissor.
They were now between me and the landing pad, so I swung around, coming back behind them and causing them to break formation, scattering in all directions to try to take me down.
Alanik showered them with fire—we didn’t dare use our IMPs in this situation, since neither of us could stop long enough to reignite our shields.
The point wasn’t to take down these ships, but to distract them, to give Sadie and Gilaf enough time to land.
“Amphi!” Sadie said, “we’ve got a problem down here.”
I looked at my monitors, but we’d done a good job of keeping the ships off Sadie and Gilaf—they had a clear area around the end of the station to make their landing.
“Is the landing zone blocked?” I asked.
“No,” Gilaf said, “but it’s protected by autofire.”
Scud. We’d have to take those out before we could land—and we’d have to do it with a hell of a lot of fire on our tails.