Chapter Thirty-Nine Arturo
Thirty-Nine
Arturo
“Oh, stars,” I said, staring up at the approaching ships. Bob kept broadcasting my words, not knowing they were no longer meant for the crowd. “They’re going to attack. The scudding varvax are going to attack the arena.”
Those ships would be here in moments. “We need to get to our ships,” I said to Alanik.
Bob got the message on that one, and my words cut out halfway through.
Stars, though, I’d just told a whole arena of people they were under attack.
Many of them would have seen the ship that hit the city wall, and all of them would have heard about it.
I could already hear the voices in the arena beginning to rise, the panic beginning to set in.
There wasn’t time. I had to leave control of these people to Dayan and hope they could keep them from rioting. If a crowd this big tried to flee in a rush, people could be trampled.
“Bob, stay with Dayan,” I said as Alanik put a hand on my shoulder. “Stars, we have to wait for a hyperjump,” I said. The ships might destroy the arena by then.
“We can go now,” Alanik said. “I requested one when Ivy announced Dayan was a traitor. I thought we were having an immediate need.”
I hadn’t commanded her to do that, but I wasn’t unhappy she had. Alanik put a hand on Gilaf as well.
“We’ll do our best to keep them off you,” I said to Dayan, and in a blink, we’d left the arena behind.
All those humans, about to be fired on by destructors.
No shields. No ships. Not even a roof between them and raw firepower from enemy starfighters.
Only Dayan and Bob remained to try to stave off the panic.
We appeared near our ships. “Alanik, ride with me,” I said, running for the Dulo.
She was injured, and we only had two ships for three pilots.
From the copilot’s seat she could help me manage the taynix and keep an eye on the enemy.
I let Suki out so she could climb into the Dulo’s dash seat.
Alanik and I emptied our bags of taynix, and I passed Squeeze and Wham to Gilaf as he boarded the remaining starfighter. We kept Nope with us.
But Naga was missing. “Naga!” I shouted, expecting to find her waiting on my dash, or already in her sling beside my seat, but she wasn’t here. The last time I’d seen her, she’d appeared in the coliseum. “Suki, did you see where she went?”
“She hyperjumped while we were still in the arena,” Suki said.
“Scud.” She was a hyperslug, so she couldn’t be left behind unless she wanted to be.
“There’s no time to find her,” Alanik said. “She’ll have to catch up.”
Stars, I hoped she was okay, but Alanik was right. We needed to be over the arena now.
Suki buckled herself into the dash seat. I forgot about the preflight checklist. Even rule-following Jorgen wouldn’t mess with one under these circumstances. Instead, I lifted my ship off the ground, hovering just below the tree canopy. “Ghost, you ready?” I asked.
“Ready,” Gilaf said.
Stars, what did I think we were going to do? We were two scudding ships against whatever Ivy had at her disposal.
Still, I wasn’t going to leave the people in the arena undefended.
“Let’s do this,” I said. “Shoot down the enemy ships. Keep them from targeting the civilians in the arena. If you take out a ship, make sure to catch that wreckage. Do not let it drop over the civilians. Copy?”
“Copy!” Gilaf said, “though the light-lance on this ship is broken, so you’ll have to do the catching.”
“Noted,” I said, and we both shot through the trees, flying toward the arena.
The enemy ships had already arrived, and one fired down into the crowd, destructor fire scattering over the stands.
Stars, people were already dying. We didn’t have a moment to waste, and we had to be careful or we’d rain down hell on both the arena and the surrounding city. Gilaf reached the ships first, weaving in front of them and drawing their attention upward and away from the crowd.
The enemy ships weren’t as discerning with their destructors, and Gilaf suffered a hit, but succeeded in leading some of the ships away from the arena.
“I can hear Ivy over the hypercomm instructing the pilots,” Alanik said. Those communications were cytonic, which allowed Alanik to intercept them. “They’re going to target Dayan and Bob so they can’t keep talking.”
That made sense. Ivy wanted control again. I soared over the open top of the arena and flipped an Imban turn, ready to shoot down anything that targeted Dayan and the other gladiators.
“By the branches,” Alanik said.
“What?” I asked.
“I can’t hear them anymore,” she said. “One of those ships is carrying an inhibitor.”
Oh, scud. The Superiority had only put inhibitors in capital ships, not in small fighters. But Ivy was clearly not working with the Superiority, or playing by their rules. “You’ve lost your cytonics?” I asked.
“Yes,” Alanik said. “I can’t hear the hypercomm, and I can’t hyperjump us out of here if this goes wrong.”
Scud. We were two ships against the enemy’s armada, without the use of any of our cytonic assets to aid our cause. Wham, Squeeze, Alanik herself, all neutralized.
“Amphi?” Gilaf said. “Orders?”
We could run. We could turn tail, speed out of inhibitor range, and get the hell out of here. Sadie and Nedd should be in the nowhere by now. We might be able to find a different way to get them out, or sneak back in and go after them when the carnage was over.
But our mission was to open a path to diplomatic relations with these humans. Those starfighters were after them because of us. We’d brought this hellfire down on them.
We couldn’t abandon them to this. We wouldn’t.
“Protect the civilians,” I said. “Defend the arena. We might not be able to save them all, but we are damn well going to try.”
Beside me, Alanik nodded. Suki held up her little fist in approval. They were willing to die here beside me to prevent this atrocity.
I just hoped the sacrifice wouldn’t be for nothing.