Chapter Forty Arturo
Forty
Arturo
I didn’t like flying over a sea of civilians. It tied our hands in ways that didn’t equally hinder the enemy. Just as Alanik had predicted, the ships kept trying to get an angle on the gateway to the portal, where the gladiators were gathered.
Dayan still had a handheld radio we’d equipped them with when they were flying in my ship. I no longer cared if Ivy heard the transmission. We had to warn them.
“You’re being targeted,” I said to Dayan. “Get your people out of there.”
“We’re hiding inside the gate,” Dayan said. “But I don’t like the people watching us cower. It’s adding to their panic.”
“It won’t work anyway,” I said. “If a ship gets a clear shot at the gate, that whole area is going to collapse. Get out of there. Spread out.”
“Okay,” Dayan said. “Though running out in the open during a firefight seems counterintuitive.”
“Trust me,” I said. “The roof you’re under isn’t going to hold up to destructor fire. They’re going to cave it in on your heads.”
I grabbed a ship with my light-lance just as it lined up for a shot.
I ascended quickly, groaning as the g-forces overwhelmed my GravCaps, and hauled the enemy ship’s nose up so its destructor fire went wild over the top of the arena wall.
Gilaf pummeled it with fire, dropping its shields and then destroying its hull.
I hauled the wreckage over the coliseum wall to avoid dropping it on the crowd, though I had nowhere to dump it besides over Epiphany itself.
I tried to aim for the alley behind the coliseum, but I couldn’t spare the time to watch where it actually landed.
Stars, I hated drones. It was nice not to worry about shooting down pilots who were only doing their jobs, but the enemy risked nothing except the cost of the equipment, while we risked everything.
“Can you tell which of these ships has the inhibitor?” I asked Alanik.
She shook her head. “All my cytonic senses are dead. I can’t feel it.”
“It will probably be a ship taking fewer risks, yes?” Suki asked.
That was a good point. “Can you find any matching that behavior pattern on the monitors?”
Alanik and Suki scrutinized the screen while I targeted a ship that dove down into the arena from a high angle.
It was coming in fast, but I aimed my destructors over the coliseum wall and shot at it, cutting off its path.
Gilaf came at it from another angle, chasing it out over the city, where I hoped the civilians were taking cover.
Another ship flew in, already shooting down into the crowd, and I grabbed it with my light-lance, hauling it along with me. Without Gilaf to shoot at it, I could do little more than drag it away, but Gilaf was already returning from taking out that last ship. I had to hold on.
“Pull up!” Alanik shouted. “Pull up!”
Scud, the ship I was dragging was on a trajectory to collide with the upper wall of the coliseum, which would rain stone down onto the crowd. I pulled up harder, g-forces overwhelming me. My vision tunneled and I thought I might pass out.
My vision cleared as Gilaf swooped in, taking out my captured ship. I dropped my light-lance, releasing the wreckage in the alley, away from the streams of people fleeing the arena.
“We’re moving into the arena,” Dayan said. “I think…I think it’s good for the people to see us out here. We’re not hiding.”
“Good,” I said. “Keep it up. We’re doing our best to cover you.”
“You’d better,” Dayan said.
“I found something,” Suki said. “Two ships, flying in a circle around the arena at a distance of seven kilometers. You could chase them, but you’d have to abandon the arena.”
I didn’t want to do that. Even as we spoke, two drones dove through the top of the coliseum at once. I grabbed one with the light-lance, hauling it up, but the other cut a path of carnage down the side of the arena before Gilaf could chase it over the wall.
Stars, that blast would have killed a lot of people, and even more would have witnessed their grisly deaths. “We need to get your hypercomm back up,” I said.
“I can’t,” Dayan said. “Your slug disappeared.”
Bob disappeared? Where would he have gone? Stars, I still hadn’t seen Naga either.
“Wait!” Alanik said. “One of the circling ships is on the move.”
One of the ships was leaving. It soared directly away from the city, accelerating as it went.
“What the scud is it doing?” I asked.
“Fleeing,” Alanik said. “The better question is why.”
I didn’t know why, which was worrisome. “The inhibitor is down,” Alanik said. “It…ran away.”
I didn’t know what that was about, but I had a guess. “Ghost, tell Squeeze to fire away.”
“Over all these people?” Gilaf asked.
“I’ll catch the wreckage,” I told him. “Do it now.”
“I still don’t have a hypercomm,” Dayan said. “But everyone can see you’re trying to help us. That’s good, right?”
It was, but if people kept dying, it wasn’t good enough.
“Boom!” Gilaf said.
There was no fire, no explosion, no blast. The ship flying in front of Gilaf slid elegantly apart, as if it had been run through an invisible egg slicer, the pieces fragmenting out in all directions.
I swooped in, catching the majority of the ship with my light-lance before it could fall into the crowd and tossing it over the edge into the city.
There were still six ships circling the arena.
They had given up on aiming for the gate and were now shooting indiscriminately at the crowd, whether to punish them or to convince us to give up, I couldn’t tell.
Gilaf dove his ship under a barrage of fire, catching the full force of it with his shield but preventing it from hitting the arena below.
His shields went down, and he flew away from the arena, off to reignite.
We needed to take these ships out fast, before they killed more civilians.
“Where’s that other ship?” I asked. “The one that might have the hypercomm?”
“It’s still flying,” Alanik said. “Here.” She indicated a spot on the monitors near three o’clock. I banked to go after it. I didn’t like leaving the arena undefended, but if we could take out that hypercomm, we could take down all the ships.
I startled as a pile of slugs materialized between my seat and Alanik’s, heaped all the way up to Suki’s seat.
Suki yelped as Naga slid off the pile, squishing her against the dash.
Bob was among them, and also three commslugs I’d never seen before, two boomslugs, one concussion slug, one inhibitor slug, and two hyperslugs.
They piled on top of one another, all wriggling in panic except Bob, who lay on top of the pile, looking smug.
“Friends!” Naga said.
Friends, indeed.
“Naga!” I said. “Take Bob to Dayan!”
“Dayan!” Naga said, and then she and Bob disappeared again, leaving us with a pile of unfamiliar slugs.
“Could you…put those somewhere?” I asked Alanik.
Alanik threw her hand in the air. “Any suggestions?”
There wasn’t time. I jerked my ship to the side as an enemy drone came up behind me. I shot upward, trying to simultaneously shake the ship and direct it away from the civilians. The ship didn’t take the bait, instead moving in a straight line angled down toward the arena.
Scud, all of the ships flew straight, as if…as if they’d suddenly lost navigational commands, and were just following the last trajectory they’d been given.
Oh, stars. Naga had taken their commslug.
“Way to go, Naga!” I said.
“Way to go, Naga!” several of the new slugs replied.
“The enemy has lost control over the ships!” I shouted into the radio. “Naga rescued their commslug.” We needed to catch the drones to make sure they didn’t crash over the city.
Or over the arena. The ship that had been following me was going to clear the coliseum and crash somewhere in the woods beyond the city, but one of the other ships up ahead was on a collision course with the outside of the coliseum wall. How many would it kill if it took out the stone wall?
I didn’t want to find out. I went into a dive, sweeping above the ship and tagging it with my light-lance.
I pulled up sharply, hauling it over the top of the arena and into the forest beyond.
A few plumes of smoke rose from the forest—I hoped those ships hadn’t crashed into anything important, though the casualties would be much lower out in the forest than they would be if they crashed into the arena.
I sailed low over the forest outside the city wall, watching for a place that was dense with foliage and uninhabited, and then I dropped the wreckage and turned my ship around to fly back.
Alanik wrangled slugs, trying to find places for them to rest in the slings, under the dash, and behind our seats.
“Dayan,” I said, “how’s the arena? You shouldn’t take any more fire.”
Dayan sounded decidedly less relieved about that than I’d hoped. “But Amphi, there are—there are people pouring through the gate from the nowhere.”
“What?” I said. “What do you mean, people?”
“Warriors,” Dayan said.
“Your gladiators?” I asked. “Are they returning your people to you?”
“I don’t recognize them,” Dayan said. “They’re armed and armored. The other gladiators and I have retreated, but some of the scions are still alive. They’re disoriented, so we’re avoiding them for now. Oh, crabs, the warriors—they’re attacking the civilians. And shouting about Elysium.”
My heart sank into my gut. Not a happy reunion, then. Something was very, very wrong here. “Hang on,” I said. “We’re coming.”
“Should we hyperjump in?” Alanik asked. “I can ask Bob for permission.”
“You and I will be no help down there without a ship,” I said. “Gilaf, convene over the arena. We need to provide air support. Dayan, make sure your people are clear of that gate.”
“We’re clear!” Dayan said.
I soared into the coliseum, aimed, and fired. The ceiling over the gate caved in, collapsing on the incoming army, leaving a gaping pile of rubble and gore.
“We’re baiting the scions up the ramp,” Dayan said. “We’re going to use them to create confusion for the warriors.”
“I can hear Ivy again,” Alanik said. “She’s ordering the varvax to close the portal.”
Stars, Sadie and Nedd were in there. We couldn’t let them get locked in, and we had to know where these soldiers were coming from.
“Gilaf,” I said, “if more soldiers come out of that gate, fire on them. Careful not to hit the gladiators, the scions, or the civilians. You’re in command out here.”
“What?” Gilaf said. “Where are you going?”
I had an idea. Stars, it might be a terrible one. “I’m going to do something very stupid,” I told Alanik. “Do you want me to drop you in the arena before I try it?”
“If you’re doing something stupid,” Alanik said, “I am coming with you.”
“So am I!” Suki said.
I surveyed the battlefield below. Stars, Dayan had climbed into the branches of one of the scions and was riding it straight toward the ramp full of warriors, with the other gladiators running along behind, spurring it forward.
I accelerated past them, skimming over the incoming warriors.
“Amphi,” Alanik said. “Are we going to—”
“Hold on!” I said, and I flew my ship directly through the rubble of the gate, narrowly missing the heads of the warriors who were shoving their way out of it.
The opening was just big enough for the fighter to pass through without shearing off my wings—and thankfully I’d gotten the aim dead on.
For a moment, everything went black, and then we emerged on the other side.