Chapter 36 Callie
thirty-six
Callie
I punched the throttle as soon as we were free of the Foresight, stomping on the rudder petal and jerked the stick, rolling Lyudmila out from under the Cutter.
Once we were floating out in open space, I blew out a breath.
“Shit. Don’t let me get distracted like that again.”
Aga gave a short laugh. “Trust me. I won’t. I think I need to change my pants.”
We laughed and then grew serious as the Vengeance shifted into firing position like a big cat stalking its prey. The Rijiteran ship was easily ten times the size of the Unity ship. The gap in technology was like comparing a sun dial to a smart watch. It was eerie to witness.
The Unity Dreadnaught tried to jump out, but it was far too late for that.
The single shot from the ridged laser gun on the Vengeance's spine was invisible to the eye without the help of Lyudmila’s computer system providing the visual aid, and within one breath and the next the Unity ship was just a scattering debris field of pieces no bigger than my fist.
“Holy fucking shit,” I breathed, stunned.
Rathal cackled, his voice vicious when he managed to speak. “And that is why the Unity had to resort to a bioweapon.”
You couldn’t fight against that. There was no winning here.
The Unity was fucked.
Callie, quit gawking and go get Patty. She’s pinned down on some kind of rooftop garden. I’m sending some Fangs to assist.
Jack’s voice in my head made me smile.
And don’t tell her I’m up here. I want it to be a surprise. She’ll love it.
I rolled my eyes and punched it, directing Lyudmila towards the planet where the rest of Erral’s fighters were already engaged with the Unity, if the chatter on the comms was anything to go by.
We passed by the Vengeance just as a long rectangular line opened up on her starboard side and a dense wave of white Fangs swarmed out of her like wasps leaving a hive.
I pushed the throttle all the way forward so we would beat them into the atmosphere.
Aga leaned forward. “The palace is built into the mountain side that looks over the city. According to the schematics we were given by Som’ae, the garden they are talking about is actually a greenhouse.
Patty, Rema, the Neldre Queen and her consort are pinned down there.
We could land in the courtyard to the right of the green house. ”
I nodded. “Alright. Armor up if you got it.”
I willed my gold armor to the surface, the helmet clicking into place and feeding my visor into my HUD display so my vision wasn’t limited. We entered the upper atmosphere, the violet burn washing over the viewscreen and I risked a look over my shoulder to see if Aga had listened to me.
I jolted in surprise to find that Rathal had Rijiteran armor as well, the helmet similar to Jacks, with an open face and blue fans behind his tall ears akin to Egyptian drawings. He raised a gauntlet covered hand, gold claws wicked looking.
“What? Did you forget that I was there when these were made, my love?”
Good point.
I faced forward again, a grin making my cheeks ache.
“You look sexy dressed for war,” I told him.
“Why thank you, my love. So do you. In fact, later we should—”
“You two disgust me,” Aga’s gruff voice interrupted what I was sure was going to be something filthy.
We dropped through pink clouds and into a debris field so thick you could hopscotch across the falling ship parts. All conversation ceased as I cursed and began aggressive evasive maneuvers that had Aga warbling in alarm and Rathal shouting ‘weee!’ from his seat behind me.
Patty was going to love him.
I thought we were in the clear when the silver glint of twisting skyscrapers came into view, but all that did was put us right within the laser line of sight of a squadron of Insects.
I rolled, avoiding adding our bits and pieces to the debris field by mere inches and fired my own lasers.
I hit the wing of one of the Insects, sending it careening to the ground and kept firing as my HUD warned of a half a dozen enemy targeting systems aimed at us.
I burned hard to avoid them, jerking my ship every which way and holding down the trigger of my lasers until my HUD stopped flashing.
I dropped lower, using the buildings for cover, my ship's passage blowing out windows as we passed, three Insects hot on our ass.
I banked hard left—damn near inverting my ship, but alien tech didn’t have to worry about pesky things like unsafe bank angles and stall speeds—and screamed through more tall buildings, looping back around to drop in behind the Insects.
The targeting reticle zoomed in on them and I squeezed the trigger with a smile.
I slid my jet nearly sideways to avoid hitting the falling pieces of the Unity ships.
“Excellent shot, Callie,” Rathal praised.
Warm little tingles spread over my skin. I wanted to look back at him but there were already new flashing enemy indicators blinking into existence on my HUD like a bad rash.
“Sonofabitch, how many did they get deployed before their Dreadnaught was destroyed?” I growled and jerked into a roll to dodge the Insects lasers.
“Hella says about two hundred. There are ground troops as well. Not only the Dreadnaught was carrying troops. Their smaller ships were the main carriers of their ground forces. They, of course, retreated when the Vengeance vaporized the Dreadnaught, but that has left the Unity soldiers here on the planet even more desperate to win. They are abandoned,” Aga explained, his voice strained as I maneuvered through the city, firing and dodging as we went. Pulling this many Gs was brutal.
I gritted my teeth. “Last Stand.”
“Precisely.”
I jerked my nose up, gaining altitude to clear the top of a building and banked sharply right to circle back around and make another strafing run through the city.
My indicator showed tiny little red dots in uniformed lines four across and probably fifty deep marching down the widest road in this futuristic hellscape of a city.
Blue dots dropped down from the twisting silver spires and swooped right down on top of the marching red dots.
Well good for them, but now wasn’t the time.
I switched to the open laser line of sight communication net and all but growled into it.
“Neldre fighters, fall back! Fall back! This is Commander Ramirez of the Solus. Fall. Back. We are closing in on your position and will be laying down suppressing fire. Repeat. We will be laying down suppressing fire on your position in ten seconds.”
The distance indicator on my HUD was rapidly counting down and my buttcheeks clenched right before the blue dots scattered.
“Understood, Commander Ramirez. Pulling out now.”
I blew out a breath. “Thank fuck.”
Lining up the nose of Lyudmila, I squeezed the trigger for the belly mounted coil gun, grinning like a feral animal the whole time.
Each split second shot vibrated the ship as the electromagnetic field generated along the barrel of the gun spit out a hundred cylindrical metal slugs a second.
That was six thousand rounds per minute for anyone who wondered.
In other words; it tore the hell out of the Unity soldiers marching through the street like a bunch of fucking morons. They broke ranks as the first ten rows went down. I roared over them, pulling up and banking left to circle back around through the buildings for another run.
This time they shot back with their own shoulder mounted rockets, coil guns, and lasers, but I was shooting and gone before they could get laser line of sight for their targeting systems.
“You are clear to engage, Neldre,” I told the fighters waiting—quite literally—in the wings. Their blue dots hovered around the buildings, hugging close to the spire's walls to avoid being shot at or hit by any ships passing by.
And there were ships passing by.
My run on the ground troops had triggered them to call in their own reinforcements and I couldn’t let them ruin all my hard work protecting the Neldre fighters by blowing them out of the sky before they had a chance to kill anyone. That wasn’t fair.
“On our starboard side, Callie.”
I flicked my eye towards the area on my HUD and sure enough, two Insects were trying to head me off, but I cursed and poured on the thrust, pulling the stick back to send my nose into the air in a hard vertical climb that had both Aga and Rathal grunting as the gravitational force slammed us into our seats like the hammer fist of god.
I burned left, falling hard into a nose dive and then banked right, trying to shake the Insects off my ass long enough to shoot them. I clenched my abs and thighs, breathing through the Gs so I wouldn’t pass out. I was well practiced in this, but it still sucked ass.
A bulky, bulbous building some fifty stories high was looming center mass on my HUD and I maneuvered into a high G left turn, my breath grunting as I forced air in and out and circled all the way around the building and right up the Insects asses.
I fired both of my lasers. There is no visual of the beam in real time, only the helpful indicator on my HUD.
I knew it was a more deadly weapon, but I kind of missed missiles.
Still, even without the satisfying smoke trail, the two enemy fighters went down.
One of them slammed into the building, falling down its side in an ass over end fashion, raining down death and debris until it finally crashed in a fiery explosion on the street below.
That was the problem with fighting in an urban environment.
No matter who won, what was left was ashes and dead civilians.
I gritted my teeth as we flew over more burning buildings.
Neldre were flying in and out, carrying injured or supplies to the ground floors from what I could see.
It was chaos and I hated the Unity more in that moment than I ever had.