Chapter 40 #3
Aikari's face blinked to life on my tablet. "Hello, Captain," she said, full of cheer. "I hope you're doing well." She said it with very little preamble. "Unfortunately, we have a rather severe problem.”
“Please don't delay on my behalf," I told her.
"Well, it seems the battleship in orbit is changing course."
I nodded. I had asked her to monitor it. "Are they leaving?"
"Well, that wouldn't be a big enough problem for me to call, now would it, Captain?" she said with her hands on her hips. "No, it's heading straight for your location. Oh, look at that," she said, tilting her head and flopping her ears to the side. "They're powering up weapons."
"What does that mean?" I blinked, struggling to connect concepts right now.
"I'm pretty sure that means they're just going to fire on us from orbit," Melgara said as she began gesturing for Lily to pick me up.
Brick's face blanched. "Wait, they're just going to bombard us?"
I shrugged. "If I were an evil cabal, and a very violent kikai that was even marginally embarrassed had just lost, that's what I would do."
"But they're dead. This ship doesn't have any more reason to fight," Brick said.
I shook my head. "No more reason to fight if ultimately they report to those two. But I'd bet money that whoever is behind that ship simply wants to get rid of Violet. I mean, you don't think those two idiots actually outright owned a battleship, do you?"
Brick's mouth gaped several times like a fish stranded on land.
"They were borrowing it, well… if you consider serving on the VDF ship the same as borrowing it. There's no way they could control an entire sector without some form of military. We just have the very lucky opportunity to fight it." I grinned.
Melgara was next to me with her scanner. "You're in shock, Captain."
"Well, that's fine. Honestly, it explains why none of this is bothering me too much. Still, I think we’ll all pull through if we just give it our best." Of course, those words didn't exactly make my doctor happy.
"How long until you're here?" Melgara said to my tablet.
"I'm inbound. It'll just be"—the AI whistled to herself for a second—"a few minutes. But it looks like it'll be a few minutes too late." She clicked her tongue. "That battleship is at full blast."
Whatever else she said was cut off as the Griffin rumbled.
"Whoopsie!" The AI chuckled to herself. "Still getting the hang of flying this bucket.
" She chuckled. "But don't worry, I've got it.
" She gave an exaggerated thumbs-up and flipped down the visor on a sudden pilot's helmet.
"It'd be best if you could get in the air, preferably somewhere high enough so I can just, you know, scoop you right up.
" She made a motion that I sure hoped wasn’t indicative of her flight path.
"The confidence is inspiring," I said dryly as Aikari gave me a salute.
"Gotta go. I need to focus so I don't bump into another building." She winked out as the tablet hung up the call.
"Should she be flying the ship?" Tiri asked.
"Oh, absolutely not," Melgara said. "They actually banned AI from piloting years ago because too many of them don't value human life as much as they should."
"Yeah, that wasn't exactly what I was asking." Tiri rolled her eyes. "I'm more worried about our ship getting to us in one piece."
"That's what shields are for." The doctor-slash-pilot shrugged. "I'm sure she won't run it into so many things that it doesn't make it to us."
Tiri still looked doubtful.
And Lily turned to Melgara. "What do you need for the captain? None of this matters if the captain dies," Lily said. And I could tell several of the others present disagreed but didn't have the guts to say that to Lily.
"Well, I'll need you to create some of the gene therapies we've discussed."
Lily bit her lip. "But we haven't found a lion yet." That comment made several people in our group stare at her, confused.
"Don't mind her," I said quickly. "We can do the lion later, dear," I promised Lily. “Right now, it’s probably best we delay my expiration as much as possible.”
As a ship breached the clouds above, the massive menace had its nose tucked straight for us and held everyone's attention.
"Maybe we should get going," Brick said. "The AI said we needed to be in the air."
"Yeah, I think that was the plan," I said, trying to get to my feet and struggling. A moment later, Lily scooped me up, blanket and all, and carried me in. She glanced momentarily at Madam Chiksai, nudging what remained of her body into the shuttle.
"You care?" I asked.
"She did save you. Even if she should die for betraying our crew in the first place,” the helivore deadpanned.
I chuckled at Lily and then began coughing up blood.
"Don't laugh," Lily said with grave seriousness.
"Maybe you should try being a little less funny."
Unfortunately, I didn't get the laugh I expected. Instead, Lily stared at me with a painful severity in her eyes. "You will survive, Captain," she said, the words more like a promise than anything else.
"Of course I will. Because if I don't survive, who's going to take care of you?" I said, cupping her face with a smile.