then powered through and limped as fast as she could back to the Lockheed.
“What happened?” Elayne asked as Sandra entered the hatch.
“Just a sprain,” Sandra answered, not waiting to take off her thermal-suit, instead rushing up to the bridge. “Your fiancée is dead, my condolences.”
“Are they launching a battle-skiff?” Cheng asked in disbelief as Sandra reached the bridge. Ahead of them the flying tank had just dropped out of the strato-freighter and was hovering above the ice.
“Yes they are,” Sandra answered dropping into her seat and powering up the engines. Cheng was targeting the skiff but Sandra interrupted him, “If you shoot them while they're under the freighter the whole thing will blow.”
“They're turning,” Cheng observed, and Sandra hit the VTOL jets, lifting the Lockheed out of the skiff's line of fire.
“They'll have to come out if they want to shoot us,” Sandra observed.
“What kind of armaments will it have?” Cheng asked.
“No idea,” Sandra answered. “They can be outfitted for anything from anti-personnel cluster grenades to anti-air missiles.”
“Can the missiles be fired without a lock on?” Cheng asked.
“Yes,” Sandra answered and lifted the Lockheed higher into the air. “But they'd have to be idiots to fire blind.”
As she said it a barrage of missiles shot out from under the airship, and then arched upwards as they locked onto the Lockheed. Sandra shot the Lockheed back up into the frozen sky, as Cheng targeted and destroyed the missiles behind them, then she piloted the Lockheed back down to the airship, and hovered above it waiting for the skiff to make its next move.
“If I was them, I would blow up the strato-freighter,” Cheng observed. “To stop the Confederacy from getting the rest of the battle-skiffs.”
“I would too,” Sandra agreed. “How fast do you think you could target them?”
“If we are lucky, before they target us,” Cheng answered.
“How about the ice?” Elayne asked. “Can you target the ice under them?”
“They are not sitting on the ice,” Cheng argued. “They are floating above it.”
“I know,” Elayne stated. “Using turbo-fans, which the ice-fog could damage.”
“Yes of course!” Cheng agreed. “Take us down captain. They're not going anywhere with our skiff!”
Sandra manoeuvred the Lockheed to the front of the airship, and started lowering it into the battle-skiff's line of fire. As she did Cheng let loose with the particle beam, blasting the ice-sheet into vapour that quickly froze into ice-fog, and the skiff started to slowly spin. The gunner on the skiff fired off a laser barrage in their direction, and Sandra jammed the VTOL jets, and lifted the Lockheed back out of line of sight. Laser blasts continued to fire out from under the strato-freighter, at first hectic, in varied directions as if someone was trying find the Lockheed, but couldn't see through the ice-fog. Then the blasts became steady but frantic, every shot in straight line, firing rapidly, the gunner clearly panicked.
Sandra manoeuvred the Lockhead to the rear of the ship and lowered it to see what was happening. The skiff was entirely encased in the glacier, but the gun was still firing, frantically, in the direction it was facing when the ice reformed.
“They won't melt the ice that way,” Cheng said.
“They won't melt the ice at all,” Sandra said.
“Well we can always come back for the skiff next summer,” Cheng suggested.
“I'm setting us back down,” Sandra stated. “We need to back sure there's no one left aboard the Cacophony before heading back to Hangtian.”
“Hangtian?” Elayne argued. “I'm not leaving without my ship!”
“We can have you back out here tomorrow with a repair crew,” Sandra stated. “You can't fly it by yourself anyway.”
By the time they'd finished searching the ship the skiff was no longer firing its laser cannon. They didn't know if the crew had already succumbed to the cold, or just the inevitability or their mortality. Once Elayne had seen the frozen bodies of her father and her former fiancée she no longer wanted to stay on the ship over night, and did not object when Sandra informed her they were leaving. Somewhere far to the south a war was raging, but here it was over, at least for now.
Frozen Sky Page 6