Floating high above the warships, out of range of their short-distance blasters, Ryze pulled the trigger on each flight stick. Orange lasers sprayed from the dual cannons, each one hitting some part of the invaders. The drones exploded to shrapnel, falling and crashing into the warships below it with even larger explosions. This wouldn’t be detrimental to the warships, of course, but it made Ryze feel slightly triumphant regardless. Anything to stick it to the God-King and his Dominion.
He released the buttons, his hands still tingling from the rampant vibrations, and banked right again. For the moment, they were clear of invaders, and all Ryze had to worry about were the big fellas. The only way to get to the planet was flying directly in their line of fire, and they knew this, which was why they hadn’t released any more drones.
Can’t hover up here all day, Ryze thought, jerking the flight sticks forward. The Starblazer nosedived toward Xovia, following the course Spex put in the nav.
“Here goes nothing!” Ryze shouted over Spex’s constant prayers.
Flames burst on the ship’s wings as Ryze pushed the engines into overdrive. The Starblazer was one of the fastest in the galaxy and she was proving so right now.
“Careful! Careful!” Spex shouted. “We’re in the warships’ sights. They’re locking onto us…”
Beeping blared from the console, letting Ryze know the obvious. On top of that, beamblasts streaked past the viewscreen—missed shots but for how much longer?
“Don’t worry, Spex!”
And as Ryze said that, the ship jerked, and the beeping turned into a wailing alarm.
“Left wing has been hit,” Spex said. “I told you, sir!”
“How are the shields?”
“At fifteen percent capacity. At the speed you’re going, they’ll never charge, and if we get hit again, the ship will be destroyed—”
“Then let’s not get hit again. Divert weapon power to the left wing.”
“Sir, that’s insane—”
“Do it!”
It was a risk, but Ryze tilted the ship so the left wing was the only exposed part of the ship. He checked the console. WARNING flashed in bright red letters. They were flying with half the ship unprotected. Sweat dripped down Ryze’s forehead. His hands ached painfully from holding the controls against the forces of the ship’s descent. He fought the urge to break the blaring console, and instead focused on breaking through Xovia’s atmosphere without the ship going up in flame.
More blasts whipped past as they flew lopsided. With all the shots fired in their direction, another was bound to hit them.
And it did.
The ship shook, the console all but screaming. Ryze gripped with all his might, trying to keep the sticks canted.
“Now we have no shields!” Spex shouted. “We’ll burn up before we even break the atmosphere—”
“Shut up, Spex,” Ryze said, oddly quiet, “and give the main thrusters a little boost for me.”
Spex, mumbling prayers, did it, and the Starblazer punched through just as three beams were stopped by the planet’s protective shell.
“See?” Ryze shouted—he had to over the roar of their descent. “I know what I’m doing!”
Calmly, Spex said, “Do you, sir?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Then you might want to pull up before you crash into that Battler.”
The Starblazer’s viewscreen showed the seemingly endless surface of the ship they were about to crash into, long, black, and sleek—a technological marvel.
“Shit!” Ryze screamed, wrenching the sticks with what little strength he had left.
Fourteen
A crackle came through Calamity’s commlink and startled Ace Silver out of a peaceful viewing of the dying city.
“Sir?”
“Yes,” Ace answered. The voice belonged to a commander on one of the warships hovering over the planet. Ace had forgotten his name, not that it mattered. If the commander delivered bad news, he would be killed for his folly. In the Celestial Dominion, the person at fault and the messenger were often shot.
“A ship has slipped past our blockade, sir. An old SG-Rogue class.”
Ace was quiet for a long moment, his breathing uneven, then rage filled him and mottled his face red. Through clenched teeth, he finally said, “What?”
“I’m sorry, sir. The pilot was quite…impressive. Whoever it was took out a battalion of invaders without batting an eye. One of our warships was able to hit it on its descent to the planet—”
“Commander, can you patch me to your head of security, please?”
A pause and a click in the man’s throat as he gulped. “Y-yes, sir.”
The line went silent for a moment before Ace was transferred to the warship’s security team.
A female voice answered. “Yes, sir?”
“Hello, this is Ace Silver. Clearance code XGG36.” Stating the code was pointless. Ace’s voice was as distinct as the God-King’s himself, but he had found most people were not eager to carry out punishment, especially when said punishment was death. The clearance code confirmed his identity, and no one refused his orders. Had he been on the warship, he would’ve killed the commander with his bare hands. He would’ve enjoyed it, too.
“Greetings, sir.”
“I would like the commander of your ship executed. Please.” Spoken as nonchalantly as a man telling a waitress what he’d like for dinner.
“Yes, sir.” The woman did not hesitate. Ace liked that.
“What is your name, soldier?”
“Dila Toag, sir.”
“Well, SO Toag, would you please patch the execution onto Calamity’s viewscreen?”
“Yes, sir.” There was a pause and a crackle again. Distantly, Ace heard the security officer bark orders to the rest of her team. In the background, the commander yelped.
This brought a smile to Ace’s face. He turned to his second-in-command and told him to be on the lookout for an SG-Rogue class. The officer nodded and directed his own orders to those manning the radars below the bridge.
A second later, the viewscreen dissolved away from the burning capital city to the bridge of the warship above.
Toag was a slender woman with a harsh face. She had dark eyes that could pierce through steel with a simple glare, and blonde hair done up in a tight bun. Ace had never seen her before, and he thought that was a travesty. She was beautiful.
Still, Ace remained serious, standing in the ramrod posture drilled into his head from years of military experience. He kept his face impassive, his brow wrinkled and his eyes narrowed.
Three officers surrounded Toag. They grabbed the commander, a pasty-faced twig of a man, by the shoulders and kicked the backs of his legs, causing the man to fall on his knees. Unlike the SO, Ace had seen this man before. His name was Crane, or something close to it. He never liked the guy and now wondered how Crane had risen to this rank in the first place.
“Please don’t, war-master Silver! Please have mercy!”
Ace allowed himself a slight smile, but only for a fraction of a second. As he turned around on the bridge and faced his own frightened crew, his face changed back to that of the stern war-master he was. He unclasped his hands and stuck out his arms to each side. “You see? This is what happens when you fail me,” he shouted to the bridge. “Trust me, this is tame compared to what the God-King does to failures.” He turned back to the viewscreen, nodded. “You may proceed, SO Toag.”
She nodded back, un-holstered her blaster, and pressed it against the back of Crane’s head.
He sobbed and convulsed, but the men holding him were too strong and he got nowhere.
Toag squeezed the trigger. A concussive blast followed instantaneously, and Crane fell on his face with a new sizzling hole in his head. Toag holstered her weapon and stood at attention as the other guards dragged the body off the screen.
“Thank you, SO Toag,” Ace said, nodding. “Switch the screen back to the city.”
As much as he wanted t
o enjoy the moment of the commander’s death, he didn’t have time, because the radar suddenly shrieked, and Ace knew exactly what that noise meant.
“Sir,” one of the lieutenants said, “the SG-Rogue is right above us.”
Ace bared his teeth. “Then shoot him down. Now.”
Fifteen
Ryze pulled up just in time, getting close enough to the Battler to skim along the top. As he expected, its weapons zeroed in on the Starblazer.
“No shields, Ryze!” Spex shouted.
“I know that.”
“Should I be worrying now?”
“Have you not been?” Ryze rolled to the right, going off-course of the nav. More shots fired his way and he dropped below the Battler, skimming the forest. Ryze lost control, no longer able to handle the torque, and the ship jolted, cutting through the trees, leaving a trail of fire and smoke in their wake.
“Shields at thirty-percent,” Spex said.
“Good—” One of the beams hit the right wing. Steam sprayed from a pipe on the side of the cockpit. “What the—!” Ryze reached and slapped it out of his face with one hand, directing the steam in another direction.
“Shields at eight percent now, sir,” Spex corrected.
“Don’t tell me anymore, Spex!”
“What are you going to do, sir? Hopefully something, or we are going to die!”
Ryze pulled down on the sticks and rose slightly above the trees. Alarms blared, lights flashed from the console, and the viewscreen showed nothing besides imminent death
“I’m going to do something I’m not proud of, Spex,” Ryze answered.
“What’s that?”
Ryze grinned without humor, thinking Please let this work! He killed the engine, changing to auxiliary power.
“What? We’re going to crash and burn, Ryze! I’m not ready to die!” the AI screeched.
“Trust me. When have I ever steered us wrong?”
“You’re steering us wrong right now! Literally!”
The ship shut down with a hum and plummeted, bending to the forces of Xovia’s gravity. Without the engines running, Ryze found it even harder to gain control over the flight sticks, but somehow he did, despite Spex’s screaming.
“Drop an ion bomb for good measure,” Ryze ordered.
“Why, sir?”
“We need to really sell this.”
“Sell what?”
“Our demise,” Ryze replied. “Burn down a couple trees, and they’ll think we crashed. Sure, they’ll send a survey team with a bunch of cybersoldiers to check it out, but—”
An explosion boomed below them.
“Sorry,” Spex said, “the sooner you quit talking, the sooner you can land this thing—sir.”
“I like it, Spex. You should lose the manners here and there more often!” Ryze switched the viewscreen to the rear. A chunk of the forest was destroyed, the trees burning, the ground a crater. In the distance, growing smaller by the second, hung the Battler.
Gliding, Ryze banked right. They were still off-course, but they needed to get free of any scanners or tractor beams. When he blazed by the warships in space, that was easy. More room to navigate, more room to speed. Here, in the planet’s atmosphere…not so much. Gravity worked against them and the towering trees were obstacles capable of killing upon collision.
“Just like the maneuverability test at the academy,” Ryze told himself.
“Altitude dropping, sir,” Spex informed him.
“I can see that. I’m trying to get back on course. The closer we get to the communications center, the less time I have to spend trekking through the woods. This place can get mighty dangerous at night. Ah, I’m going to put us down right here—whoa.”
They had come upon a canyon, or so it seemed to Ryze before his eyes focused on what he saw. Whatever this was wasn’t made by nature. In this canyon, a starship’s remains were half-buried in the ground.
Ryze flared the Starblazer’s rudders, then flicked a bevy of switches on the console, which no longer chirped and blared at him, thank the Gods. The landing gear emerged with a slight whine. Ryze diverted just enough power to the thrusters to float down on the uneven surface. Once the gear touched ground, he breathed a sigh of relief, and Spex cheered.
He was, after all, the best damn pilot in the galaxy.
“See? What did I tell you? Haven’t steered us wrong yet, buddy,” Ryze said.
“I will admit, I thought my dreams of one day inhabiting an automaton were done for, sir.”
Ryze tapped the console speakers—save for ripping his chip out, the closest he could get to touching the AI—and said, “Your dreams live on, my friend. Maybe one day, you and I can go get smashed on dredka together.”
“I do doubt that, sir.”
“We’ll see. Besides, we ain’t out of the woods yet. Literally.” He chuckled at his lame attempt at a joke. Spex gave no sign he heard it. “What? Really? You don’t like that one, Spex?”
“It was…quite an easy witticism.”
“I didn’t hear you coming up with it. You’re supposed to be some all-knowing computer overlord, right?” Ryze stood and put his hands on his hip. It was only just occurring to him how much he argued with the AI. Not a person, but a program. Silly.
“Must’ve been beyond my circuitry, sir.”
Ryze grabbed his helmet and secured it to his battle armor. That felt good, some protection. Right now, he knew he was a sitting duck, waiting to get picked off by drones. “Whatever, Spex. I give you credit when you make a joke. Least you could do is reciprocate.”
“Reciprocate. Hm, that is a word not normally in your vocabulary, sir.”
“Don’t call me stupid, Spex,” Ryze warned as he wound the loose pipe up and set it back in place among the side track.
“I would never, sir. It’s just that…hold on, computing…among the 21,550,994 words you’ve spoken to me over the last Common decade, reciprocate has never been one of those words,” Spex said, sounding pleased with himself.
Ryze smirked. “It is now.” He was looking inside the weapons locker off the main hold. Most of the supplies had fallen from their shelves and pegs. Ryze bent down and picked up his trusty flayzer and a fresh blasgun, slinging the former over his shoulder and placing the latter in his hip holster. Then he grabbed six energy packs and deposited them into his belt pouches—hopefully that would be more than enough ammunition for the job.
Hopefully.
“Sir, I didn’t mean to offend.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ryze mumbled. “Real cute, Spex. Real cute.” The state of the main hold was a mess. Storage bins had spilled their contents all over the floor; glasses had broken and left glittering shards everywhere; and one of the viewscreens hung from the wall, its wires dangling down like vines in a jungle. “You should really get that automaton body, Spex. Sooner rather than later. I’m gonna need a hell of a cleanup job here.”
“Hmm, I believe I’ll put it off a little while longer then, sir. Respectfully, of course.”
“Yeah, I thought you might say that. Now patch into my helmet. We’ve got more adventure ahead of us.”
As sarcastically as an AI could sound, Spex said, “I can’t wait, sir.”
Ryze shook his helmet-clad head and exited into the wilderness of his home world. “Do me a favor, Spex. Send a transmission back to the comm center and let them know I’m here.”
“Of course, sir.”
Sixteen
Akyra and the cybersoldiers had found the comm center sometime in the night.
Thermal sights had indicated there were two people inside; her targets. The soldiers initially made a move toward the building, but Akyra called them back. She didn’t know the type of weapons the queen and her guard possessed. For this mission, patience was key. Plus the queensguards of Xovia were lethally trained by some of the finest generals in the galaxy. The queen would probably have some sort of training herself, too. She wouldn’t be helpless. Best to wait them out. Hide until Jade and her pal tho
ught it was safe to move on.
They had been waiting for a while. The sun was rising. Any moment now the queen would move on.
Akyra stalked through the brush. She fell into a prone position behind an uprooted tree. Luminescent orange worms dangled from the dirt, glittering in the morning sunshine.
Her hololens detected movement within. One of the two heat sigs was up and walking around; the other remained asleep. They were getting their rest in shifts. Smart gals.
“Get ready,” Akyra told the cybersoldiers.
They replied by rising into a crouched position and readying their arm cannons. The weapons hummed slightly, brewing with enough power to blast the building into rubble.
Always an option, sure, but Akyra wanted to find out what the God-King so coveted. As the second heat sig rose from their slumber inside the comm center and Akyra leveled her weapon at the entrance, her ear buzzed.
She jolted, surprised by the sudden chatter on the Dominion fleet’s channel.
She listened.
A new ship had entered the atmosphere despite the blockade. An SG-Rogue class. A hell of a ship, not many around any longer.
It could only mean one thing…
Someone was coming for the little queen. She’d been able to hail for help, which Akyra knew she would, but she never expected someone crazy enough to answer the call, nor get through the blockade, for that matter.
She must be offering quite a reward. But what does this queen have, now that her kingdom is all but destroyed?
Akyra turned toward the soldiers, put a hand up, and lowered it.
The cybersoldiers then stood down.
More waiting. Basic strategy; she didn’t know how many people would come to the comm center to save the queen. It would be bad if she and the soldiers got into a firefight with the targets, and some random mercenaries crept behind her amidst all the chaos and gunned her down.
So she would continue biding her time. They had already waited this long; what was a little longer?
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