Seth slumped to one knee to alleviate the spots in his eyes. He watched as she reached the end of the passage and came upon a trio of MSA soldiers rushing toward her.
Shannon drew her gun high, fired four shots, and then stumbled to safety. Bullets whizzed down the adjacent passage. She sprinted back to Seth. "The MSA are coming. I got one of them, but it won’t slow them down. I heard one of them radio for backup."
Seth tried to get up but stumbled away from Shannon down the corridor. He crashed to one knee and slammed his head against a smooth surface. He smelled xexon fuel wafting from under the door.
"A hangar bay," he muttered. "I told her it was here."
He reached up with his good arm and pressed the door open button. He slid into the hangar, inching his way toward Liam’s space yacht.
Moments later, Shannon punched the doorway shut. Using the butt of her pistol, she slammed it into the control panel, shattering the glass panel into dozens of pieces and freezing anyone from activating the hangar doorway.
The boxed ship read Untouchable along its side. The design was older but would serve its purpose. He continued up the plank and into the cabin.
By the time Shannon arrived at the top of the plank, to her left, he had splayed his arms and legs across the rear cabin bed and was slipping in and out of consciousness.
He closed his eyes and let a great wave of euphoria trickle through his body. His body surged with energy, and he felt a sharp pain that quickly turned to a soothing warmth surrounding his shoulder. After a minute or so, he reached over and felt along his shoulder. No pain, no wound. Only the wet blood in his clothes remained. He was healed.
He heard Shannon in the rear of the ship, fiddling with the engines. He knew she had to be feeding the energy lines into the engines.
He rose, moved to the bridge, and sat in the pilot’s seat to prep the ship for takeoff. The control screen encouraged him; the engines’ heat and fuel sensors acknowledged an all-clear for takeoff, and the coolant system read at ninety-nine percent efficiency. The forward sensor array swiveled back and forth, going haywire. Something was wrong. With a jab of his finger on the control panel he called up the sensor display screen and immediately saw the reason for the fluctuating energy reading. The hangar’s plasma shield was still up.
He scanned the controls and found the plasma control pad to his left. He tapped on the disengage button. Nothing happened. He jabbed it with his finger repeatedly. Nothing happened.
Separating him from freedom, the flickering plasma shield held in place. "It’s stuck," he muttered.
"What are you doing?" Shannon called from behind. "Get out of the seat, you’re wounded."
"I’m fine now," he said, windmilling his shoulder. "I’ll take us out of here."
"No way. I’m the better pilot."
"Debatable." Her comments annoyed him a bit. He knew he had Shannon’s skill set and probably a bit more.
"Fine. If you kill us, I’ll kill you!"
"Go ahead," he muttered.
A booming explosion battered the hull of the yacht. He flipped on the motion cameras and immediately saw the reason he couldn’t disengage the plasma shielding. The access door to the hangar remained open. Several MSA soldiers with torches had welded it off. With a pressurization breach and the ship’s safeties overriding his requests, he had no way to release the controls.
He scanned the hangar. He would have to destroy the generator. He doubted there would be any backup systems with the level of technology the raiders possessed. His only hesitation was that an instantaneous depressurization would pop every blood vessel of every person within one hundred meters of the plasma shielding. They all would be dead.
A bitterness formed under his tongue.
He groaned. They are MSA the enemy. In order to survive, I don’t have a choice. He scanned the hangar for power sources. Instantly, the computer returned results; he aimed the gun turret toward the stairs encasing the generator and fired.
The generator fizzled to an unspectacular halt. The plasma shield flickered twice and dissipated into nothing.
The yacht swayed forward as the repulse engines fought against the air rushing out. Everything loose—crates, tools, helmets, and MSA soldiers—flew out of the mouth of the hangar and scattered along the surface.
He didn’t wait to gawk. He punched the accelerator, zipped out, and steered the ship away from the colony.
He couldn’t congratulate himself as he wanted. His escape was brutish and to some extent immoral. Aside from the dead MSA soldiers, depressurizing the entire section of the tunnels would have been disastrous to the colony’s underground structure. The people without breathing masks would surely have died. His chest felt heavy. That was why every civilized colony had a third and even a fourth backup generator for all plasma shields.
Unexpectedly, a ship swept across the bow of the yacht.
He yanked on the control stick and swiveled around to look out of the port side window at the ship streaking over their hull.
MSA atmospheric fighter. He cursed it. Maybe he shouldn’t feel so guilt ridden.
He slammed on the power, and the yacht accelerated, faster than he expected—apparently Liam had upgraded it—pressing him back into his seat.
A volley of bullets streaked toward his port side. He yanked the stick to the right, but the lateral engines reacted sluggishly. He cursed Liam. His upgrades hadn’t been completed.
The bullets nicked the underbelly, but the hull’s sensors reported no breaches.
"No breaches," Shannon called out.
"Good." His face contorted, and he felt lucky he had escaped that volley.
He cut the power to the engines, creating what would appear to the MSA atmofighter as a stall. Shannon groaned as the ship dropped from under her feet. But he had a plan, and as he sloped more into the descent, he saw exactly what he was searching for…a chasma.
With a flip of his pinky finger on the control stick, the viewscreen scrolled to the two ships trailing their yacht. He spit a volley of sonic bullets futilely toward the swerving MSA atmofighters.
Still, the engines were idle.
He flipped the view back to the front. The chasma approached fast, and he didn’t know if the lateral engines could handle the stress of leveling off inside the swirling winds of the chasma. He had little choice but to trust his imagination. He reignited the engine, flaring the backwash toward the closing atmofighters. The high-pitched hiss of the engines cued they were lit. He pulled up on the stick, causing him and the hull to groan in unison. Everything within the yacht rumbled.
An instant later, the sheer cliffs soared past either side of his cockpit windows. The squeeze against his peripheral vision weighed on his mind. One wrong turn and the Untouchable would spin out of control into the bottom of the mile-deep chasma.
He pushed the stick forward and lowered the ship farther into the chasma. The walls narrowed. The atmofighters were more agile and better armed for a battle. The chasma’s tight walls might work to his advantage.
He glanced at his overhead display and caught a glimpse of a bottleneck only a few hundred meters away. The targeting cross moved into his predicted field. The atmofighters ambled back and forth, still attempting to dodge his random fire. Suddenly, the distance was up and the wall compressed instantly into a single lane thoroughfare. The atmofighter to his left pulled up into an upright position, slowed by an abrupt turn to avoid the wall.
He had a clear view of its underbelly, and he fired as soon as he had the chance. The bullets connected the next instant against the hull, sending the atmofighter spiraling into the darkened bottom of the chasma. A brilliant explosion flared up between the jags in the chasma floor.
The second fighter turned into her view, and he fired again. Click. An instant later, the ammunition gauge chirped and displayed a reading of zero.
"Jinx, no bullets!" Shannon shouted.
His heart pounded. They had no ammunition, and the ship was slower and less agile t
han the atmofighter. Plus their failure would mean certain death for Eamonn. Why can’t this ever be easy or at least only mildly difficult?
He keyed in the terrain map on his viewscreen. The overlay showed the chasma extended another ten kilometers straight ahead—ten kilometers until he exited into the open arms of the MSA and their electromagnetic pulse. Once the pulse hit, the yacht would shut down, and the MSA would capture them.
He glanced at the map again. Several tributary chasma jutted off from this particular chasma in two kilometers. If he could cut into one of them, the atmofighter might react too late to make the turn. He revved the engine past the top speed, chirping and warbling every alert in the cockpit. He silenced them all.
The Untouchable zipped as close to the chasma floor as he would get. The rumbling of the backwash off the surface below deafened all the worries barking in his head. Dust billowed up behind, hopefully creating some cover.
In the distance, the adjoining chasma became visible through the dust fog to the port side. He adjusted his course as much as possible so as not to tip off the upcoming maneuver. The hulking walls straightened out, and the atmofighter closed in. Contrary to his sense of survival, this encouraged him because if the MSA fighter was going too fast, it would have less time to react to his next move.
A drip of cold sweat ran down the back of his neck. The distance read only a few hundred meters, where he would perform a sharp turn at three hundred kilometers an hour.
One more second—
He yanked on the control stick, sending the ship up. In the same motion, he twisted his arms and started a barrel-roll toward the chasma wall. Once he had the ship a quarter of the way from the horizon, making the wings vertical, he stopped the twist and scooted the ship with a short burst of acceleration into the adjoining chasma walls.
The MSA fighter seemed to expect the maneuver, but the narrower walls caught him off guard. The fighter slammed an overhanging boulder inlayed into the cliff’s face, sending it into a horizontal spin.
As the MSA fighter exploded into the opposite cliff, Shannon yelped with joy.
The chasma began to widen again, he adjusted the wings back to level, raised the ship into the high atmosphere, and set course for Aethpis.
All in one wicked escape, they were free of Liam and the MSA. He felt a great lethargy push through his mind.
"Seth," Shannon said. "What is happening to you?"
"Tired."
"I knew you were still wounded. No one heals that fast."
"I’m healed," he muttered, but the lethargy consuming him told him otherwise. He slumped over in the pilot’s seat. The last thing he heard was Shannon screaming his name.
Chapter 31
The pinkish hue of the early morning sun penetrated through the dusty haze into the conference room of Aethpisian Command. Parker lowered the tint and raised the lighting as he and Sarah walked into the room.
"Captain Terry," Sarah said to the man standing alone, gazing across the colony, seemingly lost in thought.
Since Sarah’s return, Parker had noticed that she spent her fair share of time doing the same from her secure location. The barrier splitting Aethpis created great torment within her. A scar on its face, an ugly reminder they were at war.
The man half-turned with a subdued gaze toward them. Clearly, he was apathetic and weary of the bad news they were about to deliver.
"It isn’t that bad, Nathan," she said, sympathizing with his weary face. "Looking over Kisgel’s troop distribution, I realize you’ll not be able to run your offensive for at least another month, but you have to understand it is in the best interests of the Alliance to secure our borders along the ground. And we need to protect Castor and Pollux." She paused, letting the words sink in. "The Air Command was given one hundred new recruits."
"And they were the best of the best, too," Terry said. His eyes fixated once again out the window. "It isn’t that. We are tearing the heart out of Aethpis."
Parker turned his head to follow Terry’s gaze.
Silence lingered for a long moment.
"In the revolutionary days," Captain Terry said, "Aethpis was fully united. But Aethpisian unity was a luxury, I see that now. The barrier defines our fractured nature, and it is a daunting task to overcome. Beyond the handful of people we can trust, I find it impossible to know who is on our side."
"You mean Thibodaux." Parker cringed slightly as he said the name. "I realize he was one of your best aides for over five years. But you can’t expect—"
"Mr. McCloud, I understand the difference between reality and my wishes. I wish he wasn’t a traitor, and I wish we didn’t have to execute him," he said with a sigh. "My bones are old, and sentimentality encrusts itself deep within them. If I’m melodramatic, I apologize."
"Nathan, we all have a melancholy about us these days," Sarah said. "Don’t think you are alone in sorrow and remembrance of a peaceful past. You provided that past with my grandfather in the last revolution. I need you to do it again."
"You are a definitely a Cortez. Always knowing the right thing to say," he said, shifting his feet together and straightening his back. "Now, tell me more about Kisgel’s troop assignments. I’m curious about where I can shift my Asterfighters with the added capabilities the expanded troops can provide."
"Excellent," she said. A small smile curled up her cheek. "Parker, show him."
Parker activated a display screen—a map of Aethpisian territory drawn in three-dimensional lines. "Now, in the northeast, the Elysium Mons air defense cannons have a full complement of troops. The added coverage gives us a two-hundred-kilometer radius from its peak in every direction. A fifty percent increase."
"Good," Captain Terry said, eyeing the map on the datapad. "With greater support over Aethpisian skies, we can move some of the Asterfighter patrols farther to the south to cover the Cyclopia corridor. The MSA have had free reign in that area for too long. We can pinch off supply runs coming from Trivium Port."
Sarah nodded. "The south should benefit the most."
"What about Aetheria? Did we send enough troops to finally barricade the northern defense?"
Parker nodded. "That is the first thing I told Kisgel. Utopia Planitia has been a constant pain to us. We have to stop them from launching attacks from the southern and western tips." He pointed to two locations to the northwest of Aethpis. "Have your engineers come up with theories on how they are blocking our radar?"
"I sent you a report a week ago," Terry said, a slight annoyance weaving in his tone.
Captain Terry was a strict officer and expected everyone along his chain of command to know everything he wanted them to know. That meant tons of reports for everyone to read and assimilate.
Parker had other pressing matters, namely, his friends hiding on Mars. "I haven’t had the time to read every report on my desk. Every department sends hundreds."
"I’ll have my officers summarize the reports for you," Terry said. "They use either a plasma shield enveloping the entire ship into subspace or a series of absorbers and emitters to destroy on contact and replicate the radar emissions."
"Fakedar," he said. "I’ve heard of that before."
"Both methods involve a serious jump in technological advancement; fakedar has been researched in the past but is prone to skips in the radar stream."
"Skips?"
Terry motioned with his hand. "As a ship flies through space, fakedar can look great, absorbing the radar signals hitting the hull and emitting a fake one to replace it. But when the power fluctuates in the capacitors—and it will when you deal with raw energy flow—the emitter and the absorber drift out of sync."
Sarah rubbed her forehead. "So the drifts act like bumps in the terrain which the fakedar can’t smooth out."
Terry nodded in agreement. "And the radar hops over them. Once the radar system spots a drift, it will modulate the signal against the potential threat. The absorbers will be overloaded with signals; consequently, we attain a pinpoint targeting. You mig
ht be able to hide for a minute or two, but the radar will always pick it up.
"I see," she said. "And your subspace theory isn’t probable either?"
"Subspace is only in the imagination of physics geniuses. I can’t even wrap my mind around the idea, let alone believe it is possible to jump into subspace and survive."
Parker rubbed his chin, trying to remember his secondary schooling physics classes. "So we are no closer to solving the riddle."
"Nope."
Sarah let out a long sigh. "It isn’t fair that they can hide from us."
"War never is," Terry replied.
"Jinx," she said, letting it roll off her tongue. "Aethpis is fighting an uphill battle in every way. The quality of life the MSA are providing for anyone who pledges allegiance to them has been difficult for us to overcome from a publicity standpoint. I haven’t seen this many credits pour into the general population in my lifetime. And they seem to do it every day. People get a large credit dump and a nice apartment for abandoning their principles and their morals. They all join in greed and don’t realize what they are committing to."
"The MSA will crumble under the weight of its own credits," Terry boasted. "The Alliance will always be around to remind the people who was right and who was wrong. They won’t be able to take everyone."
Parker huffed. "I don’t know if I share your optimism about people. Greed is a powerful ally—"
Behind him, Parker heard the door open. He turned to find Sarah’s top aide, Gertrude Pine, enter the room. She came at such a hurried pace, he immediately forgave her for interrupting their meeting.
"What is it, Gertie?" Sarah said.
Between gasping breaths, Gertie said, "This just…came…over the wire, Minister…McCloud." She reached out and passed Sarah a datapad lined with the yellow trim, indicating classified information.
"What could be so urgent you’re flustered and out of breath?" Sarah held her hand out to steady Gertie.
"Lady Arwell sent it."
Parker’s knees buckled. The angst inside of him, suppressed for so many days since the assassination of Gwen’s father, flowed through his veins again. A bitterness pooled under his tongue. He swallowed. "Gwen?"
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