Lunara: The Original Trilogy

by Wyatt Davenport

"You need a pilot," she replied, moving to the controls. "The fleet will be here at any moment. Get in your captain’s chair and captain everyone to safety."

  "They’ll find their own way out of here," he said, shifting his intent gaze from the control panel to her. "I know I am."

  She grabbed him by the shoulder. "Get in your chair now. I’ll pilot the Protector. Shannon is vulnerable in that archaic craft."

  Reluctantly, making a point of his displeasure, he moved into the captain’s chair.

  She sat down quickly and activated the preflight routines. The main computer dumped power into the engines and weapon systems, and hull scanners searched for breaches.

  A half minute passed, and everything checked out positive. They were ready to take off.

  The radar fluttered with blips along the screen. The bulk of the blips were red, coming in from the west—the MSA fleet. To the east, green dots flickered, hurrying away from Orcus: Shannon in the drone ship in the middle of Red Dust, Olympus, and Quartz, with Atalo Grove, piloting the Iron Chunk, taking up the rear. To Chloe’s dismay, the red dots advanced quickly. The drone ship didn’t have enough thrusters.

  "Head toward the Big Three Mons," Eamonn said, tapping in commands on his flight screen.

  The whine of the engines resounded through the cockpit. The Protector rocked and lifted off.

  "We can’t go there," she said. "No place to hide. It is exposed. We should be heading for Valles Marineris."

  "I don’t have time to discuss any of this. Either do it, or get out of my way."

  Chloe didn’t reply. She was already busy moving forward, quickly passing over her old colony. Suddenly, the ship jostled back and forth, and the bright flash of a percussion missile filled the cockpit. An eerie creak resounded along the port side of the hull, sending a ripple of fear across Chloe’s body.

  "Don’t worry about that," Eamonn said. "We can outrace the rest of them."

  "If one of those hits the drone ship—"

  Eamonn responded before she finished. "I know. Just get us as close to the mons as possible."

  "You fool. How could you let him go?"

  Seth stood facing a rising Martian sun, looking intently at the Protector as it flew away from his view. "Your fleet should be trained adequately enough to capture them."

  "That is irrelevant," Samantha said.

  He took his eyes off the distant ship for a moment to look at Samantha. Her face turned raspberry red, and a noticeable twitch trembled above her right eye as she glared at him. Every molecule of hate in her body streamed out of her eyes; she wanted him to die. A part of Seth enjoyed her tantrums. Not because he hated her as much as she hated him; it was more the fact that he could provoke her, thus weakening her.

  Samantha’s gaze ended when the sound of a shuttle whined from above them. Moments later, it landed, and a single officer sprinted down the ramp to them. He handed Samantha a radio unit.

  "Madam, there is an urgent message from the captain of the Protector. He claims he needs to speak with you. The scans from our lead ship indicate it is one of the vessels you requested we chase."

  "I know where and what the Protector is," she said and then activated the unit. "Eamonn, you should have stayed on Orcus. Prolonging your execution disappoints everyone."

  "Threats. They have never become you," Eamonn said over the radio. "I will escape again. You needn’t waste your fleet by chasing after me. I always get away."

  "Not this time, Dalton. We aren’t playing to capture you. I’ll have your ship in pieces."

  "You can’t hurt me," Chloe said over the radio. "Gwen wants me alive."

  "You little Scarlet! Don’t mock me!"

  Seth went to grab the unit away from her, but she stabbed her pistol into his stomach before he realized she had drawn it. He couldn’t avoid a direct shot.

  She jerked her head to the side, telling him to stand down.

  "Eamonn, this is the day of your death," she said into the unit and deactivated it. She addressed the officer. "Have the squadrons target the Protector. If they escape, you’ll die."

  "Understood, ma’am," the officer said, swallowing the last word. He tapped his heels together and hurried toward the awaiting shuttle.

  Seth stepped toward Samantha, but she stabbed the pistol into his stomach again. He stopped short. "You can’t kill Chloe," he said.

  "If you didn’t get it, she tried to kill you. You’re dead to her. Just as Eamonn is dead to me."

  "She knew she wouldn’t kill me. She was angry."

  "Special abilities or not, once you fire upon a person, you mean to kill, making your life void in their eyes. She did that to you. You better accept it before you cost the MSA any more than you have already cost us."

  Seth didn’t say anything in return. Samantha holstered her gun and moved up the ramp, disappearing into the shuttle.

  Seth’s shoulders dropped. Perhaps she was correct. The gap between Chloe and him might be too great to bridge.

  From her pilot’s chair, Chloe looked back at Eamonn. "Okay, so we enticed Samantha into chasing us. What do we do next?"

  "I don’t know," Eamonn said faintly, as if he wasn’t paying particular attention to her words.

  Chloe looked back toward the Big Three Mons in front of her. She directed the ship toward Pavonis Mons, the middle mons. To the south of Olympus Mons, the Tharsis region held three lesser mons lined up in a row. Located on the equator, the three mons were a common landmark for pilots to direct themselves toward various destinations around the planet. Chloe remembered passing through these mons two years ago when the crew returned to Mars. A sight that once held such marvel for her had now become horrific in her mind.

  Eamonn gave little indication to her about where to go once they arrived. The peak of Pavonis indicated no direction for her. To her port side, the drone ship along with Asterfighter pilots Quartz and Red Dust skimmed along the surface, barely leaving room for error. In front of them, Olympus and the Iron Chunk pulled away from them on Eamonn’s orders; they were to scout ahead for any surprises.

  Chloe gripped the handles of her control stick a little tighter, sweat pooling in the palm of her hands. The MSA fleet was approaching quickly, and she doubted the MSA valued her life any longer. Samantha’s anger would have become like a supernova by now. Seth’s relationship with Gwen would do little in the way of protecting her now. She had to accept that. She had done too much to the MSA for them to sit back and placate him any longer. For the first time, she felt the danger that everyone else had been feeling for two years. It terrified everything within her, and she understood, though admittedly to a lesser degree, why Eamonn had lost confidence in himself.

  Pavonis Mons sat only a kilometer away. Still, she didn’t know what Eamonn expected of them when they arrived. The fleet would catch them by the time they passed it, and there was little in the way of cover once they did pass it. Chloe narrowed her eyes, readying for her orders.

  The orders came a moment later. "Loop halfway around Pavonis and then streak directly upward toward space. I want us into orbit quickly." Eamonn opened a channel to the rest of the squadron. "Parker’s squad. I want you to stay with the drone ship, make sure it arrives at the rendezvous undamaged. Head to the Valles if you need to. Keep low along the surface. We can’t give them an open shot. She can’t take any fire."

  "Affirmative," the squad replied in unison.

  Eamonn closed the channel as soon as they hit the edge of Pavonis.

  In a long drawn-out loop, Chloe eased the Protector around the mons, eyeing the jutting pieces extending out from the base. The Protector shook violently as it fought to keep its arc around the mons. Chloe heard nothing over the rattling in the cockpit. The friction of the atmosphere and the force of the turn were tearing the ship apart.

  As soon as they arrived on the other side of the Pavonis, the rest of the squad streaked away. Taking her cue, Chloe yanked the control stick far back. The Protector yawed up to the sky. The gravitational forces pushe
d her back in her seat, her eyes began to bug out, and worst of all, her stomach dropped. She wanted to vomit. She tasted the bile bubbling up her throat, but she pushed it down with a swallow.

  Pilots can take the Gs!

  The Protector straightened out. Chloe punched the thrusters to maximum, streaking the ship upward faster and faster.

  In a matter of seconds, the Protector broke orbit. Chloe was relieved. She always felt more comfortable flying in outer space, without the nuisance of gravity or the suddenness of the ground to stop her.

  "We don’t have radar anymore," she said. "Without the atmospheric friction, we can’t find them."

  "I know," Eamonn said. "But over two dozen ships broke orbit with us."

  "What are we going to do? I don’t like the idea of us fighting against an entire fleet."

  "Neither do I," he said. "We have no choice. Samantha gets a little touchy when it comes to me."

  Chloe swore she heard a chuckle from Eamonn when he mentioned Samantha, but she forgot it as several twitters and tweets sounded. "Incoming missiles. Ten of them. No, check that. Twenty of them. No, check that. Thirty of them."

  "I get it. Head toward Deimos!" Eamonn shouted.

  "Adjusting course." She shifted the control stick to tilt the Protector toward the tumbling moon.

  "I will be in the rear compartment."

  "You are leaving me!" she shouted. "I can’t fly this alone."

  "You will have to," he said. "I’ll only be a few minutes."

  Chloe turned her head around to plead with him, but he was already gone. She turned back to the screen in front of her. Thirty seconds from impact. Sweat dripped from her neck down to the small of her back.

  Deimos. Missiles. Deimos. Missiles. She darted her eyes between the two closing gaps in front of and behind the Protector. It looked like she would make the turn around Deimos in time to evade the missiles.

  She arrived at Deimos and swept around the moon, trying to stay close. Atmosphere-free, Deimos was basically a huge asteroid orbiting Mars, and that allowed her to skim the surface and avoid any drag. She eyed her radar. The missiles were dropping, destroyed when the awkward tumble of the moon caused a peak where a valley had been. Once again, she realized Eamonn was a genius.

  It wouldn’t be enough to get each missile though. The tracking computers weren’t that dumb. Chloe needed something else. She called up the weapons control panel and scrolled through the choices. Immediately, she found what she was looking for—guardian flares. She dropped twenty out of the back in intervals of five. The flares burst into an arrayed spectrum of colors, lighting up the dark side of Deimos.

  The missiles, fooled by the heat and the movement, streaked toward the faked signals and then burst into a brilliant blaze.

  Chloe checked the radar. It was clean. She let out a long breath.

  However, it was only a momentary relief. It was hardly over for her. She knew that once she arrived on the other side of the moon, the MSA fleet would be waiting for her, eager to vindicate the trouble she and Eamonn had caused them over the last two years.

  She dropped the Protector downward, streaking the ship along a different vector, hoping to gain some time once they sprung out the other side.

  "Keep us steady," Eamonn said, pulling himself through the opening of the cockpit hatch and then moving to his captain’s chair.

  "Where have you been? Neptune?" she shouted.

  "Setting up our escape."

  "Phobos is too far away and too active to pull off the same trick," Chloe said. "And the openness of space will only get us killed. We are trapped."

  "Head back to the fleet. We can use the ship’s backdrop as protection."

  "Head back to the fleet? You have gone completely insane."

  Eamonn ignored her. He was busy punching away at his control panel. "I want you to pass over the following twelve points."

  "Jinx," Chloe muttered. She looked down at her flight screen. The points were scattered and didn’t follow any pattern of escape, requiring her to stay within the fleet longer than necessary. "You know this will get us killed. There will be multiple point-blank shots."

  "I’m counting on them to hold their fire when their own ships are in harm’s way."

  Wham! Chloe’s head jerked to the side. Before she fully realized what happened, a squadron of MSA fighters swooped across the front of the ship. She slammed the thrusters down and sped at maximum toward the MSA fleet, realizing she had no other choice, or at least, no better ones.

  They must have taken them by surprise, because as she streaked over four of the points in the fleet, the four MSA cruisers turned in unison toward each other. After a quarter turn, two of the MSA cruisers were facing each other, heading for a collision. The captains of the cruisers acted quickly; one turned around while the other dove downward. They barely missed each other.

  Eamonn laughed.

  Chloe shook her head. Is he enjoying this?

  "They are scrambling now," he said. "The MSA cruisers are out of sync, and the fighters are dodging in every direction just to avoid the cruisers’ panic."

  Chloe came around, shooting toward the left side of the fleet. She twisted and turned through a group of fighters, blazing a path through them. She smirked, realizing the MSA fighters were too eager. She shot easily past them and skirted along the hull of the closest MSA cruiser. She licked her lips. She had passed over three of the twelve points Eamonn had specified, and the MSA fleet was more confused with each pass. It was working, for now. Still, she didn’t see an end to this cat and mouse game; eventually the cat caught even the cleverest mouse, especially with the risks Eamonn was having her take.

  "Come around to vector twenty-nine point three," he said. "We can sweep the rest of the points and be home in time for dinner."

  Chloe adjusted, but it had no effect. The MSA fighters were becoming more patient as the chase lengthened. No doubt they were changing their goal from becoming the hero-of-the-catch to just catching-the-damned-ship, just to survive the wrath of Samantha Burns.

  A group of MSA bombers pushed in from her starboard side, trying to wedge her off, forcing her to swerve into a cluster of oncoming fighters. She was having none of it. She swept toward the bombers, and using her size advantage, she pushed them back enough for the Protector to squirt past the incoming MSA fighters and streak toward the MSA cruiser in the distance.

  A funny feeling perplexed Chloe. The MSA cruisers were safe havens in this impossible labyrinth of ships. They provided a buffer between the ever-darting fighters buzzing around her. Yet, with one shot from an MSA cruiser’s cannon, the Protector would disintegrate into a billion pieces. All things being equal, she trusted closeness to the cruisers over the emptiness of space.

  "Come on!" Eamonn shouted. "Only one point to go, and we can leave."

  "It is on the other side of that cruiser," she said. "Do you think the MSA will be confused enough for us to slip out?"

  "They should have bigger problems."

  The hull shuddered. Chloe thought her teeth were coming out, it was so violent. She shook it off and yawed upward as a missile swept across the belly of the ship. She heard a clang, metal against metal, followed by a fizzling sound. Then it was overshadowed by a massive creaking of the hull.

  Chloe cringed, then scanned the proximity alerts. Significant impact signatures dotted the engine mounts, but they were holding. The plasma shielding drained to ten percent energy. And a leak in the xenon flow tubes sunk the fuel gauge lower. If she didn’t let off the throttle, they would be out of main engine fuel in a matter of minutes.

  Another jolt jerked the ship to the side, spinning it around its horizontal axis. For a moment, she thought the ship was going to blow, but as she yanked the control stick back and forth, she managed to coax the Protector into a straight course.

  A dozen sensors rang out like a frightened child calling out for its mother. Purposely, with effort, she ignored the tweets, twitters, chirps, and warbles of the alerts from her
status screen. It was pointless to look, anyway. Either it held or it didn’t; trying to diagnose the screen reports was senseless in this hunt.

  The MSA cruiser pushed to less than three meters from the Protector. She wouldn’t be surprised if someone climbed out and slapped a dynocharge against their hull. They were that close. She had to lessen the sonic bullets’ fire hurling at them from multiple directions, and she throttled back on her speed; the pursuing ships would have to do the same to avoid the turning cruiser’s mass.

  The fuel levels buzzed in the back of her mind like MSA fighters, disturbing her concentration. The ship was damaged enough to concern her. She hoped Eamonn’s plan was complete, because as great as she was, the Protector was ready to die.

  The Protector came to the end of the MSA cruiser, blazed through its exhaust trail, and shot toward Mars, exiting the fleet.

  "Got it!" Eamonn shouted. "Angle the Protector back toward the fleet but stay the course to Mars. I need them to stay in the funnel."

  "What is happening?"

  "I activated the netting nods," he said. "I have been dropping them at the points I specified to you."

  "Jinx to them!" Chloe shouted. "If they pass through an activated net, they will be torn to pieces."

  "It’s starting."

  Chloe flipped on her rear screen and watched the fireworks. Already, the three MSA cruisers were split in half, as they were in the netting when Eamonn activated it. As the fighters slammed into the netting, only small puffs of fire flashed on the screen. And by all indications, none of the ships were following them. The fleet came to a halt to avoid the labyrinth the netting created.

  "You did it," Chloe said. She wanted to get up and kiss him a thousand times for his brilliance.

  He smirked. "The nodes are designed to obliterate an entire meteor when they are perfectly aligned. I thought if we activated the nodes in a radical pattern within the middle of a fleet, it would cause the bigger ships to hesitate."

  "You stopped the whole fleet. None of them has seen anything like my captain before. You herded them right into a trap. Who would have ever thought of that?"

  The Protector shook as it entered the Martian atmosphere.