When they arrived back in the ship’s control room, Tristin went toward the highest console. In three leaps he was there, his fingers going over the buttons.
Roihan knelt by one of the cyborgs, trying to ascertain the damage.
She went to Lucas. “His suit has been pierced through by one of the Ardak blades,” she told Roihan.
“We need to get both of them to the medbay,” Roihan said. “I won’t know more until they’re on tables with the suits off.”
“I can help,” she offered.
“No, you stay here in case I need you to portal,” Tristin called down.
“Jaffa, Evett.” Roihan yelled. “Help me get these guys to the medbay.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Tristin
Tristin connected to the ship with his mind. “How are we flying all these ships?” he asked Chihon. “And will the other cyborgs have control of their own ships?”
“Connect to it at the squadron level with your mind. Tristin, you have command of squadrons A, B, and C. Aria, you have command of squadrons D and E.”
“How many ships in a squadron?”
“One hundred.”
He closed his eyes, concentrating on finding control of the ships.
Aria’s voice came over the frequency. “Who’s lifting off first?”
“Go ahead,” Tristin replied. “I’m still getting my bearings.”
The outer bay rumbled with the sound of hundreds of engines starting up, while Tristin grappled with control of his squadrons.
“Ship doors closed. Final lock checks completed. Bay on screen. Commencing liftoff.” Aria’s voice was sure and certain.
Tristin opened his eyes to see the ships begin lifting off at the far end in perfect synchronization. He couldn’t figure out what he was doing wrong. The ships weren’t responding to him.
“Tristin, what’s your status?” Chihon asked.
“I’m not sure. Every time I try to connect, it blocks me and my visual cortex turns red. I’m just focusing on taking control of this ship, not even trying to do the whole fleet.”
“That’s your problem,” Chihon said. “Rather than going up from one ship to the squadron, focus on the entire fleet at once, then go down one level to the squadrons. Their number is too large to focus on individual ships.”
Tristin searched the computer grid for the highest level, the connection between all of the ships. Finally, he found it, then saw the connections for the squadrons. He integrated them, then gave the command for the ship doors to lock. “Final lock checks completed. Starting engines. Liftoff in 3, 2, 1.”
He opened his eyes to see his ships begin lifting off. They would empty the final half of the bay in less than a minute.
A yowl from outside the ship let him know that the Ardaks weren’t completely gone. He wondered if any of them had boarded the ships before they took off. They’d have to check before they landed on Aurora.
Without warning, the glass at the front of the ship exploded.
As if in slow motion, Tristin watched as Simban tried to shield Irielle, but it was too late. One of the enormous chunks of glass flew from the front and embedded itself in her shoulder.
She woke suddenly and screamed, and Simban fell backward, weighed down by the enormous piece of glass.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Tristin
Tristin jumped down from the console as Simban fell backward with Irielle, the piece of glass inside her shoulder easily the size of his arm.
Tristan examined the wound. “She’s lucky it didn’t cut her arm off—a few inches to the right and it would have. The glass is embedded deeply enough that it will be dangerous to remove, but we can’t leave it in, either. Who’s your best healer?”
“Aielle,” Simban said quickly.
“Traako, she’s unconscious in the medbay,” Kirelle answered.
“I’ve set the autopilot to put the three squadrons in orbit, but we need to get off this ship before too much of the atmosphere leaks in from outside.” Tristin examined the grid of ships on his visual cortex for one he believed was empty. “Kirelle, make a portal to Ship 416. Everyone through! Now!”
Kirelle brought up the grid on screen and made the portal, then the rest of his team and the cyborgs they’d rescued began running through to the new ship.
Another cyborg handed him a leather strap from his armor and Tristin put one hand on Irielle’s shoulder, yanking the glass out with the other. Blood squirted from the wound and he tied the leather strap around it, creating a tourniquet.
“Irielle, can you hear me?”
Her pale face and clammy skin showed that even unconscious, her body was going into shock.
“Go through the portal and get her to the medbay on Ship 416,” he told Simban. “I’ll have Roihan meet you there.”
“Thank you, Tristin.” Simban ran through the portal, heading for the medbay on the new ship.
When the control room was clear, Tristin pushed Kirelle through in front of him and ran through the portal to the new ship.
Ship 416 looked exactly like the last one, and everyone was fine, if just a little more frazzled.
Tristin turned to Kirelle. “Make a portal to the medbay and retrieve the others from the old ship,” he ordered.
Kirelle opened a portal while Tristin jumped up to the command console, seeing that the ships were all outside the base and they had almost reached orbit. He cleared his mind to completely focus on flight.
For a moment he tuned in to the visual display at the back of the ship, where he saw the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He saw the top of the facility had opened and a stream of ships was coming from it, following them into the air.
Then he didn’t think further, but focused forward and flew them up into space.
Just when he thought they were free, Aria cut into his thoughts. “What the hell is that coming up at us?”
Tristin turned the front display to the lower scanners, where he saw a massive Ardak ship blocking their escape. It was the size of a hundred of his small ships, with all of their associated firepower.
And there was no mistaking whose ship it was.
“Jaffete! That’s the king’s ship!” Tristin said loudly over the frequency. “Take evasive action.”
But then the worst thing possible happened. As his ship rose, two more Ardak cruisers appeared over the horizon, flanking the king’s ship.
“Two more of them.” He fought a wave of pure terror. “How many squadrons can we split into?”
“Just the five,” came the smooth answer of a female voice that could only be Aria.
“All right, that’s almost two per ship. Let’s fly one high, one low. The ones that go high, try to take out their guns. Low, try to take out their engines. And if we get the chance at a rear shot, take out their crystal power source.”
“Anything else?” Aria’s voice was cool.
“Fucking pray,” he answered.
He connected to the ships’ coms of his three hundred ships. “Everyone strap in. There are three Ardak cruisers blocking our path—we’re going to charge them and get out of here.”
He gunned the engines and then they were charging the ships, each squadron doing what he and Aria had told them to do.
But the big ships had lasers that targeted their craft with specific accuracy.
“The shields on these ships won’t take more than one or two direct hits. We need portalers to rescue people from the downed ships,” Mordjan said over the ship’s coms.
“I don’t know who the hell can do that. How do we even know where to get them?” Tristin asked.
“I’m down,” Aria said. “Ship 147.”
“That’s how we know,” Mordjan growled.
“Ship 147. Aria’s down,” Tristin said.
“I’ve got her,” Kirelle said, pulling up a grid on a monitor.
Before Tristin could protest, she disappeared into a portal.
“Son of a bitch! Where the hell did she go?
” Tristin asked over the frequency.
A few moments later, Aria gave a cool reply. “She’s on my ship, going to Ship 348.”
“They appeared on our ship,” Roihan said clearly.
“Help us! Losing shields.” Several cyborgs began calling out over the frequency.
“Ship number?” Roihan yelled over them.
“Ship 464.”
“Kirelle and I are on the way.” The voice was Mochi’s.
“Dammit no!” Tristin shouted.
“It’s too late, man. She’s gone,” Roihan answered.
“Fuck! Don’t we have any other portalers?”
“Yes,” Mordjan said tightly. “We’re putting them to work, too.”
“Ship 573.” A voice said weakly.
“On our way.” This time, it was Valdjan.
Tristin smacked the console, knowing he was powerless to do anything but fly the ships. “Let me know when someone gets her back.”
They had just finished passing the three cruisers when all hell broke loose.
“They’ve deployed smaller ships,” Aria said calmly. Her voice came on over the ships’ speakers. “Cyborgs, I’m going to free up the weapons systems on your ships. Aim for the Ardaks.”
A cacophony of voices followed this announcement, but Tristin was more interested in how she’d done it.
“Nice trick,” Tristin remarked.
“You can do it, too. Use the Fleet Command option, then select Coms.”
As he followed her directions, he was gratified to see the smaller ships begin firing back. The cyborgs had impeccable aim, taking out the smaller ships. But the smaller ships were better at evasive maneuvers, and soon the sky was filled with firing weapons and spiraling ships.
It began to look like they could win the battle. But then five of the ships from Squadron A began firing on the other fleeing ships.
“There are Ardaks on five ships in Squadron A,” Tristin informed the cyborgs over the frequency.
“Yes, we saw that as well,” Aria replied.
Tristin pulled up the grid. “Ship 31 and Ship 128. And Ships 49, 85, and 86.”
“Got it,” Tordan replied. “We’re portaling teams over to take them out.”
“Can’t we just take out the ships somehow?” Tristin asked. He didn’t want to waste warriors taking out individual Ardaks.
Turning on the rear scanners, he saw the larger ships were turning around to pursue. “Ardak warships turning around,” he told them. “We need to get the hell out of here. Head for the wormhole.”
“Ships with damage won’t make it through the wormhole,” she informed him. “Shall we stall to evacuate troops?”
“How many ships would that be?”
“Seventeen. We have all of our portalers grabbing cyborgs from them now.”
“Fuck. The king’s ship is fully turned, and it’s faster than ours. We need to flee to keep ahead, or they will follow us in too closely and be able to discern our destination.” Besides, they would lose more ships while the warships picked them off as they fled.
“Understood.” Her voice was smooth and calm. As if they hadn’t just decided to kill any number of cyborgs. “Heading for wormhole. Estimated entry in ninety seconds. Expected duration for all ships to get through, two minutes.”
“Setting my squadrons to enter in three minutes, forty-five seconds.” Damn, that was a long time. Too long. The king’s ship would definitely catch up with them before then, and the other warships were right behind him.
Mordjan’s voice came over the frequency. “Just before entry, send all portalers and cyborgs back to squadrons A, B, and C.”
“What? No, dammit! I’m in charge of this mission,” Tristin yelled. “Get the fuck out of here! Who knows how many ships I’ll lose waiting for the wormhole? Besides, Squadron A has a few ships with Ardaks on board.”
“We’re not deserting the remaining ships,” Tordan’s voice came back commanding. “All portalers and cyborgs to squadrons A, B, and C to continue fighting the Ardaks.”
“The River people want to go, too.” There was a note of humor in Durstin’s voice. “Aefin said, ‘Traako, stop being a bunch of racist uds.’”
“By all means,” Tristin snarled. “Let’s just send the whole army back here in case they have the planet killer. Then they can take out the wormhole and spend the rest of the damn day picking us off.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Valdjan’s voice came from below him, and he glanced down to see Valdjan and Ithyll, Tordan and Irielle below him. “Quit being such an asshole about it.”
As gratified as Tristin was to see Tordan and Irielle awake, he was enraged at their stupidity. “I’ve lost whole fleets on stupid decisions like this!” Tristin shouted, his whole body beginning to tremble with rage. “Bringing soldiers to the rear like this is counter to every strategy I’ve used against the Ardaks. The ones in the rear usually die.”
“And we’ve saved more people than we can count by not leaving them behind,” Tordan shot back. “So shut up and let us do our jobs.”
Aielle formed a portal and they disappeared, bringing back more people seconds later. Ithyll did the same, and the control room began filling up with cyborgs and elves.
Ships began entering the wormhole, and he was gratified to see that Kirelle hadn’t appeared. Perhaps she’d done the right thing and gone through.
He waited, holding his breath as the ships disappeared into the wormhole in front of him. The king’s warship gained on them by the second in the rear. It was just reaching range to fire, and he knew the next three minutes would be the longest of his life.
As his first few ships began entering the wormhole, the king fired directly at his ship, taking out both the shield and the weapons to the rear.
Fuck. That wily Ardak knows exactly which ship I’m on.
He took a deep breath.
“Evacuate ship,” he said over the frequency and the speakers. “We’ve lost power, we’re going down.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Kirelle
Kirelle drew in a quick breath, steadying herself against the console in front of her. She’d been portaling as quickly as she could and was dizzy from all the different locations, rattled from several close calls. She’d paired up with Mochi, and the second he called out a ship, she found it on the grid and portaled to the control room, helping Mochi shuffle cyborgs through.
But there had been several close calls, grabbing cyborgs just as their ship was exploding or breaking apart. In the last one, she’d stopped Mochi from going in and they’d reached through for their hands, pulling two cyborgs out at the last moment.
Until this point, she hadn’t realized how dangerous portaling was, even to her. She’d never had to make so many portals at once, but now that she’d made dozens, she could feel her magic waning along with her strength.
It wasn’t just the portaling, it was also the stress of the battle.
“Ship 424,” Mochi said.
She found it on the grid and threw up her hand, forming the portal. Beads of sweat broke out on her forehead.
Mochi pushed her back. “Hey, you’re getting tired. Let me do this.”
She nodded but stepped through anyway, pushing the cyborg in. Two others ran through after him.
Suddenly Mochi turned back to her. “Get back! Oh gods!”
Strong hands pulled her back through and, as if in slow motion, she saw the ship crack in half and Mochi begin to drift away.
She screamed as the portal closed, throwing up her hands to make another. But when she peered through, she saw Mochi was far below her, the piece of ship drifting even faster.
She tried again, reaching for his hand, but just missing him.
“Let me go, lady,” he said, his face beginning to freeze. “You’ve done well.”
Tears formed on her lashes, and she closed the portal, trying one more time.
Again, he was too far.
Hands stopped her from making another portal, and she t
urned to see Fayelle. “He’s right there!” she cried, “Right beyond my fingers!”
“Let’s try together,” Fayelle said. “We open, you pull him through.”
Kirelle saw two of the cyborgs she’d rescued, one had a long cord attached to him. They threw up a portal and he dove in, the others pulling him back after a few seconds. But his hands came back empty.
Kirelle burst into sobs, falling against Fayelle.
“We tried our best,” Fayelle said, her own voice a sob. “I’ve lost so many, too.”
“Portal back to Tristin’s ship,” Roihan shouted. “We’re going into the wormhole.”
They held up their hands and portaled to Tristin’s ship.
Hands grabbed her and she looked up into wild, glowing purple eyes. “What are you doing here? Evacuate! Abandon ship!”
“Where to?”
“Through the portal!”
Tristin pushed her through a portal behind her and she ended up in another control room, packed with cyborgs and elves. But the portal closed behind her, and Tristin didn’t follow.
“Where is he?” she shrieked.
But in the chaos no one was listening.
She threw up a hand and made a portal back to his ship to find him.
“I told you to get out of here!” Tristin was screaming at her, and she turned to see the glass at the front cracking open.
Tristin threw her the device he’d gotten from X-Blade. “Get this to my cousin Juordin. Tell him I tried.”
“I’m not leaving without you!”
“And I’ll go!” he shouted. “But save the others in the med bay first.”
A spiraling ship crashed into them and she screamed at the impact.
“Go now, dammit!”
She didn’t know what to do, but couldn’t just stand there when he’d given her an order. “I’ll be back,” she promised, making a portal to the med bay. “I’ll be back.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Tristin
No, little elf, you won’t.
Tristin watched the King’s warship, Vengeance, coming toward him, the other warships behind it. His weapons were gone, his shield down. He was a sitting target, easy prey. The king wasn’t firing, which probably meant he was planning to capture Tristin again.
Tristin (Cyborg Warriors Book 7) Page 16