by Ryk Brown
Seconds later, he was out of the narrow corridor between the woods, decelerating sharply in preparation to circle. As expected, the assault from the ground troops pinned down by his comrades was now redirected at him, slamming into the unprotected underside of his hull.
Loki quickly reset his jump buffer monitors and refreshed his jump computer’s status. Much to his surprise, the jump readiness light turned green again. Not surprising, however, were the four Super Eagles that had just jumped in ahead and above, diving toward him with plasma cannons firing. Their attack angle was perfect, allowing them to fire on the Voss as well as Loki, with only minor adjustments in their attack dives.
Several more bolts of energy slammed into his starboard side, lighting up a dozen more warning lights. Loki’s spirits sank, but his jump drive readiness light remained green.
He had only seconds to react. Climbing toward the newly arrived Super Eagles would reduce his target profile to a minimum but would make him easy prey for the fighters following slightly above and behind him. If he circled the Voss down low, he would be picked off in seconds, which at this point seemed like the best option. Assuming he survived the crash, he might be able to make it to the Voss, despite all the troops moving to surround it.
What would Josh do?
Loki smiled. Something stupid.
He jammed his foot onto his forward accelerator pedal as he shoved his grav-drive power slider to maximum. He needed to gain altitude or risk slamming into the mountains ahead. As his P-Seventy-Two lunged forward, he spun the jump range selector wheel in his flight control stick to its maximum setting. He had no idea if he would get more than one jump out of the damaged ship, and he intended to get as far away from Earth as possible. Better to die in space than to be executed on Earth.
“Voss!” he yelled over comms. “Lightning Two, passing overhead! A little help, please?”
“I’ve got you covered, Loki!” Mori replied over comms from the Voss’s topside gun turret as it rotated around to point forward.
A barrage of plasma bolts slammed into his waning dorsal shields, collapsing them completely. Warning lights began flashing all over his consoles, and his ship began pitching and yawing wildly as malfunctioning thrusters began firing at random, making his tiny fighter nearly impossible to control. A follow-up barrage slammed into his port engine, illuminating what few warning lights that remained. As his grav-lift began to fail, and his ability to control his fighter faded, he thought of his daughter. She would be safe with the Doran’s family.
Loki glanced at his jump track display. He still didn’t have a clear jump line over the trees, let alone one that would clear the mountains ahead. To make matters worse, his jump drive readiness indicator was randomly alternating between red and green. For all he knew, his jump drive was already inoperative.
All options were gone, his death assured. The only question that remained was how he would die. In the sights of enemy guns or slamming into the side of the mountains.
For the first time in weeks, Loki allowed himself to think of Lael. He found himself not praying for a miracle but hoping that the beliefs his wife had held were true, and that pressing the jump button would bring them together again.
His fear of death suddenly gone, the knowledge that he could chose the moment of his passing brought him a peace he had not known since his wife’s untimely demise.
As more bolts of energy slammed into his ship, Loki closed his eyes, imagined his wife’s face, and pressed the jump button.
Red-orange bolts of plasma, fired from the Voss’s topside gun turret, streaked over the cockpit windows, making Dylan flinch with each flash of red. “This is not good!” he repeated.
He glanced at the rear camera view on the center display screen, just as Jessica turned to head up the platform.
An explosion lit up the sky less than a kilometer ahead of him, right where the Super Eagles were diving toward them.
Something streaked over his left upper cockpit windows, headed for the tree line. Dylan ducked instinctively. “Shit!” he exclaimed, realizing it was Loki’s P-Seventy-Two Lightning.
A blue-white flash enveloped the tiny fighter just as it collided with the treetops, shearing them off and sending branches flying in all directions. A split second later, there was an explosion on the far side of the trees, in the next fairway just before the base of the mountains.
“Oh my God.”
“Take off! Take off!” Vladimir yelled over the intercom.
Still staring at the rising smoke beyond the trees, Dylan pushed the lift throttles upward slightly, causing the Voss to rise slowly off the ground. At the same time, he eased his forward velocity throttle forward, just enough to get them moving, but not so much that they wouldn’t be able to clear the trees ahead.
But without an enemy fighter to target, all EDF Super Eagles now turned their guns on the Voss, opening up with everything they had.
Red-orange energy bolts slammed into the Voss’s topside shields from all directions as Eagles dived on the slowly rising vessel. On the ground, marines moved out from their cover, pounding the underside of the enemy vessel with assault rifles, aiming at the unshielded aft end.
The Voss rocked with the impacts, knocking Jessica off her stride. She managed to avoid falling, but an energy bolt fired from below passed through a gaping hole in the ramp and struck her in the left shoulder, sending her spinning around and falling backward.
“JESS!” Nathan yelled, dropping his weapon and running out on the ramp after her. As she slid toward the end of the ramp, Nathan dove for her, managing to grab her hand.
Kit was next, diving for Nathan’s leg as he slid past, falling to the deck behind him in the hopes that his own mass would provide enough drag to prevent his comrades from falling off the end.
It worked, but just barely.
Dylan nervously adjusted the controls, increasing their rate of climb to clear the trees at the end of the LZ.
“Hold ’er steady!” Marcus bellowed over the intercom. “Nash fell!”
“What?” Dylan looked at the view screen in the center of the console. He couldn’t see Jessica, but he could see Nathan lying belly down, half off the end of the ramp, Kit holding onto his leg in a similar position.
“This is not good!” he exclaimed as incoming fire rocked the ship, setting off multiple warning lights and alarms in the cockpit.
“COVER FIRE!” Kit yelled as he lay prone on the ramp, holding on to Nathan’s legs with both hands.
Vlad ran out to the right side of the ramp, standing precariously near the edge without a safety tether, firing downward at the EDF marines. Marcus did the same, but to the left, unleashing his quad-barreled boomer at the unprotected troops. “Get a gun, kid!” he called to Josh over his shoulder.
Nathan peered over the edge, both arms hanging straight down, grasping Jessica’s left hand with both of his. Jessica was firing away with her other hand, trying to keep the onslaught at bay. “Christ! Can you stop fighting for once in your life!” Nathan exclaimed. “Give me your other hand!”
Jessica looked up at him, then looked forward, spotting the treetops coming toward her. She let go of her weapon, allowing it to fall away as she reached for Nathan with her free hand. Nathan pulled, but it was not enough. She bent her arms, raising her torso up and tucking her legs, just in time to avoid being whacked by the first tree that rose up under them.
No longer having a line of fire on the ground troops below, both Vladimir and Marcus rushed out, plopping face-down on the end of the ramp on either side of Nathan and reaching for Jessica. More energy weapons fire slammed into the ship’s topside shields, causing it to buck violently, nearly tossing Vladimir off the ramp.
Josh came running back onto the ramp, assault rifle in hand, but stumbled when the ship bucked from incoming fire and fell on top of Kit.
“Get off me!” Kit yelled a
s he held on to Nathan’s legs to keep Jessica’s weight from pulling him off the end of the ramp along with her.
“What do I do?” Josh asked as he climbed back to his feet.
“Go fly this fucking thing!” Marcus yelled, “before that little shit gets us all killed!”
“That I can do!” Josh assured him, turning around and sprinting back up the ramp, tossing his weapon aside on the way.
“And hit the ramp retract button on your way!” Marcus followed.
Josh stopped in his tracks as he reached the top of the ramp, stumbling to his right as the ship lurched sideways, sending him flying into the starboard bulkhead. “Jesus, Dylan!” he exclaimed as he slapped the ramp retract button.
“Are you trying to fly like shit!” Josh yelled over the intercom.
“You’re more than welcome to take over!” Dylan responded as he struggled to keep the ship level while the Super Eagles continued to pound them relentlessly with plasma cannons.
Dylan glanced out his port window, looking down at the fairway below. Treetops and branches were strewn forward along Loki’s flight path at the time he had jumped, and on the far end of the fairway, just before the green in front of the rising mountainside, the ground was torn apart in a straight line, ending at the P-Seventy-Two’s burning wreckage. “Oh, no.”
Dylan looked back inside, not really looking at anything, the shock of what he had just seen hitting him. But the shock didn’t last long, as another thought interrupted his grief.
The mountains.
The mangled cargo ramp shook slightly as its retraction motors started. It shook, bounced, but did not retract more than a few centimeters.
Her arms still bent and running out of strength, Jessica let go of Nathan with her right hand, quickly reaching up and grabbing Vladimir’s hand just as her left arm gave out.
Nathan felt Jessica’s left hand slide out of his and reached for her belt before she swung out of his reach, grabbing it with both hands.
Jessica swung her left hand up and over Nathan’s head, flailing wildly.
Marcus grabbed Jessica’s left forearm with both hands, pulling with all his might, and he and Vladimir pulled her up over Nathan’s shoulder and onto his back. Vladimir then grabbed the back of her belt, sliding her even further aboard.
Josh climbed up the ladder leading from the cargo deck to the main deck. As he climbed, he could see Mori in the topside turret, rotating around as he fired at the Super Eagles attacking them.
The ship bounced wildly, causing Josh’s feet to slip off the rungs. As he swung from side to side, he could see Jokay in the ventral turret, upside down in relation to the rest of the Voss’s deck. For a split second, he wondered what would happen if he fell down the tube, then crossed the line where the gravity reversed itself before entering Jokay’s turret.
“We have to pitch up and jump, or we’re going to hit the mountains!” Dylan warned over the intercom loudspeakers.
“You can’t jump yet!” Josh warned as he struggled to get his feet back on the ladder. “Not until they’re completely out of the utility bay! The ramp is damaged and won’t seal up!”
“We’re going to hit those mountains in less than a minute!” Dylan warned.
“Pitch down ten degrees for ten seconds, then scoop it!” Josh instructed as he let go of the ladder and dropped back down to the cargo deck.
“We’ll hit the ground!” Dylan argued.
“Don’t hit the ground!” Josh insisted, running back toward the utility bay. “You gotta get outta this bay now, or we’re all dead!” he yelled at the others as he pulled Lynne through the hatch.
“Oh God,” Dylan said as he prepared to pitch down.
“Jam your grav-lift to the max and use your thrusters to pitch down!” Josh shouted over the intercom.
Dylan suddenly understood. “Right!” He jammed his grav-lift throttles up to full power, causing the ship to rise rapidly. At the same time, he bypassed the automatic flight mode system and selected spaceflight mode. He took a deep breath, then pushed his flight control stick forward, causing the attitude thrusters on top of the Voss’s nose to fire, pushing the nose down.
Having just barely managed to get back to their feet, those on the cargo ramp suddenly found themselves tumbling forward into the utility bay, slamming into the forward bulkhead.
Josh fell backwards through the open hatch, bouncing off the ladder at the center of the octagonal center tube and landing on the bulkhead on the opposite side.
“Inside! Everyone!” Nathan ordered, half crawling and half falling toward the open hatch on the utility bay’s forward bulkhead.
One by one, they fell clumsily through the hatch, grabbing the center ladder to steady themselves, fighting the increased gravity that the Voss’s rapid, nose-down climb was creating.
“I’ve got to climb!” Dylan warned over the intercom.
“Wait!” Josh yelled, but it was too late.
The ship shifted, suddenly going nose up at least sixty degrees, far more than it’s currently damaged inertial dampening systems could compensate for.
Kit fell backward, twisting as he passed through the open hatch and grabbing the hatch frame, dangling inside the utility bay.
The Voss climbed as it approached the side of the mountains, its aft end brushing the summit as it passed, sending chunks of the rocky mountainside flying.
The ship lurched violently, suddenly going from nose high to level with a deafening thud, the sounds of structural members being strained beyond their design tolerances.
Kit was thrown back onto the floor, but quickly scrambled through the hatch, the last one to clear the utility bay.
Marcus swung the hatch closed, spinning the lock.
“We’re in!” Josh yelled over the intercom. “Scoop it!”
“FINALLY!” Dylan exclaimed.
The main engines fired, and everyone was suddenly thrown against the aft wall of the central corridor, pressed against the wall by the extreme acceleration as the ship climbed like a rocket. A few seconds later, the force of acceleration stopped as quickly as it had started.
“We’re clear!” Dylan yelled in disbelief. After a moment, he added, “Now will someone get up here and take over flying this thing?”
“Use the evasion algorithm to get us to the exit rally point,” Nathan instructed over the intercom. “Loki will be waiting for us.”
A somber look came across Dylan’s face. He knew he should tell them, but he didn’t know how. The only response he could muster was, “Yes, sir.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nathan lay quietly on the med-bed in the back corner of the Voss’s common room, remaining still as Deeks finished treating his wounds.
“How is he doing?” Jessica asked her Ghatazhak comrade as she approached.
“I gave him a megadose of nanites,” Deeks informed her. “He should be good as new by the time we get home. I can see to you next.”
“Kit already put a field dressing on it and gave me a nanite booster,” Jessica told him. “I’ll be fine.”
“Got to love those nanites,” Deeks chuckled.
“Damn right.”
Nathan opened his eyes. “Any sign of him?”
“Nothing,” she replied somberly. “Dylan swears he saw the crash site, but I reviewed the sensor logs, and I couldn’t tell for certain if the wreckage was his, but the size and trajectory seemed right.”
“It could have been one of the Eagles,” Nathan suggested. “Mori shot down four of them just before we took off.”
“Even if it wasn’t Loki’s wreckage, he didn’t have enough altitude to clear the mountains. He would’ve slammed right into them.”
“Then there would have been an impact site on the side of the mountains, right?” Nathan surmised.
“The forward sensor array was damaged just befor
e Loki jumped,” Jessica told him. “We didn’t get any scans of the mountains.”
“Then there’s still a chance…”
“Nathan,” Jessica pleaded. “I want Loki to be alive as much as anyone, but his flight path when he jumped was straight at the mountains. Hell, he wasn’t even above the treetops.”
“But he could have changed course as he jumped.”
“According to the telemetry logs from Loki’s Lightning, his flight systems were badly damaged. He couldn’t maneuver. Hell, he could barely keep the thing in the air. His thrusters were firing randomly; his grav-lift system was failing…Dylan says it’s a miracle he even managed to jump.”
Nathan sighed. “How’s Josh taking it?”
“He refuses to accept it,” Jessica told him. “He insists that Loki is still alive.”
“Even with so much evidence against him?” Deeks wondered.
“They’ve been best friends since way back,” Jessica explained. “They’ve been through a lot together.”
“He’s tough,” Deeks insisted. “Give him time.”
“I’m not so sure,” Jessica replied.
“He’s right,” Nathan said. “It’ll take a while, but he’ll get over it eventually. We all do.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Nathan looked at Deeks. “Are we done?”
“You should spend the rest of the trip in your rack,” Deeks suggested.
“After I talk to Josh,” Nathan replied, rising gingerly from the med-bed.
* * *
Nathan stepped carefully into the aft end of the Voss’s command deck. It would take several hours for the nanites to reduce his pain, and until then, he planned to move very slowly.
“How you doing, Cap’n?” Marcus asked, heading toward him.
“Not as bad as that beating I took on Tyrelyx.”