Ignite (Blackout Book 1)

by Daniel Young

  Jackson had to laugh. “Yeah, right. Come on.”

  He ducked behind the mound, heading where he thought the twins had gone.

  “Do you see any racers?” Roy whispered in his ear.

  Jackson shook his head. He emerged into one of the aisles and scanned the surroundings. “No one could park a ship in this dump. We gotta find a way out of here.”

  Roy accompanied him through another avenue. A few street people peeked out, searching for the racers, but none came. “They can’t be gone. How do they silence their engine noise to sneak up on their targets like that? It’s unnatural. It shouldn’t be allowed.”

  “You pass a law against it. See how far you get. Look, there’s a gap over there.” Jackson picked up the pace and passed another hill.

  “These mounds all look the same,” Roy grumbled. “You’d think they’d at least…” He stepped into the opening between this pile and the next when, once again, the racers pounced.

  They hurtled out of nowhere from Jackson’s right. He caught a glimpse of Liri and Lana dashing past him and vanishing behind another mound. The racers whistled into the sky, wheeled back, and blasted the sisters to kingdom come.

  Liri and Lana dodged, but they didn’t dig into the trash this time. They wheeled around the nearest mound and split into a run.

  Jackson charged the opposite way, heading for the gap. If it offered a way out of here, he had to take it, but it led him right into another racer’s path. He left the sisters behind. They couldn’t help him. He’d get his head blown off if he tried to find them.

  He veered to his right, but the racers cut off every avenue of escape. They pounded the trash mountain in front of him, and rubbish blocks exploded in his face.

  Roy caught him and dragged him the other way. “This way!”

  “Where? Where did those two get to?”

  “I don’t see ‘em,” Roy called back.

  They had no time to hunt for the sisters. The racers zoomed and dove between the peaks covering the whole area.

  “There has to be a way out of here!” Roy yelled.

  “Where have I heard that before? We’re just as trapped here as we were underground.”

  Roy staggered to the right, towing Jackson with him. “Shoot!” Jackson ordered.

  The men fired backward at the racers, but it did no good. “They’re moving too fast! They dodge every shot.”

  “These little pop-guns are too small. We need something bigger.”

  “You mean like a ship, for instance?”

  Jackson and Roy spun through the dump, circling one hill after another. They got so turned around that Jackson couldn’t see what he thought was an exit any longer. He searched everywhere for somewhere to go, some protection from the assault, but found nothing.

  He skidded between a few more boulders when another fleet of racers rotated around the nearest mound. They laid down a deadly track of charges, gnawing at Jackson’s heels. This couldn’t go on.

  The racers swiveled. Their shots cut in front of him and sprayed gravel in his face. “Watch out!” Roy roared.

  Jackson sprang out of the way and streaked between two more heaps when he saw it. Stretched out before him, a long runway extended to a high fence beyond. It separated the dump from the city, but this part was no trash dump. The mountains of rubbish hid it from view until he stumbled into it.

  Ships and vehicles lined the runway all the way to the fence. They pointed their noses down the runway, all ready to take off. Jackson’s heart leaped. “Holy shit!”

  Roy scampered from one craft to the next. “I’m in heaven! My prayers have been answered.”

  They charged onto the runway as the racers came screaming into view. Jackson darted for the nearest ship and stopped dead. His heart plummeted into his boots. “No!”

  Roy ran to an almost open compartment in the hull. The engine sat on the ground next to the fuselage, where the block had been removed. Roy picked up a bunch of tubes and wires connected it to the ship. “How could they do this to us?”

  “They didn’t do anything.” Jackson felt sick. “These vessels are parked here for repair. Look. There’s the crest from the Keter Legion on the hull. These ships must belong to the Legion.”

  Roy looked like he might cry. He staggered to the next ship in line. Steps led from the ground to a hatch in the hull. The port wing hung at a wrong angle next to the stairs. A few twisted bolts held it on by one corner. The thing would never fly.

  The racers pelted overhead, but they didn’t fire on the pair, now that these ships surrounded Jackson and Roy. Jackson hunkered in place and scanned the lot. “All these ships are being repaired—or they’re waiting to be repaired. None of them will fly. This is nothing more than a glorified storage lot.”

  “Why did Arlyane send us here, then?” Roy pointed out. “He wouldn’t send us to steal a ship that didn’t fly.”

  “I don’t know, but we’re stuck. We’ll have to find Liri and Lana. Maybe they can tell us which ship Arlyane had in mind.”

  Roy’s countenance went black and dangerous. He narrowed his eyes at the ships as though their existence personally insulted him. “Bastards! They had to—”

  The scream of racer engines interrupted him. The little fighter craft swerved between the parked ships, keeping Jackson and Roy in sight at all times. Jackson squinted into the distance. “The fence—we have to make for the fence. If we can get over it and into the city, we might be able to—”

  Just then, a flash of movement drew his attention to a ship across the lot. He caught a fleeting glimpse of Liri and Lana climbing into the hull.

  Roy snarled in his ear. “What were they doing?”

  “Hiding, of course. They’re doing exactly the same thing we’re doing. Come on.”

  “We can’t go that way,” Roy pointed out. “We’d be running out into plain sight.”

  “I wasn’t planning to, genius. This way. Follow me and stay close.”

  Jackson crept around the disassembled engine block and wove between three more ships before he dared to cross the runway. Roy dashed behind him. “Are you out of your mind? What if they…?”

  “Look out!” One of the racers squealed up behind them and unloaded. Blasts fractured the pavement at Jackson’s feet.

  He pivoted between two more ships. He hurdled scattered wires and debris, but the ruse brought him within range of the vessel where the sisters were hiding.

  He dove between crumpled hulls and hit the ground in a skid. He slid under the fuselage and flattened himself there while the racers went screaming into the sky again.

  Roy scooted in next to him and the two men cowered, panting and breathless. Jackson’s heart pounded against the pavement. “Where are they?” Roy gasped. “They’ll be coming back any second.”

  Jackson tried to peek at the sky. “We have to get out of sight. Come on. Up here.”

  Roy started to protest. “But what if they…?”

  Jackson jerked his thumb toward the open hatch where the sisters had gone inside. “Maybe they know something we don’t.”

  He inched backward and paused at the hatch. The racers hunted through the yard for anything that moved. He stuck his head inside, but he didn’t hear anything. He climbed up, and Roy hoisted himself through the opening after him.

  The instant they got into the hold, Jackson spotted the sisters. Lana bent over a figure slouched against the wall. She aimed her weapon at Quort, the Urval from the bar. He must have been four times her size, but that didn’t bother her.

  He lifted one of his too-long arms to resist. She stamped on it hard and pinned it under her heel. “Don’t you even think about lying to me, you piece of shit!” she hissed under her breath. “Start talking. I asked you a question. What do you think you’re doing here?”

  “Nothing,” he grumbled. “I’m hiding. What do you think you’re doing here?”

  Lana cocked back her fist and punched him square in the face, but he hardly flinched. “I’m asking the questio
ns here, parasite. You were following us.”

  “I got here first,” Quort fired back.

  “Quiet,” Liri interjected from her sister’s side. “Keep your voice down or they’ll hear us.”

  Jackson sauntered over to them. “What’s going on?”

  “This louse stalked us here,” Lana barked without turning around. “I swear I’ll carve your head off if the Legion finds us.”

  “I was hiding from the Legion, you overgrown carbuncle!” Quort boomed, and got another fist in the face for his trouble.

  “We saw you enter this ship,” Jackson told Lana. “No one entered it after you. He must have been here first.”

  “He deserves to die,” Lana snarled. “All Urval deserve to die.”

  Quort glared at her from his place on the floor. “We will, as soon as the Keterans are all gone.”

  “You foul pig!” Lana spat. “I’ll kill you for that.”

  Liri bumped her sister’s shoulder. “Do it and be done with it. He’ll only give us away.”

  “Hold it.” Jackson chopped his hand between Lana and Quort. “Leave him alone. He was hiding from the racers, the same as us.”

  “Stay out of this,” Liri cut in. “You don’t know what vermin these Urval are.”

  “If you kill an unarmed man for hiding from the same enemy you’re hiding from, then you’re the vermin,” Jackson returned. “I said leave him alone.”

  Lana rounded on Jackson. “So now you’re telling us what to do? You don’t deserve Arlyane’s help. Get out.”

  “To hell with you!” Roy interrupted. “If we went out there now, we’d only draw attention to you. Be grateful we’re hiding in here and not running around where the racers can see us.”

  Jackson didn’t get mad. He heard something Lana didn’t say. “This is the ship Arlyane meant to give us?” He glanced around. “Is it operational?”

  A scream of aircraft engines echoed overhead. For a second, the whole party froze and listened, until the racers soared away to a different area of the runway.

  As soon as the noise died, Liri tapped her sister. “They’re gone. Finish him off and let’s go.”

  “I said no,” Jackson interjected. “No one is finishing anybody off.”

  Lana straightened up. She would have looked comic standing up to a man more than six inches taller than herself, but her countenance told Jackson she was more than just a small body. For a second, he actually wondered if he might be able to hold his own against her.

  “What do you care about this scum, anyway? Don’t tell me you’re one of these protectors of the weak and defenseless. People like that don’t last long on Keter, I gotta tell you.”

  “I’m not trying to protect him, and he can take care of himself. He’s lying there to protect himself.”

  “Protect himself from me—that’s what.”

  “You might be real tough, but you’re no scientist, either, are you?” Jackson returned. “If you start shooting in here, the racers will hear you. If you finish him off like you’re saying, you’ll get us all killed. Cool your jets and use your brain.”

  Lana narrowed her eyes at him, but before she could punch his lights out next, Liri stepped in. “He’s right, Lana. Keep the worm alive a few more minutes. The Legion will withdraw, and then we can dump the whole cargo.”

  “You aren’t dumping us, either,” Jackson countered. “We’d be stupid to split up right now. We’d only make ourselves an even more noticeable target. We should all stay put.”

  “Don’t bother, Captain,” Roy grumbled behind Jackson’s back. “There’s no talking sense into street junk like this.”

  The two sisters turned on him, but before anyone could say anything else, the ship in which they stood shuddered. It trembled all over, and then the engines whined to life.

  Jackson spun around, but there was nothing to see but Roy. “What the hell?”

  Roy took two steps and stumbled as the floor beneath his feet tilted. “Aargh!”

  Liri and Lana hit the wall and stuck. “What’s going on?”

  Jackson couldn’t hear anything over the engines screaming louder by the second. The ship wobbled as it lifted off. “Who’s flying this thing?”

  Quort picked himself up and walked across the hold. He headed for a door in the nearest bulkhead and flipped a switch to open it. He cast a glance of withering disdain toward the friends and stepped through.

  Jackson reacted a second too late before the door closed. The hatch through which he’d entered this ship let air in from outside. If the ship left the atmosphere with the four friends stranded in here, they would all die.

  He summoned all his strength and pushed off against the ship’s momentum. He stumbled to the switch Quort had used to get out of the hold. The door slid mercifully open. Jackson shoved Roy inside, followed by Liri and Lana.

  The engine noise coming through the hull cycled to a deafening pitch. The bulkheads vibrated as the ship rose faster and faster. It was definitely taking off. Someone was flying it, and that someone wasn’t Quort.

  9

  Jackson emerged on the lower deck inside the ship. A stairway led upward to a second deck. A catwalk ended at another door. Jackson saw Quort moving beyond the porthole. The cockpit must be behind that door.

  He started forward when Roy stopped him. “Be careful. They could be armed.”

  “They’re flying the damn ship. They’re too busy to be armed.”

  Jackson strode up the stairs to the catwalk. He could afford to be casual with his own weapon in his hand and the twins guarding his back.

  He didn’t bother to knock. He barged into the cockpit, ready to tear Quort a new one, when he froze. A furry creature with frond-like antennae sat at the pilot’s station, working the controls with its funny jointed appendages. “Woolzi?”

  Woolzi tottered on his seat and made a quirky twittering noise. “See the Keter Legion play about! They chase their tails!”

  Lana charged past Jackson and attacked the creature. “What are you doing? Land this ship immediately.”

  She barreled into Woolzi from behind. She bumped him aside and seized the helm. She gave it a yank to port, and the ship veered sharply. “Stop!” Woolzi cried. “Steer us into the ground.”

  Quort charged in, bellowing. He grappled Lana around the shoulders and jerked her off her feet to tear her away from the pilot’s station, but she kept a firm grip on the helm. His efforts wrestled the ship even farther off course—if it ever was on a course in the first place.

  Liri tackled Quort to help her sister. She wedged one arm between Quort’s burly chest and her sister’s back. She heaved and strained, all the while slamming the sharp point of her elbow into Quort’s face. “Get off her before I blow your brains out!”

  Every blow knocked Quort’s head back. The reaction tugged harder at Lana’s arms, and the ship tilted at a dangerous angle. It rotated almost onto its back and went into a steep plunge directly for the ground.

  Woolzi’s shrill squeaks punctuated Quort’s bellows, Lana’s snarls, and Liri’s orders. Woolzi tried to pry Lana’s fingers off the helm, but he only managed to tip the ship even farther off its attitude. It started to somersault out of control.

  Jackson rocketed forward to intervene. Roy copied him move for move, and they both went to work on the struggling party. Jackson strapped both his arms around Lana’s elbows. With one powerful jerk, he tore her hands off the helm.

  Roy grabbed Liri and fought her away from Quort. Woolzi grabbed the helm and the ship zoomed upright, heading for the upper atmosphere. Lana went nuts. She arched against Jackson’s efforts and kicked out.

  Her heel nailed Woolzi in the side of the head. One of his antennae folded in the wrong direction, and the creature almost swooned off his chair. His arms peeled the ship hard to starboard, and the vessel started to careen even more threateningly in the opposite direction.

  “Now look what you did!” Jackson thundered. “Are you trying to kill us all?”

  �
��He’s flying us off the planet!” Lana bellowed.

  “Yeah!” Jackson fired back. “He’s getting us the hell out of there.”

  “He’s flying straight into the Legion!” Liri interjected. “Look!”

  Jackson had half a second to follow her gaze. A curved glassed-in observation window gave a full view of space beyond the cockpit. In front of Jackson’s eyes, a flock of racers dropped out of the stratosphere, on a collision course for the ship.

  Jackson rounded on Woolzi. The creature’s antennae wavered and drooped. Its smooth, black eyes didn’t recognize anything. The arms holding onto the helm didn’t steer the ship in any effective course. Every time Woolzi wobbled on his seat, his arms pulled the ship one way or the other without any direction.

  Jackson let go of Lana and pounced on the helm. He ripped Woolzi’s arms away. Now he had his work cut out for him, figuring out how to fly this damn ship when he’d never even seen a model like this before in his life.

  Three dozen lit-up dials, readings, and numbers stared back at him. He didn’t have time to decipher them all before a devastating boom struck the ship. The vessel staggered under him. Without thinking, he snatched the controls and twisted hard to port.

  The sudden move jolted Roy off his feet. He stumbled backward, and Liri used her weight to drive him the rest of the way into the wall. He banged into it and grunted. His arms loosened, and she wriggled out of his grasp.

  She turned on him in vicious fury. She swung her leg in a perfect roundhouse kick that whipped his bullet head sideways. She threw a punch, but Jackson didn’t see the rest of the fight. The racers converged on the ship, firing from all sides.

  Jackson forced the ship into another dive, but this time, he plunged downward several thousand feet and then jammed the throttle to the wall. The ship shot forward and streaked underneath the oncoming racers.

  The maneuver gave him a few seconds’ reprieve to study the pilot’s station a little closer. A label in the middle of the attitude dial read Keter Legion Battle Skimmer, Blackout, Rebel Class. Jackson could live with that.

  A hasty glance showed him four EM ejection blocks along the bombardment stack, two on each wing. All four read, Initiate Gunner. They weren’t manned, which meant they were useless.