by Daniel Young
At that moment, the racers came charging up from behind. A proximity alarm on his console showed him a pictorial representation of the battle going on behind the ship where the window didn’t reach.
Scattered concussions rattled the ship. Jackson did his best to keep the ship on track, wishing he could get Woolzi to move so he could sit down. This angle didn’t exactly help manipulate the controls to best effect.
The racers overtook the Blackout on either side, laying into the hull with their charges. They closed in front and swiveled around to blast the ship to scrap.
Jackson yelled over his shoulder, “Arm the bombardment stack! We have to return fire!”
Out of nowhere, a crushing fist smashed into his cheek. The impact snapped his head the other way, and he saw stars. He momentarily forgot to steer the ship as dizzying vertigo almost toppled him off his feet.
He came to his senses to find Lana on top of him. She grappled his wrists, trying to yank his arms off the helm. He shook the fuzz out of his head. Without thinking, he slammed his knee into her stomach to drive her off. “What the hell are you doing? You’ll destroy us all!”
“Take us back to the planet!” she shrieked. “Turn this piece of shit around!”
“You can go straight to hell with that!” Jackson was so busy clamping his fingers around the helm that he couldn’t fight her very well. He bumped his shoulder into her, which did nothing. “We aren’t going back there! The Legion will kill us all for sure!”
“Turn back!” she bellowed.
Another deafening crash answered her. The blow jolted both of them away from the helm. Woolzi chose that moment to sit up straight and take hold of the controls instead. His antennae swayed into their correct position and he chirped delightfully, as though he’d just woken from a pleasant dream. “They play with us!”
To Jackson’s horror, the creature steered the Blackout straight into the racers’ guns. The noise and vibration threatened to tear the ship apart. “Roy!” Jackson yelled. “Arm the bombardment stack! Hurry!”
Roy didn’t hear him under a punishing assault from Liri. A second volley from the racers punched the ship from in front. Blasts showered the window, and the glass trembled.
Jackson sprang at Woolzi. “Evade! For Christ’s sake, what are you doing?”
Woolzi only twittered again. He couldn’t be laughing about this catastrophe. Jackson grabbed the helm again. He didn’t even try to remove Woolzi’s…well, the thing didn’t really have hands. Jackson touched tough chitin, and he gripped the helm with Woolzi’s limbs clutched in his own hands.
Woolzi laughed even harder, but Jackson wasn’t listening. “I said arm the bombardment stack!” he thundered over his shoulder. “If any of you wants to live, get into the blocks now! Roy! Quit screwing around and arm up!”
Whether Roy heard or not, Jackson couldn’t tell. Roy suddenly decided to dodge one of Liri’s punches. He ducked his shoulder and slammed it into her mid-section. He knocked her out of the way and bolted down a gangway that extended from the cockpit into the wing section to port.
Liri lunged for him, but Roy scuttled out of the way. He pounded to the gangway’s far end and dove into one of the ejection blocks. The reading on Jackson’s console changed. Gunner initiated. Thank the stars.
Liri dashed after him, but before she overtook him, the racers wheeled over the port wing. They peppered the hull with hundreds of shots. They pelted the wing down, and the Blackout veered.
Liri staggered off her feet and landed flat on her stomach. She looked around, searching for something, but she couldn’t see Roy in his ejection blocks. The racers chose that moment to bombard the ship with a spread that drummed the entire hull.
She vaulted upright and plunged into the other block. Jackson’s readings blinked again. Gunner initiated.
Both blocks lit up. Jackson could see Liri and Roy locked into their blocks. Lighting spheres surrounded them and gave both gunners a full circular view of the battle beyond the hull. They inserted their hands into the couplings and the guns powered up, ready to fire.
Lana dove to tackle Jackson, but Quort grabbed her from behind. He lifted her off the floor, kicking and thrashing. “Quort!” Jackson yelled. “Arm your block—now! Drop her!”
Quort’s haunted eyes snapped to Jackson’s face. His countenance clouded over with pure hatred, but he did as Jackson ordered. He unlocked his arms and dropped Lana onto the floor. She hopped to her feet in a heartbeat, but Quort only lumbered away toward the starboard wing. He didn’t look back.
The racers screamed around the Blackout in clouds. Concussions crunched the hull from a thousand directions. Even with the ejection blocks armed and manned, Jackson didn’t like their chances of surviving this battle.
A vicious smash hit the fuselage above the cockpit window. The framework inside the wall creaked and groaned under the strain. Racers crisscrossed Jackson’s view all over the window.
Out of nowhere, a black, jointed arm intruded in front of his face. Woolzi extended one of his limbs between Jackson’s straining wrists. Woolzi adjusted one of the dials, and a signal flicked onto the dashboard. Buffer Guard Extended.
The racers’ shots still boomed in Jackson’s ears, but they didn’t impact the ship as before. Jackson blinked at the signal and then looked down at Woolzi. The creature laughed again. He bobbed to and fro on his seat while he worked the controls side by side with Jackson. He didn’t ask permission. He didn’t tell Jackson what he was doing. Woolzi fiddled with this and that, making adjustments when and where he saw fit.
The racers redoubled their efforts. They ringed the Blackout and swamped the ship with hundreds of explosions, but the buffer guard deflected them.
Roy’s block opened up, and an answering volley erupted from the Blackout. It ripped through space, but it missed the racers altogether. They evaded, but when Quort’s block let fly, the same thing happened.
“Adjust your target downward,” Jackson called to his right. “You’re shooting too high.”
“Do you think I’m stupid?” Quort bellowed back. “I can see very well what I’m shooting at.”
Liri fired at the racers too. All four blocks blasted charges at the enemy in rapid succession. Every shot flew wide, either above or below. None of them hit anything.
Jackson bent over the pilot’s station. “Something’s wrong. The stack won’t target.”
“Ship in storage—sure.” Woolzi tinkered with the instruments again. “Ah! Here! Targeting system, classified disruption.” He laughed again. That sound was really starting to grate on Jackson’s nerves.
“Can you fix it?”
Woolzi cocked his head, and his antennae waved in the other direction. “Difficult—sure. Complicated system, this.”
“Do it. Hurry!” Jackson wrestled the Blackout back to starboard. All four blocks kept firing and kept missing. Nothing they could do would make them any more accurate.
With the bombardment stack out of commission, Jackson had one option left—evasion. He manhandled the helm, wrestling the ship in a torturous course, dodging racers all around him.
The Legion came out of nowhere, and the racers tried to cut him off. He was starting to get the hang of this vessel. He could tell now when one of the enemy was about to fire. The hulls along their wings shimmered as the EM field built up, preparing to discharge.
He could avoid these blasts, but evading them only brought him to the next racer in the ranks sooner. Missing shots from one only gave the others time to power up.
He veered around a larger vessel coming in to join the battle. It wasn’t a racer; Jackson didn’t recognize it. It took longer than the racers to power up, but when he dodged around its port wing and zoomed out the other side, he flew headlong into a cloud of racers swooping in to attack.
They all unloaded on the Blackout. Shots pounded down the starboard wing. “What the hell!” Lana yelled from inside her block. “Get us out of here if you can’t—”
“What’s the
holdup?” Jackson called down to Woolzi. “Any luck?”
The creature made some muttering noises. Woolzi’s limbs darted in and around Jackson’s arms as he fought the helm to keep the ship on course. He skated down the racer’s file, but with another posse barreling in from port, he had no choice but to fly back toward the larger fighter craft.
“Working—sure!” Woolzi announced. “All classified. No disruption.”
“What does that mean? Is it working or not?”
“The radical!”
Jackson actually took his eyes off the window to scowl down at Woolzi. “What? What radical? Speak English.”
A crushing blast caught him unawares. It hit the buffer guard so hard it collapsed the cockpit ceiling, and the dashboard instruments flickered before they came back on.
A broken yell echoed down the bombardment stack. “Do you mind?” Roy roared. “When can we get some weapons here?”
“Working—sure!” Woolzi repeated. “Classified. Working.”
Another smash hit the starboard wing, and Lana screamed something that Jackson didn’t catch. “Fire!” Jackson yelled. “The weapons are working now. Target that big ship!”
“Radical,” Woolzi corrected. “Radical Class. Weapons collapse buffer guard. You be careful.”
Jackson took a minute to realize what the hell the creature was trying to tell him. That giant fighter craft—it was Radical Class. The buffer guard wouldn’t protect against its weapons.
Jackson clenched his teeth and concentrated all his attention on that one ship. If he could break through, the racers wouldn’t be able to stop him…as long as the buffer guard held out.
He made a mental note to ask Woolzi what kind of power system and fuel source this ship needed. He didn’t even know if the Blackout could make it back to Zenith. He could be stranded in space with a bunch of lunatic aliens and no way home. That would be just thrilling.
The Radical demanded all his awareness right now. It loomed huge and deadly before him, and the gunners opened up. This time, their aim shot true and they pounded the giant ship with blasts.
The Blackout proved to be a lot stronger than Jackson ever could have dared to hope. A buffer guard along the Radical’s flank wavered under the Blackout’s assault. It shimmered. Jackson took a chance and zoomed straight for the bombardment stack on the Radical’s wings. The blocks charged up to blow the Blackout out of the sky.
A crash vibrated the Blackout as all four blocks swung around in unison. The gunners trained their weapons on the Radical’s bombardment stack as the ship soared down its wing. Woolzi poked his arm between Jackson’s wrists and did something else.
Jackson blinked down at the block displays on his console as the power readings spiked to 70kMHz. He opened his mouth to say something, but no sound came. No ship could handle an energy surge as high as that.
The next instant, the Radical opened fire and all four blocks erupted. Charges scattered down the wings, and a wicked barrage punched into the Radical’s bombardment stack.
Jackson yanked the helm hard to starboard as the Radical’s buffer guard came down. A wave of electromagnetic power struck the huge fighter craft. One ejection block imploded, and then a domino effect rippled down the ship’s starboard wing.
Jackson punched the throttle, but no ship in the galaxy could fly fast enough to escape the shockwave. A woof of flame hit the Blackout from behind, and the breaking wave lifted it free of its own engine power. It carried the Blackout directly toward the converging racers.
The gunners on the Blackout swiveled around to train their weapons on the enemy, but at that moment, the shockwave hit the racers. It swept them aside like a giant hand clearing a path for the Blackout to get through.
The next instant, the racers crumbled, and the shockwave carried the Blackout through their ranks. Open space welcomed Jackson to safety beyond the Keter Legion’s reach.
He grabbed the helm and peeled the ship backward. He pointed the nose upward and hit the throttle. The ship shot out of the shockwave and rocketed away.
10
Jackson glanced down to find Woolzi staring up at him. Jackson couldn’t read the creature’s expression. The eyes were too different, and Woolzi had no other distinguishing facial features to read.
“Captain’s station…behind.” Woolzi’s antennae swayed behind him.
Jackson followed the gesture. Another podium stood a few feet away from the pilot’s station. It didn’t look that much different from this one. He hadn’t seen it until now.
He checked Woolzi again. Jackson wouldn’t believe such a mischievous creature could look so innocent and harmless. “Can I trust you to fly this ship?”
“Trust me! Woolzi flies best of all.”
Jackson snorted. “That’s what I’m worried about. You fly this ship to Zenith. Understand? Nowhere else.”
“Zenith—sure. Woolzi flies.” He wobbled on his seat. He made those words sound so ridiculous and comic, but at least he didn’t laugh outright.
Jackson forced himself to straighten up. He had to concentrate to uncurl his fingers from the helm control. He didn’t want to hand over decision-making power to this creature he’d just met.
Woolzi took the helm, and Jackson turned to the captain’s station. It looked like he’d just been elected captain of this ragtag crew of losers.
He’d taken one step when Roy and Liri showed up from the port blocks. “What’s going on?” Roy asked. “What’s the plan?”
“I was just telling Woolzi to lay in a course for Zenith. He knows more about this ship than any of the rest of us.”
“We aren’t going to Zenith,” Lana snapped from the starboard stack. “You’re taking us back to Keter—all of us.”
“We aren’t going back to Keter,” Quort interrupted. “It’s out of the question.”
“No truer word, my fine friend,” Roy chimed in. “We just went through hell getting out of that place. Besides, your boss Arlyane told you to give us this ship. It’s ours. He gave it to us so we could leave Keter. Remember?”
“He told us to bring you to the ship so you could leave Keter, not us,” Liri pointed out. “You can’t take us to Zenith against our will. We never agreed to that.”
“The Krakzid brought me to Keter against my will,” Quort countered. “Now you can see what it feels like to have some ignorant space trash calling you scum and vermin and every other foul name they can think of.”
Roy rubbed his chin. “I’m partial to space crustaceans, myself.”
Lightning quick, Liri flung back her arm. Without aiming, she slammed her fist into Roy’s cheek. He recovered in an instant and lunged for her with both arms extended to attack.
Jackson stepped between them and shoved Roy back. “Cut it out. We have enough to worry about without you idiots bickering amongst yourselves.”
“We’ll do more than bicker if you don’t take us back to Keter,” Lana cut in. “You can’t stop us. We’ll fight you.”
“You’ll fight the Legion like good little gunners,” Jackson returned. “If they attack this ship, all our lives will depend on us working together, and that means fighting anyone who comes chasing us down. The Keter Legion might be your best friends. As long as they’re shooting at us, we’re shooting back, and that means all of you in the stack with your blocks locked. Do you hear me?”
Quort, Liri, and Lana glared at him in undisguised loathing, but none of them argued.
“Now, here’s what we’re going to do. Roy, you take Liri and Lana downstairs to the—”
“Roy isn’t taking Liri and Lana anywhere,” Lana interrupted. “We’re free agents.”
“Fine,” Jackson snapped. “Liri and Lana, take Roy downstairs.”
“Hey!” Roy countered. “What’s the idea? I’m not going anywhere with those two.”
“What’s the matter, meathead?” Liri sneered. “Don’t you think you’re safe with us? I’m flattered.”
“I’d rather go alone,” Roy said.
“We can’t go anywhere, not even back to Keter, until we know how we’re placed for fuel and arms,” Jackson said. “Go alone if you have to, but you might at least take someone with you who knows the ship and the systems better than you do.”
“Fuel at seventy percent,” Woolzi reported from his station. “Targeting classification holding. All systems operational.”
Jackson hustled over to him. “You can read that from up here?”
“Mystery solved,” Liri sniped.
Jackson ignored her and bent over Woolzi’s station. “What kind of fuel is it?”
“Acylated Smiasmiam esterified with carboxylated Vothuyrium.”
“What-what-what-what-what?” Roy stammered. “Speak English.”
“It’s a chemical reaction,” Jackson explained. “Where does it come from?”
“Your ass,” Quort interrupted.
“Real helpful input, gremlin,” Lana snarled. “Next time open your mouth a little wider, and a few Prunus spectaculum might fly in.”
Quort snarled. “Carboxylated Vothuyrium will be coming out of your ass in a minute if you screw with me.”
Roy groaned. “I don’t want to think about anything named Prunus doing anything.”
The twins laughed again—in genuine mirth, this time.
“What about armaments?” Jackson asked Woolzi. “What power source do the guns use for these pulses?”
“Same,” Woolzi told him. “Stack draws power from engines.”
Jackson nodded to himself. “That means that every time we get into a battle, we’re draining our fuel supplies faster.”
“Simple,” Woolzi replied. “Resupply at Doing-Doing Mines.”
“Doing-Doing Mines!” Roy guffawed out loud. “You made that up.”
Lana glared at him. “Don’t you dare say anything against Doing-Doing, or we’re gonna have words.”
Roy rolled his eyes to heaven. “I can’t wait.”
Jackson concentrated on the pilot’s station. He still had no idea how Woolzi was reading half this information about the Blackout. “How far are we from Zenith?”