by Joshua James
Eli’s eye skipped over the marbled curve of the ocean from one military installation to the next. He knew them all too well and he also knew, in the bottom corners of his heart, that none of them had the firepower to take out this horde.
Sure enough, the spheres dodged their fire and scattered across the atmosphere. They set up a net all around the planet, but they didn’t fire. Explosions sparkled down on the surface. Flashes of red and orange twinkled through the clouds without the spheres appearing to fire at all, but that was only an illusion. They were using whatever weapon they’d brought here to destroy Earth.
Jood almost whispered from engineering: “If you plan to deploy the EMP, now would be the most prudent time.”
Eli glanced over, but his friend wasn’t looking at him. Jood gazed through the window at Earth. Eli read the horrible truth on the Xynnar’s face.
Eli shuddered himself awake. “Take us down there, River. Where’s Yasha?”
The intercom crackled, and Yasha’s voice pierced his brain. “Waylon’s hit! I have to stop the bleeding before he...”
“Get up here!” he bellowed back. “I said take us down there, River. Get us as close to the swarm as possible.”
River spun her chair around. “If we detonate the EMP, we’ll shut down the Boomerang, too. If we do that in the atmosphere, we’ll crash and burn along with the rest of the horde.”
Eli rounded on her, baring his teeth. “Descend! Do it now or I’ll do it myself. We don’t have much time.”
She tucked her chin against her chest and turned her chair away. Eli took a deep breath inside himself. He heard himself firing orders everywhere, and his crew bowing their heads to carry them out. He’d spent the last twenty-five years hoping he’d never do that again.
But the Boomerang and her crew of outlaws had gone way beyond the point of no return a long time ago. Prudence and circumspection no longer had any place in Eli’s life.
Twenty-Six
Annihilation
The Boomerang went into a nosedive, plummeting toward the atmosphere. Yasha stumbled into the cockpit, supporting herself against the bulkhead. “I’m here. What do you want me to do?”
At that moment, a shockwave hit the Boomerang from behind. Eli’s first glance at his console told him all he needed to know. His sensor display showed him the remaining Squadron ships in hot pursuit. They overtook the Boomerang and fired on her. They couldn’t destroy all the spheres, so they’d opted for the most convenient target instead.
River grappled with the helm and the Boomerang started to divert, but Eli roared at her again. “No! Dive into the heart of the swarm. Do it now!”
She didn’t argue back this time. She flipped the helm and Boomerang spiraled parallel to the Squadron’s rocket fire. Eli slammed back in his seat when she hit the throttle for all it was worth. The Boomerang jumped and reared.
Jood’s fingers blurred over his instruments. “The Squadron ships are following us. If they maintain their current speed, they will overtake us when we reach the swarm. They will get caught in the EMP anyway.”
“Screw it,” Eli snarled. “It’s their funeral.”
“Eli, I really must protest against this course of...”
“Get into the middle of the net!” Eli spun his chair around to confront Yasha. “Get ready to release the EMP.”
Her eyes popped. “I can’t! I told you I don’t know how to release it. You said you would...”
Another explosion smashed the Boomerang to port. “We lost the tender!” River hollered. “We’re losing stability.”
“Maintain speed,” Eli roared. “Don’t cut throttle.”
She didn’t turn around, but he heard her tone change. She didn’t even try to hide it. “We have to, or we’ll plunge straight into the ocean.”
“Do it!” he thundered. “Don’t slow down for anything.”
The Boomerang shuddered when she struck the atmosphere. “The starboard tender is hanging by a thread,” Jood informed him. “We will lose propulsion in ten seconds and then we’ll be in freefall at terminal velocity. We will all be dead the instant we hit.”
Eli ignored him. He extended his hand to Yasha. “Come over here. Stand right here next to me.”
She stretched one arm toward him to take his hand, without letting go of the bulkhead. She took a step when another blow shook the ship to its struts. She staggered and crashed down on one knee.
“The Squadrons are overtaking us,” Jood announced. “They cannot hit so many enemies, so they are concentrating their fire on us.”
Eli still didn’t respond. What difference did it make if the Squadrons were firing on the Boomerang? That didn’t change anything.
Yasha pushed herself up against the constant back-and-forth concussions of rockets pounding the hull. She put out her hand to grab Eli again when a withering thump smashed into the ship. It felt like it came from directly above, but Eli couldn’t be sure.
“The starboard tender is gone!” River cried. “We’ve got no helm at all. We’re dead in the water.”
Dead in the water. How many times in his checkered career had Eli heard those words? Out in space, dead in the water meant stranded in motionless lethargy. Dead in the water meant sitting still until you got your engines repaired and restarted.
Those words took on a new meaning several thousand feet above a planet’s surface with the full force of gravity towing you toward the ground. The Boomerang whistled through the clouds when another volley bombarded the tail. The ship tilted sideways with her belly pointed downward.
Eli lost sight of the planet. A perfectly blue field obliterated the window, and the Boomerang fell belly first. She shot out from under Eli’s seat, and he lifted up too fast to catch himself.
He whizzed upward and smashed his head into the ceiling. At the same moment, another explosion hurtled the ship forward. He rocketed sideways and crashed into the window at the same time River, Jood, and Yasha all landed near him. Their four bodies pounded down on the cruel steel floor, only to get hurled upward again with equal force.
Eli struggled against a wave of vertigo to pry his eyes open. He blinked blood out of his eyes to stare down at his own command chair. The engineering station and the pilot’s console were all empty.
An ominous howling noise thundered in his ear. His head hurt something awful, but he commanded himself to look to one side. He came face to face with River’s features distorted in a purple mass of bruises. Her damp hair trailed in blood running out of a pulpy gash cutting across her face, but the blood didn’t fall toward the floor. It ran off in a curled dribble toward the ceiling.
An arm clothed in blue draped over her waist. The hand dangling from the sleeve showed a strange orange-brown tinge to the skin. Eli blinked at it, and a curious blue color came into view. It traced the cup-shaped wrinkles of the knuckles. Only Xynnar had that coloration on their hands.
He hated to look around any further, but that horrible howling noise made him think twice. What did it mean? Then he caught sight of the cockpit window beyond River’s shoulder, and he remembered everything.
A blue-white landscape tilted beyond the glass, and he knew where he was. He was on Earth—at least, he was in the Earth’s atmosphere. Yes, there were the spheres. They were firing now. They unloaded their rockets toward the surface. Splinter cannon fire streaked past them. If any shot came near the spheres, they dodged it easily.
Eli hauled his aching head up. Yasha. He had to find Yasha. Breaking the gravitation hold pinning him to the ceiling demanded all his strength. His vision swam, but he forced himself to look around.
He spotted her lying half-twisted against the bulkhead. Her legs splayed on the ceiling and her mouth sagged open. Beyond her, a familiar face poked through the entrance. Tim crawled forward into the cockpit and his eyes met Eli’s.
Twenty-Seven
For what seemed like a long time, he and Eli regarded each other across Yasha’s inert frame. The young doctor didn’t say anything, but his
eyes said all the awful things he’d said to Eli in the weeks since he and Quinn had come on board the Boomerang.
This time was different, though. Those eyes challenged Eli in a way he’d never allowed Tim to challenge him before. Was Eli going to do what he’d promised Quinn he would do, or was he going to sit here while the Boomerang crashed into the ocean? It was as simple as that.
Eli pivoted over on his hands and knees. He started the painful crawl toward the bulkhead, but the impossible gravity made every step a battle. Every time he braced his hand against the steel, another impact rocked the vessel. He had to stop and catch his balance before he ventured another excruciating inch.
Tim dragged himself into the cockpit and took Yasha by the shoulders. He started to wrestle her around to get her off the bulkhead. Eli never thought he’d live to see Dr. Tim Knox try to help him, but desperation had a way of putting grudges in perspective.
Moving an unconscious body proved more difficult than moving a conscious one. By the time Eli reached Yasha, Tim had only managed to haul her lower body into alignment. Her cranium still wedged at an angle against the bulkhead, where Eli couldn’t reach her.
Working together, the two men knotted their fists in her clothes. They heaved as one and succeeded in dragging her off the wall. Her skull flopped against the ceiling, and Eli put out his hand to slip his fingers behind her neck.
His fingertips brushed her hair when a gut-wrenching tremor seized the Boomerang. She slammed downward even harder and flattened Tim and Eli to the ceiling. In a fraction of a second, another impact sent everyone hurtling toward the floor. The blow smashed Eli across the command chair. He pulverized his stomach over the back of the seat and his head struck the footrest. His legs whipped downward and he passed out.
Another hideous crash woke him from his stupor to find himself floating in mid-air. He rotated in a zero-gravity paralysis, suspended in the middle of the cockpit. All his friends swam around him in states of unconsciousness. River floated on her back, and her hair waved in mysterious shapes around her expressionless face. A few feet away, Tim spun in a slow somersault. His face registered no sign of life, and blood ran out of his mouth.
Eli swallowed hard. Now he was alone, more alone than before he knew Tim was still alive and awake and working to help him. He almost lost heart when a hint of movement drew his attention toward the engineering station.
Yasha hovered there with her eyes shut. That howling noise vibrated through the hull louder now. Eli couldn’t know how close he was to the horde without checking, and he didn’t have time for that.
He looked around for some way to propel himself to her side when another blast sent him tumbling backward. He landed spread-eagled across the window, and River crashed down on top of him with all her bulk.
Another barrage pulverized the Boomerang and the force ripped him off the glass. He spun the opposite way, and the bulkhead hurtled toward his eyes. At the last possible second, he wrenched himself sideways and went wheeling in front of Tim. Eli planted his palm against the doctor’s chest and pushed. He soared across the cockpit and tackled Yasha as she twirled past him.
He strapped his arms around her chest and hugged her against him as one concussion after another threatened to blast the Boomerang apart at the seams. Eli shut his eyes and commanded himself to think. All he had to do was reach up and take hold of the back of her neck, but he couldn’t release his hands without risking losing his grip on her.
A splintering crash shocked him into opening his eyes just as a rocket punctured the hull. Sparks showered around him as it ripped the ceiling back and crashed through the floor. The distant howl turned into an ear-splitting shriek. The wind tore through the hole and another punishing blow knocked him flat.
Eli concentrated everything on keeping his arms around Yasha. He landed hard on the floor with his hands still clasped under her. The pain crushed him, but he didn’t care as long as he was near her.
He dragged his arms out from under her and propped himself up. He caught one look at her face, enveloped in slumber. That moment stretched into eternity, and he crossed into a surreal dream without time. He slipped his hand under her shoulder blades and up to her neck. His fingers closed around the back of her skull, and a world-shaking blast flooded into him.
For a second, he found himself back on the lawn with the dog. Yasha’s mother called her from the porch, and Eli turned around to look up at her. In front of his eyes, the house crumbled into a billion tiny flecks of color. The paroxysm spread to the entire scene. The sky, the trees, the fence, the grass, even the dog dissolved into a swirling vapor of colored specks.
They wavered in an indistinct haze for a moment. Then, with stunning speed, they compressed and reassembled into a forest at night. Insect noises clicked and rasped out of sight. A moon gleamed down through the branches. Eli heard through Yasha’s ears the sounds of footsteps coming closer.
He looked down and saw a gun clasped in his hands—but they weren’t his hands. They were Yasha’s. He crouched and tiptoed into the trees, heading toward those footsteps.
When he scanned the surroundings, the trees and bushes started to dissolve the way the house had. Millions of tiny scraps of color rotated in a confused swirl of nothing.
At that moment, a bone-crunching bang hit him and he snapped to the open air. He materialized outside the Boomerang just in time to see one of those spheres glance off the nose. The Boomerang pivoted off one way, and the sphere got hurled in the opposite direction.
Just for a second, Eli caught sight of the whole array of spheres spread around the Earth. He withdrew his attention to Yasha. For some reason, she lay underneath him out here in the tearing wind, but they weren’t lying down with him on top of her. She hung vertically between his arms with his hand still clasped behind her neck.
He focused his mental power on her sleeping face, and sent her a silent command beyond words. This was it. She had to do it now if she was going to do it at all.
At that instant, the whole world imploded, and a ruinous discharge pounded into his brain. It fired him into unconsciousness and his hand released.
Twenty-Eight
Eli woke up and stared at the ceiling above him. Through the ragged hole of twisted metal and distorted structural members, he gazed at clouds streaming across a blue sky. Just for a second, all the tension and fear and anger from the last twenty-five years drained out of him. He relaxed into that beautiful sight. It soothed him into a blessed delirium where nothing could ever bother him again.
A high-pitched scream startled him out of his reverie. Beyond the breach, a rocket coiled its vapor trail across his sight, followed by an enormous Squadron destroyer. It blinked in front of him for only a second, and he recognized it. It was the Nautilus, the namesake for a class of ship on a scale that dwarfed his first command. A half-dozen Devilfish could sit inside her hold.
He shot up on puppet strings and whipped to his right. The cockpit window rotated back and forth in a mindless swing. Sections of land tilted across the view, intermixed with the deep blue of ocean.
He ignored the pain radiating all over his body as he flung himself into the command chair and seized the controls. He punched the throttle, but of course nothing happened. Neither tender would respond.
Eli gritted his teeth and swallowed down the urge to lose his mind. His instincts told him to call for Jood or River or...anybody, but he wouldn’t be calling on anybody today. They all lay immobile around him. Their blood stained the floor—his floor.
He clamped his lips tight together. Very deliberately, he dragged his eyes to the window. He refused to look away, clenching his fists around the controls.
He dragged the helm into some semblance of stability, but without the tenders, it all came down to muscle against the force of gravity, towing him down to his destruction.
The rudder flapped before it obeyed him. The wind jerked it in all directions. Every time it wavered, the Boomerang tumbled to one side or the other, and he had
to start over from zero.
Eli’s arms ached, but he kept his grip on the helm. He nudged the ailerons, and the Boomerang veered at a revolting angle. She almost spun completely out of control, but by luck and effort, he held them steady and the nose lifted.
He commanded himself to stay calm and concentrate against the gravity smashing him back in his seat. They should have already crashed into the blue planet below. Yasha’s pulse had shifted them spatially somehow, but whether that was a good or bad thing was yet to be determined.
He inched the ailerons another micron upward, and the Boomerang angled her nose another dangerous inch. The next minute, she jerked up hard and rocketed level with the ground. The ship boomed over the sound barrier and hurtled faster than her fullest throttle speed, but at least she was running parallel to the ground instead of pointed at it.
Eli fought the helm, straining his every fiber to hold her steady. He dodged mountains and more Squadron ships hanging in mid-air. Explosions went off all around him, but he didn’t see any spheres—not that he had a chance to look very hard.
A landmass whizzed toward him—he didn’t know which one, and he didn’t care. The Boomerang rocked on the breeze, burning over millions of miles. How long would she keep running before she crashed in a plume of fire?
All too soon, the ocean sped up underneath the window. Every time the ship wavered, she threatened to point her nose into the drink. He cursed her speed now. The ailerons shuddered and the rudder cable snapped. The rudder banged again, but the Boomerang was speeding too fast to make any difference. The rudder hovered somewhere in the middle, and did nothing to break her headlong sprint across the planet.
How would he know if she started to lose altitude? He took a risk and glanced down at his console. His stomach turned when he saw the reading. She was already losing precious height. She would crash any second. The only question was when...and where.