by Calista Skye
Then she got the first look at the firebird. Yep, that was a dragon. It had four stubby legs in addition to its immense wings, and its tail was long and flowing as it flowed through the air. It was sleek and elegant and beautiful, and that only made it seem more dangerous. It was exactly as Harper had described it, only much more frightening.
If it saw her running, it could be at her with one single beat of its mighty wings.
She got ready to run. She would need about ten to fifteen steps to get over to the other shuttle.
The dragon suddenly dived for Cori'ax, and Charlotte couldn't hold back a squeal. His back was turned!
Then he spun around and slashed his huge sword across the dragon's snout at the very last moment. It jerked its huge head upwards and released a shriek where all the amusement had gone and there was only anger. The sword must have done some damage.
Cori'ax had tricked it into attacking him, pretending to not be paying attention.
“Good going, my love,” Charlotte said and took a deep breath. The dragon was busy with its wound, and this was the right time.
She climbed down onto the ground, and the grass and bushes tickled her bare legs above the boots. Cori'ax and the dragon were on the other side of the shuttle and she couldn't see them.
She clutched Elerea Blaze to her chest as firmly as she dared, ran over to the old Acerex shuttle and slapped the hatch release. The hatch swung open and she climbed in, holding the baby and keeping her head down. This shuttle had more glass surfaces than the Earth dropship, and she wanted to stay out of sight.
She hunkered down and just stayed still, hearing her own heartbeat in her ears like machinegun fire. Elerea was still asleep, and her little hands kept moving.
“Okay, mommy has some work to do,” Charlotte whispered and crawled all the way forwards to the cockpit. The instrument lights were on, and indeed the shuttle looked like it was was ready for a pretty quick engine start.
She could read some of the flowing Acerex script, and the controls were clearly labelled. She had to make some guesses, but it seemed like she was right, because she could soon hear the warm turbines spinning up from a standstill. Only a few seconds from now and they would be ready to take off.
She dared to raise her head and look out in the direction of Cori'ax and the dragon.
He was still moving away from her, and she wasn't sure how far he was going to go. Already he would have trouble running back and throwing himself inside, even if he ran as fast as he could.
The dragon was circling him, and its movements were less elegant than before. It was either angry or wounded. Or both.
There was movement in the corner of her eye. Another dragon was on the way, except this one wasn't coming for Cori'ax. It was headed straight for the shuttle.
27
- Cori'ax -
He was pretty satisfied. He had taken the firebird by surprise and given it a hard slash of his sword across the snout. It had felt like striking a bare mountainside, because the dragon had very tough scales, but his old sword was made by the finest bladesmiths and honed by years and years of combat. It had sliced open a wound that dripped with green blood, and the firebird was clearly much less eager to attack now. As long as it kept its attention on him, that was fine.
He saw Charlotte entering the shuttle. The first part of his plan was complete. Now all he had to do was keep this firebird's attention until the crash start of the engine was complete and Charlotte could hit the autopilot to take her and the baby up and out of danger.
He had only been partly truthful to her. It was true that he had no desire to die here and now. But he also knew that there was no way around it. He had to keep the firebird occupied until Charlotte and their little baby were safe. When the shuttle was away, he would fight the firebirds with all his might until the end came, making sure they were occupied. It was not a bad way to go. Or, when all his strength was gone, he might fall on his sword and deny the firebirds their sport and their victory.
It was okay. It was right. After all, this could all have been avoided if he'd had the courage to abandon old beliefs and realize that Earthlings were friends before now. He was only grateful that it now looked as if his cowardice hadn't killed Charlotte and their baby, too.
He could faintly hear the whine of the shuttle's turbines spinning up, and he grinned. Victory was close.
Then the smile died on his lips when he saw the shadows far away, coming closer fast. There was not just one. There had to be twenty firebirds diving out of the sky, heading for Charlotte's shuttle. Their wings beat the air with deceptive laziness.
They were coming for Charlotte. And for their baby.
He felt all the strength go out of him, and his arms hung limply along his sides.
That was hopeless. Nobody had ever fought that many of them and lived for more than a handful of seconds.
But there was something growing in him now.
He was a father. He was beloved. He was somebody.
Again he felt the little head under his hand, felt the sweet baby smell in his nose and heard Charlotte's soft voice in his ears, the way he'd heard it months ago, something that had resonated in his mind ever since: 'And he's fucking magnificent.'
He would show her how right she had been.
He saw the sleek shapes of the firebirds come closer, and the one he'd injured ignored him and flew to join them.
They would try to get between him and his family.
No.
A cold fire grew in him, an anger so white and so fierce that he had never felt anything remotely like it.
They wanted to hurt his mate and child.
“No,” he said flatly.
And then the anger exploded. “I will not allow it!”
His own voice rang in his ears, and she wounded firebird glanced quickly behind it in a movement of obvious anxiety. It was afraid of him.
A firebird was afraid of him!
The realization gave him wings. He ran towards the shuttle, silently, faster than he'd ever run before.
The firebirds would reach it first. But he would chase them away. After all, they were only birds. And he was an Acerex warrior. And a father. And a beloved. The firebirds had no rights to keep him from his loves. The Spirit was on his side.
The air felt different to him, fresher. The Fire Planet would lose this time. The anger had burned the fear out of his mind, and he let the rage fill him.
Two firebirds sat down beside the shuttle and seemed to be looking inside it. He had to take their attention from it, and he bellowed while he ran. “Victory for Acerex!”
They looked up and peered in his direction with their huge eyes. They were not used to anyone coming towards them. Every being would always run away. Before he could get to them, they slowly took to their wings, a reluctance and a primitive puzzlement in their movements.
He reached the shuttle, noticing that it hadn't quite completed its startup sequence. He leapt onto a wing and from there to the roof, just as the first firebird shot its head forward to peck at the shuttle from above. Its open mouth, with fangs that glittered like steel daggers, only encountered his blade.
The shriek was hellish, but it only made Cori'ax grin. Firebirds weren't used to taking injuries, and he was sure that the pain confused them.
More firebirds came in to try their luck, but they had no passion and were now starting to fear his blade. There were many of them, but they were only adolescents, come to play and amuse themselves. They were not here to fight for their life, their love and their child, like Cori'ax was. At that moment, he would win against anything. It was an uneven match.
He felt a talon rip him, but the pain just gave him more fuel. He taunted them and laughed and sneered, holding them off like they were only a pack of curious sheep, slashing and jabbing and thrusting. Sometimes he hit, sometimes not. He would probably not kill any of them.
But he didn't need to.
28
- Charlotte -
She'd
never seen anything like it. First Cori'ax had run faster than she thought possible, coming right for the shuttle. Then the huge warrior had seemed to fly as he leaped easily onto the roof.
And now, as far as Charlotte could tell from the sounds and the dragons she could see outside the window, he was winning. She'd seen Acerex warriors battle aliens before, but this was something else entirely. She knew she was witnessing something that shouldn't be possible. The sword had a life of its own in his hands. Already a couple of the dragons had turned tail and were flying away.
The shuttle had powered up its engines and now trembled with vibrations. She could do as Cori'ax had ordered and engage the autopilot's emergency program, and then she and Elerea would be safe. But Cori'ax would fall off, and they would leave him behind forever.
And now, Charlotte would rather die than leave him.
She grabbed the power lever and pushed it back and forth a couple of times, like revving the engine of a car to let him know from the sound that he should get in.
But she saw the problem. All the dragons needed to win was to rip a tiny little hole in the shuttle or to break a window. Then they couldn't leave the planet, because they had no way to pressurize the cabin. If they went into space in a damaged shuttle, they'd suffocate. If Cori'ax gave the dragons just one second of respite, they'd pounce and rip the craft apart.
She somehow had to get him in without him having to stop fighting.
Well, she'd once done the opposite.
Still holding Elerea with one arm, she engaged the vertical thrusters as softly as she could, increasing power until the shuttle was hovering unsteadily an inch above the ground. In her own Earth-made dropship, she could have done it with one finger. But this was an old and primitive craft without fly-by-wire functionality, and she had to handle all the little nuances herself.
It took all her experience and feeling with the craft to keep it hovering steadily like a helicopter, something that it was not designed to do for more than a few seconds at a time. It wanted to go forwards, not stand still. One turbine was already starting to protest, sounding strained.
What she wanted was to increase speed and height slowly while Cori'ax was still on the roof. The shuttle had many handholds and bars up there, especially made so warriors could hang off them. But even so, she couldn't make any sudden movements, and she couldn't go so fast that he would be blown off.
Still she heard his war cries and the clang of his sword striking hard dragon scales, and still the dragons gave off angry screams that now definitely had some puzzlement in them, like question marks at the end of their shrieks.
She let the shuttle drift forwards and made it ascend to a few feet above the grass and bushes. She couldn't leave too much air underneath it, either – while on the roof, Cori'ax couldn't defend it from an attack from below.
“Hold on,” she yelled, hoping he would hear and that the baby wouldn't be too distressed by the sound. She accelerated steadily until the shuttle was flying four feet above the ground at fifteen miles an hour. Still she heard him up there, but the clangs from his sword were now much further apart, and she could see that some of the dragons were hanging back and not attacking. Another couple of them had lost interest and were flying lazily away.
The shuttle accelerated to thirty miles an hour, and she wouldn't dare go much faster than that. She hoped he would have the sense to hang on to the handholds. He was strong and could hang on with one hand while he held his sword with the other one. At least that was what she was hoping. There was no camera up there.
She tilted the engines more downwards, making the shuttle climb faster, hoping he would get it – he had to hold on!
She could only hope he was getting the message and that he wasn't still standing upright up there. Because this was it – she could see five of the dragons circling beneath the shuttle, coming closer. The underside was unprotected and she just couldn't let them get closer.
“Hold on!” she yelled again, then gunned the throttle and climbed faster. There was no sound from the roof, but she also hadn't seen the helpless shape of a person falling from up there. He was still hanging on.
She had left the dragons behind, but that was only for a second. She would make full use of that second.
She slowly rotated the shuttle, tilting it halfway on its side, then looked around to both sides.
Ah. That was the powerful legs of the man she loved, hanging down past the window on the right side.
She hit the releases, and the hatch on that side flung open. Again she hoped he realized what she was planning. The dragons were catching up fast, and they were coming in with their talons first.
“Yes! That's it, love!”
Cori'ax was making his way to the rear of the roof, so that he would be right above the open hatch.
As soon as he was in the right place, she quickly rolled the shuttle the other way in a mirror image of the move the autopilot had made way back months ago, when she had fallen out of her dropship. Except this time, someone would fall in.
Cori'ax easily swung in through the hatch back in the crew compartment, helped by the shuttle's rolling motion.
As soon as she saw that, Charlotte hit the button that would close the hatch again and slammed the throttle lever all the way forward.
The turbines caught for a moment, surprised by the sudden power they were allowed to develop, and then they roared and the shuttle shot upwards at the greatest speed she could squeeze out of the old craft.
Charlotte heard a thud and a rattle from further back in the craft. “Sorry!” she yelled over her shoulder. “We just have to get out of there.”
She kept climbing hard. The shapes of the dragons were growing smaller down and behind them, but not as fast as she would wish.
“That's okay,” a deep voice said at her shoulder.
Charlotte was so surprised she yelped. “Cori'ax? How did you ...?”
The shuttle was climbing hard straight up and the floor was almost vertical, but still he had made his way to the cockpit in the front of it. He must have been using every handhold and seat and nook and cranny to climb up, and now he was hanging from the back of the copilot's seat with his strong arms.
Charlotte leveled off a little.
“Nothing will keep me away from my love and my child,” he said simply and sat down in the copilot's seat. Then he leaned over and kissed her cheek, fastened the harness around himself and gently took the baby from her arms. “I have a lot so say to you, but right now we have our hands full.”
She glanced over. He was pale, and his old burn scars were redder than before. He had some small wounds oozing blood, but nothing worse.
“Not really,” she said. “All we have to do is get into orbit and then aim for Gideo Station so you can get some medical treatment. The autopilot can do all that on its own.”
He gently tucked the fabric around Elerea's face with hands that seemed to be three times the size of the baby. “I'm sure it can. But only you can deal with those.”
He motioned back and to the side with his head, not even bothering to look away from his child's face.
Charlotte turned in her seat. “Shit! I didn't see them come that close!”
There were at least ten dragons on their tail, coming closer, beating their huge wings hard. She pulled back on the controls, and the shuttle shot upwards.
“They're shrewd,” Cori'ax said, seemingly totally unconcerned. “They've approached the craft from the blind angle where you can't see them.”
The dragons were still coming closer.
“How fast can they go?”
The warrior smiled at Elerea's little face, still not looking up. “They can go fast. And now they're not playing anymore. They're furious and humiliated. They'll use their fire.”
Charlotte adjusted the fine trim of the shuttle's angle against the air, wanting to eke out as much speed and climb as possible from the old craft. “How far will they chase us?”
“To the upper reaches of
the atmosphere.”
The dragons seemed to have absolutely no problem keeping up and closing. Their long tails flowed behind them, and now the predators looked more determined than elegant. “It will take us ten minutes to get there in this old kite. They'll be on us in less than one.”
He glanced up at her and his yellow eyes flashed with amusement. “Only one person in the universe can get us out of this. But luckily I'm very well connected. I happen to know that person. Indeed, for the past few minutes I have been engaged to her.”
For a moment she just stared, trying to understand what he meant. Then she smiled. “Yes, I believe you have.”
There was a brilliant flash behind them, and Charlotte reflexively threw the craft to the side. A sharp flame the size of an apartment building filled the space where they'd been a split second before. She knew that if just one of those flames grazed the shuttle, it would disintegrate.
“Yeah, now they're not playing. Fine. We'll stop playing, too.”
She pulled back hard on the stick and forced the shuttle into a loop, and suddenly they were going towards the approaching dragons at full speed, upside-down. She saw their confusion and smiled tightly. “Didn't expect that, huh? Let's see what else we can do.”
29
- Cori'ax -
He had no idea how long it lasted. It was a chaos of screaming turbines, deadly fire shooting towards them from many firebirds at the same time but somehow never hitting them, sharp talons and teeth seeming to pass within inches of the shuttle, immense rattling and shaking and terrible acceleration and g-forces as Charlotte made the old shuttle do things its designers had never come close to dreaming about, as he held their baby in his arms and made sure to shield the new life against it all.
He loved looking at Charlotte then. She didn't say a word. She was fully concentrated, her head moving around constantly, her hands and feet like natural extensions of the craft, as if she were an integral part of it.
