by Ryk Brown
“Your controls,” Loki confirmed, releasing control of the ship to Josh. “Powering up weapons and shields.”
“You didn’t have shields up?”
“I didn’t have enough power for shields and inertial dampeners,” Loki defended. “I figured it was better to get your ass up here. Besides, ground-pounder guns aren’t powerful enough to take us out.” He looked at Josh. “Right?”
Josh looked back, shrugging.
A warning beeped.
Loki glanced at the sensor screen. “Assault shuttles!”
“Where?” Josh asked as he turned toward a Dusahn troop pod that had just jumped in to their left.
“Everywhere!”
Josh pressed the firing button, sending a pair of plasma torpedoes streaking toward the troop pod, obliterating it.
“A little overkill, don’t you think?” Loki commented.
“Just get those PDs up!” Josh replied.
“Point-defenses, coming online now!”
On the underside of the Seiiki, several miniature laser turrets popped out and swung into action, the ship’s automated targeting system directing the tiny weapons to target anything giving off an energy signature that looked remotely like a weapon.
Deliza’s calves burned as she ran up the stairs. The building suddenly shook, causing her to stumble. “What……was……that?” she called back down the stairs.
“A little present I left for the Dusahn!” Corporal Amund replied from the next flight down. “Keep going!”
Nearly out of breath, Deliza finally reached the rooftop exit. She pushed on the crash bar, swinging the door open and tripping the alarm.
“Great,” Corporal Torlak commented as he came up the stairs behind them.
Deliza stepped out onto the roof, bending over, panting as Naralena came out behind her.
“If they didn’t know where we were, they know now,” Corporal Amund commented as he followed Corporal Torlak through the door, onto the roof. He tapped his comm-set as he ran out onto the middle of the roof, looking around. “Seiiki! Amund! You got me?”
“Thirty seconds!” Loki replied.
The corporal turned in the direction of the airfield, squinting to spot the Seiiki in the bright afternoon sun. “There!”
“Brown building, two streets over, eight down!” Loki instructed.
“You know we have combat shuttles closing on us, right?” Dalen called over comm-sets.
“Well, give them something to think about!” Loki replied.
Dalen flipped off the dual safety switches on the gun handle and brought the under hung weapon onto one of the three shuttles closing on them. “I’ll give them something to think about.” He pressed the firing button once, and three pulses of plasma energy leapt out of the weapon in earsplitting screeches. “Whoa!” he exclaimed, pressing and holding the firing button as he swept back and forth, screaming at the top of his lungs.
The shields on all three shuttles lit up as balls of plasma energy slammed into them. The shuttles jinked up and down and from side to side, trying to avoid the constant barrage of energy that Dalen was sending their way.
“This gun is great!” he exclaimed, holding his fire for a moment.
“Yeah, but maybe you could avoid screaming through your comm-set!” Josh replied.
The entire cargo bay flashed red in rapid succession as the shuttles pursuing them opened fire, pummeling the Seiiki’s aft shields.
The Seiiki shook from the incoming fire as Josh slid the ship to the left and started a rapid descent. “I see them!” he exclaimed, looking out the forward window.
“Amund! Seiiki! We have you!” Loki called. “We’ll be there in a few seconds!” Loki’s eyes suddenly widened as he spotted four Dusahn soldiers coming out of a door on the far side of the rooftop. “Amund! Bandits on the opposite side! To your left!”
Corporal Amund spun around just as the four Dusahn soldiers charged toward them from an open door on the other side of the rooftop, opening fire as they approached. The corporal dropped into a crouch as he returned fire, instinctively charging toward the attackers, jinking left and right as he avoided their fire.
“Dalen! Shoot the guys on the roof!” Josh ordered as he twisted the flight control stick, causing the ship to rotate on its vertical axis.
As the view of the rooftops, outside the cargo bay, slid past him rapidly from left to right, Dalen felt what remained of his lunch trying to come back up. Suppressing the sensation, he concentrated on picking out his target. When the ship stopped spinning, and the charging Dusahn soldiers came into view, he shouted, “Amund! Duck!” He paused just long enough for the corporal to hit the deck, then pressed the firing button, mowing down the four charging enemy soldiers as the Seiiki began to descend to the rooftop.
“I got ‘em!” Dalen shouted, ceasing fire. He pushed the gun aside and charged down the ramp, just as the Seiiki was about to touch down.
Josh’s eyes darted back and forth between his flight displays and the aft camera view on the center view screen. “I can’t set down!” he called over comm-sets. “There’s not enough room! They’ve got to jump onto the ramp!”
Naralena ran toward the Seiiki’s cargo ramp as it slammed against the roof, but stopped when the ramp bounced off of it. The ship wasn’t landing; it was just hovering there, shaking about as energy weapons fire slammed into its forward shields. She looked at the young man balancing precariously in the middle of the moving ramp, gesturing for her to come toward him.
“You’ve got to jump for it!” Corporal Torlak urged. “There’s not enough room for them to land!”
Naralena eyed the moving ramp, trying not to look at the pitching ship it was connected to. She took a deep breath and charged forward, jumping to the ramp and falling onto it as it pitched upward. She reached out blindly and felt the young man’s strong grasp pulling her toward him. She frantically crawled toward him, getting to her feet on the pitching ramp with his help, and finally falling into the relative safety of the Seiiki’s cargo bay.
“You must be Naralena!” Dalen yelled. “I’m Dalen! Welcome aboard!”
“Forward shields are down to forty percent!” Loki exclaimed. “Someone get to the gun turrets!”
“Can you operate a plasma cannon?” Dalen asked Naralena.
“I don’t know! I can try!”
“Up that ladder, through the hatch, and up the stairs! It’s easy!”
“Those shuttles are closing!” Loki warned, pointing out the window as the Seiiki rotated slowly around again, her shields flashing as incoming weapons fire slammed into them. “Dalen! You see them?”
“Come on!” Dalen yelled to Deliza, standing in the middle of the pitching ramp, his hand outstretched.
Deliza watched the ship rotating around, trying to judge its rotational speed, utter fear in her eyes.
Corporal Amund fired at the troop pod hovering to his right, picking off soldiers as they tried to jump to the rooftop.
“GO!” Corporal Torlak yelled, pushing Deliza forward, while he fired at the troop pod descending behind them.
Deliza charged forward, jumping up onto the ramp as it passed left to right. When she landed, the rotation of the ship caused her to lose her balance, and she fell to the left, tumbling off the edge of the ramp. At the last second, she grabbed hold of the port hydraulic ramp strut. As the ship swung around, she could feel the centrifugal force trying to throw her clear. She glanced toward her dangling feet, just as the ramp swung out over the edge, revealing the street more than forty meters below.
Dalen quickly disconnected his tether as he yelled, “Stop spinning! We’re gonna lose her!” He slid down the ramp, face first, on his belly, stopping himself by grabbing the same strut. The ship stopped its rotation, and he grabbed the back of Deliza’s jack
et, pulling with all of his might.
“Somebody shoot those damned shuttles!” Loki cried out over comm-sets as the ship rocked with the weapons impacts against their failing shields.
Naralena climbed up into the port gun turret, immediately reaching for the one thing that was familiar to her: a comm-set. “I’m in!”
“Shoot!” Josh yelled.
“How?” she asked, flinching from the flashes as incoming weapons fire impacted the shields outside her turret bubble.
“Left handle moves the turret side to side, right handle moves the weapon up and down!” Loki explained, trying to remain calm as their ship was pummeled.
Naralena looked at the two sticks, noticing buttons on top of each one. “Which button fires the gun?”
“Either one!” Loki replied urgently as the ship tracked to the right. “Fire on the shuttles to the left!”
Naralena reluctantly put her hands on the control sticks, pushing the left one to the side. The turret quickly rotated to port, startling her and causing her to let go of the controls. She immediately grabbed them again, tracking further left and pulling the right handle back to raise the weapon. “Is this little screen for targeting?”
“YES! SHOOT!” Josh begged.
The targeting reticle on the view screen turned green as she maneuvered the weapon, turning red when she went too far. She tracked back in the opposite direction, realizing the target was moving from her left to right and that she needed to lead it slightly. Again, the reticle turned green, and she pressed the firing button on the right control stick. The weapon cycled a dozen times in rapid succession, making repeated zings, each of which ended with a staccato screech, sending bolts of red-orange plasma leaping from the barrels. Left right, left right, the twin barrels continued to fire as she tracked the enemy shuttle, keeping the targeting reticle green. The sound of the weapon; the flashes of red-orange light; the flashes of the enemy shuttle’s shields as her weapons fire struck them…it all scared her to death, but she held the button down and continued to fire until…
A brilliant explosion flashed less than a hundred meters in front of her. She screamed in fright, her weapon ceasing fire when she released the controls.
“LOOK OUT!” Josh warned.
Pieces of debris slammed into the Seiiki’s port shields, the flashes lighting up her gun turret. Naralena instinctively held up her hands in front of her face to shield herself, never seeing the remains of the shuttle as it dove directly toward her.
Josh pulled his flight control stick back and to the right, firing the translation thrusters on the underside of the ship at the same time. The Seiiki pitched up and angled right in response, gaining just enough altitude to allow the half-destroyed shuttle to pass underneath them.
Corporal Torlak’s eyes widened as he spotted the damaged Dusahn shuttle plummeting toward him. He took three running steps, then dove forward, barely escaping as the shuttle slammed into the rooftop, right where he had been standing a moment ago. The roof buckled, then gave way to the shuttle’s kinetic energy.
The shuttle plowed through the roof, into the floor, and out the side wall, tumbling to the street below, and pulling half the building with it.
The Seiiki leveled off, continuing to rotate to the right, bringing its cargo ramp back around to what was left of the rooftop.
Corporal Amund watched as his fellow Ghatazhak fell with the collapsing roof. With no other option, he ran and jumped a good five meters in the air, landing perfectly on the moving ramp. Rather than run up the ramp to the safety of the cargo bay, the corporal, instead, grabbed the side hydraulic strut and turned to look for his friend amongst the rubble in the street below. “He’s still alive!” he hollered over comm-sets. “He’s on the street! He’s in a firefight!”
“I’m in the starboard turret!” Deliza announced as she put the comm-set on her head.
“Keep those bastards off our ass while I pick up Torlak!” Josh ordered.
“I’m on it,” Deliza replied, swinging her gun around and immediately opening fire on the other two Dusahn assault shuttles. “Come on, Naralena!” she called to her still stunned friend. “We can do this!”
Corporal Torlak scrambled over the rubble of the collapsed building. His left leg was bleeding, and searing with pain, and his back didn’t feel right. Had it not been for the assistive combat bodysuit under his civvies, the fall surely would have killed him. He only hoped that his nanites were doing their job.
“Find a clear spot!” Loki called over the corporal’s comm-set. “We’re coming for you!”
Enemy energy weapons fire slammed into the rubble to his right, causing it to explode, sending super-heated debris flying in all directions. He returned fire as best he could, shooting over the top of the rubble, while he scrambled toward the buildings on the far side of the street. He needed to get clear, to get somewhere that the Seiiki could pick him up.
The weapons fire continued as the corporal made it to the side of the street. Free of the rubble, he turned and ran toward the corner.
At that very moment, a Dusahn soldier came charging around the corner, nearly running into Corporal Torlak. The corporal ducked down, grabbing the charging soldier’s weapon and spinning to his right, pulling hard on the enemy’s weapon and the soldier holding it. The second soldier came charging around the corner, as well, unaware of the confrontation that had already begun.
As Corporal Torlak flipped the first guard over his shoulder and onto the sidewalk, he swept out his right foot, catching the second soldier just below the knees, sending him tumbling forward. Knowing the Dusahn traveled in fours, the corporal continued spinning around, tossing the captured assault rifle in the air, spinning end over end. As the weapon ascended, the corporal flat-handed the third soldier directly in the face shield with his left hand, tightening up his arm during the blow so the assistive combat bodysuit would stiffen, strengthening his blow. The soldier’s helmet shifted back, the face shield striking the man’s nose, bloodying it.
The weapon, still flipping end over end, came back down, and the corporal caught it with his right hand. He then slipped the shoulder strap over the third soldier’s head, flipped the rifle over to twist the strap tight, and dropped to his knee, pulling downward. He could feel the man’s cervical vertebrae give, shifting unevenly and severing the man’s spinal cord.
With a fourth soldier due to come around the corner, the corporal took another step forward, jumped into the air, spinning around, and placing his foot into the throat of the fourth soldier as he came blindly around the corner to meet his doom.
Plasma torpedo cannons sounded on the corporal’s left, causing him to turn in the direction of the sound, as a string of plasma torpedoes streaked past him, slamming into the building on the opposite corner, causing its massive overhang to collapse.
With barely enough room to land, the Seiiki swooped down into the rubble-strewn intersection, spinning around to point its cargo ramp at Corporal Torlak. Dalen stood inside, firing his under hung plasma cannon at the Dusahn on the other side of the rubble pile behind the corporal. Corporal Amund stood next to him, firing his own weapon with his right hand as he gestured to his friend to come aboard with his left.
Corporal Torlak broke into a run, jumping onto a large piece of the collapsed structure, and launching himself toward the Seiiki’s outstretched ramp. He sailed through the air, landing on the very end of the ramp, continuing up the ramp without missing a beat.
The ship rocked as its topside shields took multiple impacts.
“We’ve got him!” Corporal Amund reported over comm-sets. “Go, go, go!”
Josh could barely keep the ship in a hover as incoming weapons fire slammed into them, seemingly from all directions. “FUCK!” he exclaimed as he gunned the throttles and started to climb. The ship slipped to the left from the impacts and slammed into
the buildings. “SHIT!”
Loki reached over, knowing that Josh’s hands were full, and pushed the lift throttles to full power, as well, wanting to prevent the collapsing building from pulling them down with it.
The Seiiki screamed and moaned, feeling like she was being twisted like a pretzel, but she somehow managed to blast her way through the collapsing building and into the air again.
“YES!” Josh exclaimed. “WAY TO GO, LOK!”
“Hang on!” Loki warned over comm-sets. “We’re blasting out at full power!”
Dalen braced himself, both feet planted firmly on the deck, his hands on his plasma cannon as he continued firing away at the two Dusahn assault shuttles pursuing them. The aft shields flashed red repeatedly as bolts of plasma slammed into it. Suddenly, it flashed brighter than usual, and sparks flew past the open bay doors from the sides.
Dalen’s eyes widened, knowing full well what had just happened.
Two more bolts of plasma slammed into the, now unshielded, stern of the Seiiki. The first impact blew the ramp into a twisted wreck, and the second passed through the open end, slamming into Dalen and his plasma cannon, sending them both flying backward toward the front end of the cargo bay.
The blast knocked both corporals to either side of the open bay, rendering them senseless for several seconds. When their senses returned, all they could hear was the rush of air, the roar of the Seiiki’s engines, and the faint sound of Loki asking if they were alright.
