“Bring them down,” she said, desperate to get her hands on that ancient technology. More desperate than at any moment so far.
Her Praetor nodded. “One destroyer has split off to engage the fighter.” He tapped a few controls on his end and her sub-image expanded to a larger tactical view of the area, showing the maneuvering fighter and the destroyer heading toward it.
Good.
**
“Satori you have to get clear!” Bianca yelled into the open channel. She and Nani were locked in a game of life and death, zipping around and up and down in the mighty Reaver, Nani engaged with the marauding Kel destroyers sent to intercept. It was a dogfight, pure and simple, albeit one between ships the size of buildings. Buildings that zipped just as fast as fighters. Bianca kept catching her breath, trying to maintain her focus as the whole flurry of action and rapid change of space in three dimensions fought to overwhelm her.
Absently she had the thought that they had to be giving off huge shockwaves that were rocking the countryside.
Nani for her part was just as frantic, though she seemed to be gaining an edge. She was handily out-stripping the Kel, flying all over the sky, high then low—one second the ground looking like a Google map from way high above, the next Bianca could swear she was able to see leaves on trees as they hooked along some twisting path just above the ground. Through it all she targeted the Reaver’s turrets like a banshee, firing with gusto.
“There’s one coming for you!” she yelled for Satori, eyeing the larger ship that had peeled off and was headed straight for the valley where Satori and Willet were battling to rescue Zac and Jess. Bianca and Nani had been trying to keep the Kel destroyers at bay.
“We see him!” Satori’s voice was strained on the other end. Bianca could see the destroyer angling right for her—
BAM! BAM! BAM! shocks rocked the Reaver. One of the pursuing Kel had gotten a bead.
Bianca whirled furiously at her controls, lining up the Reaver’s turrets and firing back. She hit. Red-hot pieces of Kel destroyer vaporized along one side in a fiery line where her shots connected. It rolled and banked away, Nani taking them fast and hard in the other direction. So abruptly even the Reaver’s suppression systems were taxed. It no longer just looked like a dogfight on the bridge, it felt like one.
Bianca sought targets in the disorienting spin and curve. Desperately trying to keep one eye on the encounter unfolding below.
Where is she?!
**
Heath cringed against the ground where he lay, looking up, the rest of his team recoiling as the dark shadow of a giant starship shot over the valley floor instants ahead of the ship itself. No one saw it coming, the size of the monster only slightly less shocking than the speed at which it traveled.
“Shit!”
BOOOOOM! the concussion of its passage hammered them into the dirt with such force it was like a push from above. Like they’d been stepped on, squashed and shoved into the ground. Heath’s vision warbled, dirt was up his nose and in his eyes, his breathing stopped and for an instant he worried he’d lost his hearing. But in that same moment he realized two things: One, he could still hear and, Two, the fact that he was having these thoughts was a good sign. A very good sign.
He was still alive.
But that one was close. The dirt swirled and cleared; a few trees were finishing their fall, roots ripped from the ground and toppled with the concussive passage of the giant craft. The valley had become a circus of sonic booms and thunderous destruction, out of nowhere, and so far Heath and his team had been unable to make sense of exactly what had changed or what exactly was going on. All they knew was that when these alien ships moved they moved fast, ripping the air just like any other giant object, and at Mach speed they left one hell of a sonic boom.
He rolled and tried to see what he could high in the sky, ears on a perpetual ring. He and his team had low-crawled to the edge of the woods and been watching Superman wreak havoc—then sat in shocked awe as the demon came and the two began battling across the valley. It was frightening each time the two came close but Heath and his team stayed put. Then, just when it looked like the demon would win, and they began to fear it would follow that victory by marching up and down the field killing everyone it found, the different-looking alien craft came and shot down the others then, much to their surprise—and exuberant joy—it hammered the demon right into the ground.
That had been a victorious moment.
Immediately following that Superman had gone running the other way—at about a hundred miles an hour, arms and legs a blur—the different fighter was whirling around overhead and, just now, the huge alien ship went blasting by right overhead.
“This day really can’t get any worse,” said Steve, voice dull in Heath’s ears as the ringing cleared. Heath watched the flying skyscraper angle up in the far distance, straight up, full view of its long spine hazy through the distance; over, supersonic air streaming off the edges in white contrails, pulling over and back, nose angling for a return to the valley.
It was coming.
“Stay low and cover your ears!” Heath instructed. It was all they could do.
Then the ship opened fire.
**
This was not good. Satori gritted her teeth as she dodged hard in all directions but, unlike the Kel fighters, this destroyer had turrets and, though the much larger ship could not tail her, it was fanning the sky with high-energy death and she could not see her way clear.
“Shit!” she dodged frantically. “How much longer?!” she asked urgently of Bianca and Nani on their channel. They were engaged with the other Kel destroyers. It was up to Satori to make the rescue of Zac and Jessica but she saw no way to do it. The attacks had become too furious.
And they still had no idea where Jessica was. All they could see was Zac, blitzing away on what errand they could not know. Was he going for her?
Nani’s voice was strained: “On our way!”
It was no use. Nani and Bianca had dropped two of the Kel destroyers but there were still two more, plus the one after Satori.
And there were a whole lot more in orbit, just a few moments away.
“We’re never going to get out of this,” she said under her breath.
WHOOOOM! a solid hit and the world spun.
Another and her own head spun. Like a concussion …
WHOOOOM! another and the last thing she saw was the ground outside the fighter spiraling madly toward them.
**
Zac ran back across the field, Icon retrieved and in hand. He’d dug it up from under the broken tree, now he had to figure a way to get Satori out of the line of fire long enough to get aboard. He was confident the fighter could outrun the others. Getting him on it was the tricky part.
One of the larger Kel starships was firing non-stop, an absolute flurry that had to be taxing the fighter for all it was worth, energy bolts going in all directions as the two machines twisted and turned in the sky, dangerously close. He hoped Satori would see him. He went to the middle of the valley floor, near the smoking hulks of a few of the Kel tanks—acutely aware of what happened to Kang and feeling vulnerable out there in the open. But Satori needed to see him. If she could just swoop over him he could …
Another squadron of Kel fighters ripped across the sky.
Things were only getting worse.
And as he had that thought one of the turrets from the Kel destroyer landed a hit. The impact knocked Satori’s fighter to the side, curving wildly for the ground then …
Another hit. And another.
That one the killing blow.
**
“She’s hit!” Bianca checked readings even as Nani flew like a woman possessed. Bianca no longer tried to look at the psychotic view on the domed screen, choosing instead to focus on the sterile telemetry of the instruments. Even that was insane.
“She’s down! She’s going down!” Nani had more info; saw the fighter was hurt.
“Satori!” Bi
anca yelled for her. Nothing.
Bianca no longer knew which way was up, or even where they were.
“They're down!” Nani yelled, hooking them around and up in yet another gut-wrenching turn. Bianca’s heart chugged in her chest. She watched the graphic for Satori's fighter plummet to ground and stop all at once.
“Can you tell if they’re alive?!” She targeted one of the destroyers and fired; again and again, hitting. It wobbled and fell off course. “Are they alive?!”
“I think so!” Nani wove a dangerous path near the ground. They themselves had already hit the ground once earlier in the Reaver, as Nani missed her mark on a diving pull-out, gouging a long, huge trench in the rocky soil and continuing on. If the Reaver could take that kind of abuse, thought Bianca, maybe the fighter could too. Maybe it survived the plunge.
But it hit so hard.
“You’ve got them?! You can read them?!” Bianca was beside herself, finally caving. It was all too much.
Now they’d lost Satori and Willet.
“I don't know!”
Bianca kept shooting. The other attacking destroyer had come back on line but she got it, a solid blow just as it was getting on track, knocking it aside. Too close to the ground and it clipped a hill, nosing in on the other side in a wall of dirt and trees. Bianca triggered one of the top spinal turrets and kept on it as they raced away, hammering the bulk as it cartwheeled across the ground, way too enormous of an object to stay solid as it flipped end over end like a giant brick but it did, laying waste to everything in its path.
The remaining destroyer veered back and forth in their wake, firing. A new squadron of fighters had come in over the area where Satori went down. Bianca could see where they were now, Nani holding a straight line just above the madly undulating ground. Grassy waves of hills rose and fell beneath them. The other destroyer turned toward the Reaver, blip flashing on tactical readout. More were coming.
Closing.
**
Willet cracked open an eye and looked up. It felt like up, at any rate. Maybe it was down. Everything was black. Then a glow; some of the lights in the cabin were still working. Just enough to see the interior as things came into focus.
His head pulsed so hard he thought it might explode.
But he was alert. Found he could move. Last thing he saw they were headed into ground way too fast to live, but somehow …
Suddenly very alert he craned his head urgently around the dark cabin, looking for Satori, wincing as he did. She was at her station, also groaning and coming to.
She’s alive!
“You okay?” Other sounds crept to his awareness. Overflights outside, fighters, larger craft, ripping the sky with their high-speed rush. Distant blasts, dull through the thick hull. Cannon fire.
Would they swoop in to finish the job?
Satori’s groan rose to a curse, then a loud yell, followed by the bang of a fist against the console.
Yep. She’s alive.
“You did everything you could,” he said to her in the gloom.
“We can't let them get this.” Her voice sounded as if she were coming to an unpleasant realization.
“The fighter?”
“The information. I’ve got to wipe everything. This thing has everything we know.”
Damn.
“Isn’t there some kind of destruct?”
“Not that I know of. Pretty much everything’s shot.” She was looking things over.
“Can you reach Nani?”
She kept checking things.
“No.” Then: “Communications aren’t responding.”
“We’ve got to get out of here.” Willet rolled to his side with another grimace and sat up. Straightened painfully.
Satori was shaking her head. “Gotta wipe this first. No way to keep them from getting the technology but we can at least keep them from the information. I should be able to erase it.”
Willet was going to argue but she interrupted him. “Go find Zac,” she said, voice hiding pain but remarkably calm under the circumstances. The battle outside raged. In the semi-dark she’d already begun. “He had to have seen us go down. Find him, let him know we’re alive.”
“He may come here,” Willet tried to reason.
“Get his attention. Flag down somebody and get us the hell out of here. Anybody, the locals if you have to. I’ll kill this and get out. Right now we’re a sitting duck.”
The Kel would be coming. They would want this ship and everything on it.
**
“Zac!” There it was again. Zac wasn’t imagining it. A voice he recognized.
It was Willet.
At the confirmation of it he ran low through the trees toward the shouts, trying to stay out of sight. Then he had Willet in view and was bearing on him. Willet saw him coming at the last second and cringed as Zac ran up and, quite on impulse, grabbed him up in a hug and spun him around.
Willet grunted. Zac put him down and stepped back. Willet looked hurt, panicked, confused and many other things Zac had never seen the esteemed soldier look. Zac had been headed for the site of the downed fighter. Hoping against hope.
“Where’s Satori?”
Willet pointed back through the woods. “She stayed to wipe out the files.”
Zac shook his head, so relieved.
Satori was also alive.
“I thought you were both dead.”
“We made it.” Willet glanced now at the Icon in Zac’s hand, eyes going wide. He continued with his next question even as the sight of the Icon brought a whole new regard: “Where’s Jess—”
Before he could finish the entire landscape pulsed, trees bending and snapping as a pair of the giant Kel destroyers raced overhead, dark monsters out of nowhere that Zac saw far too late. The concussion of their abrupt passage hit before he could react, knocking Willet to the ground and leaving Zac standing alone. Trees swayed mightily in the wake of their rush.
They were still very much in the middle of combat.
Willet rose unsteadily as the shockwaves rolled across the land, thunderclaps booming the air. Quickly he got himself to his feet, staggering badly, looking fearfully to the heavens for more. Zac was looking too, peering hard through the trees …
He spotted the Reaver. In the distance, arcing through the sky, engaged with the marauding destroyers along with a handful of fighters. Briefly he looked to Willet, put a hand on his shoulder and tried to steady him, then turned back to the sky and—
Suddenly the Reaver was right there.
Smack out of nowhere, dominant in the clearing and filling his view. An instant ago it was in the far distant sky now it was right there on them, a dark, colossal mass, bringing with it a fresh cloud of debris as it whisked in on waves of silent power. Zac still couldn’t wrap his head around the size of these ships and how quickly they changed position in space. Now here was the Reaver, a behemoth in flight, settling to a hover just beyond the clearing.
Willet nearly fell again.
Even as he caught himself the Reaver stabilized and slid closer and, as Zac struggled to process what was going on, a door on the side opened. Small against the ship’s bulk, it was an urgent invitation and Zac knew at once what it meant.
They needed to get aboard.
Now.
He looked up. High above one of the destroyers was curving in on a buttonhook, preparing to fire.
For that hairsbreadth in time they had a chance.
This might be their only one.
He snatched Willet, jerking a yelp out of him. There was no time to speak or to warn or do anything but get aboard and do it now. With two bounds he was at the door and jumping through, Willet tight in his arms. Aboard the ship Zac pulled up short as he ran into Bianca—who was running to the doorway from the inside. She screamed. Zac set Willet to his feet.
“Satori!” was Willet’s first urgent word.
Bianca was just as frantic. “Where’s Jess?!” She shoved around Zac, looking out the door, looking for he
r friend who wasn’t there.
Zac held up the Icon. “This,” he said. “We can get to her with this.”
Willet yelled again: “We’ve got to get Satori!” He turned with desperate purpose to leap out the door but Zac grabbed him.
“I’m going!” Zac told him, shoving him aside—
WHOOOM! Bianca and Willet were knocked to the floor. WHOOM! WHOOM! WHOOM! Zac realized in that throbbing, world-rocking moment that the buttonhooking destroyer had opened up from above and was nailing them to the ground. Like a boxer, striking hits along the Reaver’s back and hammering it straight to the dirt with titanic force. The ship crunched into the field, pressed there beneath the unrelenting fury until the shots ceased.
Nani’s voice came over the din, yelling.
“We have to go!”
“I can get her!” Zac insisted, leaning back out the door as the lethal shadow of the attacking destroyer whipped across them. He cringed, catching sight of it as it curved around for another attack. Even as it did another destroyer curved into view, also coming for them. The Reaver rose slowly back into the air. The world outside was utter chaos, too dangerous probably even for a Kazerai.
“No time!” It was Nani. “Let’s go! Inside!”
Then Zac saw it. Yet another Kel destroyer. Out of nowhere and hovering over the downed fighter in the distance. The fighter where Satori was. Kel soldiers started dropping around the dark hulk of the downed fighter like rain.
“Let’s go!!” Nani yelled, spiking the audio in the small bay. “Close the door!” she was in a full panic. Zac worried she was about to gun it whether they were in or not.
Willet made for the door. “I’m not leaving her!” But Zac held him.
There was just no way. It would be suicide, for Willet or him.
He found the controls for the door and hit them. It shut fast, closing off the chaos outside with dark finality.
Zac spoke firmly. “They’ve got her,” he said to Willet, pained. “I can’t save her. We’ll come back.”
Star Angel: Rising (Star Angel Book 4) Page 24
