The Endless Sky

by Adam P. Knave

  The thirteen enemy ships, having worked out what they were up against, scattered effectively, forcing Deep Water and Beef to give chase and fight them in small batches. They also tried to draw the Arrow into the fighting full-time.

  “Deep Water, this is Mud. Permission to go for a walk?”

  “Negative, Mud,” Bushfield replied quickly. “Drones still in play.”

  “Damn it, Deep Water, we need to even the score.”

  “Negative, repeat negative. Your mission is planetside. Punch through quick and get on the ground. This is our sandbox. Copy?”

  “Copy, Deep Water. Arrow to proceed into atmo, on mission,” Chellox said before Mud could reply. Unable to look away from what he was doing, he added over his shoulder, “I’m taking us in, Mud.”

  Mud didn’t reply, instead heading back to the airlock and gathering up GravPacks, handing them out to everyone but Chellox and Steelbox. They couldn’t take the time just then, so Mud set their packs near their seats and strapped himself back in.

  Chellox aimed them at a pocket of enemy fighters and then, just as they opened fire, dove toward the planet at speed, leaving the battleground.

  The Arrow hurtled toward the planet, daring the enemy fighters to break off and pursue. One took them up on it. Deep Water and Beef caught the trajectory change and considered their options quickly.

  “Beef, get that thing off their tail. I’ll keep the rest on the hunt after me.”

  “Boss, that’s not the—”

  “Beef, stay on mission. Keep the door open for them. Clear their six.”

  “Copy, Deep Water.” Beef broke away from pursing fighters to trail after the Arrow. The fighter behind them had managed to tag the ship once already, giving it a bit of a wobble as it got close to the planet. Beef could see the damage didn’t cross into critical, but his sensors were still jammed so he couldn’t be too sure on what might’ve been knocked out.

  He opened fire with blasters only, not wanting to risk a missile getting off-track and becoming friendly fire. The enemy fighter tried to stay directly behind the Arrow, so an easy dodge would put the ship at risk from Beef’s shots. He cursed loudly, hoping his comms weren’t hot, and pushed his engines as hard as they’d go, trying to overtake the enemy ship from relative above.

  Chellox saw Beef’s speed increase and took a gamble on the maneuver. He slowed down, turning as if to abandon planet fall, counting on the ship still firing on the Arrow to follow him. They did, and Chellox let a soft whoop escape from his lips as he used the Tsyfarian engines to do their thing and turn far faster than any ship had a right to, throwing the crew around the cabin unexpectedly. “Sorry,” he said, not meaning it, “just have to lose this guy, hold on.”

  “You tell us to hold on before you do that, Chellox,” Bee muttered, gripping her harness tightly in her hands. “Not after.”

  “Well, hold on,” Chellox said again. The Arrow came around, turning to loop the enemy ship horizontally, giving him no good way to turn and fire for a moment. Beef took his shot. He took several. Enough of them hit that the enemy ship’s engine started to sputter.

  “Arrow’s in the clear,” Beef said. “Headed back to you, Deep Water.”

  “Copy,” Bushfield said. She turned her ship hard enough she could hear the metal of her hull complain. The enemy took the moment to focus solely on her, surrounding her with fire. The only good side to it that she could see was that their fire knocked a bunch of the remaining drones out of the way.

  She dodged as best she could, hoping her shields continued to hold, but knowing that the damage her ship accumulated would overwhelm her ability to keep up with the fight sooner than later. They’d underprepared, she thought; she should’ve taken at least two more ships along. They could only react to the data they possessed, though, and nothing Mills showed her had lead them to believe orbital defenses would be quite as robust as they seemed to be now.

  Beef came in hard from her right, firing everything he had, chasing a few of the enemy off her. In return she looped around and caught out one of them as they started to shift into position to take shots at Beef.

  All in all, eleven ships remained in the darkness around them, with only their two quickly depleting weapons stores to protect them. It’d be a thin line between survival and failure for them, but they both knew they had to hold tight, keep up the fight, and be ready for round two when the Arrow took off. So they retreated, drawing the fighters off with them, hoping they’d turn back.

  They did, and Beef and Bushfield cut engines, floating free for a few. “Beef, while we catch our breath, we need to EVA to try and do patch jobs. You good?”

  “Good here, Deep Water, but they’ll toss more drones in our way if we try to make it back into the full field.”

  “Of course they will,” Bushfield agreed, “so let’s hope the Arrow can stop them at the root while doing everything else they’re on mission for.”

  “They’ll get it done.”

  “They will, if they remember. And we can’t comm them anymore to make sure—the jammers are too strong close to the planet for us to punch through.”

  “So what do we do?” Beef asked, checking his systems carefully, making special notice of weapons levels.

  “Go EVA and patch job, like I said. One at a time, the other keeps an eye out for stray enemies.”

  “And if they send a drone wave back out this far?”

  “Then we probably die. So let’s hope they don’t do that,” Bushfield said, popping her ship’s hatch open and latching a tie down to make sure she didn’t drift off.

  “Copy, Deep Water,” Beef said, watching her work while keeping an eye out for signs of engine flare in the distance. “It’s a good plan, Boss. I’m thrilled to be a part of it.”

  CHAPTER 9

  ATMOSPHERE STARTED TO FORM around the Arrow. Flames followed, and Chellox adjusted his entry angle to let the shields do their work. He planned to land far from their target city, then fly over it, once they were securely in atmo and no longer looked like an invading force.

  A good plan, but one that didn’t count on explosions starting to go off in the sky all around them.

  “Report!” Mud yelled, trying to see what his screens could tell him.

  “Aerial defenses, Mud—we’ve got more of those drones, and missiles coming in hot,” Steelbox said.

  “Options?” Mud asked, sure he wouldn’t like any of them.

  “We can go down hard or we can try to fight back,” Chellox said. “We can’t exactly flee anywhere. If we retreat into orbit we won’t be able to try another run, data suggests. If we just go the way we are, the ship might end up...unwell.”

  “So we crash? You’re saying we crash?” Mud took a deep breath. “Why does it feel like we’re always crashing?”

  “Probably something you did,” Bee said, hoping for a tension break.

  “Probably is,” Mud agreed, shaking his head. “Chellox, can you at least crash land us somewhere in one piece, without too much damage?”

  “That’s my current objective, Mud,” Chellox said, “so just let me work on that.”

  “Shutting up then.”

  Mud glanced toward Olivet, who nodded and opened one of his jars of mist, sniffing deeply. Mud hoped that the process he didn’t even really believe in would work for them. He knew it would take some time, so best to start now, doubly so if they had to abandon ship.

  Explosions rocked them hard, but Chellox did his best to keep them fairly steady. After a few minutes, the ground rushing at them, they could all feel the ship start to respond badly. A shake and drift combined with a strange rattle from the engine that shouldn’t be there. Olivet stored the jar of mist and joined Bee as she went to see to the engine. Mud heard a fire extinguisher go off and had started to unhook his harness when they came back out of the engine compartment together. “It’s fine,” Bee told him, “but we’ll need repairs when we land.”

  Mud settled back into his seat, as best he could wearing his Gra
vPack. “Plus repairs to the hull, chances are.”

  “Olivet can handle the engine, Chellox can work on the hull.”

  “Shouldn’t you work on the engine, Bee?” Mud asked, looking between her and Olivet.

  “You need one of us on mission with you,” she said, as if that solved it.

  “So I take Olivet and leave you to fix things here,” he said.

  “Mud, if Bee feels—” Olivet started.

  “No, I need the best hands on engine. Also, Bee, you’re better in combat situations than Olivet and we all know it. I need you here in case they come for the ship. Those’re orders.” Mud looked around as they continued to fall from the sky, mostly uncontrollably. “Anyone else think we’re way too calm about crash landings?”

  “Comes with the job, Cap,” Steelbox said over his shoulder. “Also I’m better with the hull work than Chellox, if we’re dividing up teams already.”

  “Chellox, can Steelbox make sure those Tsyfarian engines are properly tuned, yet?” Mud asked.

  “Not yet,” Chellox said, “but please let me crash this ship safely, thank you.”

  “Sure thing, Chel, sorry. Steelbox, you come with me and Olivet. Bee and Chellox fix the Arrow so we have a way back off world. New side mission parameter, too. We need to knock out whatever controls those drones, otherwise when we launch, and while we retreat, we’ll get blown out of the sky again. Also Deep Water and Beef would probably welcome the respite.”

  “Copy that, Cap,” Steelbox said, returning to helping Chellox land the ship as smoothly as feasible.

  “Well, let’s crash this thing with dignity then,” Mud said with only a small hint of a sigh.

  Chellox kept them as level as he could manage, skimming through trees and bouncing them as gently as possible before they skidded to a bone-rattling, jarring stop.

  They all hit harness releases and got out of their chairs quickly, Chellox and Steelbox stopping to don their GravPacks. They exited the Arrow and stood around outside of it, looking over the damage. “Olivet? Chellox?” Mud asked, looking between them both.

  “Hull damage is minimal, Mud,” Chellox said, “but the engines will need realignment and that will take some time.”

  “Olivet?”

  “Engine’s fixable. Mostly. Take-off could be a big problem.”

  “Wait, why?” Mud asked.

  Bee nodded at Olivet. “Because the engine will still generate thrust but the relatively long-term strain of leaving atmo might knock it back out.”

  “Wouldn’t a hard burn home do the same?” Steelbox asked before Mud could say it.

  “Oh, sure. But one thing at a time, right?” Bee shook her head and walked back toward the rear of the ship with Olivet, discussing a few ideas.

  Olivet returned alone and stood near Mud. “Bee is going to get to work. I suggest we do the same.”

  “Agreed. Steelbox, you good to go?”

  “All good, Cap.”

  “All right. We’ll fly in low, grab the Brands, convince them to shut off the drones and tell us about the jammers, then blow the drone controls anyway. Simple,” Mud said, knowing it would remain exactly that simple right up until the moment reality caught up with planning, as it always did.

  Mud, Steelbox, and Olivet took off, leaving the Arrow behind. Bee watched them go, returning to the interior of the Arrow to work on the engine. She wanted to be part of the mission team, not left behind as support staff, but felt Mud was right; if there was trouble here, she had a better shot at dealing with it.

  They weren’t hard to track, landing the way they did, and given how anxious these people had proved so far about keeping them away, there remained a ton of reason to feel they would send a team to inspect, confiscate, or more likely destroy the Arrow.

  She couldn’t keep an eye out while working on the engine from inside, of course, but Chellox could while working on the hull. They talked it over briefly, and he went to work still wearing his Tsyfarian helmet, in case.

  Chellox didn’t mind being left behind to work on the ship; he preferred it. Fighting was fine, if you were in a ship, but hand-to-hand felt ungainly and strange to him. Also, even though it might logically follow that he would be the most natural with a GravPack, he found he hated the things. Flying a ship made sense to him. The crazy strand weaving of the GravPacks, selecting target after target for attract or repel, just never clicked in his brain well enough.

  So they both worked on the Arrow tensely, waiting for attack.

  CHAPTER 10

  Mud, Olivet, and Steelbox flew over trees, the latter two a bit wobbly in their paths. Selecting planetary-surface mode allowed them to dial down to much smaller gravity sources than whole planets. The fine-tuning let them attract their GravPacks to some treetops and repel others, and if done at the proper speed, the flight path looked straight and clean.

  “Let’s slave your packs to mine for entry,” Mud said. “It’ll keep us lower.” Neither of his teammates disagreed, and the linkage went live. Mud sped them over the trees, dropping as low as he dared. “Set shields to one foot,” he said.

  “That’s a little thin,” Steelbox said. He didn’t like GravPacks, but put up with them when he had to.

  “We’ll be fine,” Mud assured him. “Not my first tree topper.”

  “But it’s mine,” Steelbox pointed out.

  “Same,” Olivet added, “and a foot shield is close enough to dent us if you twitch wrong.”

  “Which I won’t. Set for one foot, where’s the trust?” Mud hated this. He needed his team to not take up time arguing about the finer points of perfectly solid plans. He felt torn—he didn’t want to go full ‘I’m the boss’ right before they entered a probable firefight, but the reminder might help. He considered everything and ran it, eventually, through the filters of his parents. His father would absolutely enforce order. His mother remained a maybe, leaning toward a yes. He decided on something different. “I don’t want to lay down law, pull rank, and piss us all off,” he said, deciding to, instead, just be blunt with them. “But we need to do this solid, without missing. The rest of the team, our friends in the black right now, they need us to get this right the first time. So can we cut the democracy for a bit?”

  He waited in what felt like an endless silence that only lasted a few seconds in reality.

  “Copy, Cap,” Steelbox said.

  “Copy,” echoed Olivet. They set their shields to only a foot of distance and both took a few deep, calming breaths. The three continued in silence for a while, Mud using his GravPack to pull and push them along the tree line like a gymnast. They hit speeds upwards of a hundred miles per hour, with Mud having to select new targets and disconnect from old ones a few steps of ahead of where they were. He did the sort of GravPack flying that he’d been raised to, the type he thought he’d never really need.

  Soon enough, Kenzo came into view. Large, spire-shaped buildings rose up, straining for the sky. The rest of the city sprawled around them, edging out into the woods. From their vantage point, the team could see a distinct lack of careful city planning, meaning the place grew wild, expanding as needed—and quickly, from the gleam of most of the buildings. So it sprang up and edged out into the wildness out of necessity, claiming what land it needed without thought to checking growth.

  Other cities on McDallison, they knew from their map checks, had been planned out before construction, almost sterile in their mapping. The tiny town of Kenzo had started that way, but the last decade had seen an influx of money and a decrease in care.

  Mud knew that the Brands lived in one of the taller spires, but their power base laid distributed throughout a lot of the smaller buildings in town. Knowing an attack headed their way, what were the chances they’d stay home and not seek a reinforced hiding hole? The question then became where they hid, and where their attack controls were.

  The controls were going to be easier—there was only one small spaceport in the city large enough to launch a small cruiser, or maybe fifteen smal
l fighters. Why wouldn’t, Mud reasoned, you want your drones to be controlled from the same place they’d probably launch their payload rockets from?

  He turned them toward the spaceport and quickly laid out his reasoning. “So the problem left is where the Brands themselves are,” he said, finishing his chain of thought. “We’ll work it out while we get rid of the drone problem. Setting you both to free flight in five. Steelbox, take the control tower; Olivet, provide covering fire; I’ll find the tech room and knock it out.”

  They came in over the spaceport quickly and dropped to the ground just as fast. Guards came out of the four terminals, yelling and brandishing guns. Steelbox used his GravPack to shoot off to the tower, crashing through one of its large windows.

  Tucking and rolling as he went through the window, Steelbox came to his feet gun drawn, spinning to do a quick head count. Only four people sat in the tower at the moment, and all four of them were cowering. “So hey, hi, we’re gonna be grounding anything for the rest of the day, that good for you all?” Steelbox waved the four toward one spot in the room, across from the door, so he could track them easier. Locking and bracing the door shut, he turned his blaster back toward his new hostages. “I promise, the last thing I want to do is hurt anyone here. But nothing takes off, nothing lands, and no one gets any data from you. Just a while, then we’ll be on our way. You can thank the Brands for today’s disruption of service.”

  Outside, on the ground, Olivet sought cover, taking random shots from behind various structures and vehicles at the guards going after Mud. He kept them distracted, giving Mud openings, which Mud took advantage of happily. He leapt at one guard, lassoed him with an attractor field from his GravPack, then spun and set it to repel, throwing the guard hard into one of his friends.