Earth Shout: Book 3 in the Earth Song Series

by Nick Cook

  ‘Tom, those pursuing TR-3Bs are closing on us,’ I said.

  Tom stared at one of his screens. ‘How the hell are they managing to do that?’

  A chill blanketed me. ‘I think I know. When I was stowed away on that other TR-3B, Zack redlined their engines for a mercy dash to Area 51 to get the Grey back quickly.’

  Tom looked over his flight consoles and turned his gaze to me. ‘I didn’t know that was technically possible. Can you do the same for us?’

  I stared at the array of screens and the maze of information and shook my head. ‘Sorry, I haven’t got a clue how to do that. But the good news is that they were only able to keep up that speed for about twenty minutes before their reactor started to overheat.’

  ‘That helps, but they’re going to catch up with us in the next ten.’

  ‘Oh, bloody hell.’ My eyes swept over the screens as I looked for an answer. Tom was right – they were nearing quickly. The distance was now down to forty-five miles as they continued to reel us in.

  ‘So we’re going to have to fight them after all?’ I asked.

  Tom’s lips curled over his teeth. ‘We can try, but those TR-3B pilots are the best of the best, the real top guns in every sense. Once they catch up with us, we’ll be heavily outgunned and almost certainly outflown too.’

  ‘Then maybe we’re thinking about this back to front,’ I said and peered at one of my screens that displayed a scrolling map.

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘If we can’t outrun them, we need to use cover to even our odds up a bit.’

  ‘There’s not exactly a lot of that up here, Lauren.’

  ‘True.’ I gestured at my navigation screen. ‘But according to the map I’m looking at, we’re not too far away from the Grand Canyon. How about hiding out down there where radar can’t get a lock on us thanks to all that rock?’

  ‘Flying a top-secret triangular craft at high speed close to the ground… You do know that you really are certifiably crazy, don’t you?’

  I grinned at him. ‘So everyone keeps telling me.’

  Tom chuckled as he pushed his left joystick forward. We curved down towards a bank of clouds and plunged into mist. On my screen I saw beads of water streaming over the invisible force field round the craft. With a rush of sunlight we punched through into clear air again.

  ‘How far behind us are they now?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Thirty-five miles.’

  Tom nodded. ‘Let’s see if we can bluff our way out of this.’ He pushed the comm button. ‘Pursuing craft, you are to stand down and return to base,’ he said, his southern drawl back in place.

  A pulsating spot appeared next to the lead ship with the ID tag Skyscraper next to it.

  ‘I’m afraid we can’t do that, Commander Jenson,’ a man with a New York accent replied. ‘We have orders to bring you in. So do us all a favour and turn that bird round right now.’

  ‘As much as I’d like to comply, that’s not an option, Skyscraper,’ Tom replied. ‘I’m on a clandestine mission that’s time critical.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Commander, but you have to abandon your mission. If you don’t, you’ll leave us with no choice but to engage you.’

  ‘Sorry, but no can do, Skyscraper.’

  A sigh came over the radio. ‘Have it your way, Commander. I hate to have to do this, but you can’t say you weren’t warned.’

  A warbling warning sound came from my gunner’s screen. My heart leapt as a shockwave appeared in front of the Skyscraper craft. A line of silver shot out from it, streaking through the sky and eating up the miles between us in a shockingly small amount of time.

  ‘Incoming hypervelocity projectile!’ I shouted as I read the data info next to it.

  Tom nodded and rolled the thumb control on his left joystick.

  The seat’s harness bit into my body as our Astra shot downwards, racing towards the scrubland far below. Ribbons of vapour flowed over the plummeting sphere of our gravity bubble, creating a shockwave at the leading edge of it.

  My jaw tightened as the gunner’s view automatically tracked the projectile. It was the barest blur through the air and the tracking system was doing an astonishing job of keeping it in frame. I instinctively winced as a whistling sound came from outside, speeding past us. The camera view spun round to show it streaking away towards the horizon. A moment later its sonic boom rattled our cockpit.

  Tom breathed hard as he levelled out our flight path again. ‘Hold your damned fire, Skyscraper!’

  ‘Order are orders, Commander. You of all people should know that.’

  Tom stabbed his finger down on the comm button, killing the link. ‘I never liked that man. Played things too much by the book rather than thinking for himself. Still, I don’t want take their lives if we can at all help it.’

  ‘Me too. After all, they’re US Navy pilots not Overseer agents.’

  ‘Agreed. With that in mind, there should be an option on your screen that says Firing Solutions. Select that, Lauren.’

  I hunted across the displays and spotted a grey box with that wording in the bottom right of the gunner’s screen. I pressed it and two options appeared. The first one, Target Critical Systems, was already selected. My gaze scanned down to the next item, Target Non-Critical Systems. I selected it and the tension that I hadn’t even realised I’d been carrying in my jaw faded away. This was a good call from Tom.

  ‘OK, locked and loaded,’ I said.

  ‘Good, so our rail gun won’t blast them out of the sky now as it will only take out secondary systems, hopefully enough to slow them down.’

  ‘And how about them with us?’

  ‘I’m afraid as far as they are concerned we’re a legitimate target.’

  ‘I was afraid you were going to say that.’

  Tom adjusted the flight controls and we sped towards a series of valleys ahead of us, one of which was unmistakable. The Grand Canyon was on my bucket list, but I’d never in a million years thought I would see it in anything like these circumstances. Slabs of golden rock towered either side of a deep valley, multicoloured rock strata visible throughout like stacks of stone pancakes. Its size was breathtaking – it was an awesome spectacle of nature and maybe our only hope of staying alive.

  It was then that I realised Tom didn’t seem to be aiming for it, but flying towards one of the parallel canyons just to the left of it.

  ‘We have a better chance of evading them in the smaller canyons,’ Tom said, answering my unasked question.

  A warbling alarm came from my display and three more blips appeared in the far distance behind the craft already chasing us. ‘New targets detected,’ the female computerised voice said far too calmly.

  ‘Oh, this day just gets better and better,’ I said.

  ‘Someone really doesn’t want us to get away,’ Tom muttered as we tore towards the smaller canyon dead ahead of us.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  We dropped to what must have been less than a hundred metres above the ground, skimming over it at heart-stopping velocity. Tom’s face was drenched in sweat, his eyes laser-focused on his flight screen. He pulled back on the throttle control as we raced towards the entrance of a wide valley. The landscape whipping past on my screen slowed from a nose-bleed blur to a still ridiculously fast six hundred miles per hour.

  ‘Why are you slowing down?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve no choice unless you want us to plough straight into a cliff face. Just keep an eye on the pursuing craft. We’re well within effective target range now.’

  The weapons’ targeting joystick grew slick in my hand as I watched the distance indicator for the pursuing squadron tick down to five miles. Flying just above the ground, our gravity field bubble was large enough to throw up a spreading bow wave of orange dust in twin radiating swirls that spread out behind us, obscuring the view.

  The square targeting reticles grew larger on my screen, the labels indicating they were only four miles away. Like three riders emerging
from an apocalypse, they burst out of the dust stormed we’d created, three blacks triangles flying perpendicular to the ground and suddenly decelerating hard too.

  The distance between us ticked down to three miles as we raced into the valley, rock walls skimming past. Tom jinked our craft, throwing the ship left and right within the confines of the canyon.

  A warning alarm blared out from my display, red lights appearing across it.

  Enemy lock flashed up on my screen.

  My throat constricted as a shockwave appeared in front of the TR-3B on the left of the chasing squadron.

  Tom twitched his joystick left. We rolled sideways and a black dart sped past us, the sonic boom only a split second behind it at this range. With a whump the hypersonic round slammed into the side of the valley. It was like an instant earthquake had taken hold of the cliff and shattered it. With a roar of splintering stone the whole rock face exploded into a shower of boulders. Rattles and bangs came from outside as rocks slammed into the ground, throwing up huge plumes of red dust ahead of us.

  His teeth bared, Tom yanked his left joystick back, using the vectoring rockets to adjust our flight path. We hurtled through the top of the expanding cloud before diving back into the valley. The TR-3B hummed and creaked around us, the antigravity drive reducing some but not all the stresses on the airframe.

  Even with our reduced speed, all this happened in less than three seconds and then we were past and it was receding into the distance.

  ‘Return fire!’ Tom shouted.

  My heart surged as I centred on the TR-3B that had fired on us. The green reticle round it turned green as it locked on.

  I squeezed the trigger on the joystick. Our ship vibrated as a harmonic sound came from the Astra. With a whoosh our own thread of death sped straight towards the pursuing craft.

  In all the chaos a sense of calm filled me as I thought of the hunter about to bring down their prey. But at the last second the chasing craft bobbed upwards and my shot sped uselessly beneath it, cutting out a huge furrow in the canyon’s base, trailing dust and debris.

  Tom grimaced. ‘I told you these guys were all bloody top guns.’

  Two more shockwaves appeared as shots blurred away from them towards us.

  A hissing sound came from the multiple vectoring rockets round the circumference of our ship as Tom desperately pulled the TR-3B round a bend in the canyon.

  The air felt as if it were being sucked out of my lungs by the intensity of the manoeuvre as I was pressed into my seat. A split second later, like the bellow of a giant being felled, the rocky bluff behind us exploded in a shower of rock splinters, right where we’d been just a second before.

  We curved away, spinning as we went, the canyon walls speeding past at a nausea-inducing rate. Tom was entirely dripping with sweat now, his jaw muscles prominent. He threw us round a series of increasingly dangerous switchback bends in the now winding canyon.

  My hands clawed my seat arms as he just managed a sharp turn to the right. A shudder passed through the ship, the gravity bubble doing its best to cushion us from the rock face just metres from our fuselage.

  The canyon opened up again into a straight and we raced along it.

  We couldn’t last much longer at this rate. I needed to increase our odds of survival.

  In all the chaos I somehow found the mental space to take a centring breath. Once again a sense of serenity took hold of me and I aimed my rail gun’s reticle towards the exit of the bend we’d just taken. A bead of sweat tickled down my nose, but I didn’t allow anything to break my focus as my finger trembled on the trigger.

  Three reticle squares appeared. No time for using the automated weapon systems. I adjusted my aim by a millimetre and took the shot as the three TR-3Bs banked the corner.

  There was no chance for the pilot to do anything as my rail-gun round smashed into the lead ship. I blinked, barely able to believe I’d actually hit it as their Astra spiralled towards the ground. For a moment I was the pilot in that ship, imagining it was us crashing. My stomach lurched in sympathy when it smashed into the rocky floor in a cloud of smoke and fire.

  I found myself shaking. Those were US Navy pilots I’d just shot down.

  Tom grabbed a split second to throw me a sideways look. ‘You did what you had to do, Lauren,’ he said, reading my mind.

  I swallowed hard. But then I caught sight of a round pod on a parachute slowly drifting down to earth. ‘It looks as if they had time to eject!’

  Tom nodded as he got us round the next bend.

  It was only then that I realised just one of two remaining TR-3Bs had appeared from the expanding dust cloud. Had the other been taken out by flying debris?

  That hope died inside me as another warbling alarm shrilled out. ‘Enemy lock,’ the female AI announced.

  A flashing arrow appeared at the top of my display. I yanked the rail gun’s joystick back. My gunner’s screen pivoted upwards towards it in a blur of movement. I spotted the missing TR-3B diving straight for us as a shockwave appeared in front of the ship.

  Tom was already yanking the joystick hard over, flipping us sideways. The incoming rail gun round smashed into the canyon base just beneath us with a detonation so loud it seemed as if the whole world was screaming.

  On my screen I saw the TR-3B still coming for us, a hawk plummeting from the sky towards its prey. As Tom punched the accelerator and tried to race us away, a stillness filled me once again. I saw the craft starting to pull out of the dive as though my response rate had sped up a thousand times, almost bringing its manoeuvre into slow motion. I centred it in my sights and squeezed the trigger.

  At close range the impact of our hypersonic round was shocking. The rail-gun projectile ripped straight through the tip of the triangular craft. The panels vaporised into a cloud of molten metal as the nose of the craft was sliced off as if cut by a surgeon. The Astra yawed sideways towards the canyon wall as its pilot lost control.

  I gritted my teeth for the inevitable impact. At the last moment a circular hatch opened in the roof and a large metal sphere shot out into the sky. The Astra ploughed into the rock face in a huge explosion.

  ‘Enemy lock,’ the computerised voice calmly announced.

  Something streaked past us and a massive bang followed by a rumble like a rushing tsunami came from above. The last pursuing Astra!

  I pivoted my screen to see half a cliff starting to collapse right on top of us from the hypersonic round that had just been fired into it.

  It was like watching an avalanche rolling down towards us, but made from stone and dust, not snow and ice. Tom had run out of sky and, with nowhere left to go, we plunged headlong into it.

  Jarring impacts came from all around the ship as if we’d run into a hailstorm of ball bearings. The scent of my own sweat filled my nose and my mouth went bone dry as our gravity field became overwhelmed and our whole ship shook. Would this be how we died?

  But Tom was screaming, ‘Come on!’ His hand muscles cabled as he pulled his left joystick hard back, pushing the other joystick forward.

  A whining sound came from the ship’s gravity-reduction drive and we started to rise back through the avalanche as it tumbled past us into the bottom of the canyon. We were faced with a shock of blue sky as we rose out into clear air.

  But I knew that the other ship had to be somewhere behind us still.

  I spun my sight back down towards the expanding cloud of dirt. And then, like a whale breaking the surface of the sea, the chasing craft burst out too.

  Tom was already reacting, speeding us down into an adjacent valley, spinning the craft as we descended. Another projectile blurred past us as Tom jinked us sideways just in time.

  A fresh alarm warbled in the cockpit.

  I stared at the warning display, tears threatening my eyes as I absorbed the information. This was so bloody unfair. ‘Tom, that second squadron is almost in range of us now, just five miles out.’

  He managed a vague nod as he manoeuvred us
hard round another bend. And then another alarm sounded.

  ‘Fuck, make that two!’ I screamed as I saw new contacts light up on my gunner’s screen. ‘The craft travelling towards us at Mach 6 will be on top of us in two minutes.’

  Tom weaved from one side of the canyon to the other, like a hare tracked by hounds, as he desperately tried to escape. But the last ship from the first squadron matched Tom’s increasingly frantic manoeuvres move for move. The skin tightened across my forehead as I blazed round after round at the pursuing TR-3B, but kept missing. How the hell was I going to hit that thing…? Then the answer burst into my mind. Of course!

  I swung my gunsight to the top of the canyon wall above. I’d use the same tactic on them that they’d already tried on us. I tried to keep the cliff centred, but it kept spinning out of view as Tom threw us fiercely around.

  ‘Tom, I need you to keep the ship level for a second so I can take a shot.’

  ‘But a second is all that other ship needs.’

  ‘We’ll be dead anyway soon if you don’t. Just trust me.’

  He gave me a sharp nod. There was no time to argue. No time for anything apart from cheating death.

  The gyration of our craft slowed and the canyon wall steadied on my gunner’s screen. I breathed out and fired.

  The hypersonic round slammed almost instantly into the cliff wall behind us. What had been solid a moment before rose up in an expanding cloud of shattered stone before tumbling back to earth.

  ‘Enemy target lock,’ the computerised voice said.

  Tom spun the accelerator wheel forward and we hurtled straight up into the sky. But not fast enough. A massive bang came from our craft and it shuddered as red lights lit up the gunner’s screen.

  ‘Weapon systems are offline,’ the ship’s AI announced.

  Fear roared through me. I braced for the next shot that would take us out as the other craft began to rise up from the valley towards us. But the cliff was still slipping down towards it. An avalanche of boulders, some easily the size of houses, smashed straight into the rising craft. With a pulse of blinding light, the TR-3B grounded itself in the surrounding canyon. It shook violently as more rocks slammed into it with sledgehammer blows. Great panels of metal were sheared away like a tin can being opened. The Astra’s momentum crawled to a stop. And then it began to fall back, carried down into the boiling maelstrom of destruction.