Princeps’s voice rings out over the open comms channel. “Attention, unidentified Chellerian vessels. You are firing on a Terran Defense Force vessel under command of the Global Intelligence Agen—”
“I know damn well who I’m shooting at, hoo-maaan,” comes the growling reply as the terrifying face of the sector’s most infamous crime lord materializes on the display. “You GIA shraakz sold me out, and nobody stabs Casseldon Bianchi in the back and lives to talk about it.”
“Looks like someone wants his Trigger back,” Scarlett breathes.
“Um.” Finian glances at Aurora. “Someone want to tell him we broke it?”
We’ve hit the gravity well of Octavia III now, the coolant leaking from the Bellerophon’s port engines slowly spiraling down into the planet’s upper atmo.
The Chellerian ships are moving quick as hummingbirds, flitting through the destroyer’s rail gun fire and blasting away at the bigger ship, like a swarm of ants on an elephant. I watch as the Bellerophon launches its fighters, smaller ships streaming out from its bay doors. Most of the destroyer’s birds turn to combat the smaller Chellerian ships, but at least half a dozen of them turn and zero in on us.
Our power levels are dropping quick, but this is where I live. I turn our Longbow to face the incoming fighters, weaving through their streams of fire like thread through a needle’s eye. All the years training, all the instinct, all the rhythm pulsing in my veins flow to the surface. I can’t feel my hands as they skim the controls. Can’t feel my body as the ship rolls and twists beneath me.
I sling us down and out of Octavia III’s gravity well, picking up an extra burst of speed. Kal has manned the secondary weapons array, and between us, we carve a swathe of fire through the TDF birds. Elation surges through me, watching the hunter become the hunted. Watching the Chellerians and the Bellerophon cutting each other to pieces. Watching the flashes of blue flame and shrapnel as we shoot down the fighters on our tails, one by one.
And then I remember my mum was a TDF pilot.
And I realize there are real people inside those fighters.
I’ve never shot down a living person before today. All the hours, all the training, the cockpit where I earned my nickname—all of that was just a sim. These are real people out here. Terrans, fighting for what they believe in.
Just like me.
The engine’s getting sluggish. The power drain from our damage is reaching the redline. And thinking about the people inside those cockpits, I’m getting sloppy. Bellerophon is on fire, oxygen pouring out of its melted hull and burning in the black. The Chellerians have been torn to ribbons, too, pieces of those sleek, black stealth ships glittering like shards of broken glass as they tumble away into space.
A flash of nuclear fire ignites Octavia III’s upper atmosphere—a desperate stab from the dying Bellerophon. Bianchi’s roaring over comms as his vessel gets caught in the blast. I see the fireball, watch the electromagnetic shock wave travel toward us.
I try to pull us up, but the engines don’t have the kick I need anymore—my girl’s too wounded to fly as fast as I need her to. The EMP burst hits us, a wave of light and sound, the instrumentation in front of me lighting up in a hail of sparks.
I’m thrown sideways in my harness. Hear Fin cry out. Alarms are screaming. Temperature rising. We’ve hit atmo, our ship skipping across it like a stone skimmed along the water. I try to fight the drag, pulling back with everything I’ve got. But we’re hemorrhaging too much power.
We’ve taken too much damage.
“We’re going in!”
30
Finian
“Ty, boost the stabilizers! Squad, brace, and prayers if you got ’em!”
Cat’s covering her console like she’s one of our four-armed Chellerian friends up above: hands everywhere at once, flicking switches and dancing across buttons, trying to coax a little more lift out of our wounded steed.
“Everyone strap in,” Ty commands. Aurora buckles herself onto a spare velocity couch at the back of the cabin, and all around me my squad mates deploy their restraints. “Ready for impact.”
The whole Longbow shudders, tilting to the right with a scream of protest, and Zila crashes into the far wall before she can get to her seat. None of us can so much as lift a hand to help her out, and Cat keeps on rapping out orders. Goldenboy’s our Alpha in the field, but he’s trained to back her up at times