ReDawn (Skyward, #2.2)

Arturo dove directly behind him, and I jerked my ship to the side in my attempt to keep up. I wished I had my own ship—I looked like an idiot in this thing, which wasn’t going to help them think of me as a capable member of the team.

“Scud,” Jorgen said. “Enemy ships, on top and closing. Nedder, help me hold them off.” I focused on following Arturo as we neared the transport ship.

Kimmalyn’s ship darted over our heads. She had to get ahead of the transport ship to get a clear shot. The transport ship aimed its destructors at her and fired, but she dodged and turned her ship around to face it.

    “Ready,” she said.

“All right, Quirk,” Arturo said. “On my mark.” He soared over the transport ship and shot it with his light-lance. I aimed and fired as well, grabbing the ship by the other side.

“Scud,” Nedder said. “They’re coming in hot.”

“Fire!” Arturo said.

Kimmalyn’s destructors fired, and the cockpit of the transport ship exploded in a shower of sparks.





Nine


“Quirk!” Jorgen shouted over the radio. “Report?”

“Successful, I think?” Kimmalyn said. “Cockpit annihilated. Hull is intact.”

That was a seriously impressive shot. Kimmalyn would have been a star, even in the professional leagues.

“Alanik? How’s the inhibitor?”

I scanned the area through the negative realm. The hull was a giant blank space. “Operational,” I said. I held one half of the ship by my light-lance and Arturo had the other. The ship’s acclivity ring also seemed to be operational, so we didn’t have to adjust our boosters to keep it in the air. Without the cockpit controls, I didn’t know how much longer that would last.

“What about the pilot?” I asked.

“Um, dead?” Kimmalyn said. “Copilot, too, if there was one.”

I blinked down at the ship. I didn’t have a clear view of the cockpit from this angle, but—

“Well done, Quirk,” Jorgen said, like it was nothing.

She’d just killed people, and they thought of it as nothing.

I shook myself. What did I think was going to happen in an actual military firefight?

“We’re here to help,” FM said, and I looked up through my canopy to see the rest of the flight descending on the remaining ships. They seemed to have it handled for now, and the light-lance would be sufficient to hyperjump us all.

    “We need to jump this ship to the base,” I said. “Where the pilots can board Independence ships and help us.”

“You can take them anytime, Alanik,” Jorgen said.

I didn’t need his permission, but at least we agreed on what had to be done.

“That base will be crawling with the enemy, won’t it?” Arturo asked.

“Probably,” I said. “Drop your line if you don’t want to come with me.”

I gave Arturo a few seconds to decide. With the ship’s acclivity ring still functional, I didn’t need him to hold the ship, but I could use the backup when we arrived. When he didn’t release, I reached through the negative realm up to the airspace in front of the Independence base and pulled us all through.

The eyes were wrathful as we passed beneath them, but no more than last time. Hopefully it had been long enough since my last jump that I wasn’t putting us all at too much risk. Especially because I wasn’t confident that I was going to get out of this battle without needing to hyperjump again.

“Alanik,” Arturo said over the radio, “confirm, personnel in that hangar are the enemy, correct?”

I had to turn my ship to the side to see what he was referring to. There were Unity soldiers inside the hangar, some staring in confusion, others running for cover.

“Affirmative,” I said.

“Copy,” Arturo said. He opened fire as we approached the hangar, and the remaining Unity people began to flee.

    “Do we need to secure the area?” Arturo asked.

“My people can do it,” I said. At least, I hoped they would do a better job of it than they did the first time. We flew into the hangar and deposited the transport on the ground, our ships still hovering above it. My people poured out, including my brother, Gilaf, who turned around and stared up at us. There weren’t more than fifty of them—I wondered if some of the Independence people had defected to Unity.

I pulled off my helmet and waved at Gilaf. He waved back and joined a group of Independence pilots already heading to the remaining ships. They’d get in the air and join the fight, putting us ahead in numbers.

For now.

I searched again for hypercomm signals. Far out in the miasma, I heard the buzz of a communication.

—at Hollow. Bring her in alive—other cytonic interference—not sure what to expect—

I smiled. Quilan could sense Jorgen and the slugs, same as I could. A group of humans with hyperdrives would be low on his list of possible explanations.

“More enemy incoming,” I said over the radio.

“Do we know how many ships?” Arturo asked.

“No idea,” I said. “Depends on how many Quilan can muster in a hurry.” And how much of a threat he thought I was.

Ships couldn’t move as fast through the miasma as they could in the vacuum because of the air resistance. Quilan would probably head straight up out of the atmosphere and then skirt the planet in the vacuum. He’d call up units as close to us as possible—which meant they could be here long before he was.

    I widened my sensors, searching for the incoming ships. They were coming through the miasma on the duskward side of Hollow. They’d pass by Skyward Flight before they got to us. “They’re coming up fast. Duskward side.”

“What’s that?” Jorgen asked.

Oh. “The side where the sun sets. On the…”

The enemy split into two groups as the ships approached the tree.

“We use time on a clock,” he said. “Like, directly behind me is six o’clock, straight ahead is twelve…”

I had vaguely heard of this—an old-fashioned way of telling directions, probably from the days when we were allied with the humans. “We don’t use that notation anymore. Here.” I sent the direction to his mind so he could see what I meant.

“Scud,” Jorgen said. “I see them on our sensors now. They are coming up fast. Looks like about twenty of them.”