Death Drop (51 page)

Rilek was taken by surprise but he wasted no time in responding to the threat. The
Lodestar
buzzed over top of the
Ghost
, barrel-rolling to the other side with an agility Dezmara didn’t think possible from the battered and worn looks of her outsides. Rilek and Saraunt were in perfect sync, and before the
Lodestar
had pitched the smallest fraction of a degree, the
Maelstrom
dove on the ambushing vessel and let loose with all its forward machine guns. The swarm of projectiles glanced off the slick, liquid-like, metallic skin and sparks hung in the air, marking each bullet’s initial hit and beckoning the wayward lead back to its mark before giving up and withering in the unrelenting cold. The mystery attacker shrugged off the assault and banked under the
Ghost
in pursuit of the bigger threat—the more heavily armed and formidable
Lodestar
.

Rilek moved to the starboard side of the
Ghost
, happily using Dezmara’s ship as a shield against the vicious guns of the shell-helmed menace. The trailing flame of his engines stretched and grew brighter as he accelerated hard. The marauding ship swooped from underneath Dezmara and company at an angle to catch Rilek and put another broadside volley into his flank, but the cunning admiral had other plans. As soon as his pursuer crested the nose of the
Ghost
, Rilek slammed his throttles to all back full.

The alien craft had taken the bait, and it hurtled past the viewing panes with only meters to spare. The blast of its engines rocked the helpless
Ghost
and Dezmara fell into her chair, clutching the rim of the seat with both hands to keep from meeting the floor for a second time in sixty grueling seconds. As it arced past, the violent tremors decreased to a small humming vibration, and Dezmara looked out of the cockpit and onto the stern of her unknown savior. There, etched across the tail of the ship like a charred black brand, was its moniker:
Triton
.

The captain of the
Triton
had overcommitted, and in the split second it took for him to realize his grave error, Rilek had maneuvered directly behind him. Shells were tearing from the
Lodestar’s
deck guns and four cannons that appeared from large rectangular bay doors on both sides of the bow. The
Triton’s
swirling engine fairings, two on each side of the tail section, spiraled closed, swallowing the demon red exhaust glow like mollusks drawing their feet into the protective confines of their armored shells. But it was too late. The upper starboard engine belched flames, and when the conflagration evaporated, there was nothing left but gnarled pieces of blackened metal where the fairing had once attached to the hull: Rilek had scored a direct hit on one of the
Triton’s
engines.

Dezmara’s hopes dropped like heavy stones in the sea. She didn’t know who was in the
Triton
or what would happen if they destroyed Rilek and Saraunt, but she knew what would happen if the admiral prevailed, and she was pulling for the survival of herself and her only two friends in the universe. Her spirits lifted again as two nautilus doors opened on the tail section of the silver ship, and the cannon barrels that appeared pumped back and forth as they alternated firing salvos in their wake. The shells sped by without leaving so much as a scratch on the rusty hull of the
Lodestar
, but the rounds weren’t meant to cause damage—they were a distraction.

Rilek couldn’t move directly to his left or he would slam into the
Ghost
and risk damaging his own ship, so he took evasive action by swinging to his right in a pendulum motion. And as he made his move, so did his adversary. The
Triton
looped back and rolled on its side, opening fire with all of its portside guns now pointing straight down at the top deck of the
Lodestar
. Dezmara was on an emotional roller coaster and, just as she thought she might live to add this amazing battle to her incredible repertoire of pub stories, she shot into the depths of despair once more. Rilek launched into a vertical dive as the
Triton
attacked, putting the most valuable components—the engines—farthest away from the barrage and saving himself and his crew from what was certain to be a deathblow. She pressed her cheek against the cold viewing pane, her hot breath fogging out in a half circle on the glass, and looked after them until the battling ships passed out of sight beneath her. “Dammit!” Dezmara cursed and then, just as she thought she couldn’t get any lower, something occurred to her. “Where the hell’s the other ship?! Oh, SHIT!”

CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK!

The
Maelstrom
was back, and its big caliber machine guns were finishing what they had started before the
Triton
showed up.
“All it takes is one round,”
she said to herself as the bullets stitched their way along the port side of the ship and up over the top, missing the cockpit by a hair’s breadth. Saraunt rolled his odd-looking craft over and looped downward, pulling out of the acrobatic move directly level with Dezmara’s line of sight and charging straight for her. “This is it,” she said in a disbelieving tone. She had been almost sure they would somehow get out of this one, but she had been pretty lucky since getting up this morning.
“Death always gets its due, even if you’re not ready to pay up,”
she thought. Dezmara put her arm around Diodojo’s neck and felt the warm pulse of animal blood coursing through his veins; she felt his fierce spirit, she felt his life. She put her other hand gently between his ears and stared straight ahead. The
Maelstrom
was so close Dezmara could see the barrels on its forward guns start to spin—a deadly precursor that would last only a fraction of a second before lead flew from the revolving chambers and chopped her to bits.

FLASH!

A blinding explosion of light pierced the viewing panes on the
Ghost
. Dezmara was knocked to the floor by the concussion, and the
Ghost
shook so hard in the aftermath that it felt like it was tearing itself apart. The trembling stopped and as she lay there on the floor, an image was scorched into the backs of her eyelids. It was the
Triton
, and it had appeared off the starboard side of the ship and annihilated the
Maelstrom
with a perfect cannon shot before it could open fire on her. Dezmara couldn’t believe it at first, but then the com crackled and she knew that what she’d seen just before hitting the deck was real.

“Woohoo—looks like our friend there’s gonna save our bloody skins!” Simon bellowed triumphantly. But Dezmara wasn’t so sure. Her only friends were aboard the
Ghost
, and she didn’t trust anyone else; and besides, Rilek was still out there and he wasn’t going to take the demise of the
Maelstrom
and its crew lightly.

“Get that engine up, Sy—now.”

“Err…yes, ma’rm,” Simon said awkwardly, “I’m on it, luv!”

They drifted onward. They passed far enough from Clara’s moon to be unaffected by its gravitational forces, and with nothing else to divert them from their original course, Clara 591 grew bigger and bigger through the viewing panes with each passing moment. But Dezmara was worried. Rilek was smart, and although she had no idea who the captain of the
Triton
was or where the ship came from, she knew what she would think if she were in Rilek’s position. She would think that the
Triton
and the
Ghost
were in league together, and she wouldn’t let either one of them escape. Unfortunately, the
Ghost
was the easier target, and Rilek meant to finish what he had started.

Dezmara shook her head as she watched the
Lodestar
pull to the port side, its guns tracking the most likely fuel tank location in a maneuver that was hauntingly similar to the first time Rilek moved in for the kill—right before the
Triton
showed up. It was obvious the strange craft was protecting them, but Saraunt’s attack had caused the
Triton
to break off pursuit of Rilek in order to intercept the
Maelstrom
, and the admiral used the opportunity to its fullest advantage. Rilek was now on the port side of the
Ghost
, poised and ready to strike, and the
Triton
was to starboard, hopelessly out of position to stop him.

The
Triton
maneuvered, banking hard to port in a last ditch effort to get a clear shot at Rilek, as the two big deck guns on the
Lodestar
stopped searching and locked onto to their target. Dezmara had had enough. No more words of farewell, no more gestures, no more tears. If death was here, let it be done. The guns threatened for milliseconds that passed like ages. Dezmara waited. Her legs were weak with exhaustion, but she stood firm and balanced herself on the back of her chair—she wanted to die standing up. She was staring so hard at the dark tubes her eyes burned, imploring her to blink before they shriveled and cracked in their sockets, but she knew the moment she did, Rilek would pull the trigger and she would miss it. And then it happened.

The gun barrels aboard the
Lodestar
pitched upward. Dezmara blinked in confusion, and her eyes, getting the respite they were aching for, stared even harder as her nose pressed against the pane. Rilek wasn’t just withdrawing his guns, they were tilting along with his entire ship—something was wrong. Dezmara continued gaping in utter bewilderment as the
Lodestar
listed to port, its bow drifting slowly downward like a huge fish dazed from the exertion of battling for its life. Dezmara lurched back from her viewing panes as four large explosions flared from Rilek’s ship. The
Triton
had found a clear line of fire and, despite the
Lodestar’s
disengagement from the battle, pounded its enemy without mercy.

“And here ends the legend of Rilek and the
Lodestar…
” Dezmara said softly. Even though he had tried his best to kill her, it was an amazing battle and a story worthy of the final moments of the greatest sailor ever to sail sea, sky, or stars.
“I just hope we live to tell the tale,”
she thought as the
Triton
crossed her bow and slowed to pull even on the portside. “Ah, hell…”

Dezmara glanced down and her eyes followed the decimated
Lodestar
as it entered Clara 591’s atmosphere and began its meteoric fall to doom. At that moment, something inside her longed for Rilek to recover—another ingenious gambit executed to perfection—and pull up with guns blazing again, but she didn’t know why, and then, all of a sudden, she understood.

The nautilus doors flanking the
Triton
opened and three rows of gleaming cannon barrels protruded from their centers and opened fire.

Chapter 36:
Eyes of the Betrayer

“B
attle stations!” Rilek bellowed over the pulsing aahoouga of the alarm before turning back to the wheel and gripping the com in his feathery hand. The Ghost had broken course and the time for shadowing a suspect had come to an end: it was now time to kill a murderer.

“Captain Saraunt, engage!”

“Aye, aye, Admiral!”

The emerald green flames of the engines glowed brighter as Saraunt maneuvered his
ship higher. He had been an ace fighter pilot in the Brigadier Wars that had wracked his planet for eight years when he was a young lieutenant in the Kandish Royal Flight Force. The war took his wife, a daughter and two sons—casualties of heavy bombing—and the loss of his family drove him mad. From that moment on, Saraunt only lived to fly his death machine on any mission—the more dangerous, the better—and to kill as many of the enemy as he could before being blasted from the sky. Ironically, it was his death wish that kept him alive: truly flying without fear of the grave or hesitation was an advantage very few pilots could claim.

When the war finally ended, Saraunt had shot down two hundred and five enemy aircraft. He was hailed as a hero, but the killing didn’t heal his broken mind; it made it worse, and he returned a shamble of a man to an empty home. For years, he simply existed—not wanting to live but unable to face the dishonor of taking his own life—and found solace, like so many of his countrymen and enemies alike, at the bottom of a bottle.

In another revelation of fate’s cruel and ironic sense, it was the invasion of the Durax that brought him back from the darkest fringes of his mind and made him whole again. Like the rest of his people, down to the last child, in one swift and terrible instant, he had forgotten whatever it was that justified the hatred and destruction of his fellow Welku and the immediate pain of his loss. All differences, including race, land, resources, riches, belief, and power, dissolved into absolute oneness when faced with annihilation. Saraunt took to the air once again—not for his countrymen or even his people, but this time, for his entire world and every last thing on it. Now, the
Maelstrom
, Saraunt, and his five crew members were all that was left of the Welku.

Of course, fighting on-world was in his blood and the tactic of dropping down on unsuspecting enemy craft had not only served him well in the wars long ago, but it was almost instinctual. He liked the angles the maneuver opened up for the battle to come, and as the ship reached the height he wanted, Saraunt’s big voice barked an order. “FIRE!”