Death Drop (56 page)

CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK! Eight columns down, four to go.

CLINK! CLINK! CLINK!

The impact warning screamed bloody murder and images of six bogeys launched from the nautilus doors of the
Triton
spun frantically in the kranos. Not surprisingly, they were shaped like chambered shells and, like their progenitor, each of the six shined like liquid silver in the hot sun and trailed red exhaust blasts from a single, large opening in the last section of their bodies. Gun barrels jutted from the center of the spiral on either side of each craft, extending beyond the foremost curvature and giving the shell-pods, as Dezmara aptly named them, their own creature-like appearance.

“These guys get an ‘A’ for accessorizing,” she said as she banked over the top of the
Ghost
and continued her turn so she could come around for another pass between the ships.

“Come in, Sy.”

“Copy, luv. When may I take my leave from this ‘orrible party?”

“I’m hopin’ in the next ten seconds—get ready!”

“Roger that, luv. Simon out.”

Dezmara approached from altitude again. Three shell-pods followed her and moved onto her tail as she lined up for another attack. Orange streaks cut the pale blue around her as tracer rounds hissed their threats and sailed passed
The
Firebug
from behind. She turned two quick barrel rolls to the right followed immediately by another to the left as the enemy bullets whirred by, curving and dancing around Dezmara’s spinning jet with inches to spare, like a well-rehearsed circus performance for some unseen alien audience far below. But this was no act and Dezmara intended to free the
Ghost
and kill every last pirate that got in her way.

She reached up with her left hand and adjusted the top cannon in the turret so it pointed straight up, swooped
The Firebug
into a left-hand roll, and killed the throttle. The engines flamed out with a small pop-pop, closely followed by three deafening blasts. As each of the shell-pods passing below eclipsed the edge of Dezmara’s gunsight, the cannon hovering above them exhaled its deadly breath of fire and metal and sent them plummeting through the clouds in quick succession. She finished her roll and leveled out in time to see the last of the three enemy fighters fall away like a flaming beast incinerated by the sun for trespassing in the heavens.

She toggled the ignition for both engines and they sputtered twice before roaring to life again. The remaining three shell-pods appeared from beyond their mother ship and raced at her head-on. They opened fire as Dezmara drew within range of the last four columns tethering the
Ghost
to the pirate ship, but she easily dodged the bullets with a few flicks of her wrist.

“You might be good sailors, but you’re shitty pilots,” Dezmara said and then pulled her trigger. The center cannon pounded away and the rapid fire had the effect she had hoped for as her attackers flitted left and right, scattering away from the sooty black puffs of her exploded shells and clearing her line of fire to the target.

CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK! CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!

“NOW, SIMON!” she shouted into the kranos.

The columns sprayed and rattled as fluid and chain links flew through the air and painted the sky with purple and metallic silver. The remnants of the ruptured sleeves swung down and rapped against the hull of the
Triton
with loud clacks before jostling back out into the air and then bouncing toward the ship once more. The tow chains finally stopped their awkward dance and lapped gently against the flank of the pirate vessel like lifeless, broken limbs swaying helplessly at its side in the high wind.

As soon as the last column collapsed, the
Ghost
dropped and Dezmara let out a panicked gasp. She watched in terror—one hand pushed hard against the pod bubble, the eyeports of the kranos boring into the clear protective barrier—as it fell with its tail pointed slightly downward. But the portside engine sputtered and then glowed a familiar blue that instantly melted her horror and replaced it with a smile. Her heart filled with something she didn’t feel very often as Simon peeled away and rumbled east to freedom: she was happy.

“We did it,” she sighed.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The
Triton
turned to chase down its prize and sent a barrage of cannon shells in her direction as she stared trancelike out of the bubble at Simon’s escape.
The
Firebug
shook and bounced as clusters of black smoke exploded and marred the sky around her. The big ship had completed its turn before she came around, and now it rocketed toward the
Ghost
. Dezmara hoped the single engine that Simon had repaired would be enough to outrun the three trails of red exhaust that streamed from the
Triton’s
swirling fairings as she punched her throttles to full.

The three remaining shell-pods had circled around in attack formation, and now they charged straight at her. Dezmara could see the muzzle-flash lick through the perforations on the lead fighter’s guns like the red-hot tongues of a thousand bloodthirsty demons raging inside. She yanked back on the stick and climbed. The soft blue gave way to the bright white of sun-filled clouds that crowded against her pod like countless spirits hoping to glimpse the rare, helmeted creature inside. The last of the cloud cover flitted by and was gone, but
The
Firebug
continued to gain altitude, speeding into the rays of Clara’s sun. Dezmara knew that flying into the light would make it hard for the shell-pods to get a bead on her in the blinding glare.

She reached the pinnacle of her ascent and made her move. Dezmara raised the front of her jet higher and throttled down as she kicked the rudder. Suddenly, the frenetic sounds of the battle disappeared, all but the soft whistle of air slipping around the body of
The
Firebug
as it glided sideways and then turned completely around, falling silently back toward the clouds. Dezmara engaged the engines and gripped the trigger—ready to sling hot lead into the attackers close on her tail now blinded by the sun—but there was nothing there.

“Where the hell’d they go?” she said, frantically looking left and right for the unmistakable shape of the enemy fighters, but they weren’t to be seen.

BRRR-BRRR-BRRR! Tracers streaked by her from somewhere below.

“Firing blind from the clouds?” she thought. “That’s a little amateur, even for these guys.”

BRRR-BRRR-BRRR! CLACK! CLACK! CLACK! Another burst of rounds zipped from beneath her position and slammed into the left fuselage.
The
Firebug
shuddered from the impact and Dezmara rolled quickly to the right. “Where the hell’d that come from—wait a damn minute,” she said as she tapped the kranos and engaged the thermal vision. “You little sonsofbitches!”

The shell-pods, stopped in a line just before the top of the cloud bank, not only had the capability to hover, but also came equipped with the same strange camouflage the
Triton
had used to ambush Rilek and Saraunt and hijack the
Ghost.

She locked onto the bogey on her left and let loose with a single shot from her horizontal cannon.
The Firebug
jerked back from the powerful recoil and surged forward again. Dezmara flared over the decimated shell-pod, fanning the flames with her powerful jet engines as she swept left and took aim at her next victim. She gripped the trigger and squeezed.

“Come in, luv!” Simon said frantically, and his timing, along with the distress in his voice, shook Dezmara’s concentration. The cannon barked again but the shot missed, and as she leveled out, the last two shell-pods gave chase.

“Copy, Sy!” Dezmara said.

“That bloody pirate ship’s almost got us, luv!”

“Open fire an’ keep ‘em off ‘til I get there!”

“Used up all the bangers already, luv! I’m in the blue spikes an’ dodgin’ the best I can, but looks like they’re gonna try more snatchers first chance they get. I could do with that promise you made to show up an’ save my furry arse!”

“I’m comin’, Sy, just hold on!”

The two remaining shell-pods pulled behind her, and their powerful engines chewed up the distance to
The Firebug’s
tail end at an alarming rate. The lead fighter let loose with several bursts of well-aimed machine gun fire, and Dezmara found herself struggling to avoid being hit for the first time since launching
The Firebug
. “Looks like there’s a pilot in the crew after all,” she said nervously. She swept her mount left and then right in a pendulum motion, interspersed with a barrel roll here and there, to avoid being shot down and to keep her pursuers guessing as to her next move. Dezmara spun to her right over the next salvo and then banked into a hard left turn. She could feel her sight dim as she pushed the throttles for more power and the G-forces pulled the oxygen-rich blood away from her brain. Her head lolled forward, bobbing on her neck as she started to pass out, and then snapped up as she leveled out again. The shell-pods had a speed advantage, but
The
Firebug
had a tighter turning radius. And Dezmara leveraged it perfectly.

The three craft looped around an invisible track that expanded and collapsed as every pilot jockeyed for the brass ring—a clear shot at the backside of their opponent. As she pulled out of her second turn, Dezmara had already come three-quarters of the way around on their tails—one and a half more turns and she would be chasing them. And then it happened. After coming out of its turn, one of the shell-pods cut hard across her nose from left to right with both guns ablaze. She banked left and the two odd craft raced toward each other in arcs of havoc: mirror images of death.

The attacking shell-pod passed so close she saw the liquid glimmer of its skin fail and glimpsed, for the briefest moment, its pilot, standing beneath a cockpit bubble, guarding his face with his arms and twisting in pain as her bullets passed through the ship and his body like they were paper targets floating in the wind.

The tail of
The Firebug
swept over the clouds and the red jet of fire from the last shell-pod glowed dead ahead and perfectly centered in her gunsight. The maneuver worked better than planned, and Dezmara was grateful: every second brought the
Triton
closer to the
Ghost
and the pirates closer to killing her friends. It was a perfect move—almost. But before she could understand what was happening, she had become the target.

The shell-pod spun around its spiral center, and with its engine now pointed in the opposite direction, the craft hovered in mid-air in front of her. The long guns at the machine’s sides rotated down and then swooped up, coming to bear on
The
Firebug
and sending a barrage of projectiles screaming at her head-on.

“HOLY SHIT!” she yelled, slamming the stick forward to avoid the surprise attack. A tremor in the left fuselage shook
The Firebug
and an alarm rang in the kranos as it flashed,
Left Engine Failure—Left Engine Failure—Left Engine Failure.
She was hit.

Dezmara rolled left and right, barely escaping the relentless fire from the shell-pod on her tail as she dove for the clouds. A storm of lights and sirens swirled in the cockpit, and her body ached from the constant jostling and G-forces. Dezmara sat at the center of a maddening riot, a chorus of sickly voices conducted by bloody death itself, and the cacophony dulled her senses.

The clouds drifted apart and long wisps of white tendrils caressed the clear bubble as she passed into pockets of open air between them. She rolled over again to avoid more gunfire and something flashed into her vision from below. It blinked so fast—there and then gone—that it couldn’t have been real. The image had to be a cruel trick of the mind playing on her want, her desire to save Simon and Diodojo, but the picture of her ship—the
Ghost
—moving at speed with both engines alight just below her was burned into her synapses.
“Did that crafty sonofabitch get the other engine up? I told him to break east! Did he come back to help?”
she thought as she turned the fighter right side up and pulled out of her dive. She tapped the kranos to kill the alarms and then hit it again to engage the com.

“Come in, Sy. Sy, are you there?”

“Barely, luv! Still in the rocks—can’t hold out much longer!”

That settled it—she was seeing things. Simon was still headed east with the
Triton
in pursuit. She shook her head to fight back the fatigue and tried to focus on how to down the last fighter on her tail and get to Simon.

She couldn’t out maneuver the shell-pod in the open on one engine. She needed to find some obstacles to fly through; fortunately, that’s exactly where she was headed.

Chapter 38:
Revenant

“G
oddamit,” she said, flipping and dodging gunfire through the clouds. “Why is the last guy always the best?!” Her engine churned as fast as it could, but the shell-pod was gaining. The only thing keeping her from being shot down was the patchwork of clouds that sporadically hid
The Firebug
, appearing and then vanishing again like puffs of gray-white smoke as she sped eastward.

CLINK! CLINK! CLINK! CLINK! Bullets peppered her tail but didn’t hit anything important. They pierced the right fuselage and were stopped cold by the already dead engine. Dezmara craned her neck around to both sides as she swayed her fighter left and right, trying desperately to counter her attacker’s moves and swing wide of his gunsights, but her luck was about to run out. The clouds were failing, and in the widening patches of open air, Dezmara’s hobbled craft had become an easy target. Her pilot-bubble drifted dead center into the shell-pod’s targeting arc, and it opened fire.