Death Drop (57 page)

The
Firebug
broke free of the clouds as slugs leapt from the shell-pod’s guns. Dezmara yanked the stick right, skimming a thick column of smooth, blue rock with the belly of her fighter and sending a small avalanche of loose debris tumbling to the ground in her wake. She whipped her head around and hoped to see the shell-pod slam into the rocks, but the pilot swerved out of the way and bolted after her.

“This one’s good!” she said with a hint of apprehension; but before she could start doubting her chances, Clara 591 gave her a gift. As she leveled out, she could see the terrain more closely, and the devilish grin appeared on her face again—her luck was still holding.

The landscape had been swept clean of vegetation and polished smooth by erosion. Dezmara had thought the columns that towered on both sides of her were pure blue, but they had bands of gray in varying shades—lighter at the top and darker toward the bottom—that sparkled in the light. A river, deep green with stretches of frothing white, glistened far below the two seemingly endless lines of totem-esque hoodoos that were to be her saving grace.

She banked left and angled toward one of many stone arches spanning the huge gap between the closest columns. They curved up and down, in and out in one of the grandest and most strangely beautiful displays of nature Dezmara had ever seen. Some sections of stone spiraled around each other; others were flat on top with holes of different shapes and sizes bored through their thick, crack-lined sides; still others were perfectly shaped vaults, as if they were crafted by a master architect and placed with a calculated precision that Simon would have been proud of.

Dezmara shot through the crisscrossing network of bridges as bullets from the shell-pod chased her, pounding the stones and sending clouds of blue and gray dust glittering through the air after her. The enemy pilot was undaunted by the tight quarters and charged on. He was navigating the labyrinth of rock as easily as Dezmara and, worse, he was gaining. She hoped there weren’t any indigenous creatures living in or around the columns, as bolts from the shell-pod continued to assault the landscape around her at every turn. She couldn’t see any openings or caverns where anything might live, but then again, she was weaving in and out of the columns at dangerous speeds, and she wasn’t exactly on a sightseeing tour of the flora and fauna.

Dezmara swept right to pass the next column, and as she flew out into the open air of the canyon, she spotted the
Ghost.
Simon was a few clicks ahead of her with the
Triton
off of his right quarter. She watched for an agonizing moment as the pirates drew even, but before they could fire their snatchers, Simon banked left between two spires of rock and disappeared out of sight. Dezmara let out a sigh of relief and then refocused. She had to waste the guy on her tail and catch up or she’d never forgive herself.

She curled around the next column, passing so close she could have counted the number of sparkling granules in the gray band of rock if she had looked up. Then she dove to her right, ducking beneath a thick arch stretching out to the next pillar. Dezmara kept the nose pointed down as she weaved around arch after arch in dizzying succession. So many horizontal byways packed the chasm of rock that she imagined the two flanking columns could be the torso of a giant blue monster that was ripped apart and the myriad of archways were the sinewy fibers of connective tissue and muscle still clinging to each ravaged half. She was falling downward, twisting the controls with every ounce of concentration and piloting prowess she had to keep from being blown to bits or smashed against the rock face, when something flitted past her vision. Her green eyes flashed and she tapped the kranos and waited—then she pulled up and charged for open air. This time she didn’t head down the line of columns. She was gaining altitude for another pass through the harrowing gauntlet she had just barely escaped.

CLINK! CLINK! CLINK! CHUNK!

Bullets hit
The
Firebug
again, and the left engine chugged for a horrifying moment before catching. She eased back the throttle to lure the attacker closer as she looked out over the twin nose cones at the clear blue of forever. “It’s been fun, but it’s time for you to die,” she said as
The
Firebug
tipped over backwards and she pegged the throttle. The engine forgot its little hiccup from just moments ago and growled ferociously in response to Dezmara’s demand for maximum speed. Now girl and machine were barreling straight down and ripping past solid stone with no room to spare. Dezmara didn’t need to look behind her—the audible chug of machine gun fire told her that the shell-pod was exactly where she wanted him—right on her ass.

The topmost span was broad, and it blocked the view of the deadly maze of stone lurking beneath like a protective barrier or a warning that Dezmara ignored without a second thought. She was repeating the run exactly as she had the first time, only faster. Archways passed in front and behind by the dozen, like the blurred arms of giant blue-gray monsters unfurling to swat her from the air as she barrel-rolled left and right, back and forth between them. The gunfire from behind droned out in one long cadence of frustration as the enemy pilot tried to put an end to Dezmara’s running so he could head back to his ship to share in the spoils of their prize. He would have been surprised to know that at that very moment, Dezmara thought the very same thing: it
was
time for her to stop running…but she planned on becoming the pursuer.

The arch she needed was five more down and slightly off of her course. She crested the first arch so the belly of
The Firebug
slid past and then she rolled over again, passing the next in the same fashion. Dezmara kept on spinning and passing in a corkscrewing death spiral that inched closer and closer to each archway until she felt the underside of her fighter scrape across the edge of the fourth.

The shell-pod pilot had followed suit and wasn’t impressed by Dezmara’s acrobatics in the least. He followed her through every dip, dive, turn, and spin and she couldn’t shake him. He was so close, he didn’t need to line Dezmara up in his gun sight:
The
Firebug
filled his entire view.

The edge of the fifth arch raced up at her, and as the shell-pod turned its guns loose, Dezmara eased the stick up and
The Firebug
nudged over the center of the stone bridge at the last possible second so that the salvo sailed wide. The enemy pilot was so close and so focused on Dezmara’s tail, he didn’t see it—a long slash eroded in the center of the archway, most likely from the pooling of water over tens of thousands of years.

The thought of creatures living around the columns had sparked Dezmara’s subconscious, and it had started looking for openings in the rocks. When she spotted a dark shape out of the corner of her eye on her first pass, she checked the kranos to make sure
The
Firebug
would fit through the opening and her uninvited guest would not. It was close, but she could manage it. Perhaps the most fiendish part of her plan was that the shell-pod would fit through the opening on top but couldn’t pass all the way through. The hole became narrower at the bottom.

All at once everything was dark, all but a slit of light in the distance that grew bigger and bigger, brighter and brighter, until suddenly it exploded around Dezmara as
The
Firebug
scraped through the other side of the chasm in a shower of sparks. She turned her head in time to see the lower half of the shell-pod spill from the cavern and fall, ricocheting from one vault to the next in sprays of shattered pieces as it smashed its way to the ground. The top half of the enemy fighter was smeared against the inside edge of the hole in a gooey paste of metal and gore.

She looped back and swept into the canyon at full throttle. The two ships in the distance were swerving in and out of sight as Simon used the columns to block a clear line of fire and the
Triton
tried to counter.

“Simon, I’m almost there—loop around the next column and head back to the west!” There was no reply, but Simon must have copied because the
Ghost
banked around and was now heading straight for her. She was counting in her head as all three ships rocketed toward each other on a collision course. “Now turn back around and keep over the canyon!” she said as she jetted inland, slipping between a tight cluster of hoodoos. She flicked the fingers of her trigger hand out one by one, hoping the inside of her glove would absorb some of the sweat, and then firmly placed her first digit over the half-moon shaped sliver extending from beneath the top of the grip.

The blue burn of the
Ghost’s
only engine winked in front of her and curved back toward the canyon before it disappeared behind the hulking shape of the
Triton.
The pirate ship had flashed out from behind the rocks and right into Dezmara’s sights.

“BASTARDS!” she bellowed as the center cannon punctuated her hatred with several sky-rattling blasts. The back end of the
Triton
sagged and fish-tailed as flames roared from its hull, and billows of black smoke rolled and swirled upward like dark wraiths dancing in celebration of the carnage. For the second time since springing its trap on the
Ghost
,
the
Triton
had an engine shot to pieces: now only two remained.

Dezmara raced ahead as smoke trailed out over the canyon. She pulled parallel with the pirate ship and smiled as the flames—fed by the unlimited oxygen of Clara’s atmosphere—continued to leap from the back side of the vessel, flashing through the columns that passed between them like desperate signals for help. But there were no saviors here—only killers. She dove until she reached the myriad passages between the columns and then cut hard toward the canyon. The
Triton
rolled on its side and its cannons sent a volley of missiles crashing into the arches. The rock crumbled into huge chunks and boulders that cascaded down to crush her, but
The
Firebug
zipped through the blue dust, slowing its advance as it slipped sideways and up. Dezmara was behind them again and she wasted no time. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Another spiraled fairing lay twisted, burnt and smoldering on the once immaculate hull of the
Triton
as Dezmara flicked back between the columns and dove for the archways again. It was almost too easy.
The
Firebug
was smaller and more agile, and the pirate ship was no match for Dezmara’s hit and run tactics under cover of the rock formations. But the
Triton
had one advantage left, and its captain intended to use it.

As she darted into the next passage, the marauding ship skidded south over the canyon. The jet of flame from its engine pounded the air with a furious roar that battered
The
Firebug.
Dezmara pulled up quickly to rise above the blast before banking onto the
Triton’s
tail and dogging its escape.

“Come in, Sy!” she said over the howl of the wind and the rumble of her motor.

“You did it, luv!” Simon said. “Now let’s find a place to land, fix the ol’ girl here, an’ get the hell out of Dodge, eh?”

“I’m with you, Sy, but we have to stick to the plan. Gotta make sure these bastards can’t track us down while we make repairs. Keep headin’ east and set your beacon when you land. I’ll be there!”

“Right, luv,” Simon said with some hesitation. “Track down those cheeky thievers an’ retire ‘em an’… I’ll be seein’ ya…”

The com fuzzed and crackled and then went dead. “Sy?! Come in! Dammit!” she shouted.
“I’ll be seein’ ya? That’s kind of a strange thing to say, don’t you think?”
Dezmara often thought about Simon’s odd behavior, and although she’d been quite preoccupied with the events of the last twenty-four hours, she hadn’t forgotten about their agreement for full disclosure in the armory before arriving in Luxon. She spilled her story about being Human, but Simon managed to get off without revealing a single thing about his past.
“I’ll press him when I get back to the Ghost—use the ‘I just saved your life’ angle if I have to.”
She switched off her inner monologue and focused her eyes ahead.

The
Triton
was still faster than she was—even with one engine—and it was barreling south, with
The
Firebug
struggling to keep up. The arid badlands of the canyon quickly retreated and were replaced by an immense field of green. The landscape seemed to writhe as the wind scoured its surface, crumbling the fragile ridges of dunes and melting the small shadows that cowered beneath them from the scorching sun. There was no vegetation or wildlife that Dezmara could see. It was a green desert that stretched for miles below them as they sped on and on.

She fired her horizontal cannon a few times to range the target and immediately wished she hadn’t, as stars of smoke exploded around her in response. The
Triton
was out of her reach, but she was easily within range of its rear guns. Dezmara swung her ship from side to side. Avoiding the attacks wasn’t difficult, but the entire situation was starting to piss her off. She couldn’t do any damage at this range, but
The Firebug
just didn’t have anything left to give. At this rate, she would most likely run out of fuel before the bigger ship, and they would just head back to the canyon and track Simon down from there. The situation frustrated her and on top of it all, swaying from side to side was beginning to make her nauseous.