“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.”
“The pilots we rescued are getting in their ships now,” I said, “so we’ll have backup.”
The remaining Unity soldiers seemed unwilling to step into the hangar to be shot by our destructors, which had given the Independence pilots plenty of time to get in their ships. Arturo and I could now go back and help the flight without risking that my people would be overrun.
“We’re on our way back to you,” I said to Jorgen. “Maybe we can make a stand inside the tree and keep the enemy ships occupied.”
“Affirmative,” Jorgen said. “But if things get too hot or they try to skirt us, we’ll implement bounce protocol.”
I didn’t know what that was, but I had to trust they would handle themselves. I found the Independence radio channel and broadcast to the ships. “Independence pilots. Allies are fighting Unity forces near the lumber mine operations. Hold the base, and we’ll be back to support you as soon as we can.”
“Alanik,” my brother said over the radio. “Who are your allies?”
I wasn’t going to announce that over the radio. “I’ll explain later.” I flipped to Skyward Flight’s channel and followed Arturo as he turned his ship toward the entrance at the base of the branches.
Quilan’s reinforcements beat us there. I could see half their flight entering the shaft that led to the lumber mine, while the others flew into the larger upper opening ahead of us. They’d split up to come at Jorgen and the others from both sides. Arturo opened fire as we chased them in, and some of the ships flipped around, returning fire.
“You’ve got company down below,” Arturo said over the radio. “We’re keeping them busy up top.”
“Copy, Amphi,” Jorgen said. “Flight, star formation. Crossfire positions. FM, Sentry, cover our six.”
Jorgen had said six was behind him, hadn’t he? I was glad that if he was using that terminology, it wasn’t addressed to me. I dodged fire from an incoming ship as Arturo and I sped past, leaving them to follow us down into the depths of the tree.
We approached Skyward’s formation from above, firing at the ships that had them pinned down near the bottom of the tree. The ship I targeted lost its shield, and I pegged it with a destructor blast right in its boosters. The pilot ejected, joining several other pilots drifting down into the mining facilities while their ships crashed into the wooden wall on the dawnward side.
Skyward Flight flew in a loose sphere with Jorgen and Kimmalyn at the center, all with their acclivity rings rotated to point their noses upward at different angles. They filled the air with destructor blasts, each line of fire crossing over another. This formation was similar to one I’d learned in training, though we used laser guns. If you had an obstacle at your back and enough ships clustered together, any enemy that tried to get through to you risked getting tagged in your crossing lines of fire.
Arturo took up position next to Nedder, and I dodged past the ships between us, flying through to join Kimmalyn and Jorgen at the center.
“What are you doing?” I asked Jorgen over the radio. “You’re the leader. Shouldn’t you be out front?”
“What?” Jorgen said. “No. If I’m out front I can’t watch and give orders. And if I’m in trouble, who’s going to make sure the rest of the flight is safe?”
Safe? “But you’re not getting any of the action,” I said. “How are you going to prove yourself?”
“Prove myself?” Jorgen said.
“Quirk, incoming!” FM said. Kimmalyn pivoted her ship to point down, opening fire. It took me a second longer to get my ship turned the right way, and then I joined them.
Kimmalyn especially was a good shot—she got several blows to the enemy shields before they peeled off to the sides and swung around again.
Two more ships broke past FM and Sentry below us. These got close enough that they deployed their light hooks—two from each ship, the streams crossing each other to form a kind of net. They pulled apart, trying to fly alongside Kimmalyn to capture her ship, but she rolled to the side, avoiding the trap. “Scud! What is that?”
“Light nets,” I said. “It’s a capture tactic. Their orders are to bring us in alive.” Or me anyway, now that Quilan knew I was here. Though if these pilots got close enough to recognize the humans under their flight helmets, their commander would quickly realize having humans to turn over to the Superiority could only work in Unity’s favor.
Not that I was going to let that happen.
The ships turned their nets toward Jorgen, and I fired at one with my destructors. The pilot tried to maintain the net a moment too long, and I landed enough hits to take down the shield. The ship turned, breaking the net, but Kimmalyn got the final shot and the ship went into an uncontrolled spin. The pilot ejected, and instead of flying off to the side like the others, the ship spiraled into one of the mining buildings below.
At least there wouldn’t be many people living in here, though there would be some civilians present. I hoped they’d taken cover when the fighting began.
“Jerkface,” FM said, “we have incoming.”
She was right. My sensors identified a whole fleet of air force ships, many more than we’d been chasing around this tree, and all of them would be equipped with light nets. They were still a few minutes out, but they were coming for us.
“We can’t fight all those,” Jorgen said. “How defensible is the base? Does it have ground support?”
“Like guns?” I asked. “No. It’s never been attacked, not in almost a century. Maybe not even then.”
“Scud,” Jorgen said. “We need to get out of here. Skyward Flight, bounce protocol. Fall back to the base. We’re not leaving without Alanik’s people.”
Leaving? We were supposed to take and hold the base. If we left now, how would we inspire the rest of the Independence air force to fight?
I could see the incoming ships on my sensor screen though. There were too many of them. We wouldn’t be able to hold the base against so many, even if they didn’t have a cytonic with them.
FM and Sentry immediately disappeared, though I saw them reappear outside the tree through one of the knot holes. They’d used their hyperdrives to escape. The Unity pilots clearly weren’t expecting this, and I could hear snatches of confused exclamations over the radio through the negative realm.
“Alanik,” Jorgen said. “We don’t want to leave you behind.”
As if they could. “I’ve got it,” I said.
“Right. Quirk. Ten o’clock. Here we go.”
“Copy, Jerkface,” Kimmalyn said, and then both their ships disappeared.
