Page 239

Hot damn, he can fly.

Our railguns pour a quarter of their magazines into the starboard fuselage of the torchShip, taking out three rail batteries. Two mysterious black gunboats from Nike with twice our firepower unload their main particle cannons. Fissures of white light divide the world. When they fade, ten banks of the torchShip’s turrets have been replaced by a gash of molten metal.

Using the opening, a flight of three rickety ripWings with Gamma militia sigils swoop into the gap and drop their payloads before nose-diving between the ship and the sea. The bombs rupture gaping holes ten levels deep in the decks. Seawater presses downward from the shockwaves. Men on fire jump to tumble like embers into the sea.

The Snowball jolts. Our shields collapse as the torchShip’s particle beam lashes into our port side and overloads the secondary reactor. Warning lights throb.

“Please silence that,” Pax murmurs. Sweat drips down his brow. I silence the alarms. I was hesitant to let him fly, but truth be told he’s better than I ever was or could be. I don’t have the reflexes his DNA gives him on the stick, and I can’t even consider syncing. Electra waits behind us, a compact rifle across her lap and Braga’s stolen razor wrapped around her waist.

“Fat bitch is rolling,” she says.

“Yes, but slowly,” Pax drones. “Told you they’re understaffed.”

Out the viewport, the torchShip begins a slow rotation so that its flaming starboard side will face the sea, minimizing its exposed profile as it shreds us with the unharmed topside. The com fills with mayday calls as the fresh guns of the torchShip open up. Fireballs bloom. The air shudders. “Clever bastards,” I mutter. They lower their elevation as they turn, leaving no more than ten meters’ room between their burning hull and the waves. “That’s a narrow slip.”

Pax tries a run, but is headed off by cannon fire. He banks around. “Gunboat One, Gunboat Two, I need a path.”

“Is that a child?” one of the captains asks.

Pax gestures to me impatiently. I clear my throat. “Gunboat One, Gunboat Two, are you going to give me a slagging path or am I going to have to carve it my damn self?”

“They’re too low to the deck.”

“Not for my pilot.” I set a hand on Pax’s shoulder. Electra swats it away.

“Register. Form in our shadow.”

“Ephraim, get a sick bag ready,” Pax says.

“I can handle a few G’s.”

“Not these.” Pax banks the Snowball at a sickening angle to take it low and behind the two gunboats as they sweep in a parabolic arc back toward the torchShip. Blood thunders in my head. My stomach reels at the aerial acrobatics.

Our ragtag fleet is being slowly swatted from the sky. The Snowball rumbles as we fall into a dive with the black gunboats and level out to skim the water, driving for the torchShip. Water is caught in our gravity cushion. Spheres of it float around us as we rocket toward the torchShip.

I hold on to the crash padding of my seat. The chop kicks our belly, heaving us upward. The gunboats unload the last of their hi-tech javelin and open up with their particle cannons. Fire laces the torchShip. Something punches a hole in the fuselage of the left gunboat, sending it skipping into the water. Its particle beam continues firing as it tumbles, superheating strips of water. Sheets of vapor erupt upward. The second gunboat is hit and peels off.

The torchShip looms before us. The gap between water and hull barely thicker than a razor. Acceleration pins me to my seat. The sea is less than two meters below. If we so much as nick it, it’ll ricochet us up into the hull of the torchShip at just under the speed of sound.

The cannon on the lateral-facing topside pours fire at us. Water vaporizes all around. The gap grows, still so terribly small. We slide between the cannon’s firing solutions, and I close my eyes. When I open them, we’re into the gap. Something breaks off the top of the Snowball. The sun disappears, replaced by the smoldering underside of the torchShip. Pax shunts our gravity field, forcing us into a gut-wrenching spin and my organs to thump into my ribs. He unloads the last of our railgun magazine into the exposed underbelly. Debris rains down on us. I cover my head, waiting for the whole ship to fall as the world blurs past.

Then sunlight.

We spin out the other side and, with a burst of acceleration, flip upside down and shoot landward. “You forgot the missiles!” I shout.

Pax smiles.

Thunder claps behind us. I watch through the rear display as the torchShip heaves upward along her midline, like a bucking horse, and then succumbs to gravity, breaking in two down the center. As if a spell’s been broken, her gravity engines fail and she plummets into the sea.

I grab the sick bag just in time to hurl up my breakfast into it.

Electra cackles and pets my head like I’m a puppy.

* * *

—

The unarmed civilian ships landed ahead of us on the outskirts of the mine to unload their cargo. Thousands of armed miners, fishermen, old soldiers, men, women, and teenagers roll through the Red Hand, disarming them and taking prisoners by the hundreds in the camp around the mine entrace. Since they all saw my green ship delivering the killing blow to the torchShip, they raise their fists as we pass over them to land.