“Two seconds!” Kelta reaches down, pulls out a leaver, and shoves it into the floor, then taps a backup battery symbol on her dash. Something whirs and cracks. Engines come back online, and power returns to the ship. “Shielded hypercapacitors, you fucks! Solcrue can eat a dick!”
She turns to me and holds up a fist. “‘Sup? Heard you’re a cybertech.”
I hesitantly bump her fist. “Yeah.”
“Good. So all I have to do is keep you alive until after the end.” She gives me a worried glance, then tracks her mate as he burns across the sky. “Distraction maneuvers haven’t been going well. But the hydramidium shield should help.”
Purple smoke billows out of the back of the CSP transport.
“Iridithatium. Smart,” she remarks.
“I think CSP already had it installed.”
“Which means they were in on the Venom Squadron but didn’t trust them.” Kelta is quick-witted. “Esthi, I heard you were in isolation for a long time. I was, too. Out here, you have to trust your equipment and your knowledge and always have a backup escape plan ready. Be willing to do the impossible, and we’ll get through this. Copy?”
“Copy.” I think.
“Great. I need you on guns. Flip the red lever, spread your feet, and in this heat, aim a little further ahead of the shot.”
“Where are we headed?”
“Clearing the skies, then following the BlazeStar as protection.”
The com feed crackles. “This is Commander Savage. Scant is down. Poison Arrow in pursuit. Venom ships causing severe damage! Our engines are down. SunFlux pending DOI. Switch to Honeybadger Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.”
“Boltburner on approach. Tap out in ten!” a voice growls.
“Menace, drop some of your pack on these snakes, will you?” Savage’s voice adds. “Let’s see how they do against their own creations.”
“Pleasure, sir.” A dark vessel arcs through the battlefield, banking left and right, dropping mutant wolves out the back onto Skysprinters and other Solcruean fighters.
Kelta leans forward in her seat. “Holy stars, is that your mate?”
I squint against a flare of light until my visor autotints. Armor rides atop the CSP transport, wings spread and covered in shiny new metal.
“Magma must’ve coated his wings.” My heart stalls for a beat as he jumps from the ship and soars across the desert, catching a Titan who’s jumping from a small SunFlux vessel.
“They all talk in their heads a ton. Want to hear the idle chatter?” Kelta switches something in the dash, and a hundred or more voices turn the channel into a mass drone that almost sounds like static.
“Shit. How do they sort that?”
“Visually and programming.”
Armor’s shield takes hits as Venom ships, coated with crystalline sheens, become visible in the air like purple ghosts. “I can repair a lot of internal components, some programming. But designing and troubleshooting Titans is beyond me, same with cyberpsyches. If my sister was still my sister, she could tell you how to make a Titan do anything with the right coding.”
Kelta looks over at me. “Anything? Like…turn against their own kind?”
Evo comes to mind.That’s why they took Creators.Not to punish them, to use them.
My head is starting to split open from the mess I’ve found myself in. “Why did you say you just had to keep me alive until the battle is over?”
She flips a switch and motions to our starboard side. “Fuck that up, pretty please.”
I shoot up the incoming Skysprinter.
“Because we always need medics after battle. Rebel and Taline can only do so much.”
“We have Atox, too.”
