My suit surges so hard that I strain to keep my body upright as I soar across the dunes and catch up to the stern engines of Scythe. Blood drains from my head. I breathe faster to help my heart compensate.
Overheat warnings flash in my shaky vision. Power lever drops a bar every two seconds.
Come on… Please make it.
A Skysprinter explodes midair to my right in a plume of fire, smoke, and shrapnel. Instinct makes me want to duck inside my suit, but I can’t break course, or I won’t reach my target.
Metal fragments plink as they rain over my husk. And then I see what nearly turns me inside out.
A ship with a gaping hole in the side banks along the distant mountains.
“Zoom in, visual.”
My visor focuses the image of a winged Titan crawling along the ship, black spots darkening his body.
Armor?
Anger I haven’t felt in a long time roars to life inside me. I grit my teeth and bring Scythe back into view.
Alert: Overheat and shut down in five…four…
Almost there…
Three...two...
I try to make myself as aerodynamic as I can, folding my arms and legs tightly together. It helps me close in on Scythe until I’ve got a handhold within reach. Flying under the main engines, I slip between them, reach an arm up, and snag the aileron as my visor flashes and my suit cuts out.
The weight of my body and the dead suit threaten to break my grip. My visor switches off as my body steams in the wind.
I’m on my own now.
I lug myself up and study the radiant swirling light inside a nearby cylinder.Portal generator?
Suddenly, it makes sense how Scythe has been able to be everywhere all at once, how they showed up and took Myria and the others out of the fog, made it to battles all over the galaxy to capture Titans, swaying the war in the Solcrue’s favor, and dropped in here without any word circulating among the Titans or Clover and all the scanners available to her on the BlazeStar.
Portals were never something I could find a lot of study material on. But I read everything I could when I was stuck in the mines.
I want to tell Armor, Commander Savage, anyone. But my suit is offline. Its mechanical assists are all I have to help me now.
There has to be a maintenance hatch close by if they have portal generators.
I climb around the unit to the hull of the ship, duck under an engine turbine shaft, and find an airlock. It’s engaged from the inside, but there is always an emergency backup on CSP ships. As much as they kept tools for themselves that they didn’t let anyone else have, just like Solcrue, they also had backups to get them out of situations, even though they presented vulnerabilities like the one I’m going to exploit now.
Bashing an elbow into the control panel, I find the solenoid that the power runs through to the door and rip it out. The hatch’s shielding shuts down.
I’m going to have to be fast if I don’t want to be an easy target for whatever patrol is in this area of the ship. I get up and brace myself on the hull.They’re going to hear me for sure.Grabbing my rifle from my back, I steady it in front of me, watch it light up, and switch off the safety. Then, I stomp a heel at the mechanical latch.
All those months of compiling bits of data and salvaged pages from textbooks on CSP and Solcruean ships under a headlamp with the constant threat of a mine collapse is suddenly worth it.
Prying open the hatch, I peek inside with my rifle. I find no one in the immediate area, climb inside, and close the hatch.
What to wreck first…
I’m on a lower deck, below the cockpit. Guns will be up another level, but the munitions core that powers the rows of guns will be up two floors. I’ve got to find a way out of the area I’m in so any soldiers coming for the infiltrator won’t find me. I have no doubt they’ve received the signal of hatch shielding offline.
I find an ascent shaft ladder behind an engine power turbine and fold my helmet back so I can switch to my goggles and hear worth a damn in the local area. I could power down the ship,but then I’d die when it crashed. With my suit offline, I don’t like that plan. And the portal generator is still on my mind. I’m certain there’s a use for it.
Exiting into the maintenance room, I hear two men talking. “BlazeStar’s lifting off. Erdox wants it buried.”
