Page 87 of Blightfall

“Why are there so many ships up here?” Dayan asked. “What are they doing?”

“If you can discern that,” Suki said, “you will be doing better than we have done.”

“As far as we can tell,” I added, “this planet is completely isolated with no one spacefaring to fight. These are uncrewed drone ships. Their pilots control them via hypercomm, so they may be on that station, or they may be somewhere else in the galaxy.”

“And the inhibitor,” Dayan said. “What does it do?”

“It makes it so we can’t use hyperdrives or hypercomms. But Ivy’s ships will have the code to the inhibitor, so they can use cytonics within it even when we can’t.”

“Do you have access to one of these inhibitors?” Dayan asked.

“We do,” I said. “But the field ours produces is much smaller. We could use one to keep ships from hyperjumping in close to us, but as far as I can tell, these particular drones aren’t equipped with hyperdrives.”

“Can’t you throw up an inhibitor and make it impossible for nearby drone pilots to talk to their ships? Wouldn’t they all just stop?”

That was…incredibly astute. “We’ve tested that theory,” I said. “Doesn’t work that way. Their inhibitor stops the powers from the point of origin. If we want to use an inhibitor of our own to stop the hypercommunication, we’d have to catch the station’s hypercomm in the radius. And we can’t do that if we can’t activate our inhibitor close to the station.”

“Which you can’t do because their inhibitor stops you,” Dayan said.

“Exactly. The point of origin for our inhibitor would have to be outside the enemy inhibitor range, and in this case, ours is so much smaller that it won’t work.”

As we neared, Sadie spoke to Ivy again. “Which docking facility would you prefer we use?” Sadie asked. “Please advise.”

That was a nice, covert way to say we’d never seen a station shaped like this one and we didn’t know where to land. I assumed the landing pads would be found at either end of the cylindrical structure, but I couldn’t be sure, and if this was a common layout for a Superiority outpost it was possible Inspector Zuzen’s bodyguards should already know.

“Landing zone B would be most convenient,” Ivy said. “Farthest from your entry point. I can meet you at that landing pad upon your arrival.”

That probably meant we should fly the length of the station and approach the other end. We sped closer.

“Flightleader,” Suki said off radio, “those drones are closing in.”

Sure enough, the ten escort ships on our six steadily closed in. The ones clustered around the station—I could see five, but I couldn’t confirm that there weren’t more hiding behind the hulking structure—also approached, as if coming out to greet us.

“Thank you for the welcoming party!” Sadie said over the radio. An edge of hysteria crept into her voice, and I hoped that was only obvious to those of us who knew her.

“Steady,” I said aloud, though I didn’t dare express over the hypercomm that my supposed commander needed reassurance from me.

“Is this really a thing they do?” Dayan asked. “Send armed ships to greet you? Because it’s intimidating as hell.”

It was. More so as we approached the edge of the inhibitor, slipping beyond the point where Naga, Twist, or Alanik could pull us out.

“Here we go,” I said. We had to land on that station. We needed answers and a way off this planet, and we weren’t going to find it anywhere else. I had to hope we could talk our way through this and end with a free ticket to fly home and regroup, with a better understanding of what we were up against and a whole lot more firepower.

But my hopes were dashed when one of the ships in front of us opened fire.

Twenty-Seven

Arturo

Several things happened at once. My flight immediately broke formation and switched to evasive maneuvers. Many other ships also opened fire, destructor blasts raining around us. I threw my ship into a sharp dive, angling beneath the station where fewer ships were waiting to ambush us. My GravCaps kicked in, absorbing g-forces and preventing Dayan and me from blacking out—though stars, even with the GravCaps, their body was going to take a punishment like no other as I started taking sharp turns at high speed. The GravCaps overloaded, and my head pounded as the blood in my body rushed to my head. Behind me, I heard Dayan scream.

I pulled out of my dive and my head cleared, the force reducing. “Suki, check on Dayan,” I said.

“Still conscious,” Suki said, twisting in her seat, “though I think they threw up.”

By instinct, my flight had broken into two wingmate pairs, Alanik following me into my dive and Sadie and Gilaf both banking right, leading the other ships out of the inhibitor field.

“Ivy!” Sadie shouted over the hypercomm once she was clear of the inhibitor. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding! This aggression is unnecessary! We are here to bring word of your good work to our superiors!”