Page 89 of Blightfall

“Hell yes,” Dayan said from behind me, though they sounded a bit disoriented. “Let me at them.”

“Glad you’re still with us,” I told them.

I opened a general channel with my flight—a new one, hoping Ivy wouldn’t immediately trace the frequency—and waited for them all to pick up. “Angel,” I said, “help me distract the enemy ships while Sentry and Ghost make a landing. Sentry and Ghost, once you’ve landed, try to cover us while we come in to join you. If you encounter extreme resistance on the landing pad, pull out immediately.”

“Copy,” Sadie said, though it took Gilaf a moment to answer the same.

“We’re doing this?” Nedd asked.

“Yes,” I said. We were committed now, and we needed to see it through.

“Angel,” I said, “should we try a rat chase?”

“Copy,” Alanik said.

This was a maneuver we’d learned from Alanik and Gilaf, a common tactic they used in the ship-based sporting league on ReDawn. I accelerated toward the nearest enemy ship above the landing pad until I was flying right on its tail. The ship executed a series of evasive maneuvers, trying to shake me, but I stayed on my target with a single-minded focus.

“Ready,” I told Alanik. While I was chasing, she’d positioned herself alongside another nearby enemy ship. Without warning, she threw her ship into an Imban turn, coming at the second ship from the side.

The ship reacted defensively, rolling away from her, which drove it right toward the ship I was targeting. I went into a spin, launching myself at the first ship much the way Alanik had with hers—

And that ship turned sharply, nearly colliding with Alanik’s prey. They both had to straighten out to avoid collision. While they were disoriented, Alanik and I switched places, weaving around the ships in a spiral to keep them from getting a bead on us. In the confusion, one of the ships flipped a turn and pivoted around to face us, shooting wildly. With one deft turn, Alanik swung toward the second ship and pelted it with fire—driving it up into the line of the other enemy ship’s destructor fire. Before either of the ships knew what was happening, one downed the other, and Alanik and I focused our fire on the remaining one, dropping it out of the sky.

“Well done,” I said to Alanik, though my sensors were flashing, letting me know that Gilaf and Sadie had kited with them most of the remaining enemy ships, all converging on our location.

Alanik and I had to make targets of ourselves to keep the fire off Sadie and Gilaf while they landed. “Cover me,” I said, whipping around toward the opening in the end of the tube-shaped station. My GravCaps flashed and Dayan echoed the sentiment, but I met the oncoming enemy head-on, weaving between them in a quick twin-scissor. They were now between me and the landing pad, so I swung around, coming back behind them and causing them to break formation, scattering in all directions to try to take me down. Alanik showered them with fire—we didn’t dare use our IMPs in this situation, since neither of us could stop long enough to reignite our shields. The point wasn’t to take down these ships, but to distract them, to give Sadie and Gilaf enough time to land.

“Amphi!” Sadie said, “we’ve got a problem down here.”

I looked at my monitors, but we’d done a good job of keeping the ships off Sadie and Gilaf—they had a clear area around the end of the station to make their landing.

“Is the landing zone blocked?” I asked.

“No,” Gilaf said, “but it’s protected by autofire.”

Scud. We’d have to take those out before we could land—and we’d have to do it with a hell of a lot of fire on our tails.

Twenty-Eight

Sadie

We were close to the landing pad. It was empty of ships, probably because they had all taken off before we arrived, ready to lure us close and then shoot us down. Arturo said I wasn’t to blame. And I’d played the part I was assigned to play. But it still felt like I’d failed, like it was my fault we were now fighting for our lives against an overwhelming enemy with very little idea of what kind of resistance we would face when we landed.

All that stood between us and that terrifying discovery were the gun emplacements around the circumference of the station’s circular opening. There were four of them positioned at twelve, three, six, and nine o’clock. The landing pad was positioned toward the front of the tubelike opening, with an atmospheric bubble over it. It extended farther into the pipe than I could see, the hangar concealed somewhere within.

Arturo and Alanik were doing a good job keeping the enemy ships off our backs, but every time I swooped too near the landing pad, the guns locked on to my ship and sent a barrage of energy flying at me, driving me back again.

“Orders, Amphi?” I asked.

“Nedder,” Arturo said, “can we destroy those stationary weapons?”

“Affirmative,” Nedd said. “They have shields, but with enough fire, we should be able to take them down.”

“Do it,” Arturo said.

“Copy,” I said. “Let’s team up on the top one.”

Gilaf and I flew at the weapon at twelve o’clock and fired on it. The gun locked onto my ship, and I danced through a set of scissor maneuvers, keeping it trained on me while Gilaf got in a few more shots at the emplacement’s shields, dropping them.