A Sentient ship shoots through the wormhole before it closes, its guns hot as it chases down the listing fleet ship that is desperately trying to reach Centari. It’ll never make it. No other ships are close enough to help.
“We are.” Lana’s strength resonates through my bones, her power akin to my own. “Kyte, ready on the gun. Jeren, get ready to shoot.” She shoves her emotions for Master Daviti to the back of her mind.
I drop into the gunner’s seat.
“You’re going to have to rig it. Yours is still a student model. Here—” Kyte sends an image to my mind of how to rearrange the components to make the gun live.
I make quick work of it and am sure to enable the dampening module so I don’t de-power my own ship a la Kyte. “Ready.” I sit down and pull down the targeting viewer. The Sentient ship is firing now, its blasts tearing off bits of the fleet ship.
“Let’s go.” Lana takes lead, and the Granterry beats begin to thrum through the speakers. “We’ve got this.”
“I’m ready.” Kyte practically vibrates with aggression. It gives me pause, and more than that, a bad feeling. An intuition.
“Kyte?” I call down the bond, but my question reaches a wall of thick granite. He’s blocked himself off. My intuition turns to worry for my brother, but when a blast rockets past our ship, I have to focus.
Kyte is already firing, his shots glancing off the enormous Sentient ship, the black metal sides armored and seemingly impervious. It’s easily ten times the size of our ships, double that of the fleet vessel it’s chasing.
Lana’s ship breaks away. “I’m going to maneuver to its other side to try and take out the virudivan engine with a direct shot. You do the same on this side.”
“I want you close,” Ceredes bites the words through the comms. “Stay.”
“Sorry, Alpha Commander. I’m an Omega, so I only answer to—”
“Ilwen,” I fill in. “Your Omega Commander.”
“Right. Yuck. Ilwen.” She jets through the space, her ship nimble and her mind even more so. A few rear cannons begin firing from the Sentient ship, but she dodges them with ease and disappears on the other side of the hulking mass.
“I don’t like it,” Ceredes grumbles as I fire directly at the cannons.
“Closer.” Though my weapons are hot, they still don’t have the oomph of a true combat bird, so I need to be nearer if I intend to do damage.
“Working on it.”
“Hurry. I don’t think that fleet ship can take any more hits.”
Kyte flinches. We all feel it, but we’re too busy firing and maneuvering around the Sentients’ defensive blasts to inquire about it.
When a bay door opens along the side and Sentient drones fly out, I turn my fire to them, picking them off as quickly as I can. But they’re keeping me back and away from the blue glow of virudivan power.
We take a hit. A big one that seems to scramble the ship’s energy core, and for a moment we go dark. Helpless as the Sentient drones fly toward us with their guns lit.
“Ceredes!”
“I know!” His fingers are moving so fast on his panel that I can’t tell what he’s trying.
I rush to the co-pilot controls and try to restart the engine manually with a spark of virudivan energy directly in the core. More drones are released, all of them heading for us. We’re dead.
“Fuck!” I think I use the word right as I try the manual ignition again.
The ship jolts, and the lights flicker. I hold my breath. The lights die.
“No!” He slams his fist down on his screen and, by the grace of the Pillars, the ship kicks back into life.
I jump into the gunner seat, but it’s too late. Too many drones are already on top of us, their weapons forming a wall of destruction. This is it. My guns fire, and I take out as many as I can, but they keep coming.
Ceredes surprises me when he turns to look at me as I shoot down drone after drone despite the futility of it. “We go as brothers.” His voice is thick. “I’m grateful for it.”
“So am I.” I keep firing even as the blasts overtake our shields and shake the ship, each hit a promise of doom. But at least I’m with family.
