The Unity wasfucked.
Callie, quit gawking and go get Patty. She’s pinned down on some kind of rooftop garden. I’m sending some Fangs to assist.
Jack’s voice in my head made me smile.
And don’t tell her I’m up here. I want it to be a surprise. She’ll love it.
I rolled my eyes and punched it, directingLyudmilatowards the planet where the rest of Erral’s fighters were already engaged with the Unity, if the chatter on the comms was anything to go by. We passed by theVengeancejust as a long rectangular line opened up on her starboard side and a dense wave of white Fangs swarmed out of her like wasps leaving a hive.
I pushed the throttle all the way forward so we would beat them into the atmosphere.
Aga leaned forward. “The palace is built into the mountain side that looks over the city. According to the schematics we were given by Som’ae, the garden they are talking about is actually a greenhouse. Patty, Rema, the Neldre Queen and her consort are pinned down there. We could land in the courtyard to the right of the green house.”
I nodded. “Alright. Armor up if you got it.”
I willed my gold armor to the surface, the helmet clicking into place and feeding my visor into my HUD display so my vision wasn’t limited. We entered the upper atmosphere, the violet burn washing over the viewscreen and I risked a look over my shoulder to see if Aga had listened to me.
I jolted in surprise to find that Rathal had Rijiteran armor as well, the helmet similar to Jacks, with an open face and blue fans behind his tall ears akin to Egyptian drawings. He raised a gauntlet covered hand, gold claws wicked looking.
“What? Did you forget that I was there when these were made, my love?”
Good point.
I faced forward again, a grin making my cheeks ache.
“You look sexy dressed for war,” I told him.
“Why thank you, my love. So do you. In fact, later we should—”
“You two disgust me,” Aga’s gruff voice interrupted what I was sure was going to be something filthy.
We dropped through pink clouds and into a debris field so thick you could hopscotch across the falling ship parts. All conversation ceased as I cursed and began aggressive evasive maneuvers that had Aga warbling in alarm and Rathal shouting ‘weee!’ from his seat behind me.
Patty was going to love him.
I thought we were in the clear when the silver glint of twisting skyscrapers came into view, but all that did was put us right within the laser line of sight of a squadron of Insects.
I rolled, avoiding adding our bits and pieces to the debris field by mere inches and fired my own lasers. I hit the wing of one of the Insects, sending it careening to the ground and kept firing as my HUD warned of a half a dozen enemy targeting systems aimed at us. I burned hard to avoid them, jerking my ship every which way and holding down the trigger of my lasers until my HUD stopped flashing.
I dropped lower, using the buildings for cover, my ship's passage blowing out windows as we passed, three Insects hot on our ass.
I banked hard left—damn near inverting my ship, but alien tech didn’t have to worry about pesky things like unsafebank angles and stall speeds—and screamed through more tall buildings, looping back around to drop in behind the Insects. The targeting reticle zoomed in on them and I squeezed the trigger with a smile. I slid my jet nearly sideways to avoid hitting the falling pieces of the Unity ships.
“Excellent shot, Callie,” Rathal praised.
Warm little tingles spread over my skin. I wanted to look back at him but there were already new flashing enemy indicators blinking into existence on my HUD like a bad rash.
“Sonofabitch, how many did they get deployed before their Dreadnaught was destroyed?” I growled and jerked into a roll to dodge the Insects lasers.
“Hella says about two hundred. There are ground troops as well. Not only the Dreadnaught was carrying troops. Their smaller ships were the main carriers of their ground forces. They, of course, retreated when theVengeancevaporized the Dreadnaught, but that has left the Unity soldiers here on the planet even more desperate to win. They are abandoned,” Aga explained, his voice strained as I maneuvered through the city, firing and dodging as we went. Pulling this many Gs was brutal.
I gritted my teeth. “Last Stand.”
“Precisely.”
I jerked my nose up, gaining altitude to clear the top of a building and banked sharply right to circle back around and make another strafing run through the city.
My indicator showed tiny little red dots in uniformed lines four across and probably fifty deep marching down the widest road in this futuristic hellscape of a city.
