“Latching on now.”
“Wait, what?”
His fighter clamped onto the edge of her ship, and he started a roll.
“What in the stars?” she cried out.
“Be quiet!” he said as he flew the ship around the incoming batch of fighters.
He zipped through the onslaught, testing the limits of his ship’s endurance as he protected the escape pod. One of his shields slid down over the pod, physically covering it.
“You’re going too fast! You need to—”
Kian shut off the comms between their ships. As he flew between the other vessels, he took out the incoming Terrans.
One, however, got a shot on him.
His ship spun, and his synapses fired with warnings and alerts as he lost some of his control functions.
The one he was most concerned about was the ability to further transform. Rhimodian ships were able to shift their configuration to handle situations as needed, including slipping between obstacles. His ability to do that was now compromised.
Whether he liked it or not, he had to land—get the ship on the ground before it fell into orbit somewhere, with that Ambassador trapped underneath him.
Disengage shielding of foreign ship.
Unable to comply.
Transform shielding to formal open.
Unable to comply.
Release foreign ship from protection.
Unable to comply.
“Britok dung!” he muttered, the curse he’d picked up at the space station rolling off his tongue as though he used it all the time. He did not. However, this situation seemed to warrant it.
What was he going to do now?
He’d better warn her. This was going to be a rough landing.
He opened the comms back up.
“And who the hell do you think you are? Rolling me around like that, I could have been killed—”
“You would have been had you not been under my shields.”
She cried out.
“Did you not expect an answer?”
“You haven’t answered me for five minutes! I didn’t think you were there!”
“I was busy protecting you. Now you need to secure yourself. We are heading for a hard landing in a moment.”
“It’s not like I have a lot of room in here,” she muttered.
“Sol-5 has a great deal of water, with tiny land masses. Be prepared for a water landing.”
