Warp World (79 page)

Ama traced her finger over the expanding line of Storm icons; with her other hand she pressed a button. She pressed it again but the numbers on the display didn’t change.

“Less than thirty minutes before it’s on us,” she said. “Anything from Fismar?”

“Give me a precise time on that,” Shan snapped. “And no, no word from Fis.” Her helmet was lowered into place as she scanned the displays. “Okay, if the boss comes in, we get a continuous comm link and we upload the safe flight path to bring him in without putting him in front of the guns that are still active.”

“Twenty-seven minutes,” Ama said. She looked up, out the cockpit window. “Nen’s death.”

In the distance, a black wall was bearing down on the Keep.

“Easy.” Shan pointed at the control console for the Storm-cell. “At full power, it’ll take about three seconds to activate. As long as he gets his rider here and down, he can get inside the walls, with the rest of your buddies, and finish killing these stinking Etis.”

Shan froze as Fismar’s signal came through the comm.

“Air Lead, this is Ground Lead. We’ve got the power room. Moving down to secure the living quarters and the hostages.”

“Power room is clear!” Shan said to Ama, then she cued her mike. “Air Lead, received, two-six minutes to Stormfall and—” She pounded a fist on the console. “Yes! Signal! Cathind inbound. The boss is on his way home!”

“Viren is enroute to receive,” Fismar said.

“Confirm, Viren inbound, Air Lead clear.” Shan turned to Ama. “Boss likes to make the big entrance doesn’t he? Well, let’s just show him the—”

She frowned as she stabbed the button for the transmitter, then pushed it again.

“Okay, we had comm link for a second, now it’s gone amber. What the karg?”

Seg clung to the restraint harness pinning him down in the copilot’s seat as the rider struggled to stay aloft. A burst of lightning had nearly struck them and half the instruments in the cockpit had gone dark. From somewhere down by his feet, a thin stream of smoke curled upward.

“I’ve got it, I’ve got it.” The pilot swore as he wrestled with the controls. “Fire con, red button there, hit it!”

Seg slapped the red button and was rewarded only with a loud clunk and whirring. The indicator light by the button flashed amber to show mechanical failure.

“Okay, we can make it. It’s just a bit farther,” the pilot promised.

There was a new icon on the
Defiant
’s display now, a tiny blip against the wall of the Storm. “They’re coming in the wrong way,” Ama said. She watched Seg’s shuttle deviate from the flight path Shan had carefully laid out—the path that would keep them out of range of the Etiphar guns that they hadn’t knocked out. His shuttle was right in the line of fire.

“Shan?” Ama slapped down her visor and reached for her harness.

“Crash lift.” Shan’s voice took on a strangely calm quality. “Missiles dry, we’re going to have to gun this one.”

The
Defiant
was going up. The only question was how hard would it come back down?

Even as Julewa hove into view and the pilot struggled to control the craft, Seg drank in the sight. Here he would win or die, and if he won, it would be a start. A start!

“Home,” he said, as another random buffet slammed him into the harness. He could feel the bruises forming already where the restraints had met the hard edges of his equipment.

He was in a crippled rider, flying toward a mountain battleground, as the Storm closed in. There was nowhere on the World he would rather be at this moment.

“Karg, who’s that? Was somebody supposed to meet us?” The pilot jerked his head toward the cockpit window.

Seg squinted. A rider,
his
rider, was lurching through the air toward them. Something was wrong—one landing strut was bent and the others had not retracted.

As he watched, the gunship’s nose-mounted cannon began spitting fire.

“Karg!” Shan slide-slipped the rider, desperately angling for a shot at the emplacement. “The emplacement’s shielded by the rock!”

Ama watched with growing horror as Seg’s shuttle moved into the sight line of the Etiphar guns. Without the comm connection, they had no way to warn him.

“Block it!” Ama said. “Get us between the guns and the shuttle.”

Shan hesitated for a split second, then nodded as she rammed the throttles home. “I’m going to spin us and hammer that thing as soon as we cross the line.” As the
Defiant
staggered through the air, she chuckled softly. “Good flying with you, Kalder.”

“There’s a karging gun emplacement!” the shuttle pilot yelled. “You said there’d be no guns! You said—”

The shuttle lurched and once more the pilot fought to maintain control. In front of them, the
Defiant
’s engines flared as it put on a hard thrust and leapt forward. The rider intersected their path just as the Etiphar cannon opened fire. Seg watched tracers fly through the air, stitching the
Defiant
even as its nose-mounted cannon fired again; a sustained burst sawed through the gun emplacement. The last few rounds from the destroyed enemy gun whipped past the
Defiant
and smashed into the shuttle. The craft staggered again, fell over on its wing, and threatened to drop from the sky. To his left, Seg saw the
Defiant
, trailing smoke and parts across the landscape.

Then only a view of the ground filled his screen.

“It’s gone! It’s gone!” Shan shouted. “Eject, eject, eject!”

Ama reached for the ejection lever and tugged. Nothing. The mechanism was frozen, locked in place.

“Ama, eject!”

“Broken.” An involuntary smile rose to Ama’s lips. She flipped up her visor for a moment, looked at Shan, then looked away, into the Storm.

“GO!” Ama shouted.

There was a loud BANG and Shan was gone, rocketed up and out. Air rushed in the cockpit, the roar of the Storm heightening the din.

And the voices.

Ama stared into the blackness and waited.

As the wounded shuttle spun through the air, the pilot snarled and grappled with the controls, bellowing curses at the sky. The piled trash on the console rained around the cockpit, pelting the two occupants with each gyration. Seg’s head slammed into the window next to him and was pinned in place by the centrifugal force. As they made another revolution, he saw a pillar of smoke and fire erupt from the cockpit of the
Defiant
. An ejection-seat launch, it had to be.

The seats had attached Storm cells. Ama and Shan could get down. They could survive long enough for retrieval later.

If.

If they weren’t wounded, incapacitated.

“Got it!” the pilot said “Got it aimed at the deck. Hang on!”

The rider plunged toward the Keep’s flight deck. As they reached the point of collision, the pilot slammed the fans down in an effort to bring the descent under some kind of control.