The ships turned their nets toward Jorgen, and I fired at one with my destructors. The pilot tried to maintain the net a moment too long, and I landed enough hits to take down the shield. The ship turned, breaking the net, but Kimmalyn got the final shot and the ship went into an uncontrolled spin. The pilot ejected, and instead of flying off to the side like the others, the ship spiraled into one of the mining buildings below.
At least there wouldn’t be many people living in here, though there would be some civilians present. I hoped they’d taken cover when the fighting began.
“Jerkface,” FM said, “we have incoming.”
She was right. My sensors identified a whole fleet of air force ships, many more than we’d been chasing around this tree, and all of them would be equipped with light nets. They were still a few minutes out, but they were coming for us.
“We can’t fight all those,” Jorgen said. “How defensible is the base? Does it have ground support?”
“Like guns?” I asked. “No. It’s never been attacked, not in almost a century. Maybe not even then.”
“Scud,” Jorgen said. “We need to get out of here. Skyward Flight, bounce protocol. Fall back to the base. We’re not leaving without Alanik’s people.”
Leaving? We were supposed to take and hold the base. If we left now, how would we inspire the rest of the Independence air force to fight?
I could see the incoming ships on my sensor screen though. There were too many of them. We wouldn’t be able to hold the base against so many, even if they didn’t have a cytonic with them.
FM and Sentry immediately disappeared, though I saw them reappear outside the tree through one of the knot holes. They’d used their hyperdrives to escape. The Unity pilots clearly weren’t expecting this, and I could hear snatches of confused exclamations over the radio through the negative realm.
“Alanik,” Jorgen said. “We don’t want to leave you behind.”
As if they could. “I’ve got it,” I said.
“Right. Quirk. Ten o’clock. Here we go.”
“Copy, Jerkface,” Kimmalyn said, and then both their ships disappeared.
Ten
I still wasn’t sure which way ten o’clock was, but I guessed which tree gap Jorgen was referring to and reached through the negative realm, pulling myself out on the far side. This was my third hyperjump in a shorter space of time than I would have liked, and the eyes seemed more fixated on me than normal, but I emerged from the negative realm half a kilometer from Jorgen and Kimmalyn, who were much closer together.
How do you do that? I asked Jorgen.
I send the slugs an image of a location. And then we ask nicely.
You ask nicely?
It’s not the only way, Jorgen said. But it’s ours.
I couldn’t argue with their results.
We had a moment to reposition while the enemy shot out of the holes in Hollow. I tried to track the battle on my sensor screen. Independence ships were in the air now, defending the base. I wasn’t sure how many Unity personnel were still inside, but we could deal with them in a minute. Hopefully once we’d won this skirmish they’d surrender.
Skyward Flight scattered, leading the enemy ships in circles around the tree and heading toward the Independence base. Jorgen and Kimmalyn hung back as Jorgen gave instructions to the others. I still didn’t understand it. If a leader did that in the junior leagues, or in air force training, they would be immediately replaced. You didn’t raise your shooting averages or your evasion scores by hanging back, and if your stats weren’t impressive enough you couldn’t advance. Watching Jorgen work made me wonder if I’d made too much of human aggression based on a few verbal arguments and the willingness to shoot out a single cockpit.
Four Unity ships charged up the branches toward us and I pivoted my ship, showering one of them with destructor fire. The ship dodged around one of the branches, flying close to the structures hanging beneath, using them as cover.
That was a cowardly move. I wasn’t going to fire at the ship while it passed over civilians, but I also wasn’t going to let it get away. I kept pace right over it, readying more fire. The ship twisted around the branch, winding up in a spiral pattern, and I followed. I waited for a clear patch of branch with no civilian targets, and then opened fire. The ship tried to dodge, but Kimmalyn flew in from the side, her destructors blocking off the path of escape. The ship’s shield went down, and Kimmalyn’s shot hit one of the boosters, sending it spinning away from the branch.