Evershore(Skyward #3.1)(47)

She dove, but the enemy ship followed her, slicing her ship into three even pieces. The wreckage fell to the ground. She didn’t eject, but she wouldn’t have needed to. I searched for her taynix in the falling wreckage, but I couldn’t find him. I hoped he’d hyperjumped her out.

“All flights,” I said, “that pilot has mindblades. Take them down.”

“We can’t get close enough to use the IMP,” Amphi said. “Quirk’s our best shot and she’s down.”

“Nedder,” FM said. “Did Quirk make it out?”

“I don’t know,” Nedd said. He sounded shaken. The cytonic with the mindblades dove again, this time taking off after Catnip.

I found Catnip’s slug, Whiskers, and instructed it to jump down closer to the city, below Victory Flight. Catnip disappeared. Our ships flew loosely around the enemy cytonic, all trying to peg the ship with destructor fire without getting close enough to be torn apart by the mindblades, but the enemy ship rolled and dodged, evading their fire.

I couldn’t let this continue. I could get in my own ship and try to go after the cytonic, but I imagined they had a lot more practice with those mindblades than I had, and possibly a lot more reach.

“All flights,” I said, “pull up.”

All across the battlefield, ships shot up into the clouds, clashing with the Superiority ships that had made it out of their carriers. Not all the kitsen flights obeyed, but those that didn’t were far enough away from the cytonic that they should be safe from the autofire above and below.

Go, I told Snuggles.

And I hyperjumped the platform directly below the cytonic pilot.

The cytonic pilot immediately pulled up, accelerating to get out of the inhibitor field.

Go, I said to Boomslug.

Boomslug fired the hyperweapon in the direction of the pilot, but they reached the edge of the inhibitor field and hyperjumped away. I searched for them across the sky—

And found them high above the planet, farther even than the carrier ships. Most of our forces were between me and them, but I could follow in an instant, if I could only see where they’d gone. I looked up through the window at the clouds—

And was blinded by a blast of blue energy that poured down from the sky, striking the shield around Wandering Leaf, which sputtered and crackled.

I squinted against the light. When it faded, I stared up at a large, newly arrived ship with an enormous cannon on the front of it.

Scud.

Scud.

“What is that?” Juno asked.

“It’s a planetary weapon,” I said.

“A weapon for planets,” Juno said. “It seems wrong to invent such a thing.”

“No argument here,” I said. It looked just like the one we’d destroyed on ReDawn. It made sense that it hadn’t been unique. They must have had the thing charged before they hyperjumped it in, which made a sick, reckless kind of sense.

We could not let that thing fire on the planet. I didn’t know how many kitsen that ship could destroy in one blast, and I didn’t want to find out.

“Jerkface—” Arturo said over the radio.

“I see it,” I said. “All flights, clear the space around the cannon.” The flights split, going into evasive maneuvers and leading the enemy ships away from the cannon, which was fixed squarely on Wandering Leaf.

They’d take out the platform and then Dreamspring. I had to destroy the cannon before that happened.

The airspace between me and the cannon was clear. I still didn’t know for certain if Kimmalyn was okay, or if any of my friends had been caught in that energy beam, but there were going to be a lot of other casualties if I didn’t act quickly. I focused on the space just below the cannon and hyperjumped the platform up.

The autoturrets fired immediately, pummeling the cannon and the ship around it. Scud, this thing was terrifying from this close. Last time it was Rig who’d had to stare one of these down. I hadn’t given him enough credit for it. The blue light was building again. I focused on the cannon, ready to tell Boomslug to fire—

And suddenly the vibration of the universe went dead. I could no longer feel the cytonic inside the enemy ship, or the minds of Boomslug and Snuggles so nearby in the boxes. Scud, the enemy cytonics had put up an inhibitor, and I’d brought the platform right into range. It was the same thing I’d done to the mindblade cytonic, but they had a ship with an engine, and Wandering Leaf moved only by hyperjump.

I was stuck here.

“This seems bad!” Juno said, his voice almost a squeak.

The blue light glowed brighter and brighter, and then the beam pummeled my shields again. The shield crackled and then blinked out, leaving the platform vulnerable to the next attack. I couldn’t hyperjump out. I couldn’t use the hyperweapon. I didn’t have a starfighter on board, and Alanik couldn’t come in to get me.

I stared up into the mouth of the cannon as it once again began to glow with an eerie blue light.





Fifteen


The autoturret continued to pound at the cannon. It was doing damage, but it wasn’t going to disable the thing fast enough. I was going to get blown to pieces on this platform the moment it finished charging.

“Amphi,” I said over the radio. “I have to get out of here. The autoturrets are distracted. Can any of you dodge the fire and fly in to pick me up?”