Page 48 of Wrath

“I’m going out with you as well,” Varnog said in a tone that brooked no argument.

“Do not shoot them,” I warned Linette. “Our piercing missiles contain the virus. If you blow them up, it might make things harder for us to make sure they’re truly dead.”

“Understood,” Linette replied, tension stiffening her back.

Varnog gave her a kiss before half running alongside me as we rushed to the armory to suit up. Thankfully, Wrath had insisted we remain at a fair distance from the Nomad. It would take a moment for the creatures to reach us, although our pilot kept us away. Nonetheless, we made haste, and were out in a little over a minute. I thanked God for our foresight in loading our vessels with the special missiles. To my relief, the hangar door opened without problem for us to take off. However, it didn’t close after our departure.

Marcelle was fucking with Myriam.

I would enjoy making that bitch pay for ever messing with my team. And that would start with destroying her so-called pets. A part of me wished Linette had been flying alongside me instead of her husband. She and I had trained together and instinctively adjusted to the other’s tactics. Varnog was an accomplished pilot and fighter, but we hadn’t really battled together other than in the context of his dream walk simulations. That would have to suffice.

We didn’t bother with stealth shields because the minute we started shooting, our location would be revealed. However, our quantity of special ammo was limited. We couldn’t risk wasting it early on. Just looking at the creatures, it was clear their scales were far thicker than the ones we had witnessed before and would be even harder to break through. Although our piercing missiles should in theory get through, since they were not target seeking, we didn’t take chances firing them from this distance as they could easily be dodged. Instead, we fired our standard lasers at the Jadozors to start weakening their armor.

At first, we struck our targets multiple times as they flew almost in formation. To my dismay, each shot seemed to ineffectively bounce off of their scales. Their faces didn’t show any signs of pain either. All of a sudden, they split up, making certain to never allow us to fly above them. I could only assume that meant the line alongside their spines remained their weak point.

As we closed the distance with them, I switched to the piercing missiles. To my shock, before I could fire a single shot, two creatures completely veered off. Instead of all of them trying to gang up on us, only three of them did while the other two continued their flight towards our camouflaged ship.

“Going after them,” Varnog said through the com, his fighter turning towards the one closest to him.

“Acknowledged,” I replied, fighting the terrible sense of unease gripping me. Ideally, we would have a third fighter.

We both fired our piercing missiles at the same time and struck our targets. His ripped through one of the four wings of his Jadozor, but I couldn’t watch to see if his other missiles had also struck gold. Mine all but tore off the tail of one of the other three. Once again, the beast seemed unfazed. That creeped the fuck out of me as it continued to fly forward. The wound where its tail had been severed sizzled with a white foam as the damn thing started growing back.

I fired a few more shots, only to see the one closest to me spit something in my direction. I barely managed to dodge. The others repeated the same thing. The projectiles looked like a dark grey spherical cloud, hard to see in the darkness of space. They came at me at high speed as did the creatures. Soon, I was more focused on avoiding their spheres than firing my precious missiles at them. I had no idea what the spheres would do, but I had no doubt it would be bad.

As I dove past one of the creatures, I managed to get a shot directly into its left flank. To my shock, although designed to pierce right through metal and cement blocks, only the head of the missile sank into the creature before it blew up. It wrecked most of its hind leg wing and part of the front one on its left side. The beast jerked, its flight pattern becoming erratic. I circled back, seizing that advantage to launch three more missiles at it. I would have fired more, but another Jadozor rushed me.

I dodged but the thrice damned creature followed. It appeared to want to crash into me. Trying to shake it off, I zigged and zagged, but it was relentless. I never saw the third Jadozor coming. One moment, empty space filled my screen, the next, as I lifted the nose of my ship, the creature seemed to come out of thin air, too close for me to avoid it. Instinctively, I veered left, resulting in the Jadozor smashing directly at the junction of the ship and my right wing.

The vessel started spinning, only to be struck again near the tail by another creature. The ship whined as it spun out of control. My stomach roiled as I battled to stabilize it. My instruments panel lit up with warnings while my proximity scanners blared alerts as a series of dots flew towards me. I didn’t need to see them to know the creatures had spit their weird spherical phlegm at my fighter. I could do nothing more than boost my shields to maximum and hope for the best. Until I got my shit back under control, nothing else mattered.

I activated my stealth shield, knowing its utility was a long shot. But if another beast struck my fighter again, I would be done for. Heart pounding, I fought with the control wheel, waiting for the attack that never came. My shield swallowed the spheres, its integrity plummeting at a frightening rate. I slowly stabilized my vessel, reeling at the sight of Varnog zipping past me while blowing the shit out of one of the Jadozors that had rammed into me. I cast a panicked look towards the two he should have kept from reaching our ship, only to see them limping in a jerky flight pattern.

How the fuck had the Scelk wrecked his two so utterly when I, the expert star fighter, had merely crippled one before almost getting my butt handed to me? Head still spinning, I fired three more piercing missiles at the first Jadozor I had damaged, aiming for the same spot in its flank. The first two partially embedded themselves into its thick scales. The third one slipped perfectly through the weaker spot along its spine and sank inside the creature. The hard shell under its belly kept the missile from shooting out the other side. The explosions nearly split the beast in two.

A victorious shout escaped me as the gaping wounds didn’t sizzle. The virus from the previous shots was working its magic, setting the stage for these last shots to do significant damage. Spasms shook the Jadozor’s body as its lower half, closest to the point of impact, started turning into ash.

But I couldn’t sit on that win. The other two Jadozors were ganging up on Varnog, and they weren’t just trying to send him into a tailspin like they had done to me. The one Varnog had shot turned around and threw itself at the nose of his fighter. Latching onto the vessel, it bashed its head against the windshield. Varnog would never be able to shake him.

“Charge your EMP, boost your shields to maximum, and keep your vessel steady,” I ordered Varnog through the com while taking aim at the other Jadozor—still unwounded—seconds before it landed on top of my companion’s ship.

“Acknowledged,” he replied.

The cool and collected way he responded only had my admiration for the Scelk rise another notch. Even expert pilots in his situation would have been freaked out. Granted, he’d had his mate—the best mentor anyone could want in this field—to teach him the ropes.

I almost shot the second Jadozor, but held back. It would be wasted as the EMP would fry the nanobots of the virus, rendering them useless. Going full throttle, I sped away from Varnog’s position.

“Fire!” I told him through the com as soon as I was at a safe enough distance from the blast radius.

Varnog fired his EMP. The electromagnetic pulse knocked back the creatures. My jaw dropped at the sight of electric shocks sparkling around both the creatures’ faces as they floated in space, unconscious or temporary dead.

“What the fuck?!” I whispered to myself.

Although reeling, I took aim again at the beast that had been on the back of Varnog’s ship and fired two missiles. They were perfect shots that sank right through the vulnerable sides of the beast’s spine.

“Cybernetics,” Varnog said in awe through the com as he shot the beast that had previously clung to the nose of his ship. “That’s how she’s controlling them. This isn’t the control chips Khutu had used on his Workers. Marcelle put a whole lot of metal in their heads.”

“Linette, Myriam, did you get that?” I asked over the com.

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