Page 18 of Defiant

I went into a set of evasives: the challenging, flowery type. Kimmalyn and I spun and looped, broke apart and curved back together, soared upward and sideways—dodging the fire from behind with poise. These pilots behind us were good. And the ships had actual people in the cockpits, rather than being piloted remotely. That was rare for the Superiority. Only their best fought in person.

That said, I’d faced delvers throwing hundreds of ships at me at once. Compared to that, these…well, they weren’t much of a challenge. I stuck to the outside of the bubble of air, keeping a full six of the ships busy. Kimmalyn kept up with me, and together we didn’t take a single hit to our shields.

“Spin,” Jorgen said over the line, “what are you doing?”

“Dealing with more than my share of fighters,” I said, pulling into a dive. “Anyone else and their wingmate handling six at once?”

“You haven’t fired a single shot,” Jorgen noted.

“I don’t need to.”

He fell silent. “Understood,” he said.

I watched the proximity monitor as I flew, and Hesho helpfully highlighted the incursion team. They’d pushed inward, toward the center of the city. There they buzzed a specific skyscraper with shiny black windows: the place Cuna indicated was the information storage facility. Inside we could find all kinds of useful data, including the locations of the mining stations where the enemy got their acclivity stone.

Some among the military were still suspicious of Cuna—worrying they were a plant. I didn’t have those concerns. Winzik hadlegitimately tried to kill Cuna—who, in turn, had already offered information and aid that would have been incredibly stupid to release if they were a spy.

As the incursion team finished their sweep of the data storage building, a dozen more of our ships arrived as reinforcements.The enemy fighters were good, but now they were severely outgunned—and my team included the best pilots in the galaxy. Enemy ships started going up in flowers of flame, but so far we’d only lost one fighter: Catnip, who, according to Hesho’s monitor, had hyperjumped with his slug to safety.

I should have known it was too good to last. “Scud,” Breakaway said over the comm. She was leading Vanir Flight, and therefore the incursion force. “Admiral, there’s a shield on this building, as we expected. But there’s also asecondinhibitor field here, covering just this structure.”

“What?” Cuna said. “That…that’s…I’m sorry. It must have been set up after my previous visit.”

“Scud,” Jorgen said in my ear. TheIron Fortresshad sophisticated scanning equipment, and would be sending up-to-the-second scans of the region and the fighters back to headquarters. “That’s a wrinkle. Breakaway, can you…Wait, what’s that?”

I scanned the battlefield, flying by instinct, looking for whatever he’d noticed. All through the city, rooftops were opening, and guns were rising from them. AA guns. Smaller, shorter ranged, designed to hit starfighters. They had waited to deploy them until our team got close to the city center, where they’d be surrounded.

“Defensive maneuvers!” Arturo said. “All ships!”

Vanir Flight immediately scattered as the guns started unloading on them. I held my breath, but the shots mostly missed. We lost one Vanir ship, and I waited for confirmation the crew had been hyperjumped to safety in time.

Yellow light on the comm. Some casualties from that explosion—we’d lost at least one of the four on the ship. Scud! Still, the others dodged successfully. A modern ship with a good pilot was moremaneuverable than a turret. Unfortunately, this threw a huge wrinkle into the plan. How would we break into the base if we had to be on the defensive the whole time?

“Spin,” Kimmalyn said, “that looks bad.”

As she said it, the ships tailing us got off a lucky shot on me—the destructor fire rippling across the surface of my shield, briefly illuminating the shell that protected my ship.

“Shield at sixty-five percent,” Hesho warned. “That was a solid hit.”

I nodded. The city didn’t have its own shield, though several of the more important buildings clearly had individual ones. Better to protect the most vital areas with high-powered shields than to have a single larger, thin one, easily breakable.

I focused on my evasion, pushing into a dive. Kimmalyn and I spun around one another, bright destructor blasts raining past us like burning meteorites. Sprays of them hit the city below, blooms of fire rising along a street, as flying cars exploded while fleeing the firefight.

Scud. Were my opponents that ruthless? That uncaring of the noncombatants the stray fire was killing?

No. No, I knew better. I imagined the anguish they felt being forced to defend their city, knowing each shot might kill people they knew, people they loved. The enemy pilots were doing their jobs. And sometimes the job sucked.

“Spin…” Kimmalyn said as we pulled into a loop over the city.

“All right, everyone,” Arturo said, his voice tense. “We’ll get picked off if we keep this up. Swing back in a Stewart formation, planning to angle straight toward the target. First squad, on mark 118. Squad two, follow. Nedd, you—”

Nedd’s ship went up in a burst of fire. Gone in a second, the powerful AA guns blasting straight through his shield.

“Scud!” Arturo screamed. “Nedd!”

In that moment, all of the enemy ships—even those tailing me—turned and swarmed the kitsen ship,Iron Fortress.

“Protect the kitsen ship!” Jorgen said over the line. “All pilots!”

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