Page 20 of Defiant

I nodded, doing as he suggested, and forced myself back under control. My cockpit stopped vibrating.

“Nedd,” I said.

Hesho turned on the comm, putting a direct call in to Jorgen. “Admiral, we would like to know the situation of callsign: Nedder. If it is known.”

“He arrived, burned and unconscious,” Jorgen said. “No sign of his slugs. We think Lucky died in the initial shot that hit the ship, and Chubs sent him back. But…didn’t come himself.”

I got an image in my head from Doomslug, fluting quietly from her sling. Pain. Chubs had been wounded. Sending Nedd had been his final act.

I closed my eyes, feeling Doomslug’s pain as my own.

“He should survive,” Jorgen said. “But…well, he’ll probably never fly again. Not with only one arm. I’m sorry.”

“It’s war,” I whispered, hoarse. “And we’re soldiers.”

“Nevertheless,” Jorgen said, “let’s pull you out to rest. Arturo is ready to come back in and the team can—”

“No,” I said. “I’ll see it through.”

He didn’t contradict me, so I took a deep breath and pointedly didn’t look at the large sections of the city I’d destroyed. “Incursion squad on me,” I said. “Kimmalyn, our target building is still shielded. Get it down. Skyward Flight, provide air support and be ready to pull us out if something goes wrong.”

I got a handful of “affirmative” replies, and not a one called me outon taking command in Arturo’s absence. Technically T-Stall was next in line, but I wasn’t in a mood to pay attention to the chain of command. Honestly, I hadn’teverbeen good at it, even when Ihadn’tbeen a one-woman apocalypse with a fruit-flavored delver filling.

Kimmalyn’s ship was equipped with a shield cutter. She led the way to the large black skyscraper at the center of the EDS. She hovered there, rotating her ship with the acclivity ring unhinging, so she could position the bottom of her ship as close as possible to the building. Her vessel let out a bright blue blast, reminiscent of an IMP—but far more concentrated.

That knocked out the building’s shield. I did a long, slow pass along the tower. Starting at the top, flying down in a spiral around the outside, centimeters from the wall. Yes, I could feel what had been reported earlier: this building had a second inhibitor, secret and unexpected. I wondered if I could get a sense of where the thing was, based on the field it projected. Only, with mechanical augmentation, the fields an inhibitor slug made could be various shapes. So…

Floor thirty-seven,Chet said.Directly in the center of the building. I can cut through the inhibitor and see it hiding there.

“Kimmalyn,” I said, “I need a hole in the wall on the thirty-seventh floor. Incursion team, prepare to breach there. We’re going to find the inhibitor. My senses tell me it’s at the direct center of that floor.”

“Roger,” Kimmalyn said, using her specialized destructor to cut a hole in the wall. The chunk of stone and steel from the wall fell free, edges glowing with heat.

I flew my ship over and hit the cockpit release. “Hesho, if something goes wrong, how confident are you in flying this ship?”

“With the minimal controls I have?” he asked. “Not terribly confident. But I shall endeavor to do my best in the event of a disaster.”

Good enough. As I twisted to undo the quick-release on my buckles, Doomslug fluted and appeared on my lap—jumping out of her sling.

“You sure?” I asked her. “We can’t get out until we bring down the inhibitor inside.”

She fluted in the affirmative, so I scooped her up as I climbed out. She went into a holster on my hip, slung across my opposite shoulder. The others called them slings, but that felt…I don’t know. Like the thing a mom would use to bring her baby along. Unnerved—even a little nauseated—by my powers as I was, I still wasn’t going to bring ababy slinginto battle. I was bringing aslug holster.

I unclipped a fully automatic assault rifle from its place at the side of the cockpit, and the three remaining ships from Vanir Flight joined me, each carrying three members of our newly christened marine corps. We’d never had much in the way of ground forces, but were rectifying that in the face of the increasing need for assaults like this. Nedd in particular had enjoyed finally being given time on the firing range for…

No. Don’t think about Nedd.

Wolf was the leader of the marine force, and as Junker opened his canopy for her, she stood up and waved to me. Wolf was a tall, hard-faced woman with body armor and one lock of blue hair. Her non-code name was Chono, which was apparently Mongolian. When I’d asked if she was related to the Great Khan, she’d simply said, “Of course.”

I’d tried not to gushtoomuch. It had been difficult.

She and I shared a nod, then leaped off the fronts of our hovering ships into the hole, our guns up. This city had artificial gravity, fortunately, and so we didn’t have trouble walking or moving. We activated flashlights on the front of our muzzles as the other eight marines followed quietly, each of them with their own slug holster.

Unfortunately, I’d just entered a deeper darkness than the physical kind. Because my cytonic senses once again vanished—smothered by the blanket of the inhibitor field.

“I have the description of the building that Cuna provided,” Hesho said through my helmet speaker, “and I am coordinatingwith command. We are trying to guess the direction you need to go to reach the inhibitor. If that would be of assistance.”

“That would be scudding wonderful,” I whispered back.

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