Fall of Icarus

attacked had been one such ship. As his remaining comrades broke to the left in order to avoid her and Yen’s latest assault, he had unfortunately turned right. Skimming past the debris that now filled the space around them, Keryn opened fire on the strong metal on the bottom of the fighter. Her rounds tore through the armored plating, piercing the bottom of the pilot’s chair and vaporizing the Terran within the cockpit. Another fighter drifted free, a victim of Yen and Keryn’s daunting attack.

Within minutes, the last of the fighters were destroyed. Yen checked his stores and realized that he was running low on both machine gun ammunition and the meager supply of rockets loaded on the Cair ships. Keryn, having started the battle before him, couldn’t be in much better shape. They had pulled off a miracle by defeating an entire squadron of Terran fighters with just the two Cair ships, but they had now reached a point where luck ended and common sense reasserted itself. Yen turned his ship back toward the Revolution, ready to return to the safety of the much larger Alliance Cruiser. It took him a few moments to realize that Keryn wasn’t following his lead. Checking his radar, he saw her still hovering in space, watching the Destroyer that they had both just left.

“Keryn, this is Yen,” he called over the radio. Only static answered his call. Yen frowned, the deep sense of wrongness seeping back into his mind. He activated his throat microphone again. “Keryn, this is Yen. Answer me.”

“They deserve to die,” she replied, her voice low and cool, but carrying a razor’s edge of anger. “All the other teams that went with us are now dead or captured. The Empire caused way too much damage for us to simply fly away.”

Yen’s brow furrowed. “We’re not just flying away. The Destroyer is disabled. I made sure of that before I left. Leave it to someone else to finish. Let one of the Cruisers do the dirty work.”

“And let someone else take the glory?” Keryn retorted sharply. “We did the hard work, Yen. I fought through the Terran fighters to get you there. You took the risks of losing your own life and that of your team just to follow through on something as mundane as destroying the engine of the Destroyer. I’m telling you that we can do so much more. We can not only disable the warship, we can decimate it.”

Anger burned in Yen’s chest. The sacrifice and danger that he and his team had gone through was hardly mundane. They had done what no other team had accomplished in over a century. He had struck a decisive blow against an arrogant enemy. Who was she to downplay his accomplishment?

“I don’t know what’s going on with you,” Yen barked back, “but I’m ordering you to turn the Cair Ilmun around and return to the Revolution!”

“’When we’re in combat, I am the Captain of the ship. I answer to no one else.’ Sound familiar, Yen?” Keryn growled. “And you sure as hell can’t tell me what to… cut hard right!”

The tactical command thrown in at the end of her sentence confused Yen and his hesitation almost resulted in the death of him and his team. Tilting the wings of his Cair hard to the right, a heavy metal slug nearly half the length of his ship went flying by. Painted dark colors, it virtually vanished into empty space as soon as it had gone a few hundred feet beyond him. On the console, the radar was blinking wildly. The Destroyer, though unable to fly, still had a full complement of weapons. Dozens of rail gun slugs were filling the space behind Yen.

“We need to get out of here, now!” Adam yelled as another slug narrowly missed their ship.

“Keryn, get out of there,” Yen called into the radio. On the radar, however, Yen saw the blue dot signifying the Cair Ilmun growing further away rather than closer. Instead of retreating with him, Keryn was actually charging the Destroyer.

“What are you doing?” he yelled into his microphone.

“No one fires at me,” Keryn hissed. “I’m going to make sure they never do it again!”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

There was a pattern to the rail gun slugs and plasma missiles. It pounded like a heartbeat. Fifteen seconds between each volley of eight metal slugs. Seventy-one seconds to load and launch a new plasma rocket. Keryn couldn’t believe that she had never seen it before. It was so simple and predictable. Realizing the pattern, Keryn was able to find the surprisingly wide gaps in the Destroyer’s defensive fire. Rolling to the right, she easily avoided the next round of rail gun fire. Keryn accelerated quickly, knowing she had fifteen seconds to close the gap on the Destroyer before it was able to fire again. By then, she knew, she’d be ready to skirt their next assault.

She had been surprised to find a similar pattern amongst the Terran fighters. Behind each of the fighters, Keryn had traced their trajectory, drawing imaginary lines through the empty space. The numbers danced across her vision as the fighters wove around one another in seemingly random patterns. Tracking their movements, Keryn had computed the complex mathematical equations in her mind, revealing a simple and predictable pattern in their intricate weave. The numbers made order of their seeming chaos. After that, it had been a simple matter of pulling at the loose threads in their weave, eliminating one fighter after another until nothing remained.

Undaunted by now facing a full Destroyer, Keryn found herself giggling in the cockpit of the Cair Ilmun. Had someone asked her if she thought it were possible for a transport ship to bring down a Terran warship, Keryn would have called them crazy. Yet maybe she was the crazy one. Here she was, diving toward a Destroyer easily a hundred times the length of her own ship. Yet she knew that it was all too possible, if the pilot only had the knowledge she possessed. Knowing that she was going to succeed on what should have been a suicidal mission just deepened her laughter. With a sharp realization, Keryn recognized the strange emotion brewing in her chest. It wasn’t hysteria like she first believed, it was merriment. She was enjoying herself.

Keryn was stunned by her overwhelming sense of glee. She was getting ready to obliterate a Destroyer, potentially killing thousands of Terrans on board. While she felt no sense of guilt at their deaths since they were her enemy, happiness seemed like the wrong emotion to feel at a time like this. Keryn shook her head to try to break free of the weird sensation, but the sadistic joy remained like a shell encasing her mind.

As Keryn sat confused, her lips started to move though the words were not her own. “Stop fighting me,” her own voice filled the cockpit. “You made your choice, now accept it.”

Though it sounded odd to hear it speak outside of her own mind, Keryn knew the Voice as soon as it began. She fought for control, pulling back hands that yearned to fly the ship in spite of her mental orders. Her body struggled against her commands, leaving her fingers curling inward like claws, but never fully leaving the console.

“Stop this!” Keryn heard herself yell. “You’re going to get us killed!”

The warning claxon sounded from the radar screen. From eyes she didn’t control, Keryn saw the next barrage of rail gun slugs being fired from the Terran warship. Relinquishing control momentarily, Keryn’s fingers flew over the controls, turning the Cair Ilmun aside at the last possible moment to avoid the metal projectiles. Once they were clear and Keryn knew she had another fifteen seconds to spare, she made a move for control of her body.

A grunt escaped her lips as she tried to force them to move. “Give me back my body,” she muttered through a nearly paralyzed mouth.

“It’s not yours anymore,” the Voice replied. “You chose to merge. Now unless you intend for us to die out here, then leave me alone so that I can finish what we came here to do!”

Keryn maintained a symbiotic control only moments longer before conceding to the Voice. She felt sickened by the thought of no longer being in control. She had been relegated to an outside observer for her own actions. It made her stomach turn, a feeling that was personified by the nausea she now felt. In all aspects, she was still firmly entrenched in her own body. All sensations were hers to share. To a degree, she assumed, so were the decisions they made. But the Voice was now driving and Keryn was little more than a passenger, navigating the road.

She felt drained. Even the meager fight for her hands and lips had taken its toll. Mentally, Keryn felt exhausted. Internally though, hidden from the prying eyes of the Voice, Keryn smiled. Their roles were now reversed, with Keryn acting as the conscience to the sadistic ideations of the Voice. But, more than just being able to speak her mind, Keryn knew that her personality that had existed before had not been completely erased. For the