“Are you linked to the ship as well?” she asked softly, knowing he would hear her.
His terse nod was all the answer she needed to confirm that he hadn’t been lying about not being human. Given her situation, she’d made sure to keep up with technological advances on the cybernetic front. It had pretty much stalled when the Scorperio units had crippled their operators. The furthest doctors would venture these days were things like the exoskeletal supports she’d been forced to rely on over the last few years. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the level of technology he so casually displayed… humanity wasn’t anywhere close to it. Obviously, the Lathar were.
They reached the bridge to find Sparky strapped into the copilot’s seat. He cast them a look over his shoulder. “Glad you’ve both got clothes on. Strap in. This is going to be a bumpy ride.”
“Put me there,” Eris ordered, motioning to the gunner’s position. She wasn’t surprised to see it. Ships that ran in the Pheidian Belt were often armed to the teeth, a show of force to put off pirates. Hopefully, it would be enough.
“You got it, babe,” he murmured, setting her down gently. He reached for her harness to strap her in but she slapped his hands away.
“My legs don’t work, not my hands. Now go!” she ordered, nodding toward the pilot’s chair.
“Yes, ma’am.” He stole a quick, hard kiss and was gone.
Her hands were swift and efficient, buckling herself in as she looked at the screen. To her relief, it was familiar. An argus seventeen control unit with what looked like byzantine seven rail guns and, she flicked the screen across… yeah, a full complement of torpedoes. It was just the big brother to the weapons system in her suit, one she’d spent many hours training on.
“Weapons systems coming online,” she called out, attention on the tracking systems as they came online. Her expression tightened. Three lancer class troop carriers were following them. They were fast, maneuverable and unfortunately armed to the teeth.
“Confirm, three targets coming in hot. I can keep them off our tails but not for long. Gonna need some fancy flying, boys.”
“You got it, doll,” Sparky replied, and a small lurch told her they’d just disengaged the autopilot.
Sliding her hands into the gun controls, she called out over her shoulder. “Any pearls of wisdom to impart about fighting SO13, Allen?”
“Yeah,” he called back. “Don’t get fucking shot.”
“I had heard that tends to sting a little,” she threw back, just as Zero warned. “Going for a high-g right and then prep for flight pattern Alpha-three-three-nine. In three, two, one… mark!”
Eris gritted her teeth as the ship rolled, peeling off to the right. The high-speed maneuver raised a question she filed for later. If Zero wasn’t human, how the hell did he know Terran combat patterns so well?
Automatically she adjusted her line of sight, her chair swiveling in its mountings to keep her level as she focused on the ships following them. Working in concert with the targeting systems, she grinned in triumph as two lit up red.
“Torpedoes away,” she announced, hitting the triggers. The tail plumes of both torpedoes blossomed in her view screen for a split second. Then the ship pitched and dropped, sliding behind an asteroid just as the lancers engaged their rail guns. Without line of sight, she was forced to rely on her screens.
“Direct hit, one down. One shook the lock,” she called out, but then it was game on.
Both Allen and Zero called out flight patterns. She responded on the fly, adapting her firing techniques to the flight profile and the cover from the asteroids around them. They played hide and seek with the lancers, trying to stay in shelter and inflict the maximum amount of damage without getting tagged themselves.
But nothing could last forever.
“Guys,” she called out in warning, cutting the rail guns as they slid behind another asteroid. “Running low on ammo. I have maybe two engagements left. We’re gonna need to make a break for it. Or we’re fucked. Seriously.”
8
❖
“Fuck!” Sparky, strapped into the seat next to him, spat. “She’s right. And we’re almost down to vapor on the fuel. We’re out of options, big man. Any ideas?”
Zero’s lips compressed into a thin line. He didn’t need to check the systems to know they were both telling the truth. As soon as he’d slid into the pilot’s seat and taken control, he’d known they had a snowball in hell’s chance of beating the three human ships. All they could do was evade and delay the inevitable.
Well… almost all they could do.
“Conserve fuel and ammo,” he ordered, adjusting the ship’s systems on the fly. Opening airlocks and depressurizing whole areas, he increased efficiency so their fuel would go further. At the same time, he used the long-range sensors to plot a course through the asteroid field. Multitasking was the beauty of being a cyborg. If someone had given him a broom, he could’ve swept the floor as well.
Then he felt the smallest tickle at the back of his onboard and smiled.
“Eris, I want you to bring the guns to bear on the following coordinates,” he ordered, rattling off a sequence in the human format. “Sparky, ready the ship for flight pattern Kilo-seven-five.”
Sparky jerked in his seat in surprise, turning to look at him even as he keyed in the sequence. “Sure about that, big man. That’s gonna put us flying through a whole fucking heap of rock when shotgun back there blasts that rock to hell. Our shields can’t take that load.”
“Trust me,” Zero shot back. There was
