The soldiers at the gates glanced at each other, and started to run. I’d already thought Brazud’s soldiers were terrible, but this was something else.
“Follow me!” I yelled.
I jammed the accelerator and shot toward the gate. I bailed from my hoverbike and hit the ground rolling. I was still rolling when I heard the explosion of my vehicle crashing into the gate. I didn’t think I’d destroyed the metal barrier, but it would be easier to knock down when the time came.
When my tumbling slowed, I planted my feet, drew Ebon, and looked toward the gate. My hoverbike had punched a hole big enough to ride another hoverbike through.
The gate was open.
An explosion to my right almost knocked me off my feet. I realized then that the soldiers outside the gates hadn’t been running from us, they were running from the reinforcements.
Three arrowhead-shaped fighter skiffs glided over the streets on a carpet of acrid smoke. All three were painted black with yellow trim. Weapon pods extended on their upper halves and appeared to have been designed to fight other skiffs rather than engage ground targets.
They were close enough that I could see the shapes of the vrak gunners at the pods under transparent canopies. Good. If it was a computer system doing the shooting, I’d need to take out the entire vessel. With living gunners, all I had to do was make them not living.
“Go!” I yelled to my friends on their bikes.
As Beatrix rode her bike toward the gate, she held a hand out to me. I took it as she passed, and the force nearly broke our grip, but I was able to swing myself onto the back of her vehicle. She lifted her tentacles almost straight up, helping give me an unobstructed view of my surroundings.
We had made it through the gate, and while Reaver, Skrew, and Yaltu were on their bike a few dozen yards ahead.
The enemy skiff’s particle cannons opened up, and the ground exploded around us. The hostiles began to anticipate our moves, firing where they expected us to be and shooting targets around us. Beatrix juked to avoid them. I knew it was only a matter of time before they got a lucky shot.
My hands ached for the minigun I’d used in the garage. If I’d had a way to shoot-down the skiffs, I would have done it. They were too fast to throw anything at and expect to hit. The largest one was too heavily armored to swat it from the sky with a tree or power pole. Even our rifles would be useless against such heavily armored and shielded vehicles.
I needed a really big gun, but the only ones nearby were…
On top of the skiffs themselves.
Chapter Thirty-Three
I’d already seen how a Fex could power a minigun stripped from a mech, so I figured I could do the same with a gun from the enemy skiffs. I could strip one away and still be able to provide it power with the little marble.
“I need to get on top of one of their skiffs!” I said to Beatrix as we raced through the city outskirts. People peered out from within scrap metal huts to watch us, but they soon fled when they heard the enemy skiffs.
“Are you insane?” she demanded.
“It’s that or get vaporized!”
She shook her head and glanced over her shoulder to see where they were. Then she looked ahead and nodded toward a transmission tower.
We were outside the city walls now, but we still had to get through the outskirts.
I raised my knees, planted my feet under myself, and waited for my opportunity.
“Now!” she said as she slammed on the brakes and ducked low.
I launched myself over her head, hit the roof of a nearby building, and jumped again to a higher ledge. The metal of the structure buckled under my grip as I heaved and launched myself further upward. A quick glance told me that the enemy skiffs were still prioritizing my squad. They hadn’t seen me leave the hoverbike.
They were in for a hell of a surprise.
I caught the transmission tower near the top, straightened both my arms, and stuck my body out like a flag in a stiff breeze. When the last skiff approached a second later, I relaxed my left arm, lowered my body a bit, straightened it again, and let go as I performed one aerial cartwheel before landing hard on the craft.
I took three big steps and planted my foot behind the gunner’s canopy. I drew Ebon in one movement and decapitated him. I sheathed my weapon again, then caught hold of the particle cannon on the front of the skiff. My muscles strained against junkyard hydraulics until the support gave under my grip.
Then I ripped the big cannon from its mount. I kept an eye on the other two smaller skiffs and the brightly colored leader as I fished the Fex from my pocket. The trailing cables snaked toward my pocket to search out the tiny orb. The wires wound themselves around the small orb as if they had a life of their own. Circuits began to form, and wires attached themselves together in patterns. The cannon grew warm, and I heard the most beautiful sound in the world as the hum of firing capacitors vibrated through my body.
I planted my feet as the skiff pilot tried to throw me off. One of the skiffs was in pursuit behind the one I was riding, likely preparing to take a shot once they reached a better angle. They wanted to kill me rather than shooting down one of their own skiffs. It seemed they’d realized I was more of a danger than my friends on hoverbikes.
I quickly inspected the weapon, found a cover plate, and ripped it off with my fingernails. Underneath was a button—the manual fire. The buttons were usually used in
