The pressure of the ships was relieved a bit—they weren’t coming in as hard or as fast. We’d managed to create a gap, and it was one Nyna took advantage of as she dove toward the controller.
We focused our fire on the main target. Every shot was weakening the controller ship’s structure. It was removing mass we didn’t have to punch through. It was causing internal damage, and, with any luck, its controller was panicking.
I hoped the creature saw us coming and understood what we were about to do. I hoped it realized the mistake it had made fighting against me. I hoped it was afraid.
A moment later, we drove our ship into the controller’s.
I closed my eyes and held on to my trigger as we chewed our way through the enemy vessel until the yoke was ripped from my hands. Something hard hit my knee. Something else scratched my forearm’s entire length. Then I was struck in the middle of my chest and felt all the air leave my lungs in one hard woosh.
Suddenly, I was weightless. I opened my eyes and found myself staring out into the stars. The sun was almost completely down. Only a hint of red touched the horizon. We’d busted through the controller ship and had saved Thaz’red, for now. It would be a burning heap hurtling toward the ground. There would be no survivors—not from the damage we’d dealt.
I looked over my shoulder toward Nyna. She didn’t look harmed, but she was slumped over in the pilot’s seat. The impact had knocked her out cold. Then, we started moving again, drawn to the center of the planet by its gravity.
“Wake up!” I yelled to Nyna, but she didn’t respond.
I unhooked myself from my harness and made my way toward her, pushing broken, loose-hanging beams out of the way. A bundle of loose wires shocked me as I brushed past them, but I ignored the pain until I reached her.
The controls were foreign to me. I didn’t know which did what. They looked like nothing more than a random collection of knobs, switches, buttons, and rods. I didn’t have time to think about it, so I touched one of the rods close to the middle of the control board and pushed it to the right. Nothing happened.
I pushed all the buttons surrounding it. Some illuminated red, others green, and one blue, but nothing changed. I started flipping nearby switches and heard an explosion from somewhere at the rear of the spacecraft.
“I got this!” Nyna said groggily as she jolted upright with blurry eyes. She reached out with an unsteady hand and began pressing buttons, flipping switches, and turning knobs. The wind began to slow, and I could feel her pulling the ship out of its dive.
“We have almost no power,” she said. “It’s not the Fex; it’s everything else. We’re gonna land hard.”
“Then land us hard,” I told her.
“I’m not sure I can,” she said. “Not without killing us.”
“I believe in you,” I told her.
I took one of her hands and kissed it. She pressed her lips together hard and she set her jaw.
“Hang on,” she said. “This is gonna be rough.”
Several seconds of steady flight passed before it was interrupted by a high-pitched explosion. Our ship yawed violently to the left and rolled a few degrees before Nyna was able to right it.
“Well, at least that part of the ship wasn’t important,” she laughed. “Ten seconds, everyone! Hold on!”
I couldn’t see much of our approach, but I saw enough. The city was covered in a thick layer of fog that rose up in the center like an inverted tornado. The space elevator’s base was at the arena. I knew the place only too well. The place I reunited with Reaver. The place I’d met Beatrix.
We hit the first building a moment after entering the fog. It spun us a few degrees to the right. The next impact spun us a little more, followed by another hit to the right, then a light spin to the left. Nyna worked the controls and corrected our course to keep us oriented the right way up. I’d never seen such piloting skills in my life and didn’t think I’d meet her equal if I lived to be a thousand years old.
The impacts were joined by a hard vibration and the roar and screech of our skidding landing. A few seconds later, it was all over.
“Status!” I yelled as I helped Nyna from her harness.
“I’m good!” Reaver called back before coughing.
The cabin was filling with smoke. The ship was on fire.
“I am alive!” Beatrix said. “And I am thankful to Nyna! You are a good pilot!”
“Skrew is pissed!” the vrak said. “Stupid, dumb bugs broke ship! Broke Skrew’s mech! Skrew is fire-pissed! Flaming-fire-pissed!”
“Everyone out!” I ordered. “Grab what weapons are nearby, but evacuate quick! The ship is on fire!”
The talking stopped as the scrambling began. I kicked my way out of the remnants of my weapon pod. I was out first, and I quickly scanned the area for threats. We’d landed on a street that should have been busy with pedestrians but was eerily empty.
I helped Nyna, then Skrew, from the ship. He had a large gash across his forehead that was bleeding down his face.
“Here!” Reaver said from the far side of the ship. She was pointing her rifle at a building and waving us over with her other hand. She’d found shelter, a place that would allow us to patch ourselves up before heading out. We didn’t need long, but taking a break out on the street would have been suicide. I carried Skrew under one arm, Nyna under the other, and
