“We can stop them from coming to Earth,” I whispered. “We’ll ambush them at home.”
“Home?” Zonrial asked.
“Their planet. We have the location, and—”
Zonrial crossed the space, grabbing my suit. She shoved me back, and my helmet hit the wall. “How do you know where they live?”
Jade was on her, pulling her off me. “Because we broke into a Squid and secured the information.”
Zonrial dusted off her hands and glanced at Trid. “If what they say is true, maybe we can have an edge. End this before it starts.”
“Wait, are you saying none of you have ever been on a Squid… or Barge before?” Varn shook his head. “Maybe we shouldn’t be teaming up with these guys. We’d do better on our own.”
“They do not concede so easily. How is it you found access?” Trid asked.
I quickly told him about the idle vessel we’d recently encountered, and he smiled. It wasn’t a good look for the alien. “Yes. Maybe this will work.” One of the other Darlor called out, and Trid flinched. “The Velibar are close. The transports are in danger. Come. We go now.”
“We just got here,” Varn complained.
“What’s the plan? Where’s the fleet?” Luther asked Trid.
“Right in front of you. We sent the rest to escort our people off Refuge.”
I laughed, disbelieving what I was hearing. “This?” I pointed around the room to the twenty or so people. “How are we ever going to fend off five of these bastards with a handful of people?”
Zonrial lifted her brow. “You’ll see.”
NINE
Luther whistled as we flew for Refuge. They weren’t messing around. The Stin ships numbered around two hundred. They came from every direction, joining our fleet as we raced toward our destination.
I was shocked by the fact that Refuge had been occupied over two thousand years, and that they’d evaded the Velibar for that long. I was beginning to understand how large a threat our enemies were.
I wondered what it had been like for my grandfather to encounter them on his mission to Proxima. Trid’s expression of fear said a lot. Maybe Preston had only done what was necessary to survive.
“Approach imminent,” R11 relayed from the Stin fleet. He was still in binary contact, not wanting to compromise our location to the Squids. So far, they seemed unaware of our tactic. We guessed the original assault by the seven bogeys had been a random event, but there was no way to prove it.
The four Darlor ships were nearly as big as Capricious. They were exceedingly boxy and black, and judging by the massive weapons jutting from the sides, deadly as well. Trid had seemed like a decent person, but their vessels were anything but gentle. He called them Pursuers.
Two of the Squids were orbiting Refuge, and I feared they were going to descend into the atmosphere. It was the only reason the Velibar would have wings on the hulls, and true to my instincts, they did just that. Three of them remained in position around the planet, their incensed tentacles pulsing red, flush with power.
The Stin fleet was controlled by a computer network, and R11 said they had a hive mind. They shifted in unison, based on projected actions, and watching their horde race for the first Squid was awe-inspiring. I noticed the change in their target’s flight path and assumed the Velibar had finally spotted the incoming armada.
“Shields up,” Jade called. We’d raced closer with FTL and had cut them off to meet with the rest of our friends. The Core was powerful, but we needed the primary pulse to repel shields while traveling at those speeds. The secondary safeguards were enough to protect the Racer from any errant space debris, and no one could successfully fire on us when the drive was running.
A few of the flyers turned their attention toward Killer and us, but my eyes were locked on the Squid as the tentacles whipped out, shooting their blasts at the Stin. The cluster of robot-powered vessels sprinted to the side, as if they’d jumped. The blasts continued, missing their targets. The Squid increased their assault, but the Stin anticipated each move. It was impressive.
Luther fought off a flyer while I edged closer to Refuge. With the Stin taking the nearest Squid’s attention off us, it created a path. Trid had asked my Racer to lower to the surface with his craft. He hoped that R11 and Jade could assist with the repairs on the transport before the Velibar reached the remaining colonists.
“Varn, you okay up here?” I asked. The man had once been my nemesis, and he could be a little irritating, but we were bonded by this mission. I wanted him safe, as well as Aster and Jinx, whom I had requested join us.
“Don’t worry about us. Go help them kick butt!” Varn’s voice cut off as he flew directly at two flyers.
Luther managed to disable another as we passed it, racing for Refuge. I’d witnessed our own solar system’s planets, planetoids, moons, and asteroids, but seeing another naturally habitable world like this was far different. There was a vast ocean, sandwiched by two bodies of land. One was beige and desert-like, the other three thousand kilometers away and green and vibrant. That was our destination.
Only one of the boxy Darlor Pursuers entered the atmosphere with us, and it was the one Trid occupied.
I scanned the radar, locating a city a few hundred kilometers away. The transports were near it, a short distance from the city’s limits. The Squids were a vision of terror as they descended slowly through the air, moving to the evacuated metropolis.
They had to be stopped. But we were just one Racer, and Trid had ordered us to assist with the repairs, not fight the Velibar.
I gritted my teeth as we screeched for the transports, making quick work of the kilometers. The SeaTech Racer was one of a kind, a true
