Talon flew swiftly. Anger raged in his heart. He was no longer just angry with his enemies, but at the fact that he was being separated from a woman he loved.
He might never see her again despite his promise and hers. It was just a fact of battle.
His parents had died too soon, and without ever being able to tell each other they loved each other one more time. He had not had nearly enough time with Jessica, and he wanted that time with her.
The small craft was much faster than the cumbersome and large ships currently firing their weapons at Old Earth. He said, “Let’s see how you like this.”
He dropped a neutron-radia-spore bomb directly onto the upper decks of a rust bucket of a ship and then banked hard right, one hand already toggling the control so that he could stay in touch with the others and let them know to get as far away from that ship as possible.
The ships flew by him; Caleb and the others soared higher and then spread apart, away from the explosion that rocked the ship and then sent the debris hurtling downward. It never made the surface because it disintegrated, its larger pieces breaking up and the smaller ones vanishing completely.
A federation fighter craft came up behind him. A dogfight ensued. Whoever the pilot was, he was determined to kill Talon and protect the enemy ships.
But why? Why would Federation soldiers betray their very oath?
He understood that the Federation was in collusion with the Gorlites, and had always been, but surely the Federation soldiers could see that that race was currently killing Federation-held people.
Talon spun the ship in a lightning-fast loop that put him behind the Federation fighter craft. His fingers found the controls, and he sent a blast of laser light at the ship, but its pilot was equally skilled and fast, and the craft escaped unscathed.
Talon swore a few times and then hit the throttle. He increased the speed, leading the Federation ship toward a small spinning asteroid belt. He knew it was risky. One wrong move, a single dip of the wing, and he was dead.
He made it past the first flying asteroids. His hands took the ship down, flying at a severe angle that made his stomach clench and roll. His feet slid sideways, and if it hadn’t been for the tightness of the control command space, he probably would have been knocked away from those controls.
The craft behind him either didn’t register the small asteroid that had broken away from the larger chunk or didn’t have time to avoid it. Either way, the result was the same. The Federation craft took a severe hit and then exploded into a ball of flame.
Talon zoomed to one side and let the draft of the explosion take him higher. His eyes darted across the battleground of the skies. He could see that one of his crew was in trouble, running from a harrier that was doing its best to lock its weapon sights onto his craft.
Talon spared in behind the enemy ship and fired, one cold and calculated blast later, and his crewmember was free of the threat.
But Talon was now engaged in a fight between himself and a larger ship, one that was far more heavily armed than he was. He had to use all of his skills to dodge the blasts; hoping to evade them again, he slid around the fuel stream of a Gorlite ship and as he had hoped, the blast caught that stream and ignited it, causing the Gorlite ship to catch fire.
That might not be enough to cripple or destroy that ship but at least if the creatures on it were too busy trying to save their ship and lives, they might be too busy to keep firing on him and his small number of crew in their aircraft.
Talon took the craft lower. The others were harassing the other ships, trying to line up long enough to drop more bombs on them. Talon knew the odds of them taking out more than a half dozen of those ships were low, but even a half a dozen would certainly skew the odds more in their favor, particularly if Jessica and the others were able to raise an army on the ground in the meantime.
Jessica.
She was his match in every single way. When this was all over, and he hoped that eventually one day there would be a space and time where they could be at peace with themselves and with each other and with the universe, he was going to tell her everything about her that he loved.
The fighting continued. He took his craft up beside the one flown by Caleb. He checked his weapon supply and saw with a sinking heart that while the craft were armed for warfare, they were lightly armed. He only had one more bomb and enough munitions to, if he was lucky, take out one more ship and some of the smaller Federation craft.
He kept dodging fire, but there were only so many times he would be able to do that, and he was smart enough to know it. It did no good at all to keep flying if he had no weapons left. He would be better off doing what damage that he could and then get back to the ground, and Jessica.
Caleb dropped a bomb on top of a large craft, and they both quickly darted out of the path of the explosion and found themselves engaged in another dogfight. Talon managed to take the ship down and out of the path of impending death just as he was being pursued from the back by one Federation craft and approaching a small Gorlite-laden ship.
Those two ships collided in mid-air. That collision destroyed the Federation craft, but the other limped along up until a well-aimed blast by Harlon took out its engines and sent it plummeting toward the surface.
Talon could barely keep up with the number of ships now headed toward the planet. He had been right to set his craft down; they would’ve all died aboard. Now he was facing a choice of going back down and attempting to get more weapons onto the ship that he was currently piloting or finding a new ship that was already loaded with weapons.
He was not the only one facing that choice either. Harlon had already dropped one bomb, as did Caleb and several of the others. Those bombs were effective, wrecking ships so neatly that there was absolutely no way that anything aboard them could survive, but for every ship they took out, there seemed to be two more shucking off their cloaking devices.
Sweat flicked his body, and the thrill of battle deserted him. Once upon a time, he had lived for this, but now he just felt weary and disgusted. There was so much death all around him.
He dropped the last bomb and then took out a medium-sized Federation cruiser that clearly had no weapons but which tried to block his way so that an incoming Federation fighter craft could fire upon him.
Talon toggled the com-buttons. “Can you hear me?”
Harlon answered with, “Yes boss.”
Caleb and the others answered as well. Talon apprised them of the situation. “I’m out of weapons. How many of you still have some left?”
Very few did. Talon said, “Get as close as you can to whatever ship you can and drop whatever you’ve got. Do as much damage as you can and then get back to the surface. We have to find fresh ammunition. I’m headed down.”
He hit the toggle to turn off the communication and then neatly flew around several ships attempting to come toward him. They pursued him all the way down, and it took sheer flying skills and instinct to dodge those hits.
One did strike, shearing off a wing, and he groaned as he realized that he was going to have to make a second tricky and potentially fatal landing. He considered auto-ejecting himself as he got closer but then he remembered all of the humans down there racing around in the streets.
The ships that were not disintegrating above were raining debris, some of it large enough to topple entire city blocks, down on the city as it was. He did not want to be the cause of someone’s death, so he stuck it out, flying in hard and fast coming in for a very bumpy landing that was nevertheless much softer than the original one he had made such a short time before.
The craft had barely settled before he was killing its power and jumping from it. The enemy had destroyed much in the way of ships; there was very little to choose from. Now that the one he had been and was missing a wing, it too was grounded. As he raced along the docks, searching for anything that would be able to fly and fight, he spotted terrified humans, many of them injured, huddled along the docks.
His eyes turned skyward. They had done what they could above and in the skies. There was absolutely no ship he could take up now. The other crewmembers landed, and he raced toward them.
Harlon said, “I think we are grounded.”
Talon nodded, “I think you’re right. We took out as many as we could, and we slowed them down some. That’s the best we can do I think. Help me help these people.”
More fire rained down from the enemy ships. People screamed and ran, scuttling across the street and back as they realized that no place was safe.
Talon and the other set to work. The goal now wasn’t to prevent the invasion but to minimize the casualties.
A man with blood pouring from his nose grabbed Talon’s wrist. His eyes held rage and courage. “Give me a weapon,” he said in an urgent voice. “I can fight. I will fight. I am from below and, well, if I want to stay above, I suppose there has to be an above, now doesn’t there?”
Talon nodded. “I would say yes, but you are wounded right now. I am not sure you are well enough to fight.”
“I am,” the man insisted.
A woman ran up. Her robes were blue and her hair white. She fell to her knees beside a young woman who was moaning in pain. The older woman looked up at Talon and the others, her face awash with tears. “The Federation delegate’s mansion still stands. We need to take it and use it. There’s nowhere else big enough to use as a medi-bay. They blew up the medi-bays.”
Talon looked in the direction that the woman had pointed in. “Take it?”
“I mean if there’s anyone in there who says no you and yours will have to tell them yes.” The old woman stood, and that was when he saw that her robes were stained with blood. “I have lost far too many this day and the days before it. There is death everywhere here, and we need to set up a place where people can get help.”
The man with the bloody forehead said, “They’ll likely bomb it too.”
“I know.” The woman sent him a beseeching look. “I do, but I have to try. Please, for the love of all that is good and sane, help me with those who are hurt. I am begging you.”
Talon said, “Come on, let’s help get the wounded there.” He paused. “Have you seen a woman, dark blonde, in a uniform like mine?”
The woman frowned. “I think so. When I was driving the tracked craft a woman wearing something similar was running with two small boys. She said she had found them in a rubble pile. The boys said she could not get their mother out. They went to the alley where we have the rest of the wounded that we have found so far, but they can’t stay outside. Many of them need attention now, and we need a place we can defend if those creatures land.”
True enough. Any stronghold was better than none.
Talon wrapped his arms around the battered young woman and lifted her in his arms. “Do you have meds and bandages?”
“Some, but not enough. I can’t keep up. The medi-bays are gone, and we might just have to make do with what we have and…”
Her lips turned downward, and he knew what she meant. They might just have to let the ones injured the most gravely die in order to help those who were less injured. It was a hard choice, and he knew it. He gave her a long and level look. “I understand. Let’s go; everyone help someone, and do it now. When we get these in, we’ll go to this alley of yours and help the rest.”
The young woman in his arms sobbed, “They abandoned us. The Federation abandoned us!”
The older woman looked at the young woman and said, “They have only just now abandoned you. They abandoned those of us who lived below centuries ago.”
The young woman’s sobs tapered down. Her face wore a stunned expression. “You…you live below?”
The older woman’s eyes held anger and compassion. “If you don’t want a below grounder to touch you, if you are like so many of your kind, you go right on and say so. I have people who actually want to live and who don’t care who helps them all over this city.”
Talon started walking.