The Endless Sky Read online

  Setting his Acadian blaster down to a thin beam, Mud burned through the door of one of the smaller structures at the edge of the spaceport. The small building built around the door seemed uselessly tiny, enough so that Mud felt sure the door only opened on an entrance down to some lower-level structure. Proven right, he took the stairs two at a time, blaster aimed in front of him. The bottom of the stairway dead-ended at another door. This one stood unlocked. Mud threw it open, moving to the side as best he could, and waited for a four count before looking into the new doorway. A long, empty hallway stood in front of him. “You guys good?” he asked softly into his thinsuit’s comm.

  “All good here, Cap.”

  “Still laying down cover but they’ll be onto me soon. Mud, they’re starting to gather at the door you just went through, they’ll be on you soon, too,” Olivet said.

  “Thanks, don’t worry about it, continue to secure site.” Knowing his time grew short, Mud started to kick in doors along the hallways as he walked them, clearing each as fast as possible. The rooms all sat empty, full of terminals and tech still running various routines he couldn’t identify at a glance. Nearing the last rooms and the end of the hallway, he could hear boots coming down the stairs he’d used to gain entrance. One small room, near the end of the hallway, sat empty in a different way than the others. It had the power controls for the area, breakers and circuits running to a few different power junctions.

  “The hell with it,” he muttered and started to open fire, blasting the power couplings into dust. Sparks flew, and the room, and hallway, went pitch black. Red emergency lights came to life, along with a siren. Mud reentered the hallway to see a gaggle of guards running toward him, only momentarily frozen by the loss of power and lighting change.

  Before they could react, Mud set his GravPack to repel the wall behind him, and set his shield to a good two feet in front of him. He rammed through the guards like a bullet, landing himself at the foot of the stairs. Slamming the door behind him, he set his blaster to a fine beam and welded the door mostly shut. He ran up the stairs, wanting to see what havoc he had caused.

  Back above ground, in the middle of the spaceport, Mud looked around. Nothing seemed changed. Nothing obvious, at least. He caught up with Olivet. “Any word?”

  “On what? Steelbox has the tower locked down, nothing is landing or taking off. But we have no idea where the drones are controlled from. The guards seem to have—”

  “Locked them downstairs behind me. Unconscious.”

  “There’ll be more, you know.”

  “I know. So let’s work fast.” He headed toward one of the other low buildings, while Olivet took a different one. Mud sighed, seeing the building was only a small, serviceable machine shop. Might come in handy if the needed a few parts for the Arrow and were desperate, but that was all.

  He closed the door behind him, stopping to glance down at his hand on the doorknob, wondering why he bothered. Habit. Didn’t matter. Time for the next—

  Mud’s next thought blew right out of his head as an explosion knocked the wind out of him, sending him to the ground. White heat washed over him, and a steamy breeze followed. He stood, as fast as he could manage, in the after effects.

  “What was that?” Steelbox asked over comms, sounding concerned.

  “No clue,” Mud said. He looked in the direction of the explosion.

  Olivet crouched nearby the wreckage of a building, flames still shooting up from where a roof had been. Mud ran to him.

  “You all right?” he asked, helping Olivet up and drawing his own blaster.

  “No, no—” Olivet stated.

  Mud began to pat the Bercusan down, looking for injuries.

  “No—I mean yes, I am fine, but no there is no need for your gun, Mud. That explosion was my doing.”

  “You warn people before you blow something up like that,” Mud said, shaking his head.

  “I did not know it would go up like that, but I suppose the fuel cells for the drones were stored too close to the control units, and when I shot the controls to take them offline a few sparks flew further than I planned for, and—”

  “And boom,” Mud finished.

  “Boom indeed,” Olivet agreed.

  “You get all that, Steelbox?” Mud asked over comms.

  “Olivet made the world go boom?”

  “Yeah. Let’s just go find the Brands.”

  “I’ll be right down, might have a lead on them.”

  Mud and Olivet took to the sky, setting their packs to hover while Steelbox joined them, leaping out of the same broken window he’d entered the control tower from. They took off, and Steelbox explained what he’d learned.

  Meanwhile, Bee and Olivet continued to work on the Arrow. Bee felt pretty sure they could manage an orbital launch. The mix of human and Tsyfarian engines still messed with her a head a bit. She could almost understand how the Tsyfarian ones worked, but the Arrow didn’t normally use those for launch, so Chellox took the lead there. If they could use both, launch would be doable.

  That meant a slight reworking of some of the controls and wiring. She thought what they really needed was to tear down the ship and start over. Not because of this mishap, but in general. The ship was a mix of technologies and ideas, and they’d never found the time to redo their initial plans and fuse the thoughts based on experience.

  Bee stood in front of the engine compartment, doors flung wide, and thought about how to rewire things for now. Chellox sat at the controls, ready to test her ideas. He found them sound, and remained excited about the prospect. One of his reasons for joining the team originally was to help find ways to merge and enhance both human and Tsyfarian technology.

  While he sat there, looking over early readings, hearing Bee curse and bang about in the engine room, starting to adjust some connections, the main communication unit lit up. “Arrow, this is Deep Water, do you copy?”

  “Deep Water, this is Arrow,” Chellox said, cutting the mic as soon as he spoke and calling for Bee to join him. She hurried up.

  “Chellox, that you?” Bushfield’s voice came over the comm.

  “Copy that, Deep Water. Bee is here with me.”

  “Rest of the team?” Beef’s voice cut in.

  “Not the point,” Bee said. “How are you—”

  “A few minutes ago, long-range comms came back on line,” Bushfield said, “no more static. We got a quick status from them and thought maybe the jamming had died all around. Seems like.”

  “Mission team must have killed it,” Chellox said, smiling at Bee.

  She nodded. But if they’d known what they’d done, they would have reached out. “Not that they know that,” she added.

  “Either way. Need assistance, Arrow?” Deep Water asked.

  “Negative,” Chellox said.

  Bee cut his mic. “We could use the launch assist, Chellox. And if all jamming has dropped, we could find the Brands far faster than whatever Mud is doing, I’d bet my pay. They don’t know they’ve dropped it—they can’t, or they would’ve told us.”

  “Are you sure, Arrow?” Bushfield asked again.

  Bee kept a hand over the mic switch. “Then again, we don’t know drone status, or if those fighters are still out there. We ask Deep Water and Beef to come calling and we might be dragging them into a death field again. We can’t risk it.”

  “So let’s ask Mud,” Chellox said.

  “What? But he’s—”

  “Reachable without jamming now,” Chellox pointed out, “so secure comms should be online. They might not know it, but they’ll realize it once we tell them.”

  Bee moved her hand from the switch.

  “Deep Water, hold for final. Need to count eggs and baskets down here,” Chellox said.

  “Copy that, Arrow. Get back to us. Soonest.”

  Chellox flipped the communications array over to their team’s secure channel. He sent two back-to-back pings. “Bee,” he said while they waited, “how much more work do you think we h
ave until we’re launch capable?”

  “On our own, another hour. With the fighters down here to help a bit, or maybe a GravPack-assisted launch? We’d be good to go.”

  “Good,” Chellox said.

  “Arrow, this is Mud, you got secure comms back?” Mud asked suddenly.

  “Good of you to notice,” Chellox said, shrugging at Bee.

  “How’d you manage that?” Steelbox asked. “We’re on route to where we think the Brands might be, but it’s only a good guess based on—”

  “Guys,” Bee said, cutting him off, “you took out all their jamming. We can do sensor sweeps now.”

  “Are you in the air?” Mud asked.

  “Negative, still getting us fully launch capable, but Deep Water wants to know if you need help.”

  “Ha!” Mud laughed. “Tell them we also knocked out drone control. Doors open, if they can clear fighters. Any set of you guys want to come hunt, let me know. Your sensors will outstrip our thinsuits any day.”

  “Confirm, please,” Chellox said. “Drone control is down?”

  “Confirmed. Drone control, jammers, and the space port is closed, so those fighters up there are getting minimal ground support,” Steelbox said.

  “Guys, seek cover and wait for us to get everyone in the loop,” Bee said. “We’ll get you scanner support, maybe heavy air support, soonest.”

  “Copy. We’re dropping low to wait now.”

  Bee looked at Chellox. “I’ll go finish the hotwire—it’ll hold for launch and then I can adjust it for a hard burn home. You get Bushfield down here if they think they can punch through the ships remaining and have a plan for opening the door on the way out. But only then. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” Chellox said.

  Chellox started to negotiate entry with Bushfield while Mud and crew settled down from their flight. They stood on the roof of a six-story building, feeling exposed. Mud forced open an access door and they entered the building, finding it to be a simple apartment structure. They considered making their way downstairs and hiding in whatever basement the building possessed, but Mud noticed cameras along the hallways, so instead they hit the roof and lit off again.

  They landed quickly on a street, figuring three flying people would be readily noticed and probably already had been. With all eyes on the nearby spaceport explosions and commotion, they had worked out a small window where they could afford to be seen, but that window was closing in on them quickly.

  Ducking into a random store along the street, Olivet bought three large ponchos and, donning one, took the other two to the alley where his teammates waited. With their thinsuits and GravPacks concealed, even if badly, they could walk the streets somewhat easier.

  For their part, Bushfield and Beef finished repairs on their ships and fired up sensors to locate the other fighters in the area around McDallison. Nine of them remained, and they still hung about the planet, waiting.

  Nine-on-two weren’t impossible odds, but they made precise timing suspect. Bushfield ran through a few scenarios while waiting to hear back from the Arrow. She had a plan in mind by the time Bee came back over comms.

  “Arrow to Deep Water, do you copy?”

  “Go ahead, Arrow,” she said.

  “Mission team could use scanning help. But you need to open door.”

  “Nine remain upstairs with us. But if Beef swings low for a scan pass, we can shoot the data to you, and the Arrow can take it from there,” Bushfield said.

  “Why not have us do the sensor run, too, then, Deep Water?” Chellox asked.

  “Do that and these fighters will come for you. If we tangle them here and make them think you had to’ve gone down firm, it should buy you time to run the mission and get upstairs while we hold doors. Copy?”

  “Copy that, Deep Water. We’ll relay orders and start a clock soon. Status green?”

  “We’re itching to get back into it, Arrow—don’t sleep on the dance floor on our account. Deep Water out.” She switched to ship-to-ship communications and started to work out the exact plan with Beef.

  Back planetside, Mud and Bee worked out the plan quickly as well. They looped Deep Water in and started the mission clock. Chellox fired up the Arrow and waited.

  Deep Water and Beef nudged throttles high and aimed themselves at McDallison. The nine fighters around the planet fanned out to engage in response. They’d lost communication with their ground group and could no longer confirm drone deployment, so they acted as if they were alone, which they were.

  Beef turned hard, unleashing a barrage of blaster fire from his ship, forcing a few of the enemy ship to turn and give chase. Deep Water came at the remaining fighters head on, flying tight evasive patterns to avoid a lock. She didn’t fire a single shot, making the fighters she closed in on nervous.

  “Beef, you getting that tinkling on your hull?” she asked.

  “Scattered, useless drones,” he said, confirming her suspicions.

  “Yup, complete the mission, Beef, go for dive.”

  Beef changed his ship’s angle of attack quickly and dove toward McDallison, four enemy ships following him. Deep Water changed her approach as well, turning away from the confused group in front of her to follow Beef, coming behind the four on his tail. The five fighters now behind her took after her quickly.

  A hard flip turned Beef’s ship around so it started to fall into McDallison’s gravity well backwards. Pointed back up at the sky, he started to fire at the ships chasing him. Deep Water took the sign to break off before she hit atmosphere, flipping her own ship and heading right into the clutch of five ships firing at her. She opened fire and zipped between them, leading them back away from the planet.

  Beef flipped his ship again, the hull enjoying the strain, so he could use his engines to control his descent. This is where things got tricky for him. His group was excellent at deep space combat flights, but in atmosphere the fighters behind him had logged more time, gaining experience he didn’t have. He lost all advantage, but also only had to do one simple sweep. So he led them on a chase over the planet until he could do a low flyby over Kenzo.

  He set his sensors to a very specific search and let the ship’s computer drink in data while trying to dodge blaster shots from the ships behind him. They winged him a few times, smoldering bits of hull glowing red beneath his shields. He tight beamed the data his sensors had scooped up over to the Arrow and hit thrusters hard in a wide arc of climb, heading back out of the sky and into the black. The climb felt as if it took days, the sky unending around him. He took on more fire, the fighters behind him climbing and starting to gain on him.

  Beef tried to nudge his throttle faster but nothing happened. The engines strained against atmo, reaching for the silence of space, but the shots behind him were getting closer and closer. Suddenly a ship flew past him, headed down into the gravity well. It went by in a blur, blasters firing.

  “Thanks, Deep Water,” he said on comms, feeling his ship react to the thinning air around it. Another few seconds and he would be back in open space.

  Bushfield’s ship came up alongside him. “They’re still on us, but we’ll have time to climb,” she said. “I left four up there to greet. Let’s keep them busy and hold the door open. Clock’s running.”

  “Copy that, Deep Water.”

  In the Arrow, Bee ran through the sensor data as Chellox took off. They headed directly for Kenzo, stopping just short of the sprawling city itself. She fed the results of the scans to the mission team’s thinsuits and waited. She checked the mission clock and tried to tamp down the anxiousness that welled up in her chest.

  Mud, Steelbox, and Olivet took off at the coordinates the scan results gave them. A small building, only three stories, marked off as their target. Fortified for battle, the building would be hard to crack if they wanted to be subtle. But the clock running down didn’t get them the time.

  Instead, they rammed the building with gravity shields repeatedly while Mud burned through the superstructure with his A
cadian blaster. The fortifications were as good as most long-range ship hulls, and it took longer than they’d hoped. But by the time they’d gotten through, they’d caused so much damage to the structure that the internal defenses were offline and the guards inside were rattled, if even still conscious, from the falling debris.

  It was, overall, the wrong way to get to their target in any condition other than the one they found themselves in. Keeping their fields at a set two feet, the three crewmembers of the Arrow walked through the building, letting still-falling bits of wall and ceiling bounce off their shields and shatter on the floor. They walked to the basement, easily laying down enough fire to fill the hallway among the three of them.

  The guards, realizing this would never go their way, started to flee. They, quite honestly, were not paid enough for this level of brute force. With the leading crime family in town obviously going down, their hired hands left at speed, hoping to guess the correct next-in-line family and to secure jobs with them.

  They came upon a reinforced door, the walls around it still intact, and looked at each other. “I got it,” Mud said, checking the charge on his blaster. Seeing it was low, Mud considered a door-knocker move with his GravPack. He looked behind him and realized the space provided was too small for dodging a door flying at the speed of sound right at your face. He patted at his leg and confirmed a back-up charge for his blaster. Steelbox and Olivet took up positions on either side of the doorframe.

  Setting the Acadian blaster for the highest possible burn—his spare clip in hand, ready to deploy—Mud took three shots, barrel against one edge of the door itself. Three shots and the hinges on the other side simply vanished into smoke. He pushed the door in, ejecting the empty blaster clip and slotting home the replacement in a smooth motion.

  Four guards started to fire and Mud hit the floor. Steelbox and Olivet came around the frame of the door from either side, firing quick to disable the guards. They shot on stun settings only, seeing no reason to kill. Two people, similar in looks—both thin, with almost glowingly white skin and green hair—sat in matching suits, lounging in ornate recliners.