Night Song (The Guild Wars Book 9) by Mark Wandrey (best ereader under 100 .txt) 📕

Ripley echoed the noise, dropping her tone to provide an eerie counterpoint to the sound beating against Shadow’s eardrums.

“Abandon ship.” Bana managed calm even in those words, and Shadow had never admired the old merc more. “Tell me you at least remember the evacuation plans.”

“Aye,” the mercs around him chorused, and Shadow vowed to pay attention at the next safety briefing, should he live long enough to experience one.

* * *

Ripley shoved her way into the copilot’s chair, glaring at Lieutenant Dick “Flop” Prendergast when he opened his mouth.

“Was about to ask for you,” Flop said, and she grunted in response as she strapped in. The Phoenix was crewed by two, a pilot and a gunner/navigator, with the pilot sitting forward, and the gunner/navigator behind and facing slightly to starboard. The other qualified pilot had still been on Starbright, as the Phoenix was only a backup and not used on operations. Mostly it served as a shuttle and for cadre.

“I was afraid you’d chuck a wobbly if I tried to rear-seat.”

“You’re better than nothing,” Flop said, about as close to a compliment as he’d ever offered her.

She hadn’t flown in combat before, but her reaction times were far faster than Flop’s, though not as assured or practiced. She’d rather fly than gun. Entropy take them all if she’d sit idly in the back while they flew through who knows what in hopes of some kind of safety to regroup in.

If there was safety to be found. She forced her ears upright and smoothed out her snarl. “Squad’s aboard, sir.”

“Let’s get out of here while there’s getting to be got.” He snapped the last of his pre-flight checks into place. Ripley finished securing the thigh board to her leg and flicked the switch to talk to the rest of the squad.

“We’re out in seconds, get strapped in and brace. It’s going to get bumpy real fast.”

The Paku still spun in the remaining crew’s attempt to keep the bulk of the ship in one piece.

“Decompression underway,” the intercom announced in Zuul. Any moment, once the docking door opened, they’d get the signal from the captain to disengage and make a run for it. The Paku would launch some ECM; hopefully that would cover the small ships dropping away. They’d have to run through the remaining missiles, ongoing laser fire, existing debris, and any additional mess that had been added to the fight in the time it had taken them to evacuate.

“This is avoidance, not engagement,” the pilot said, though Ripley didn’t know which of them he felt the need to remind. Given how the Paku had fared, their dropship had no business doing anything other than running as quickly as possible.

As the dropship finished firing up, a tiny Tri-V came alive before her. The Phoenix was decades out of date. The Tri-V was small because it was a major cost point, imported parts in an otherwise mostly Earth-made craft. The newer Wasp-class had a Tri-V immersive cockpit and the ability to be piloted by pinplants alone. On the display was Paku at the center, with tiny red darts to represent incoming missiles, intermittent flashes of blue lines for anti-missile CID file, and a couple friendly missiles.

“We’re in the dunny, aren’t we?” she hissed.

“Pretty much,” he said, and the Phoenix began to vibrate as her engines came online.

Ripley’s eyes picked up larger markers, all red. Ominous indications of the warships trying to kill them. But in the near distance was an arc of white.

“Planet?” she asked, touching the indicator for the white marker.

“Dwarf planet, that’s our target.”

“Roger that, we aim for the dwarf planet.” Her hands danced across the controls, entering the data into the nav-computer. “All set.”

“You program in anything new or pressing once we get moving, and I’ll keep us dodging what’s right in front of us. Hope we don’t need the explody things.”

“I look long, you look close.”

“Not a rookie anymore, merc,” he said and tossed a thumbs up over his shoulder. “Any second…”

“All shuttles, launch, launch, launch!”

“Let’s get ou—” Flop never finished the sentence. Something struck Paku a titanic blow, slamming them both against the side of the cockpit. Flop cried out in pain. Ripley was oriented differently, so she took most of the blow on the back; he’d taken it to the side. She could see a slight crack in the cockpit from his helmet impact.

“You okay?” she asked as the Gs built precipitously. She tried looking at Paku’s data feed, but it was dead. Bloody hell. “I think something happened to the ship,” she said, realizing how stupid that sounded.

“You think?” he asked, panting. “Releasing,” he said, and she could see his hand reach up ponderously, fighting the growing G forces.

“Flop, what’s wrong?” It was her father from the squad bay. He and the other nine members of their squad were in their CASPers and strapped in. The other squad and their service personnel would be aboard the two Zuul craft they called assault shuttles.

She keyed the channel to the passenger area, but the comms light stayed red. Something was broken—she could only hear her father, not talk back to him. Entropy.

As she watched Flop struggle, she shook her head. Ripley had always been a little amused at the Humans’ lower resistance to high gravity. Zuul could easily tolerate 3Gs for extended periods of time, while the same was dangerous to the relatively weaker Humans.

Flop’s gloved hand hit the switch, which went from yellow, to green, then red. On Earth, red was bad. He pushed it again. Red to green, then red again, where it flashed and refused to respond to further prodding. His hand fell down with an audible thump.

“Grapple is toast,” he groaned. They were passing five Gs. His head looked up and found a control. The shuttle’s electromagnetic grapple