Wings of Retribution (37 page)

It’s been two hours.  Tell that moron to open his airlock.  I’ve got a real mechanic on the other side.

“Negative,” Dallas replied.  “We’re almost done, sir.”

Get me Rabbit.  I’m tired of dealing with his underlings.

“Negative, sir.  Rabbit doesn’t want to talk to you.”

Remind Rabbit that he’s on
my
planet and all I have to do is wiggle my pinkie and he’ll never see T-9 again.  I’ll have so many warplanes down on you that
Retribution
will look like a wiffle ball.

Just then, Dallas felt the cargo bay doors clang shut.  She hadn’t realized they’d been opened.  She glanced at the outside vidscreen and grinned as she watched four tan hovercraft disappear into the billowing sand.

Dallas retrieved the com handset and said, “Go ahead and try it, sir.”  Then, throwing all the ship’s power into upward thrust, she shot into the atmosphere, shattering windows of the compound with the sonic boom that followed.

The first sound she heard after the rumble of atmosphere on her ship’s nose was, Retribution
fired on the compound!  Get a lock on it
now
!

Just like flight school,
Dallas told herself as blinking dots on her viewscreen started moving towards her like an army of red ants.  Forcing herself not to think about the numbers, Dallas switched off autopilot corrections, going full-manual.  It was something only done in absolute emergencies…

…or by stick-fairies.  Those who had the magic touch, when it came to flying machines.  Dallas just hoped she still had the touch.  Athenais hadn’t let her go full-manual after kidnapping her.  Ever.  The bitch.

Within the first ten seconds of being on manual, feeling the ship vibrate through the controls, the elegant machine responding to her whims like a lover, Dallas knew that she hadn’t lost her touch. 
Retribution
felt
right
.  Like it, and all the space within a full ten kilometers, was part of her.  Taking a deep breath, she settled the comset over her head and said, “Attention Erriat Fleet.  This is Dallas York of
Retribution
.  Stand down, or you’re all gonna be flying home to Erriat in life-pods.”  They deserved a warning, after all.  It was only fair.

She heard a crackle, then a laugh.  Someone said, “
Is she freakin’ serious?”

“
Must be weedin’
,” another answered.

Dallas shrugged.  Warning given.

She reached out and tenderly patted the ship’s controls.  “All right, kitten.  Let’s show ‘em your claws.”  She centered herself, located the nearest red blip on the screen, and, with a prayer to whoever was listening, threw
Retribution
forward, cannons blazing.

A moment later, the first Erriatian ship lost an engine and started spinning out of control, headed for deep space.  Dallas had been careful not to hit the cockpit.  That was just rude.

“
Holy shit, that thing’s a
gunship
!”
someone screamed into the com.  “
Take it out, take it out!”

“Wouldn’t you love that, buster?” Dallas muttered to herself, concentrating on tapping the controls just right to avoid slamming into the ship ahead of her. 
A Dragonspawn,
she thought, recognizing the sleeker structure. 
Shoot for the tail,
that automatic part of her thought. 
Power’s in the tail.
  She pummeled the core as she went by, sending flares of plasma and fluid jetting out into space to get swept up in her backwash.  Behind her, the enemy ship went dead in the water.

“
Get it!”
someone was screaming.  “
It was
right there
!”

Then another, “
Jesus, I think she’s on manual.”

And a third, “
That’s impossible.”

Dallas decided now was a good time to get back on com.  Triggering the receiver absently, she touched off another volley of shots as she simultaneously rolled out of the way of a guy whose crash-protection-system engaged at the last minute and swept him up and back, instead of in and around, which he would have needed to get a good shot. “Not really impossible,” she said, distractedly, “just kinda hard.”  She blasted another Dragonspawn in the tail, disabling its core before slamming past, coming only meters from pasting herself across his flank.  Mentally, she crossed off another one of the little red dots on her screen.

“
My system’s overriding me!”
someone shouted.  “
She’s too close to get a clear shot!”

“She’s a stick-fairy!”
another guy shouted.  “
Holy crap, we’re dealing with a fairy.”

“She ain’t a goddamned fairy,”
someone else snapped back.  “
That ship just got a better course-corrector.”

“
Wait a minute,”
a man’s voice said, going quiet.  “
What did she say her name was?”

“Does it matter?”
an eighth voice demanded.

“
There was a fairy, a couple years back.  Got kicked out of the Corps for something.”

“
Oh shut up and bring her down.  She ain’t a damned fairy.  Next one I hear say that is grounded for a term.”

Dallas, meanwhile, kept picking them out of the sky.  She tried to be nice about it, too, knowing that they were probably all regular Joes that just needed a job that wasn’t bussing tables at a hotel restaurant, but after charging the eighth ship ahead of her until its internal course-corrector chickened out and banked left instead of right, she miscalculated and left it full of holes much closer to the live-space than she liked.

“Sorry,” Dallas said quickly, feeling a little guilty.  She tapped lightly on the interstellar throttle, leaving the others in the dust, then swept around to come in behind Erriat.  “You all okay in there?”

“
Wasn’t anyone on board but me,”
the pilot said, sounding a bit deflated.  While his com still worked, his drive engines certainly did not.

“
You mean she’s not even aiming for the cockpits?!”

“I said escape-pods, not body-bags,” Dallas reminded them, feeling her face scrunching with concentration.  She pushed her throttle ever-so-slightly forward, darting towards the central ship.  “It took a few minutes, but I’m getting back into the hang of things.  Is easier than I remembered, actually.  I’ll let as many of you live as I can.”

“
To hell with this shit.  I’m out.”

“Get your ass back in the fight!  She’s bluffing, you moron.  You turn back around or I’ll have your—”
  His transmission ended in a fluff of static as Dallas took out the commander’s com system.

“Think he can do without his ranting, whaddaya say, fellahs?” Dallas said, weaving between the rest of the fleet, whose crash-guards immediately sent them scattering like mice.

There was a long silence.  Then someone said, “
You really a stick-fairy?”

“Yeah,” Dallas said absently.  “Why?”  She tapped her portside thrusters to execute a quick turn.  The command ship was still firing at her, so she had to sweep in to put a round through his engine room, sending a silent prayer that the captain had followed standard dogfight procedure and had the crew sealed in the cockpit, where they had easy access to lifepods.

“
Maaan,”
someone groaned.  “
The next few hours are really going to suck.”

“I call dibs on a date, if she lives.”

Dallas grinned at the controls.  “Gotta catch me, first, hotshot.”  She shoved the throttle forward and settled into the rhythm of marking off little red dots in her mind.

Dallas disabled the last Home Guard battleship after seven excruciating hours of dodging the Guard’s and the Planetary Weapons System’s combined efforts to shoot her down.  It had been forty-one ships in all.  Not the massive fleet she had been fearing, but still enough for several close calls.

Dallas breathed a huge sigh of relief as she watched the last ship’s evacuation pod shoot out toward Erriat.  Then she picked up the com set.

“Erriat Weapons Control, this is
Retribution.
  Halt all land-to-air missiles and other hostile fire or I will start destroying your arrays.  Over.”

Her entire body was shaking.  It was the biggest adrenaline rush she had ever had, and now that it was over, exhaustion was overtaking her.  It was all she could do to sit up straight.

Affirmative,
Retribution.
  Weapons Control is backing down.

Dallas hovered on the edge of the atmospheric haze, waiting for news from the rest of her crew.  She was drifting asleep when it came.

Dallas, rendezvous at 652.91 South, 232.03 West.  Have the regen room ready.

Dallas snapped awake and checked her coordinates.  She tilted
Retribution
downward and began her descent.  She picked up the com gear, switched to the private frequency, and said, “Who’s hurt?”

Just get here fast.

She did.  When she landed, four people rushed aboard the ship and Rabbit slammed the airlock shut.  Then her mind twitched. 
Four?

“Go!”
Rabbit shouted.

Stunned, Dallas lifted off.  She did a few halfhearted aerial maneuvers to dupe ground-to-air missiles, but the weapons arrays remained quiet. 

Just get the hell off my planet,
a man muttered over the com. 
And tell Rabbit he just made my shit list.
  She heard a click, then the buzz of static as the voice added,
Again.

Worried, Dallas switched on the shipwide intercom.  “Rabbit?  What’s going on?”

“Just fly, Dallas,” was all Rabbit said.

Hands shaking on the same controls she had just manipulated with more finite delicacy than a hypercomputer, Dallas did.  “Rabbit?” she asked again, after a few minutes jetting into the starlane.  “You guys okay back there?”

She got no answer.

As soon as they were out of range of Erriat, Dallas put the ship in autopilot and lurched out of her seat.  Heart in her throat, she jogged to the regen room.

Athenais and Tommy were standing outside.

One look at Athenais’s face and Dallas realized that Darley had been right.  The captain was haggard, her shaved head showing a prison barcode across her scalp.  There were new lines in her face and she didn’t even meet Dallas’s eyes for more than a moment.  She looked like a totally different woman.  Almost…pathetic.