"Then you can come up with a better one."
The flight stick moved of its own accord. Alisa started, grabbing it harder.
Let go, the voice in her mind instructed.
Though that was the last thing Alisa wanted to do, she forced herself to lean back, lifting her hands from the stick.
"Should I be alarmed?" Leonidas asked quietly, watching over her shoulder as the Striker surged forward, following the dart as it continued downward, as if it would fly straight into the ice.
"I am," she said.
"Dr. Dominguez wants a word with you, Captain," Mica said over the comm.
"Is he jealous that you didn"t include him in the arm wrestling match?"
"No, he knew he would lose."
"Captain," Alejandro said, "I finished a.n.a.lyzing the blood."
"Oh? I thought you had already finished a.n.a.lyzing it before." Alisa resisted the urge to grab the flight stick as the Striker picked up speed, and the sea of ice filled her vision.
"I had another idea when I saw Beck chewing on his leftover duck."
"I"m glad he"s treating our imminent death as a snack time," Mica muttered from somewhere off to the side.
"We"re not going to die," Alisa said firmly. "I"m coming up with a better plan as we speak." She wished that were true. She kept hoping inspiration would strike her. Right now, the ice was the only thing that looked like it might strike her.
"Well, it couldn"t get much worse," Mica said.
"Just work on those explosives in case there"s an opportunity to escape," Alisa said. "What did you find, Doctor?"
"A DNA match."
"You figured out which Sta.r.s.eer that blood belonged to?"
Her Striker veered to one side and then the other. As they neared the frozen sea, the craft finally veered, shifting to a horizontal path and skimming along a few feet above the ice.
"Not precisely, but I do know that it was one of the people who came to eat Beck"s food. I found his trash bin full of skewers and used the saliva dried on them to run scans. I found a match on the third one."
"How many people did Beck feed?"
"He says a couple dozen at least."
Alisa frowned. "That doesn"t narrow it down much."
"No, but he says he did not feed Abelardus. Whoever died, if anyone, it wasn"t him. He never returned to the Nomad after escorting your team into the temple."
"Ah," Alisa said, her frown disappearing. "That"s something, then."
"You"re welcome," Alejandro said, sounding like he wanted some grat.i.tude.
"Thank you," Alisa managed. She hadn"t forgotten that he had asked Leonidas about getting rid of her once, but she supposed sc.r.a.ping spit off used skewers was a demeaning job for someone who had once been a chief ER surgeon.
"I could have told you Abelardus is still alive," Leonidas said.
Control is yours again, the Sta.r.s.eer spoke into her mind as his dart surged ahead, leaving the shadow of the temple and shooting up to join other darts swooping in between Strikers and Cobras. You may join our squadron, but you may also be able to get in close and do damage with your torpedoes since you"re in an Alliance ship.
I don"t think they"re going to mistake this rusty museum piece for one of their own, Alisa thought as she zipped along the ice. She didn"t want to stay low for long, since she would be an easy target for anyone flying above, but she needed to get far enough away from the temple to better gauge everything that was going on, especially since the craft lacked a surround-flow display.
"They had better tech than this back on Old Earth," she grumbled, alternating between watching the sensor display and the view out her canopy.
They may at least hesitate to fire upon you, the other pilot said. You haven"t trained with our people, so you would be in the way as a part of our formations.
"Great."
"Problem?" Leonidas asked as Alisa took them to the edge of the mist field, then flew upward, trying to stay on the periphery of the battle, avoiding the dozens of explosives and bolts of energy filling the sky.
"They want our help, but they don"t want us anywhere near them while we do it."
"Just point me toward something I can shoot."
From the sound of his voice, he wasn"t particular about what that might be. She knew he wouldn"t mind shooting Alliance ships down under any circ.u.mstances, but after the last day and night, he might happily blow some Sta.r.s.eer ships out of the sky too.
She, on the other hand, did not want to fire at any of the targets. It crossed her mind to disappear into the mist, but that would not help the Nomad escape.
Sighing, once she had flown high enough to see the ships below, she turned toward a squadron of Alliance ships that were peppering the temple shield. Before she made it halfway to them, two of the Strikers abruptly veered downward. She had not seen either get hit, and there was not any smoke coming from their engines, but they spiraled toward the ice below as if they had been hit dead on.
"That"s chilling," she muttered.
One of the Strikers managed to recover, the nose turning up out of the dive at the last second. The belly almost sc.r.a.ped the ice as the craft swooped back upward. The second ship did not recover. It smashed into the ice so hard that it broke through. Pieces of the ship flew free as the smashed fuselage plunged into the black water below.
Alisa flicked on the comm in her Striker, a.s.suming it was tied in with the rest of the Sta.r.s.eer squadron and that she could hear their chatter. If they chattered. Maybe they were all communicating with their minds up here.
"That one"s out of it," someone was saying.
"Good, but focus on what"s going on around you too. You"ve got a cat on your tail."
"I see it."
"Focus on the warships," another voice said. "If we can crash them, it"ll matter a lot more than dropping the one-man ships. Those are just flies pestering us."
"We"ve been trying, but they"re rotating through pilots up there. As soon as we affect one, another pushes him aside and takes the helm. I did manage to find a weak-willed mind and start a fight up there." The speaker sounded smug. "He tried to punch his C.O."
"Just fly," someone with a hard voice said. "Let Naidoo and those in the temple worry about mind links."
"Look out, Nile!"
A torpedo slammed into one of the Sta.r.s.eer darts, crushing through its shields and utterly obliterating it.
"s.h.i.t," several voices said at once.
"Should have stopped that," one said, with the slam of a fist striking a console. "There"s so d.a.m.ned many of them."
More rounds launched from the temple below, coming close to shaving the wings off one of the darts. Alisa arced behind the Alliance squadron that had been distracting the Sta.r.s.eers when that torpedo had struck and she fired a few half-hearted shots at their backs.
A faint reverberation pulsed through her vessel as one of the e-cannons fired. She had almost forgotten Leonidas was back there and twitched with surprise as their projectile streaked away, engulfed in fiery energy. It slammed into the wing of one of the Alliance ships. Normally, the craft"s shields should have been able to deflect a couple of e-cannon blasts, but they must have already taken damage. They fell away, letting the projectile tear through the wing, knocking it off.
The pilot had no chance at compensating. He brought his nose up, trying to land instead of crashing, but two darts arrowed in, taking advantage. They riddled the hull with blazer fire, and smoke wafted up from the craft. It tumbled downward, eventually smashing into the frozen sea. This time, the ice did not break. Alisa almost wished it had, because seeing the craft shattered, pieces flying all across the white ice, was as sobering as a knife to the heart.
"You have deadly aim," she said quietly. It wasn"t a compliment so much as a realization that she wouldn"t be able to half-heartedly join in the battle, not with Leonidas back there, eager to take down Alliance ships.
"Line me up for another one," he said.
Alisa swallowed. That was the last thing she wanted to do.
Chapter 16.
Alisa was almost relieved when two Alliance ships diverted from their route to target her. It gave her an excuse not to line up another target for Leonidas. She swooped and dove, trying to lose them. They stuck with her. They must have seen Leonidas take down their comrade, and now they wanted revenge. She couldn"t blame them. She wouldn"t accommodate them, but she couldn"t blame them.
She put the creaky old Striker through a series of evasive maneuvers, banking to the port side and then up, making it hard for both of the Alliance ships to stick to her. One turned to follow while the other looped off in the other direction, probably hoping to meet her as she finished her loop. She twisted, coming out of it early and cutting back and across. One stuck with her, but she caught the other upside down in the middle of his own loop. She strafed him, knowing she could not hesitate to fire, not this time. She wasn"t going to get her and Leonidas killed out here. He bided his time on the cannons, waiting for her frenetic turns to slow, to reveal an opening. Now on the tail of the Alliance craft, having switched from pursued to pursuer, she pulled close, lining up the shot. Leonidas did not hesitate. With reflexes even quicker than hers, he fired.
The Alliance ship"s shields held, the energy ball exploding against them, but she knew that had drained them. She lanced out with her guns, peppering his flank until he spun away, avoiding further fire.
She would have raced right after him, but his buddy had found her backside, and was now firing at her. The old Striker had shields, but she did not know how much faith to put in them, so she veered away immediately. The more modern craft had rotating guns, and they followed her. She cursed and flew straight upward, toward the mist above the battlefield. The Alliance craft followed her, his friend also coming around to get behind her again.
As soon as she hit the mists, she banked to the port side, dipping into a sideways loop. She whipped the craft up as quickly as possible, trying to come about fast enough to catch the lead ship as it entered the mist. It zipped by too rapidly, a blip lurching across a sensor screen that had half-filled with static as soon as they hit the mists. She was relying upon her eyes. The second ship came in higher than she expected, the pilot also having made a quick adjustment, but she surged up and fired from below.
Leonidas did not hesitate to loose another cannon shot. They were targeting the same ship they had struck earlier, and this time, its shields did not hold. The cannon charge exploded against its side. The ship"s flight turned into a tumble, and it spun out of control as it streaked toward the ice.
Alisa turned her attention to the second vessel, weaving and trying to find it in the mist. It found her first. The nose emerged from the mist, cannons and guns all pointed at her. She whipped her Striker downward, but not before Leonidas fired, and not before the other pilot fired. Streaks of red slashed through the air, right at the canopy. If not for the shields, they would have struck. She took a relieved breath even as the control panel lit up, informing her that shields had dropped to fifty percent.
"Got him," Leonidas said, and Alisa glanced back to see the smoking craft spiraling downward before it disappeared into the mist.
"Good," Alisa said, though her enthusiasm was still tempered by how little she wanted to be a part of this battle.
Taking a deep breath, she guided them back out of the mist. She gulped at the carnage that stretched out before her. No less than twenty of the small combat craft lay mangled on the ice. Most of them were Alliance, but a few of the Sta.r.s.eer darts had also been destroyed. Smoke wafted up from more than a dozen spots. Several holes in the ice hinted that even more ships had gone down than were now visible, some plummeting through and sinking.
The three warships remained in the air, swooping back and forth above the temple, powerful shields deflecting everything the Sta.r.s.eer ships threw at them while seeking to avoid the larger and more dangerous artillery fire from below. The temple also remained intact, though a ripple of white flashed and outlined the curving contour of its big shield, as a huge round exploded above one of the towers.
"We need eighteen minutes," someone spoke over the Sta.r.s.eer comm channel. "The engines are halfway to ready, but the temple shield is down to twenty-five percent power."
"We"re doing our best," a pilot responded. "Is there no chance of diddling with the minds of the captains on the warships? Those ships are the ones decimating the shield power, right?"
"Yes, and we"ve been trying, but again, they have numerous people on the bridges up there. We"ve knocked out a few of the higher-ranking officers, but the lieutenants are keeping things running. They all know the plan. We"ve had more luck causing equipment failures, but there"s so much redundancy on those ships that they"re nearly impossible to bring down from mechanical issues alone."
"Figure something out. The shields are not going to last another eighteen minutes."
"Seventeen now."
"So much better. Can"t anyone down there manipulate the mists? Bring them in closer to mess with everyone"s sensors?"
"We mess with our own equipment, too, if we do that. The last thing we want is for the temple to crash."
Alisa drummed her fingers on the control panel. She could engage with other small combat ships all day, but if the warships were the main problem, nothing she did would matter overmuch.
"Leonidas, what can we do to put an end to this fight?" She did not truly expect him to have an answer-nor did she know if he even cared which side won-but nothing useful was popping into her mind.
"It sounds like someone needs to buy the temple seventeen minutes," he said.
"Yes, but how? Pipe the latest episode of the Hot Twilight Nights onto all of their monitors to transfix them?"
"Perhaps something else might transfix them."
An idea trickled into her mind, and the hairs on the back of her neck rose. Could it work? Would it entice the Alliance commander into ceasing fire momentarily? And, more importantly, could she talk Leonidas into going for it? Did she truly want to talk him into it? With a certainty that almost seemed to come from without, she nodded to herself. Yes, if she did it, she might save many lives.
"I don"t suppose you would like to be the transfixing thing, Leonidas?" Alisa asked.
"What do you mean?" he asked warily.
Alisa was guiding the Striker along the edge of the mist, trying not to engage with anyone while she debated her options. She fiddled with the comm to see if she could reach out to the Alliance ships from her craft. "To buy time, I could tell them I have a prisoner that I know they want."
"A prisoner," Leonidas said, his tone flat.
"With the way you"re wedged in there, I doubt you"ll get out in less than seventeen minutes." She smiled back over her shoulder.
He gazed steadily at her, no hint of amus.e.m.e.nt in his eyes. The carnage down below probably did not bother him. After a lifetime as a soldier, he had to be inured to it. She had to figure out how to turn him to her way of thinking. Even if that seat was a tight fit for him, there was no way she would be able to turn him in against his will.
"What if I offered you up as a prisoner if they agreed to stop firing?" Alisa asked. "At the least, one of those warships would have to move away and lower its shields to let us fly into their shuttle bay. Once there, we could figure out how to get out again before they could actually collect you and torture you, or whatever they have in mind. At this point, they would probably torture me, too, since I"ve been seen in your company so often. So, I have a motivation to make sure we can get out again. Maybe I can jury-rig this ship to-"
"You said the Sta.r.s.eers got the doctor"s...o...b.." Leonidas asked.
"They did," Alisa said, not sure what that mattered to him at this moment. "He"s distraught."
Leonidas looked down at the wrecks as they flew over them, then toward the temple. Another charge exploded against its shield, and it flashed again. Wavering. Weakening.
Alisa glimpsed the Nomad, still stuck in its docking spot, as they flew around the back of the temple.
"Do it," Leonidas said.
"What?" Alisa twisted her neck to look back and see his face. "Really?"