[Avia]

Flint was right — we weren't done. One enemy shuttle-ship hovered out-of-sight beyond the clearing, revealed by whining thrusters. And it was probably armed with plasma cannons or missiles. The other enemy shuttle flew our way from the spaceport, not far behind Zach's ship.

I caught Flint's attention. "The Freebird will be here in three minutes. How do you want to play--"

A rustle of brush behind us sent a shock down my spine.

"Look out!" Zach yelled. Jumping up, he shoved me against Flint, toppling us both to the side. Rolling in the soil, Flint pulled me further partially around the large rock and sheltered me in his arms.

My heart raced in time to the rapid percussion of a projectile rifle. Multiple bullets pinged against the boulder where I once kneeled, showering us with bits of red rock. The source revealed himself as a grim-faced, white-uniformed combatant as he crashed through the low understory with rifle pointed at me.

In quick, fluid motion, Zach dropped to a knee, drew his stunner pistol, and fired two silvery stun pulses in succession. They hit true, striking the combatant square in the chest. Eyes rolling up, he slumped to the leaf-littered ground like a dropped towel.

For a moment, Zach froze, wide-eyed, with his gun still elevated. I rushed to his side, coming to one knee, and placed a gentle kiss on a cheek. "Again, you are my hero."

A grin rose on Zach's face as Flint rose, nodding and giving Zach a mock salute.

"What about that shuttle?" Bulldog said over the com, bringing us back to the problem at hand.

"When you get a shot, shove a missile up its arse!" Flint replied.

Amber cooed in reply, "I love it when you talk dirty, Flint."

"Stay on task!" Flint barked.

As if summoned, the shuttle roared as it lifted above the trees like an angry beast. Swiveling around, it approached the clearing. The downward thrust pushed and parted the trees like a tornado, and the induced wind tossed my ponytail.

Flint called out, "Haze, distract it so Bulldog can get a shot."

"Why do I always have to be bait?" he grumbled while jumping up on a flat-topped rock to my far right.

"Because you run the fastest," Shade answered.

Flint rolled his eyes.

Shouldering his plasma rifle, Haze rapid-fired three orange bolts at the shuttle. "Come and get me, arseholes!" he yelled over the thruster roar. Two bolts hit the port side fuselage in bright flashes, showering sparks, but did little more than scorch the white, reinforced plas-steel shell.

The distraction worked, and the shuttle turned its bow toward the attacker. Then, after one more shot that struck a delta wing, Haze wisely took off, sprinting across the clearing edge in a zig-zag path. Just as he took a sharp ninety-degree turn into the brush, a plasma bolt burst from a forward turret. Starship mounted plasma cannons were much more powerful than hand-held rifles, thus the bolt hit with a dazzling orange flash and a ground-shaking whomp, blasting a small smoldering crater into tall grass where Haze would have been, had he not veered.

"Now would be a good time, Bulldog!" Haze shouted over the com, continuing his run within the trees.

Bulldog kneeled beside an enormous tree trunk to my left with a launch tube over a shoulder. "Missile away!" he announced.

The heat-seeking missile hissed away, arcing slightly, and struck one of two aft mounted thruster cones. The percussive explosion, like thunder, rocked the shuttle forward. For several moments, the starship pitched and yawed, moving sideways away from the clearing as it struggled to regain control. Smoke poured out from the fractured thruster cone. A random visualization of a panicked pilot pissing his pants brought a grin to my lips.

"Awesome shot, Bulldog!" Shade yelled over the com. "That'll show 'em."

But the cheering died away as, somehow, the pilot regained control and kept the shuttle in the air. It moved slowly our way, although lurching slightly in the starship version of a limp. Starships were awkward enough in the atmosphere compared to airships, but with damaged thrusters, it was even more so.

The ship plasma cannon fired again, blasting into the tree where the missile originated. With a sharp crack, the trunk fractured, and the tall tree fell, crashing into the clearing. Fortunately, Bulldog had abandoned his position immediately after firing the missile.

Although wounded, the enemy shuttle still posed a dangerous threat.

"Well, crap," Bulldog groaned. "That was our one and only missile."

Another thruster roar came to my ears, this one higher pitched — the Freebird.

"How are you going to land the Freebird with that thing in the air?" Zack asked, pointing upward.

And there was another and potentially greater problem — the time window to land the Freebird and get away before the other enemy shuttle arrived was only a few minutes.

A thought came to me — with the nearby shuttle barely able to achieve steady flight...

"I'll give it a nudge," I said out loud, echoing over the com. "But it's going to be violent. Suggest everyone move back."

Flint's lips turned up slightly, and he nodded, apparently realizing what I was going to do. "You heard her," he said over the com. "Everybody back ten meters."

As Zach guided me further into the trees, I closed my eyes and directly accessed the Firebird's manual flight controls with my cybernetics and peered through the external sensors. I flew the ship in faster than advisable for a landing, aiming directly for the shuttle. The thruster roar increased, becoming almost deafening. At the very last moment before collision, I pitched the nose up and fired the downside thrusters hard. The thrust wash, directed at the shuttle, acted like a powerful shove. Buffeted by induced gales, the trees and brush bent and swayed.

It worked. The enemy shuttle heaved to the side and rolled. Completely uncontrolled, it smashed into the forest beyond with a rumbling boom.

"Hurrah!" Two voices yelled over the com.

As I directed the Freebird to land in the clearing, opening the docking hatch, Flint put an arm around me. "That's my girl."

I leaned my head against Flint's shoulder, basking in his praise as if I was a young girl again.

Flint released me and motioned toward the Freebird. "We need to get going now!"

My eyes popped wide open. "We?"

He winked at me. "I'm coming with you."

Warmth blossomed in my chest and I smiled. "Okay."

The Geezer Squad gathered around. But before Flint moved two steps, Amber embraced him with arms around his neck, leaning in to place a kiss on his lips. Flint wrapped an arm around Amber's waist, drawing her closer as the kiss lingered. Apparently, their relationship was more than friends and comrades.

"Take care of yourself and our girl," Amber instructed, leaning her forehead against a muscular chest.

"Well, get going," Bulldog huffed, as Flint hesitated. "We'll clean up here. Like usual."

"Will do," Flint replied with a grin, releasing Amber.

"Thank you all so much," I called out to the Geezer Squad. Then, hand-in-hand with Zach, we sprinted toward the open hatch.

As Flint followed, Amber yelled after him, "And be sure to write."

I directed the Freebird to lift off with a roar, even before the boarding hatch closed. "The other shuttle is two minutes behind and coming fast," I shouted.

"Then, don't spare the horses," Flint advised as we dashed onto the bridge.

Zach jumped into the pilot's seat and activated a manual control joy-stick with a touch on the angled control panel. I took the seat beside him, quickly buckling the restraints, while Flint took a fold-down jump-seat behind us.

When Zach fired the rear thrusters, acceleration forces beyond the capacity of the inertial dampers pressed us back into the seat padding. A visual view appeared on the forward viewscreen, supplemented by infrared in the fading twilight. As we raced along above the trees, Zach triggered a holographic tactical display. Suspended just below the elevated view-screen, It traced our flight path above a colorful wireframe terrain representation.

"Hope you're good at flying, Zach," Flint remarked without inflection.

"I used to race hover-sleds," he answered flatly, not looking away from the display. "Avia, watch after that shuttle. Is it still following us?"

"Yes," I answered, peering at the pursuing vessel through the Freebird external sensors. "Three kilometers astern, and accelerating." As Zach abruptly changed course, I asked, "You're taking us south?"

"There's a big tropical cyclone that might hide us."

Flint asked, "Is the Freebird armed?"

"No," I said, replying for Zach. "But she's agile and stealthy--" I sucked in a breath as flashes emerged from the shuttle's belly. "Missiles! Three stingers." I paused for half a moment while computing the missiles' trajectory. "Impact, approximately three minutes."

Within a second, a red light flashed on the control panel and an emergency horn pulsed as the ship's automatic systems picked up the threat. Zach immediately silenced the redundant alarm with a touch on the control panel. The missiles streaked toward us like raptors hungry for a kill.

"Avia, engage the anti-tracking tech," Zach instructed.

"On it," I answered.

Actually, I had already engaged the system. The Freebird possessed an active defensive technology that blurred the ship's thermal, optical, and displacement signatures, making it harder to target. It wasn't a perfect system, especially in atmospheric flight, but it might confuse those missiles enough that Zach can out-fly them.

"Hang on to your lunches, boys and girls," Zach mumbled as he veered the Freebird sharply down, diving to the treetops. "This is where the fun begins."

The weightless feeling tugging at my gut did not bother me, nor would it affect Flint. During the war, we had become accustomed to such sensations.

We zig-zagged across the treetops, sometimes brushing the leaves to evade. But the missiles still followed, unrelenting in their pursuit. I watched them via my cybernetics with the ship's aft sensors, and via my eyes, represented as blinking red triangle icons on the holographic display. Despite the confusion caused by the anti-tracking tech, they gained on us.

"They're closing," I announced. "Two minutes, max."

Zach jerked the joy-stick rightward, causing the Freebird to veer in the same direction, rounding a hill. Acceleration forces pulled me to the left hard enough that I might have tumbled to the deck if not for seat restraints.

"There," Zach said, nodding toward a deep, winding canyon that split the hills. Rushing white water at the bottom was just visible in the fading sunrays.

"Can you run a canyon with this ship?" Flint asked from behind us.

"The Freebird is as good an airship as a starship," Zach answered while lining up with the canyon. "She'll do fine."

"Might be a good plan. Stingers are designed for open space — might not work well in a tight canyon. Just don't splat us."

"Right," Zach muttered as he nosed the Freebird down into the canyon. Steep gray rock walls swallowed us into shadow, the details blurred by our rushing speed. Descending further, Zack skimmed the churning water, following the curves of the river along a long bend. A cloud of mist billowed behind.

The missiles followed. But one swept too wide, scrapping the rock wall and exploding in a bright flash and raining fractured rock to the river below.

"One down," I announced. "Two more on our tail. Forty seconds and closing."

Zach shoved the joy-stick back and forth, dodging enormous boulders while shoving us against the seat restraints. The Freebird bucked.

Tapping into the ship's forward visual cameras, I gulped. "Um, Zach, are you seeing this?"

The canyon narrowed with the walls growing higher and steeper, limiting maneuvering room. Ahead, the walls closed in, forming a narrow slot bounded by twin rock spires — too narrow for the Freebird. The river gushed through it, churning in turbulent fury.

"Yeah," he answered, eyes focused straight ahead. "I'm gonna roll the Freebird and fly through it on edge, but I'll need your help to keep her straight."

"Okay," I answered in a weaker voice than I intended. Precision was required, so, closing my eyes, I ramped up my cybernetics processing speed and connected directly to the ship propulsion system and positional sensors, forming a tight control loop. The Freebird was an agile craft, but it wasn't designed for aerobatics, and the maneuvering jets were normally only used for space docking.

With a touch on the control panel, Zach increased the rear thruster output, accelerating us. I held my breath as the slot grew closer at breakneck speed.

"This is going to be close," I muttered, the thought somehow reaching my lips.

"Go!" Zach shouted.

He shoved the joy-stick to one side, snapping the starboard wing up in a quarter roll. At the same time, I pulse fired the forward maneuvering jets to resist the natural yaw tendency, keeping us flying straight. Gravity pulled me sideways, but the seat restraints held me firm, unlike other small unsecured objects that tumbled across the deck with a clatter.

The Freebird blazed through the slot, missing a hull scrape by less than a meter. The missiles did not fare as well, instead blasting against gray rock on either side of the slot. Fractured by the explosions, massive chunks of rock splashed into the raging torrent.

But the ship roll motion did not stop, rather continuing around until we flew inverted. My dark hair stood straight out, down as it was. Zach furiously yanked the joy-stick, finally righting the ship with my help on the maneuvering jets. Zach and I glanced at each other, while blowing out long breaths.

"So, this is hover-sled racing?" Flint said in an even voice, as if we hadn't barely escaped death.

Zach grinned, turning his head back. "Something like that. Only no missiles or barrel rolls."

"Might be fun to try sometime."

"We are not out of this yet," Zach said, turning forward. "Where is that shuttle, Avia?"

"Two kilometers back, high," I answered.

"Hopefully, we can outrun it." With that, Zach increased the rear thrust to near maximum, taking the Freebird supersonic.

Adjusting course, Zach took us straight south toward a massive, dark cloud bank lit by flashes of internal lightning. The towering icy cloud tops were high enough to catch the final red-orange rays of a setting sun. This must be one of Panchaia's infamous tropical cyclones.

"We're pulling away," I noted. "Three kilometers and increasing."

"Good," Zach replied. "They'd be crazy to follow us into that storm."

My eyes widened as a breath caught in my throat. "Umm, crazy like us?"

Zach shrugged. "Something like that."