Elixr_The Lost Starship One by Joshua James

Author:Joshua James [James, Joshua]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-01-29T00:00:00+00:00

Eighteen

Jood unloaded the Boomerang’s weapons on the enemy. River darted out of the way, and Quinn jumped into the seat. She grabbed the controls and the Boomerang launched straight into the cloud.

Eli braced himself for a losing fight, but what the hell, right? At least he wasn’t dying a pauper. Jood released one shot after another, targeting the spheres, but there were just too many of them. They closed around the Boomerang.

Quinn proved her skill as a pilot the way she had hundreds of times before. She steered in a crazy, looping, random course, dodging and diving every which way. She hurdled over them and slithered under clusters of them before they could spin around to aim.

A rocket struck the hull from somewhere. Eli didn’t check where it came from. He trained all his attention on a spot far up in the atmosphere. The stars hovered through the thin gas up there. The black reaches of space called to him. He could live with damage to his ship, as long as they made it out of here.

A rapid drumming of impacts rattled the vessel. The Boomerang shuddered in mid-air. Quinn attacked the controls twice as hard. “They got the port tender!” she called. “We’re running on momentum. We’ll be lucky to hold our own out here.”

Jood’s voice cut the noise from Eli’s right side. “Turn us around, Lieutenant.”

A hush fell over the cockpit when he said it. Eli didn’t know what the Xynnar had in mind. He didn’t want to know. He heard the cold determination in Jood’s tone, and he took a fresh grip on his seat’s armrests.

Quinn responded in an instant. She fired the starboard tender. The Boomerang kept rising through the atmosphere, but on a port-curving trajectory. The vessel wouldn’t be able to break orbit at this rate.

The orbs closed and their rockets whistled around the Boomerang, flying thick and fast. The ship jerked one more time when a projectile struck her tail end, and Jood unleashed the cannons. They sliced in a wide semicircle, decimating every orb in range.

Ten of them detonated, and the shock wave knocked the Boomerang back the other way. Jood kept up a steady hail of fire on the enemy, blowing up one after another. The Boomerang careened wide and rotated in a complete circle. Quinn struggled to steady her, but after a few seconds, the Boomerang drifted to a halt.

“That’s it,” Quinn called over her shoulder. “I can fire the tender again, but we’ll only turn in a circle. What do you want me to do, Dad?”

At that moment, another blow hit the hull. The Boomerang floundered in helpless circles again, and Jood popped off another cannon blast. The laser sliced through the cloud. It ruptured two orbs and glanced off a third. It shattered the top curve, and a spray of debris scattered through the air.

The sphere whipped around, and the crew all stared through the cockpit window at the sight. Hovering there in front of them, close enough to see clearly, the cut-in-half orb revealed a tiny cockpit inside its dense outer covering.

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