Project Starfighter (50 page)

“You’ve certainly grown some big
balls since then, boy,” Tyler spat.

“Stop calling me ‘boy’!”
Chris flared. He aligned himself with the Cyclone, pulling back hard
on the gun trigger. “My name
is
Chris
!” Chris shouted, as Tyler’s fighter blew. A flash
at first, the speed of the explosion’s eruption and subsequent
dissipation decreasing shortly after. Chris felt a presence move in
close beside him, his hands on the flight stick and instrument panel
drifting before him. The timeslip.

I have control again
, Athena
said.

Chris felt relief at that. For a
time, he had thought that the effects of whatever the mercenaries or
WEAPCO had hit the Firefly with had been permanent. He saw that the
Talons and the small corvette that had accompanied him into the
vicinity of Jupiter had started to move again, engines coming alive
as Athena regained control over them.

Glad to have you back
, Chris
said.
So, the signal or the block was being issued from all of
them?

Apparently. I was worried that it
might have been coming from somewhere else, broadcast from somewhere
around Jupiter itself. Range is apparently a big factor in how the
blocking works.

I see,
Chris
said,
but the bigger worry is how they did it in the first
place, and how we can stop them from doing it again.

Already dealt with
, Athena
reassured him.
They were exploiting part of the Firefly’s system
configuration. If you want the details, it was an open network port
that allowed for WEAPCO-authorised transmissions and commands to be
processed.

Can you fix it?

Already have
, Athena said.
All I needed to do was close it. It was that simple.

Are there any more routes in?

Checking. No.

Okay
, Chris said.
I think
we should not waste any more time and get on. I’m bored of Jupiter
already.

He waited, but Athena did not
release the timeslip right away. He felt her closeness, and found
himself appreciating it. He closed his eyes and thought over the
battle that had just taken place. Four powerful and skilled
mercenaries had attacked him, intent on killing him, and somehow he
had fought off and defeated them all. It wasn’t the first time that
he had fought a battle in real time, but it had certainly felt that
way; extremely challenging and terrifying all at the same time. He
admitted to himself that he had fully expected that both he and
Athena would die during the engagement.

Are you okay?
Athena asked.

Absolutely
, Chris said.
And
you?

A noticeable pause, before the
timeslip began to release.
I’m okay.

Chris chuckled as he surfaced.
“Sure?” he asked. “You weren’t really worried, were you?”

No
, Athena said.

“Liar,” Chris said.

Athena laughed, and Chris joined in.
It felt good to be alive, to emerge the victor. One step closer to
victory, to freedom. He noted the Talons drawing up alongside him,
the corvette sitting just behind.

“Okay, call the others,” Chris
said. “It’s time to finish this.”

T
he
wall of starships that WEAPCO had amassed to defend Earth was
staggering. It was far larger than Chris could have imagined; the
odds stacked against his small band were tremendous. He accelerated
hard the moment he was clear of the
Dodger
’s jump point,
leaping straight into battle, and activating the timeslip as soon as
he was within cannon range of his first opponent. Athena urged him to
use greater caution during this confrontation and he heeded, staying
behind the starfighters, mobile turrets, and battleships that Phoebe
and Ursula were in control of.

As before, Chris first witnessed a
number of the enemies opening fire on him, before their cannons
stopped pulsing, the fighters swinging around and turning on their
former allies as the Lexxes’ gift stole command of them. It was
like watching a shockwave slowly expanding – the fighters,
battleships, drones, and bots nearest to Chris falling first, the
rows behind following soon after.

Even so, Chris still found that he
needed to be ready to fight, some craft not yielding as quickly as he
would have liked. The exchange of fire between the sides was
incredible, plasma bolts, rockets, missiles, and other weapons he
didn’t even recognise lighting up the battlefield. It was far more
intense and chaotic than any of the battles that had preceded it,
including the one fought against the Immortal League.

Athena had once again enforced some
hard limits on the timeslip, and Chris was only able to lower his
perception to one-quarter of real time at most. It was enough for
him. He looked about for Kethlan, certain that the commander of
WEAPCO’s navy would be there somewhere. The man would certainly be
making his presence felt the moment the Fer-de-Lance located the
Firefly.

~

Ursula
looked about the battlefield, feeling the weight of the number of
units she was controlling starting to take its toll, despite the
delegations she had made to the drones and bots under her influence.

“Do you think you can handle
things for a while?” she asked of Phoebe.

“For a time,” Phoebe said.
“Something you need to do?”

“Something I need to do.” Ursula
concentrated on one of the drones, telling it to open itself up to
her, and reveal all the paths and routes into the core of the Upper
Circle. Guarded at first, it only took a few minor shifts of her
concentration and thinking to get her – and everyone else – where
she wanted them.

~

Ursula
materialized in the large ballroom that she had been brought to so
many times before, while she had been a guest of the Corporation.
Once, she had thought the place to have been specially prepared for
her, but now she believed that this was in fact the artificial
residence of Lance Skillman, the CEO. The tables and chairs that had
at one time been dotted around the room had now been stacked neatly
on top of one another at the side, granting her more fighting room.

The eleven men and women of the
Upper Circle – as well as their many aides – stood in the middle
of the room, looking about themselves in bafflement. How had they
gotten here? Why were they here? How could they get out? Ursula
grinned. She would be answering all that in just a moment. Each of
them had seriously wronged her over the past few months – it felt
like over a year to her. Each of them had tortured her mentally or
physically. It was time for her to repay them all – in kind.

A man in a pristine, tailormade
black suit turned to face her, noticing her for the first time. He
pointed. “You ...”

“Hello, Lance,” Ursula said,
starting forward. “Nice to see you again.” She allowed the malice
to flow into her words, making her intentions very clear to all those
present. In her hands she gripped two large katanas. Their weight
distribution was just right. They were easy to hold – not heavy
enough to weigh her down, but not light enough that they would fail
to fulfil their tasks.

“How
dare
you come here,”
Skillman said. “This is my
home
!”

“You were never that bothered
about me being here before,” Ursula said, continuing her slow
advance. Her eyes flickered across the others, seeing the
apprehensive looks on every face. “You all played a lot of little
games with me. Sometimes nice ones where we would drink, eat, and
dance; sometimes others where you would rape, beat, and torture me.”

“Rape?” a woman stood next to
Skillman asked. It was Jane, the woman whom Ursula had walked with on
the terrace and discussed xenobiology.

Ursula pointed one of the katanas at
Skillman. “Yes, rape. Your ‘husband’ raped me.”

Jane looked from Ursula to Skillman.
“You didn’t mention that,” she accused him.

“Oh please,” Ursula said to the
woman. “You are hardly a saint yourself. The moment you’d got
both me and my sister, you wouldn’t have hesitated to kill us.
Well, we’re both at Earth, now, in a pair of Valkyries. Two girls
against your hundreds of thousands of drones and bots. Come on, then.
Kill us.” Ursula stood in silence, looking from one shocked face to
the next, waiting, katanas by her sides.

“No?” she said. “Very well.”
She started forward again, the people in the room backing away.

“Lance, do something!” Jane
cried, grabbing the man’s arm.

Skillman looked at Ursula. She could
feel the man focusing on her, trying to take control and cause her to
lose her weapons. Ursula’s grin only widened as Skillman
encountered the impenetrable barriers that surrounded her mind.
Skillman tried again several more times, focusing on altering Ursula
herself, before attempting to alter the environment and the people
within it and move them outside of the ballroom.

Ursula watched his efforts, seeing
the strain on the man’s face, seeing his face slowly turning
purple. “Careful, you don’t want to give yourself a nosebleed,”
Ursula said. “Oh, too late.”

Finally, his nose dripping, Skillman
called for help, appealing to the drones and bots that served and
monitored the Eternal Engine system itself to assist them. The call
went unanswered.

“Lance?” Jane asked anxiously.

“Get out,” Skillman said. “Run!”

No further encouragement was needed,
the men and women sprinting for the great entrance doors, tugging
hard at them. They wouldn’t budge. Some of the would-be escapees
then filtered around to the terrace side, attempting to open the tall
glass doors. They, too, remained shut tight. A man grabbed a chair
from the stack, hurling it at one of the terrace doors, hoping to
shatter it and allow him to escape. The chair bounced off
ineffectually.

“Don’t do that,” Ursula
tutted. “You’re making the place look untidy.” She gave a flick
of her wrist, more for show than anything else, sending the chair
back over to the stack.

Another man came for Ursula,
grabbing at a chair as he did so, preparing to use it as a weapon
against her. As he came on, he found the chair becoming impossibly
heavy, the object sliding from his grasp and thumping down onto the
floor, the man unable to lift it even an inch. It soon returned
itself to the stack, and the man turned in horror to Ursula, falling
down before her and holding up pleading hands.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” he
gabbled. “Please don’t kill me!”

Ursula ignored the man for the
moment, turning back to Skillman. “Remember when you had me tied to
your bed, drugged and helpless?” she asked. “You whipped me, beat
me, bit me, humiliated me, mocked, and raped me. What a weak little
man you are.”

“Please,” Skillman said, still
searching for a way out of the ballroom. There was no escape, Ursula
had made sure of that. “We can come to an arrangement ...” He
moved behind the other members of the Upper Circle that Ursula had
brought there, shoving them forward as some kind of shield.

“You kept me a prisoner for what I
experienced as a year, simply because you were scared of me,”
Ursula said, continuing her unhurried advance. She was getting closer
with the blades. People were starting to cry now.

“And you did it all to defend this
pathetic little empire you have built, believing that you are so much
better than everyone else; to create an ideal place to live, a utopia
for only a select few invitees, while everyone else suffered and
died.”

In desperation, the man who had
fallen to his knees leapt up and charged Ursula. She scarcely had to
do anything, raising both swords when he was only a metre or so from
her, and allowing him to impale himself upon them. His eyes were
still pleading as his life ebbed away, but Ursula looked upon him
with no pity whatsoever. Yanking both swords out of the man, she
swept one of the blades across his neck and decapitated him. The
screams from those in the ballroom grew louder as they felt Nicoli
Tanner’s consciousness permanently exit the Eternal Engine, not one
strand of his being remaining. Perhaps they had believed that in this
place they couldn't really die.

“This place no longer belongs to
you,” Ursula told them. “I’m in charge, now.”

“Please ...” Skillman begged
again.

But Ursula was done talking, and
charged forward with a roar.

~

Phoebe
was struggling a little, Chris could tell. She wasn’t nearly as
powerful as her sister, and right now Ursula was occupied elsewhere.
Phoebe had lost some control in her sister’s absence, her Valkyrie
holding steady and being defended by a group of fighters, as well as
Sid operating from the
Dodger
. How long Ursula would be, Chris
wasn’t sure. It was sure, however, that she was exacting some sort
of revenge. Maybe gone in search of those that had tormented her
during her imprisonment.

Chris flew alongside the Talons and
Mirages that had been assigned as wingmates to him, striking down the
opposing fighters that came for him. As always, the task was made
simple by the timeslip that Athena was able to grant him, and
although it drew the battle out for what felt like hours, it made him
more or less untouchable.

Already, he had been assisted in
taking down a frigate and many of the warships. He watched the
fighters blast first through the shields and then strip away the
armour of each, reducing them to nothing but burnt out shells. Even
so, he was taking them down one at a time, and there were a great
many more opponents remaining on the field. He could keep up this
fight for some time yet, but eventually fatigue would get to him.

Chris, I’ve identified a
Fer-de-Lance on the field
, Athena said.

Chris perked up immediately.
Kethlan?