The Fight for Peace (33 page)

“I came to offer you fighters that are only a day behind us. But I see you don’t need them,” Raoul said, extending Arinna his hand.

Arinna returned his offered handshake. “Oh, we will be delighted to have them and you here. We could use the help securing the area. Good timing; we were about to see if the city formally wanted to surrender.”

When Arinna, Raoul, and Farrak arrived at one of the gateway transports, a small contingent of citizens waited on the nearest dock of the city. Negotiations for official surrender, including handing over the city’s leaders, was arranged to take place in an hour.

“I swear it must be really yesterday afternoon and I’m still asleep in the dactyl. This cannot be real,” she said to Farrak as they returned to the temporary base created from the best remnants of Thunder Bay.

“I feel the same w
a—
”

A Cadet running toward them kept Farrak from finishing. “There is an incoming message on your dactyl, my Lady.”

The thoughts of what that meant cascaded through Arinna. Kehm had found a satellite. She could find out what was happening in Europe and Crystal City. She could tell them what had happened here.

Farrak was on her heels as she raced for her plane. Without sitting and out of breath, she punched the connect button. The video blinked on as lights that had been dormant on the dashboard flared with life.

Kehm’s expression was serious. “We only have a few minutes. How are things there?”

“Done. Isle Royale formally surrenders in an hour.”

Kehm blinked at her, relief washing across his face followed by the weight of bad news that roughened his voice. “Jared has been shot down. We need your help in Crystal City.” 

Arinna swore. “Send Kieren and whatever troops you can get there fast. How long can you keep open this link?”

“Minutes. Why?”

Arinna was only half paying attention to Kehm’s answer as she flipped on the navigation program and opened the link to Farrak and Sergeant Montaya’s dactyls. “I need to plot a direct course to Irkrist.”

Chapter 36

LIEUTENANT DERRICK ELDRIDGE

DESPERATE GAMBLE

Derrick was just happy Jared’s dactyl hadn’t gone down into the shield. Because then the promise he’d just made to Arinna to find Jared would have been wasted breath. Seeing her for even that minute and knowing she was well, had even succeeded against Isle Royale, consoled Derrick. Especially as the satellite signal cut out. In that brief time with access to the dactyl’s links to each other, he hadn’t managed to locate the exact position of Jared’s crashed plane. Which could have been because there wasn’t enough operational remaining of Jared’s to talk to his.

Jared had gone down half an hour earlier in a shootout with the last of the MIGs. Racing at speeds and maneuvers Derrick couldn’t hope to emulate, neither plane had won that fight. But it had bought them a small gain in a battle which spiraled toward defeat. Now at least Derrick had free rein of the sky even though the cost might have been the Captain’s life. Help was on its way, but Derrick doubted they’d last the five-plus hours it would take for it to arrive. It made having seen Arinna, even briefly, that much sweeter.

Jared had crashed into the snow and trees north of Irkrist. The brief satellite link told Derrick that much. He found the remnants of the MIG first, smoke plume wafting skyward. But the dactyls didn’t carry fuel tanks and were down to only lasers. Short of an electrical fire, nothing would be burning in the wreck. That fact fueled a small hope that Jared could survive.

He found the dactyl’s wreckage a few minutes later by the long line of broken trees before the plane plowed into the frozen ground. Scattered pieces of grey metal littered the snow amidst the shorn trees to where the main fuselage lay half buried and torn open, looking like an alien spacecraft having careened into the earth. Nothing moved around the wreckage. Derrick set down in the clearest spot of the debris field and ran to the mess of twisted metal.

“Captain?” Derrick yelled as he sorted out where the cockpit was in the mess of snow and broken plane.

A cough sputtered from the end buried deepest. Derrick started digging. When he found the latch to open the front hatch, his fingers were nearly too numb to feel the indent. The hatch opened grudgingly, metal fragments twisted so they no longer slid apart as designed.

One of the pilot’s chairs was wedged into the broken dashboard from when the front of the plane crumbled into the ground. The other remained fairly intact. That was where Jared sat, more unconscious than awake with blood matting his hair.

“Did I get him?” Jared rasped.

“Seriously, you get shot down, crash into a shitload of trees, and you want to know if you hit the other plane? Yes, damn it. You able to move?”

Jared choked on a reply or a laugh, fumbling with his harness. “Why did you come after me?” Jared asked with a hack as Derrick helped release the harness.

“Arinna made me promise we’d both come back. I don’t think she’ll be happy if I fail,” Derrick said, hauling Jared out of the wreckage of the cockpit while ignoring grunts of pain.

Outside, Derrick dropped into the snow, panting, and took a look at Jared’s wounds, at least what he could see in the fading daylight. There was a lot of blood and scratches, but he was all in one piece.

“She’ll forgive you if it means at least one of us gets out of this,” Jared whispered, breath barely deep enough to make the words audible. Blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth. “I think I cracked a few ribs,” he added, slouching against a piece of the fuselage.

“I think you did worse than that,” Derrick answered scanning to see how close his plane lay or the FLF ... or help. No other movement or engines sounded in the lingering twilight, although the sounds of explosions from the massive battle just out of sight reverberated through the forest. It was going to be a tough trudge to Derrick’s dactyl with or without FLF showing up, especially when Jared looked like he shouldn’t be moved.

“How’s the fighting?” Jared asked, bent over as if he couldn’t decide between sitting or falling over.

“Sucks. We’re losing. But Kehm got a satellite to work for about fifteen minutes. Lieutenant O’Dell and Arinna are both enroute with support.”

Jared eyed him as if Derrick were hallucinating. “You mean she’s doing okay over there?”

“Hell with that, she won.”

“Shit. I’ll never hear the end of that.”

“Yeah, well we got about five hours until help arrives to redeem ourselves. You ready for some more flying and fighting?” Derrick asked.

“No,” Jared said as he pushed himself from the hulk of twisted metal. “Please tell me there aren’t any more planes.”

“Not the last I saw,” Derrick said, putting an arm around Jared and helping him to shuffle through the drifts.

Night had settled by the time Derrick had Jared in his dactyl and strapped into the second pilot chair, because the God-damn bastard wouldn’t lay down in the back. Nor would the Captain allow Derrick five minutes to check his wounds. Instead Jared took the med kit, opened it up to sort through for swabs, and ordered Derrick to fly.

The fight for Crystal City hadn’t ended yet, which surprised Derrick. How the slim line of Guard held out against an assault on both sides as most of the soldiers fought with the rippling shield at their backs could only be explained that they had nowhere to run and there was no way in hell they were going to give up. Not to the FLF. Not after a decade of fighting.

“How the hell are we going to help with that?” Derrick whispered under his breath.

Jared leaned forward, grunting with the pain. “You are used to ground fighting. If this were Voltzcrag, what would you do?”

“Look for the sodden road they were using to climb the mountain into the town and blow it up.”

“Well, we didn’t do that,” Jared said with a half smile. “We got to shoot at them with cannons ... and then chase them with swords.”

Derrick snorted at the memory. But he knew what Jared meant. They were one dactyl against an army. There was not much they could do, unless it was to give their forces a chance to do something for themselves.

The transports on both sides of the shield shot nearly continuous laser fire. But they weren’t as long-range as the weapons the main FLF army had brought with them as they raced back to their besieged city. All the Guard was managing to do was keep individual FLF soldiers at bay while the FLF tanks aimed shells at the transports. Two of them showed damage from hits, surprising Derrick that the shield hadn’t failed.

“You said once that the dactyls could fly with the shields on. Can the transports?”

“Probably,” Jared answered. “Why?” He sounded worried.

“Because, there is still quite a distance between the shield and the city, and most of the FLF forces are in that space. If we let them get a little closer to our forces, turn on the transporters, and jump over them ...”

Jared wiped a hand down his face. “We’ll put all of the FLF forces on the outside. So we can concentrate on one front, and one that the reinforcements can help with.”

“And get them some distance, at least briefly, from the shelling of the tanks. There might still be some fighting from the cit
y—
”

“Do it,” Jared said. “If all the transports can move, do it. I swear you and Arinna are two of the most devious people I have ever met.”

Derrick didn’t bother worrying Jared with the cascading doubts the maneuver created, the worst being if the transports could find the power to fly and keep up the shield at the same time. But if they didn’t do something, defeat lay only a matter of an hour away. The time for desperate gambles had come.

With confirmation the two damaged transport planes were mobile, the Guard inside the shield fell back. The FLF raced forward to fill the gap. Derrick did his best to distract the long-range guns while the transports unfurled tucked wings. Unfortunately, that meant taking the brunt of the fire. Despite injuries, Jared helped fly. Considering what was being launched their way, Derrick didn’t complain. He didn’t fancy being shot down as well.

On signal, the Guard troops ran for the transports, sealing the doors behind them. A few bursts of fire aimed at the FLF as the transport engines revved made Derrick cringe for soldiers left behind. But as the transports lifted off, he found other worries.

The shield shimmered, twisting and thinning to nearly invisible in the dark sky as the planes moved forward. It held, throwing sparks with fluctuations in power as they played leap frog over surprised FLF troops. But they weren’t too startled to shoot.

One transport wobbled, falling behind its mates. The shield stretched with small tears forming and merging across the surface. Derrick took a deep breath against tight lungs and shot the dactyl’s lasers at the weak spot.

“What the hell are you doing?” Jared shouted.

“It’s how Arinna stabilized their shield, instead of hooking up the dactyls.” Derrick found confidence that the shield didn’t rip apart under the laser fire. It even appeared to glow brighter. He shot at it again, keeping the fire well above the transports.

Jared muttered “crazy people” under his breath, but didn’t order Derrick to stop. The long-range guns had slid from targeting them to aiming at the transports moving out of range. In flight and powering the shield, the transports didn’t have the spare power to return fire.

“How about we see if we can reduce the number of tanks while they’re distracted?” Derrick asked as he left off worrying about the shield. The transport planes were nearly to the new position and the shield held.

“I know just the one to start with. Bastard is a fairly accurate shot,” Jared replied, banking the dactyl. “You shoot. I’ll fly.”

They made a dent in the heavy artillery before the FLF stopped worrying about the transport planes and decided to target them again. A final run that had his dactyl shuddering from close impacts absorbed Derrick’s attention as he tried to aim at tanks and any shell that came a little too close. As Jared launched them vertical and out of range, Derrick finally had a chance to glance at the shield.

It hugged Crystal City tighter, looking like a life sized version of a snow globe. The transport planes were settled, and the FLF troops were reorganizing to launch a new assault. Not much room remained between the inner transport planes and the closest buildings, which wasn’t ideal. But if the fighting inside the shield could stay minimal they’d have a chance to redistribute the Guard and maybe hold out for a few more hours.

Fighting exhaustion, Derrick and Jared spent the wait for reinforcements picking off tanks and other equipment as the FLF tried to reposition closer to the transports. Over a few tense runs, they dodged RPGs and bullets as they careened just outside the shield, helping the Guard hold their newly acquired ground.

“Shit,” Jared said, interrupting Derrick’s targeting. “We’ve got incoming.”

Derrick’s heart gave a painful double beat. Another hour and the first of the reinforcements might have arrived. But for new MIGs to show up now when Jared looked like he might pass out at any minute and Derrick was running on anxiousness more than anything else didn’t bode well.

His mind was slow enough that it took Derrick a minute to understand what the bright lights streaking toward them were. “That’s north and that’s fast.”

Jared slumped into his chair, making Derrick grab the controls of the dactyl before they plummeted from the sky.

“I don’t think you are rated to fly that thing that fast,” Jared said into the walkie.

“Did you know these things go fifteen hundred miles per hour?” Arinna asked. “You told me they could only go a thousand.”

There were tears in Jared’s eyes when he answered back. “Please don’t make me laugh. It really hurts.”

“Good to hear your voice, Captain,” Lieutenant Assad said. “We heard you had some problems.”

The three approaching dactyls slowed and banked, taking a circuit around Crystal City at enough of a height to avoid becoming a target.

“You’re not doing too bad,” Arinna said as Derrick joined the other three dactyls on their circuit. “Except for being shot down, of course.”

“Ha ha. That is thanks to a crazy maneuver of your husband’s. Otherwise you’d be talking to the FLF right now about prisoner exchange,” Jared rasped. “You really shoot your shield with lasers?”

Arinna laughed in answer. “We each have a platoon on board,” Arinna said instead. “Any recommendation where we should drop them?”

“There’s a spot to the southwest where the terrain has made it difficult for FLF to get too close with anything but soldiers. We can clear room there for quick drop offs,” Derrick answered.

There was a pause before Arinna answered. “I’ll follow your lead, Lieutenant,” she said, tone holding warmth.

Hearing they were getting replacements, the Guard made a push to clear a landing spot while the three dactyls offered covering fire as each one took a turn landing and spilling soldiers.

All troops deployed, Arinna swung her dactyl sideways. “Let’s go cause some trouble. Sergeant Montaya, follow our lead and stay high if the shooting gets heavy.”

Switching strategies as they ran attack patterns in pairs, threes, or with all four dactyls, often coming from different angles, kept the FLF on edge and shooting wide. They were making some progress in breaking up the FLF troops and buying the Guard a little relief when new lights appeared on the horizon coming from the west. From Europe.