Metal Swarm - Kevin J. Anderson [165]
‘Who do you expect is going to hear us, Nikko?' Tasia asked.
‘Anyone who's still alive down there. There must be somebody.'
There's a difference between being optimistic and being clueless. If they had any way of fighting the bugs, wouldn't they have done it already?‘
Robb scolded her. ‘Don't yell at the kid. What have you got against positive thinking?'
The Osquivel gained altitude, and Tasia saw two more vessels coming down toward them from orbit. How many more were up there in space? ‘They're blocking us in.'
She shot at the two overhead ships, ruining one, and focused on four more that came at them from the sides. The alien craft were like oversized angry gnats in the air. Robb was hell-bent, diving toward the ground, streaking eastward. The sun had already set, and they would be in full night before long. Fortunately, they were far enough from the ruined settlement that no more alien ships joined the pursuers. The insect hive city down there had been chaotic and incomprehensible, and she wondered if the Klikiss had suffered some sort of recent turmoil.
The alien ships still after them were relentless, firing again and again. A solid shot struck the already damaged engine, and the Osquivel lurched downward. That isn't good,‘ Robb said.
Tasia concentrated her fire on the remaining attackers. ‘Only five left. I can probably take them out.' As if to belie her assertion, another shot struck the Osquivel and damaged the good engine.
‘We're not going to make it much farther,' Robb said. Around them, the sky had grown dim with twilight. They raced onward.
Tasia saw this as target practice, barely bothering to breathe. She wrecked two more Klikiss ships - three left. But Robb was unable to manoeuvre. He could barely control their descent. ‘We're going down!'
Their albatross flightpath lured the Klikiss ships closer, ready for the kill. Tasia could have taken a shot, but first she let them come nearer. The Klikiss, seeing that they had mortally damaged the Osquivel, swept in, driving them downward.
‘Come on, you bastards, just a little bit closer.' The component ships obliged. With a yelp of triumph, she hit the weapons controls and fired as many blasts as she could, as fast as the Osquivel could generate the pulses. All three enemy ships exploded in the air. ‘Gotcha!'
‘If you're going to do a victory dance, do it quick,' Robb said. ‘Ten seconds until we hit - and don't expect it to be a soft landing.' The night-shadowed terrain rose up toward them, and Robb tried to head for a wide canyon. ‘But don't worry. I practised this in the simulator.'
‘Five years ago.' Tasia braced herself. ‘Shizz, hang on!'
The Osquivel scoured the bottom of the canyon with its belly, scraping rocks, spewing dirt, slewing right and left. An avalanche of sound reverberated through the hull. Anti-flame foam sprayed around the engines. Crash webbing locked down around Tasia like a hunter's net.
When the ship came to a grinding rest, Tasia shook her head, trying to focus her eyes and clear the ringing from her ears. As Robb shut down the systems and assessed the major damage (one engine off-line, the other ruined, and most of their fuel spilled all over the landscape), Tasia quickly disembarked, and circled the ship to see how bad everything looked.
The Osquivel had come to rest near a lonely distant canyon, far from the obliterated colony settlement. ‘What a mess.'
Nikko dug out the medkit and came out to stand beside her, looking forlorn. ‘I've crashed too many times for someone my age.'
‘Most people don't get a chance to crash more than once.'
The Osquivel still made groaning and clicking noises as it cooled and settled. The fire-suppressant foam fizzed as it soaked into the dry landscape. Otherwise, the Llaro night was very quiet and ominous.
‘Some rescue.' Tasia looked around in the gathering dark.
‘We wiped out all the ships chasing us,' Nikko pointed out, ‘so maybe none of the bugs will know