Muscle bunched along Mace’s jaw as he forced himself to turn away and focus on his flying. A glance at the shortrange sensors showed him gunships all over the place: the computer counted fifty-three in the zone of engagement, with more curving toward them over the horizon. He keyed the troop bay doors shut and cut in the turbojets. “Nick. Take nav.”

“Sure. Er—yes, sir.” Nick glanced at the empty sockets left behind by the ejected chairs. “Um … where do I sit?”

“Monitor sensors. We should be seeing the Halleck’s landers any second. Kar! Chalk! The emergency repulsorpacks are next to the turret hatches. You have thirty seconds.”

Nick wedged his feet under the chair-socket struts and gripped the nav console’s split-yoke controls, squinting against the stiffening wind that whistled through the empty gap in front of him. The gunship’s aerodynamics shaped the wind blast past the cockpit instead of into it, but even the minimal back-eddy leakage was enough to stagger him. His eyes lit up as he took in the array of screens on the console—especially the twin screens with targeting reticules displayed at their centers.

“Hey, what’s this do?” He twisted the split-yoke in opposite directions, and the images on the screens spun wildly to match.

“Don’t touch those.”

[...]

“Kar! Chalk! Time to go!”

The Korun girl climbed into the cockpit between Mace and Nick; she looked pale and in pain, but still fierce. The lor pelek shouldered in behind her. They both wore emergency repulsor-packs strapped across their backs. “You know how these work?”

Chalk nodded silently in reply; Vastor slapped the graphic instruction card sewn onto his harness and snarled at him. I can read.

“Um, are we bailing out?” Nick said. “Because, y’know, somebody forgot to get me one of those—”

“Nick.”

“What?”

“Shoot.”

“Right. Right. Sorry. Here, watch this.” Nick let the port turret go silent, while the starboard quad clawed at the militia ship; the battered ship jinked aside to evade the pounding—directly into a stream of fresh fire from the port turret. “See? That’s shooting—”

“With real shooting,” Chalk told him, “wouldn’t be shooting back, him.”

“Shee. What does it take to please you people?”

Mace nodded to Vastor and Chalk. “Ready?”

Without waiting for an answer he cut power to the turbojets and flicked the repulsorlifts into reverse; overstressed metal squealed in the gunship’s every joint as it blasted down toward stall speed. Mace wrenched the yoke and flipped the gunship upside down. Kar Vastor wrapped one arm around Chalk’s shoulders and with the other grabbed the empty rim of the windscreen gap, then pulled them both smoothly out onto the roof. With one explosive kick to clear the gunship’s artificial gravity, he and Chalk fell away, tumbling toward the jungle thousands of meters below.

“On second thought,” Nick said, “I guess I don’t mind staying with the ship …”

[...]

The lock-on alert screamed, and Nick’s voice almost matched it. “Missiles incoming!”

Mace didn’t even bother to look. “Take care of them.”

The perfect confidence in his tone steadied Nick instantly. He flashed his brilliant grin. “Don’t mind if I do …”

As the turrets rotated to the rear and roared back to life, Mace scanned the jungle toward which his limping ship dived. It was hard to get a sense of scale—he might have been only hundreds of meters above it, or as many dozens of kilometers. Then the swarming gunmetal specks of the balance of the militia fleet that swarmed above the canopy snapped the scene into perspective.

There—a thousand meters below, maybe more, the distress strobes flashed on the repulsor-packs that Kar and Chalk wore. A single gunship streaked to intercept them, then slowed. And stopped, hovering.

And the minuscule figures of Chalk and Kar landed lightly on its roof.

A moment later its nose came up, angling straight for him. Mace nodded to himself and let the Force guide his dive into an interception course. He checked his screens. “Missiles?”


- Shatterpoint, Chapter 19