But Pinn didn’t care about the odds. That wasn’t the kind of thing heroes worried over.
The formation started coming apart around him as fighters broke off to intercept the enemy. The plan was simple: stay near the convoy and defend it. Pinn could just about cope with remembering that. As soon as his way was clear, he peeled off to port and made his way out of the crowd and into open air. He’d need a bit of room for the fight.
Ahead of him, the Windblades were closing in. The Awakener fighters arrowed towards them. Pinn hunched over his flight stick, the cockpit rattling, thrusters roaring as he pushed them to their limits. A smile spread over his chubby face.
‘Alright fellers,’ he muttered. ‘Who wants to be the first to feel Uncle Artis’s toecap up their arse?’
One of the Windblades opened fire early, sending out a burst of tracers. It didn’t get near Pinn, but it was enough to draw his attention.
‘Think you just volunteered, mate,’ he said. He angled his craft towards the overenthusiastic pilot, his finger hovering over the trigger.
The two clouds of fighters rushed towards each other, the gap closing rapidly with every second. Suddenly the air was full of gunfire as everyone let loose at once. Bullets whined and whipped past the cockpit. An aircraft to his right exploded.
Pinn kept his cool and held his course, waited that extra second, and pressed down on his guns. A trail of bullets scored across the nosecone of his target, shattered the canopy, raked up its back. The Windblade erupted in a ball of smoke and fire.
The two fronts of fighters met. Suddenly it wasn’t bullets but aircraft lashing past him, engines screaming. Pinn screamed with them, mindless with joy. He banked and swooped, diving in among the enemy. Combat became a muddle, Awakener and Coalition craft all mixed together, dodging and shooting.
Pinn cackled with glee as he was slammed here and there by g-forces. He took down another Windblade, and another. The enemy barely noticed him in the confusion. His craft was frustratingly sluggish — too much time rotting in the swamp air, probably — but Pinn rose above it. He’d run rings round these losers even if he was flying one of those cannon-fodder junkers. He could fly anything!
He lost himself in the combat. Time slipped out of his grasp. He was action and reaction, riding adrenaline, hyper-alert. His senses were overcome by the noise of the engines, the flash of explosions, movement everywhere.
It was only when he heard the first of the anti-aircraft guns that he realised how near they’d got to Thesk. The convoy had been ploughing onward while the fighters scrapped around them; now they were close enough for the city’s weapons to be deployed.
Pinn jumped in his seat as a freighter near the front of the convoy was ripped in half, belching flame as it fell away in pieces. Shells flew up from below and burst among the Awakener’s heavy craft. The air filled with explosions.
The attacks were not all from below, either. The Coalition frigates had come within range now, and their guns began to smash into the convoy’s flanks. The convoy fired back, but the distance was too extreme for accuracy, and the Navy had the better of it. Squeezed between the two halves of the fleet, battered by the city’s weapons, the Awakeners began to take heavy losses.
And still they ploughed onward.
Deadly projectiles flew in all directions. Pinn climbed to get above the convoy and out of the way. The sight below him was not encouraging. The aircraft on the convoy’s flanks were being torn apart. He saw another of the Awakeners’ big freighters go down. Awakener outflyers battled with the Windblades in the sky all around him, but they were getting decimated.
Doubt began to nibble at Pinn’s confidence. When were the Awakeners going to hit the button? When would the secret weapon come into play? Was it possible that the rumours were true? Was it possible that it really didn’t work, that this whole thing had been a massive bluff, and the convoy was only slogging onward to its doom?
Then a Windblade shot across his flight path, and he was after it like a dog after a rabbit. It took him back into the thick of the fray. He dodged through the smoke of fresh kills, was showered in shrapnel. Explosions rocked him, setting him shuddering in his seat, pushing his craft this way and that. Two Awakener craft collided off his starboard wing, smashing head-on into each other in the confusion.
He hung on to the Windblade’s tail as long as he could, but in the end he lost it. He banged the dash in frustration. The Coalition fighter was faster and more manoeuvrable. He wasn’t used to being outclassed by an enemy’s aircraft, and it made him petulant. He looked for another Windblade to destroy, to make himself feel better.
A detonation nearby rocked him. The Coalition frigates were alarmingly close now. He swung back towards the convoy. The Awakeners had put most of their junk freighters on the edges of the convoy to soak up the damage, but they weren’t well armoured and didn’t last long. It seemed like the whole outer layer of aircraft was ablaze. The convoy was getting shredded.
Pinn began to feel uneasy about this whole affair. Bad odds he could handle, but no one liked to be on the wrong end of a whipping. They were getting smashed from three sides and were barely even fighting back. He saw a few of the mid-sized craft trying to peel away from the Awakeners, intent on making a run for it. They didn’t believe in the Awakeners’ secret weapon. Maybe Pinn didn’t, either. Maybe he should do what they were doing.
Bullets lashed through the air before his nose. He rolled and dived to avoid the attack. A couple of bullets punched his fuselage, but it was just a scratch. He levelled out and looked over his shoulder. A Windblade, coming in on his tail. No, three Windblades. The bastards were hunting in packs.
Alright, he thought. If that’s how you want it. Let’s see you catch me.
He threw his craft to starboard. And in that instant, something changed.
It felt like a ghost had passed through him. For the span of a heartbeat, time slowed and everything went silent. There was a huge sense of peace in his breast. His eyes found Lisinda’s picture on his dash, and looked upon her fondly, as if she might be the last thing he ever saw.
Then the sensation was gone, and even though it was no longer inside him, he imagined he could feel it rippling outwards in a great sphere, with the convoy at its centre. Up into the sky, down towards the ground, spreading to encompass the combatants in the air and the city in the hills. There was nothing to be seen of it with the naked eye, except for its effects. Where it went, pandemonium followed.
The Azryx device had been activated. And it worked exactly as it was meant to.
The Windblades went first. They were already travelling at speed when their controls went haywire. One moment they were carving graceful paths through the air, the next they were corkscrewing wildly. In the crowded sky, they collided with one another and with Awakener fighters, or swatted themselves against the flanks of huge freighters.
Pinn evaded frantically as Windblades flew every which way and blazing pieces of aircraft rained down all around him. He ran a chicane of explosions, then hauled on his flight stick to get up above the carnage before he was taken down. G-forces pulled at him, crushing him into his seat, making his head light. A fighter plunged past his nose close enough that he almost stalled, but he rode it out, and then suddenly there was nothing around him but sky. He levelled out, high above the plane of the battle, and then looked down on the Coalition fleet.