"We can destroy them!" she cried and hit her comm, broadcasting her words to the fleet. "Hit their exhaust pipes! Hit them when they're on afterburner! That's their Achilles' heel. Firebirds, hit them in the exhaust!"
"Missiles up their asses!" cried Captain Mairead "Firebug" McQueen, voice emerging from Leona's comm.
Duncan's daughter was a fiery young woman. She was rash, rude, and reckless. But she was also the best damn pilot in the fleet, commander of the Firebirds.
Mairead flew her starfighter right by the Jerusalem. The young pilot looped around the frigate, a showy display. As she swung by, Mairead waved at Leona.
"Firebug, enough playing!" Leona said. "Get to it."
Mairead nodded, her red hair flouncing. "Got it, boss."
Her Firebird flew onward. The other starfighters followed.
The remaining Inheritor warships—at least three were disabled—were still firing, but they were slower than the enemy. And the strikers were loath to expose their exhaust pipes. The Firebirds were fast, but they were taking heavy fire. The strikers seemed to realize that the smaller starfighters were their main threat, and they began to focus on dogfighting.
"Why haven't we launched all our Firebirds?" Leona shouted. "I'm still seeing three in our hangar."
"Our pilots are down!" Duncan shouted back. The bridge was still burning around them. "The hull is cracked! The enemy hit us right at our launch pad."
Leona cursed. "Take the bridge, Duncan."
"Commodore?"
"You have the bridge!" she cried.
She ran off the bridge. She raced across the Jerusalem's hold, the vast chamber where the tanker had once shipped gasoline and water. A hundred Inheritor marines were here, but they would be of little use now. She raced between them and toward the hangar.
She froze.
Damn it.
The strikers had scored a direct hit. The door to the hangar was locked. Through the window, Leona could see the devastation. The hangar was cracked open, exposed to space. She would need to—
A blast hit the Jerusalem.
They spun.
The hull dented, and warriors cried out.
Leona cursed. She swung her rifle, shattered a glass cabinet, and pulled out a spacesuit. She dressed hurriedly, cursing every second that passed. Finally she leaped into the cracked hangar, then slammed the door behind her.
Bloody hand prints covered the floor and walls. A hole gaped open in the airlock; the vacuum must have sucked the wounded crew and pilots into space. There were three Firebirds here. Two were damaged and smoldering, but the third was unscathed.
Leona climbed into the starfighter.
The small, agile ship—no larger than a fighter jet from ancient Earth—roared to life.
Leona fired the Firebird's guns, ripping open what remained of the airlock, and roared out into space.
She soared.
The battle spun around her with light and fire and shattering steel.
The damage was terrifying from here. Two Inheritor ships were gone—just ruined husks filled with death. Two others were listing, taking heavy fire, cracking open. The rest were overwhelmed, and the strikers were swarming everywhere. The Jerusalem's shields were pockmarked, falling apart, covered with ash.
Leona gripped her joystick. She had clocked many hours flying in these small starfighters, far more than flying the Jerusalem. In this humble round cockpit, she felt at home. A striker charged toward her, plasma firing. Leona soared high, dodging the assault, then streamed forward and around the enemy. For a split second, the striker revealed the chink in its armor. Leona fired a hailstorm of bullets toward the blazing afterburner.
The striker shattered. Shards of metal and scorpion shells spread across space, peppering warships.
"Firebirds, rally here!" Leona said. "Warships, give us cover. Let's show these bugs human pride."
"Ooh, look at the fancy commodore, flying with us peasants," said Mairead. But as the redhead flew by in her starfighter, she gave Leona a wink.
The others joined her, twenty birds in all. As they rallied, the strikers turned toward them. Plasma hit a Firebird, tearing it apart. The pilot fell from the shattered cockpit, burnt and screaming. Another striker plowed through their formation, taking out two more Firebirds.
Leona chased the striker, firing her machine guns. Her bullets grazed its side before finally entering the exhaust.
The striker shattered.
"Kill them all!" Leona cried.
And the Firebirds charged.
They were small ships, far smaller than the strikers. They were weaker. They barely had any armor. They fired mere bullets and slender missiles, not roaring plasma.
But they were fast.
They were damn fast.
Years ago, Emet had bought a hundred space-racers from a bankrupt drag race operation. He had lovingly restored the machines, working long hours in the hangar. Today they could zip through space with the speed and grace of hornets.
They swarmed around the strikers, rallying behind Leona. The afterburners glowed. The bullets slammed into the turbines. Striker after striker shattered. As the Firebirds fought, the Inheritor warships kept firing their shells, pounding the strikers. The enemy ships could not regroup. Whenever they tried to charge at the Firebirds, missiles from the warships knocked them aside, exposing their weak spots. Bullets flew. More strikers burned.
Leona and three other birds chase the last two strikers around the Jerusalem, unleashed a barrage of bullets, and the enemy ships collapsed. Dead scorpions floated through space, ejected from the wreckage.
Leona slumped back in her seat.
The battle was over.
"We won," she whispered, finally allowing her hands to tremble, her breath to shake. "The Heirs of Earth are victorious."
She spent a moment surveying the aftermath. Her heart sank.
Three Inheritor warships were ruined. Many Firebirds had fallen.
I knew those soldiers, she thought. Sons and daughters of Earth. Proud warriors. Friends. Gone.
And they hadn't even found the convoy of deathcars yet.
Leona would need to gather damage reports. To collect the dead. To tend to the wounded. To repair the ships. To clean the blood. To continue her mission. To—
Her hands trembled around the joystick. Her Firebird rattled.
Fire rained upon her wedding day, and the albino scorpion laughed, raising Jake's severed legs.
She knelt, blood dripping between her thighs, painting her wedding dress.
Around her, the dead danced.
She breathed.
"One," she whispered.
She breathed again.
"Two."
She took a deep, shuddering breath.
"Three."
And she was back. She tightened her lips.
She returned to the Jerusalem. She walked through the battered hold, moving between her warriors, and onto the burnt bridge. She had just sat down at the helm when she saw them. There—in the distance ahead.
There they were.
She inhaled sharply.
The deathcars.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The deathcars flew across the darkness, a convoy of despair.
Leona counted ten of them. The deathcars were surprisingly small. They were black, bulky rectangles, barely more than crates with engines attached. The symbol of the Skra-Shen, a red stinger, was painted on their hulls. The ten deathcars flew in single file, so close they almost looked like a train moving through space.
Leona flew the ISS Jerusalem closer. The flagship rattled and shook as it flew. The battle on the border had damaged it, but the Jerusalem was a tough old bird. It would take more to bring her down. What remained of the Inheritor fleet—eleven warships and a ragged group of starfighters—flew behind her. They were fifty AUs into Hierarchy space now—billions of kilometers deep. Earth had never seemed so far.