Chapter 59

The impact came before Alex finished bracing for it. Talons met the Liger's shoulder at an angle he hadn't chosen. The whole frame lurched sideways, servos screaming against the sudden weight.

SKREEAH.

The Petras' cry came sharp and satisfied, right on top of him. He slammed the stabilizers and fought the tilt, boots planting hard against the floor pedals as the cockpit rocked around him.

Not now. I can't go down now.

The Liger caught itself two feet from a drop that would have ended the fight right there, claws gouging fresh lines into the rock as it found purchase.

GRNK. GRNK.

Two short growls through the frame, servo-deep, the closest thing the Liger had to relief. Alex's hands were moving before his head caught up, correcting the angle, feeding power back into the legs that had nearly buckled under him.

"Ziya, what's going on down there?" he said, voice tight over the comms.

For a second there was nothing but static and the distant scream of something airborne. Then her voice cut through, faster than her usual clipped delivery, missing its usual calm.

"We've got a problem." A snarl carried under Ziya's voice, close enough to her mic that Alex could hear it clearly.

GRRAKH.

"One of the Boars peeled off from the rest and it's not coming after you or Anya, it's making a beeline for the Mule."

Something in Alex's chest went tight, independent of anything the Liger's last maneuver had done to him. The Mule wasn't built to take a hit like that. Neither was anyone standing anywhere near it.

"Seraphine's still down over here," Ziya said. "I don't think she's going to get clear in time."

"Anya, you seeing this?" Alex didn't wait for an answer before he started scanning the chaos for the Lanstag's silhouette.

"Yeah, I've got eyes on it." Anya's voice came back clipped, already committed. "I'm peeling off to cover the Mule. Somebody's going to have to pick up my angle on the Petras."

Nobody answered fast enough. The gap opened before he could do anything about it, one more piece of the line pulled thin to cover a hole that hadn't existed a minute ago.

The Petras didn't waste the opening. It banked hard against the wind, wings folding tight before flaring out again in a dive angled straight for the space Anya's Lanstag had just vacated.

Alex swore under his breath and threw the Liger's weight into a pivot, trying to put himself between the dive and anything it could reach. The turn came slower than he wanted, servos grinding against strain that hadn't fully eased from the last hit.

Turn faster. He'll be on me again before I clear it.

He didn't make it in time. The Petras clipped the Liger's flank instead of finishing its intended line, talons raking down through plating that had already taken more than its share of damage today. Sparks sprayed across the cockpit's lower display, and something in the frame gave with a groan that Alex felt through the pedals more than heard.

GRRRNNK.

The sound wasn't the Liger's usual protest. It was lower, wrong. The end of it dragged, like something had caught and hadn't let go.

A row of amber warnings bled across the HUD's edge, then one of them turned red.

SECONDARY MISSILE POD EMPTY

RIGHT LEG ACTUATOR DAMAGE DETECTED

Alex's mouth went dry. He'd known the Mark I couldn't take much more. Feeling it happen was worse than knowing it was coming.

That's the hit I said we couldn't take. We just took it.

He forced his hands to stay steady on the controls, even as the leg's response lagged half a beat behind his input now, a half-second gap between what he asked the Liger to do and what it managed.

"Guys, a little help?" Rhian's voice broke through the comms, higher than usual, strained around the edges in a way Alex hadn't heard from her before.

He caught motion out of the corner of his eye, the Arosaurer twisting hard against something too fast to track, the Ashwing bearing down on her, wings driving a speed no creature that beaten-down should still have had left in it.

SKRAAAAK!

Her cry, raw around the edges, wrong in a way none of the fight's earlier sounds had been. Alex's grip tightened on the controls.

I want to break off and get to her. Whatever it costs.

The Petras was circling back around, though, lining up another pass that would tear straight through the Liger's already-damaged flank if he broke off now. He had maybe two seconds to decide, and neither choice felt survivable.

"I've got her, stay on the Petras!" Fia's voice cut in, sharper than Rhian's, already moving.

Alex didn't see what Fia did. He only caught the tail end of it, Rhian's voice coming back a second later, steadier now, calling out that she was clear and swinging back into position. He let out a breath he didn't have time to hold and turned everything he had back toward the shape closing in on him.

Somewhere in that same stretch of seconds, dodging the Petras's renewed line, it hit Alex again. That same pressure behind an idea that hadn't fully surfaced yet, the one he'd felt back at the recovery site when the Lynx's wrongness had refused to explain itself.

The figure on the ridge above them had flinched.

He hadn't seen it happen so much as felt the aftermath, the Petras's dive going a half-beat sloppy right when it should have been cleanest, correcting late instead of early. It wasn't the first time. He was almost sure of that now, the Boar's earlier break toward the Mule, the Ashwing's stall over the outcrop, all of it lining up against the same figure every time.

It's not the Titans. Someone's behind this.

He didn't have proof, and he didn't have time to want it. The Liger's aim came off the Petras and swung onto the ridge instead, tracking toward the distant shape rather than the Petras diving at him, and held the line there for one full breath, watching.

The figure staggered.

The Petras's dive fell apart, wings catching air wrong, the whole animal wrenching sideways like something had yanked its strings out of true.

"Everyone, listen to me," Alex said, voice cutting flat and fast across the comms. "Go for the figure on the ridge. Not the Titans. Them."

Silence answered him first, just long enough to feel wrong.

"You want us to shoot the guy standing there?" Fia said. "Based on what?"

"Based on watching it happen twice," Alex said. "Every time they flinch, something out there falls apart. I don't know why. I just know it works."

"Do it," Anya said, no hesitation in it at all. "We don't have time to argue this."

Lyra's voice came in a beat later, moving. "I've got an angle on them. It's not clean, but I've got one."

"Take it," Alex said.

The crack of Lyra's shot cut clean through the noise of the fight, and this time it didn't just clip the air. Alex saw it land, a dark shape on the ridge jerking sideways under the impact, dropping half out of view behind the rock before catching itself on one knee.

That better mean something. Or we're right back where we started.

For a second, nothing else moved at all. Then everything did, all at once.

The Petras's wings locked up mid-glide, dropping it into a graceless tumble it hadn't chosen. Both Boars broke from whatever rhythm had been holding them in formation, one skidding to a dead stop like it had forgotten what it was doing there, the other rearing back and snapping at the empty air beside it.

SKREEE... KRRK.

Somewhere above the outcrop, the Ashwing's scream cut off mid-note into something closer to a confused, wounded cry.

"Their sync's gone," Ziya said over the comms, fast, almost breathless. "All of them. Whatever was holding that together just let go."

"Boars are yours, Rhian, Anya," Alex said, dragging the Liger's aim skyward. "I'm on the fliers."

The Petras was still fighting to right itself, wings catching air in broken half-beats, easy enough to leave tumbling for now. The Ashwing was the one Alex actually wanted, hovering unsteady with nothing left of the deliberate hunter she'd been an hour ago, wide open in a way she'd never been before and probably never would be again.

One shot left. Make it count.

He pulled up the last missile lock and held the reticle on her until the tone went solid.

LOCK ACQUIRED

He fired.

The missile crossed the distance faster than Alex's eyes could track it, and then the Ashwing was falling, wings folding wrong, the whole massive shape of her dropping out of the sky and slamming into the rock below in a spray of dust and broken scree.

SKREE... ah.

Her cry broke off halfway, thinner than anything Alex had heard from her all fight.

Get up. I don't want it to end like this.

She didn't get up.

The Ashwing lay where she'd landed, wings splayed wrong across the rock, and after a few seconds even the ragged rise and fall of her chest stopped. Alex watched it happen from the Liger's cockpit and didn't feel anything like triumph. His hands stayed on the controls, still and heavy, the contract that had brought them all the way out here finally over.

Below him, Rhian's autocannons finished what they'd started, the pinned Boar going still against the rock face in one last burst of fire. A moment later Anya's Lanstag drove the second one down hard, ending it before it could pull free and run.

That left the Petras.

It had never stopped fighting the air since the moment its control snapped, wings catching wrong, altitude bleeding away in short, ugly drops. Now, with nothing left pinning its will to anyone else's purpose, it wrenched itself upright, caught a clean current, and broke hard for the far side of the ridge. Nobody moved to stop it.

"Let it go," Alex said. "It's not our fight anymore."

SKREEAH...

The Petras's cry faded into the distance until there was nothing left but wind and the settling dust of everything that had just happened.

For a while, nobody said anything at all.

It's over.

Alex sat with that thought a moment longer than he meant to, then brought the Liger down off the outcrop, joints groaning with every step, and went to find the others.

They regrouped near the base of the ridge, banged up and quiet, taking stock of a fight none of them had expected to survive an hour ago. The Boars were confirmed down. The Ashwing's kill went into the log. Alex's attention went back to the one question that hadn't been settled.

"We need to find whoever that was," he said.

Nobody argued. Anya organized a sweep of the outcrop where the figure had last been seen, and the group spread out across the rock and scree, checking every gap and fold in the terrain that could have hidden a person.

They found almost nothing.

No footprints past the first few meters, no blood despite the hit Lyra had landed. Nothing to explain how someone had been standing right there and wasn't anymore.

Then Rhian called out from a crevice near the base of the outcrop, crouched low, something small held up between two fingers.

"There's this." She turned it over, frowning at it. "It's some kind of pendant. There's a symbol on it I don't recognize."

Nobody else did either. Ziya took it from her carefully, turning it once under the light before tucking it away without a word, the same way she filed everything else that didn't have an answer yet.

"They're gone," Ziya said finally. "Whoever they were, they knew this ground better than we do."

Alex looked out over the empty ridge, the pendant's unfamiliar symbol lodging itself into the same part of his mind where the Lynx's wrongness still sat unanswered.

Something's still wrong here. This isn't finished.

He turned back toward the others anyway, and started the long walk back to where the Mule was waiting.

Advance chapters on my p@tR$0n/Najicablitz.