Project Starfighter (34 page)

Athena smiled gently. “I have come
to learn, in my admittedly short life, that things are never as
simple as they seem. You will always be fighting against something.
There will always be another mountain to climb. What gets you over
each hurdle is will and determination. You’ve come this far
already, you just need to stick with it.”

Chris nodded. It wasn’t quite as
easy as that, but he appreciated the sentiment. Standing at the
bottom of the mountain and proclaiming that it was insurmountable
would never lead to victory. He seemed to see things a little more
clearly. Athena might be nothing more than an artificial intelligence
construct, but she still knew all the right things to say.

“What else?” Athena probed
further.

“We have just had a meeting with
Krass Tyler, the mercenary that I hired to find you in Spirit. He
wants to ally with us against not only WEAPCO but also a mercenary
group known as the Immortal League.”

“I know of them,” Athena said.
“They’re more like a cult than a mercenary group. Their leader,
Mal, strikes me as a man who will defeat his opponents through fear
rather than direct action. Simply the knowledge of who he is and what
he stands for seems enough to cow all but the most determined of
opponents.”

“I don’t know much about him,
myself. Doubtful that I will ever meet him, if I’m being honest,”
Chris said. “The problem is that, the way I see it, we have to
fight three opponents, not just one.”

“Because once WEAPCO is defeated,
you will then have to deal with Tyler or Mal, so that they do not
attempt to seize control,” Athena said. “Yes, that is a problem.
Do you know what I would do?”

“What?”

“I would take it one step at a
time, deal with each problem as it arises. You did it before, I saw.
You also have strong allies – Sid and Phoebe. Perhaps Ursula, too,
if and when we are able to rescue her. Keep them close. They are the
most powerful weapons you have. You also have me.”

Chris felt her fingers wandering
over to his, brushing them gently. There was a solidness to them, as
well as the warmth and that small electrical tingle he had sensed
earlier. He responded, taking her hand and squeezing it gently.
“Thank you,” he said.

“No problem,” Athena said.

He held her hand a little while
longer before releasing it. “I’m going to go and get some rest,”
he told her. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“Chris,” Athena said, as he
walked away. “I know that you are not fond of who I am, or what you
think I am, but I hope that one day you will see me as an equal.”

He turned around, pausing as he saw
the avatar had moved further away from the Firefly than usual. Beyond
the range of the system, the projection was distorting and breaking
up a little.

Undeterred, Athena went on. Her
voice crackled as she spoke. “I do hope that you will one day see
me as a friend, someone you can depend on and who will be there for
you when you most need.”

“Perhaps one day,” Chris said.
Though he couldn’t be entirely sure, he thought he saw a smile on
Athena’s face before the avatar disappeared completely.

~

Tyler
contacted them early the next day. The Wolf Pack were gearing up for
a strike run against Elamale’s main WEAPCO shipyard in the next two
hours.

“Bring every gun you have,”
Tyler told them. “I want to deliver a message to both Mal and the
Corporation that they are not the only big fish in this pond.”

C
hris
was impressed with the fleet that Tyler had mustered for the assault
against the shipyard. He had expected something small, only a
fraction of the size of that which had attempted to tackle the
Grand
Vizier
, back in Spirit. But there must have been at least a
hundred units here.

Tyler had also gotten his hands on a
battleship – the
A.B.C.
It appeared to be some sort of
hybrid, a mishmash of other vessels. Perhaps it was a fallback
warship, constructed in secret by the Wolf Pack, and squirrelled away
some place to hide it from other mercenary groups. Either that, or it
had been thrown together in a hurry from whatever had been lying
around. Still, the thing was decked out with plenty of powerful guns,
both long and short range, and was also stocked with a good number of
rockets and missiles.

Yes, Tyler had made good on all his
promises so far. There was, however, one small problem.

“Looks like Mal might have had the
same idea,” Sid communicated from the bridge of the
Dodger
.

“Yep,” Chris answered. “It
doesn’t look like this is simply going to be us versus WEAPCO,
anymore.”

He tightened his grip on the
Firefly’s joystick as he closed in on the WEAPCO shipyard. With the
Immortal League now in the area, the Firefly’s radar was tracking
dozens of additional units. A large number of the players on the
field still belonged to the Corporation, however, and Chris was
actually somewhat grateful for the appearance of the second mercenary
group. It seemed that the shipyard here at Elamale was home to a
great many more fighters and warships than had originally been
estimated, and it was clear that Tyler’s group would have been
heavily outnumbered from the outset.

“How do you want to play this?”
Eve asked over the open channel.

“We hit WEAPCO first,” Tyler
responded. “We won’t directly engage any of Mal’s party unless
they fire on us directly.”

“Right, so we just let them get
the drop on us?” Dar asked. “The moment they’re done with
WEAPCO, they’ll likely turn on us.”

“We don’t know that for sure,”
Tyler said. “Ignore him for now; let’s just do what we came here
to do. This might end up being nothing more than a pissing contest,
in which case we should oblige Mal by knocking down more of WEAPCO’s
units than he does.”

With Phoebe still in control of a
number of Talons, Chris wondered how Mal’s forces might react to
seeing WEAPCO fighters battling alongside the Wolf Pack. Would he
presume that Tyler had teamed up with the Corporation? Surely not,
given that they were striking one of WEAPCO’s own shipyards.

Moving into weapons range
,
Athena notified Chris.

The warning came at the same moment
that several flashes erupted from the mobile gun turrets circling the
shipyard, energy beams issuing. One of the Talons flying alongside
Chris fell immediately, as it was struck by cannon fire. The energy
from that weapon must have been tremendous to fell it so quickly! The
Firefly suddenly jerked and Chris found that it was changing course
of its own accord, making very sudden and precise movements. Athena
had taken over.

“Sorry,” he said to her. Even in
those brief seconds, it was clear to him that he had been far too
slow to react. Athena had appreciated the danger instantly.

Chris, please take extra
precautions
, she told him.
This fight will not be easy. I will
pull us out if I think our lives are in danger. I’m returning
control.

“Understood,” Chris said,
feeling the timeslip start to surround him. He had not requested it,
but Athena had clearly forced it upon him, keen to make sure that he
wasn’t going to make any mistakes here.

“Everyone okay?” he broadcast to
his team-mates.

“Okay,” Phoebe said.

“All clear,” Sid answered.

None of the Wolf Pack answered him.

“Eve, Dar, Clayton – split and
lead the main strike as agreed,” Tyler said. “I will take
Bainfield, and Lexx and her machines to engage the fighter support.
The
A.B.C.
will hit those cannons from long range.”

“Got it,” Eve, Dar, and Clayton
said. The three increased their speed, taking with them those members
of the Pack under their command, gunning towards either end of the
shipyard, doing what they could to evade the incoming fire from the
turrets and commence their bombing run.

Chris saw counter beams from the
A.B.C.
start to strike the yard’s mobile weapons arrays,
smashing them down as quickly as it could. Chris was grateful for the
warship’s presence, since the mobile AI guns had apparently
determined that the heavily reinforced vessel was of a far greater
threat than the individual fighters.

In response to the
A.B.C
.’s
attacks, WEAPCO fighters began to pour out of the yard, Talons,
Mirages, and many others that Chris did not recognise, turning to
meet the incoming threat, dividing themselves between the Immortal
League, and the Wolf Pack. The three sides clashed not long after,
twirling and looping around one another, unloading cannon fire from
all manner of weapons.

It was quite some time – at least
from Chris’ perspective – until he downed his first opponent.
Athena had enforced some hard limits on the timeslip, and he wasn’t
able to increase his perception very much at all. Everything was
running a great deal slower than he generally preferred. It would
mean a long, tedious fight, one that would leave him mentally
exhausted, but one that he was more likely to emerge from alive.

“Can you take control of any of
those, Phoebe?” Chris asked, looking over the swashes of
WEAPCO-aligned starfighters that made up the shipyard’s defences.

“I’m in the process of doing
so,” Phoebe said. “I’m taking baby steps, and trying to stay
alive at the same time.”

“Is range important?”

“Very. As is line of sight, most
of the time.”

Chris sought Phoebe out on his
radar, sighting her Valkyrie and heading towards her, to provide her
with additional support as she went about the task. A number of
WEAPCO fighters immediately started to focus their attention on him.
He locked the closest of the group of Mirages, preparing to open fire
on it if Phoebe wasn’t able to take control of it in time. The
group speeding towards him then began to slow, before each one
flipped around and turned away, starting back towards Phoebe. Several
other WEAPCO fighters across the field made similar course
adjustments, breaking away from the mercenaries that were attempting
to bomb the construction bays.

“Phoebe, are you doing that?”
Chris asked, as a number of red blips on his radar flipped to green,
marking the WEAPCO fighters as friendly.

“Yes,” Phoebe responded.

“I thought you said you were only
taking baby steps?”

“I was. But ... it’s hard to
describe. I can just see it all a lot clearer, now. I thought it was
going to be like learning to ride a bike; a gradual process, where
you get used to balance. But something has just ‘clicked’.”

Chris felt Athena relax the
timeslip, allowing his perception of the world to slow, and the speed
of battle to return to real time.

“We’re safe?” Chris asked her.

I think so
, Athena said.
Phoebe seems to have a good grip on things. Her abilities exceed
my own by a long, long way.

By his own count, Chris had downed a
grand total of around four AI fighters before Phoebe had taken over
control of the WEAPCO forces. His further participation in the battle
was almost unneeded. “How many are you controlling?” he asked
Phoebe.

“Almost all of them,” Phoebe
said. “Watch.”

At once, the array of fighters that
had at one time threatened the Wolf Pack grouped up into a neat
formation and turned away from the shipyard, powering towards
Phoebe’s position. Fire from Mal’s group chased some of them
before the mercenaries stopped.

“Move away from the shipyard,”
Phoebe communicated to the members of the Wolf Pack still circling
the construction zone, laying down bombs and fire against the huge
structure.

“What are you doing, Lexx?”
Tyler asked her.

“Watch,” she said, waiting for
those around the yard to move clear. “Boom.”

At the word, explosions started to
rip their way through the shipyard, sections splitting and breaking
off. They were not small explosions, either. These were tremendous
blasts, shattering the yard in a way that Chris was not sure that
even the combined firepower of the mercenaries could have delivered.

“That’s for my sister,” Phoebe
said.

“How did you do that?” Chris
asked.

“The yard itself was being
controlled by an embedded AI system,” Phoebe said. “I simply
accessed it and told it to self-destruct.”

“Clever,” Chris said.

“Amateur,” Eve tutted. “Why
didn’t you do that in the first place?”

Chris was about to reply with a
witty retort of his own when the Firefly’s console started to
jingle. “What’s that?” he asked Athena.

The League
, she replied.
They
have a message for all of us.

Chris looked at his radar, seeing
that one of the blips marking a fighter in the distance was blinking
steadily. That ship would contain Mal himself, Chris was sure.

“Let’s hear it,” Chris said.

On one of the Firefly’s cockpit
screens, an image of a man’s face popped up. The man wore a flight
helmet that, unlike ordinary ones, covered the top half of his face,
so that only his nose and mouth could be seen. Unable to wear his
traditional hood, that helmet would be the next best thing, Chris
thought.

“That shipyard was mine,” Mal
said. “This is an Immortal League controlled zone. You had no right
to come here and attack my property.”

“An Immortal League controlled
zone?” Tyler responded. “There must be something seriously wrong
with your head, Mal. Up until a few moments ago, this was WEAPCO
space. I just sent them packing. Now it’s
my
space. And
you’re
trespassing,” he added with a snarl.

“It is not me who is intruding
here,” Mal said. “Kill them! Kill them all!” he called. “Our
glorious crusade will begin with my victory here against these Devil
spawn!”

The communication shut off, and the
many dozens of starfighters that had arrived with Mal began to
mobilize, crossing the gulf of space that separated the two opposing
sides, and surging towards the Wolf Pack. The Wolf Pack responded in
kind, and in less than a minute a torrent of cannon fire was being
exchanged, both groups apparently opening fire even before they were
in range. Chris did not see to whom the first victory went, his radar
so densely packed with markers and indicators it was impossible to
see what was happening.