Jazz: Monster Collector In: Dogfight (Season 1, Episode 14)

trick; one a great, but now dead, resistance leader had taught me and one old Toerang should see coming a mile away. But today had already been a day of miracles.

  Toerang was also arrogant. He’d order his squadron to hold back. Sure, he’d let them play with me, cut bits of me off here and there, but the kill, that he’d save for himself. No way he could resist the bragging rights, ‘Toerang, the flycraft ace who shot Jazz out of the Mirthen sky.’ His arrogance would buy me some time.

  I set the mallow flow valve to Ship’s starboard Avistar thruster to about half then spun the air pump booster up to full. Ship dropped into a heavy list and, with the thruster so off balanced, turned in a slow clockwise circle as we gradually lost altitude. We were also making a fair amount of scungie smoke. In order to regain his attention, and for a bit of fun, I pulled the feed plug to Ship’s input modem and jammed it in an open power socket.

  “Yeowwch!” Ship screeched in one of his, ‘how’d he get his voice that high?’ squeals. “What in all the sinister realms are you doing to me?”

  I pulled the cluster cord from the socket. “Hold on,” I said, assuming he’d switched the mic back on when he asked his question. I flipped a couple of toggles, then exchanged the high-pressure fuel line from his starboard thruster with the low pressure line from his nullifier—I was about to need every bit of inertia nulling that the little Techscore 4340 could give me.

  “Hold on? Hold on, she says!” You’ve got my starboard thruster making more smoke than propulsion, my power cut in half, we’re surrounded by the most dangerous and diabolical pilots flying the Mirthen sky and you tell me to hold on? You’re not just stupid and crazy; you’re stupid, crazy, and going to get us killed!”

  Us? Ship said, us, not me. Unusual but he was probably right. I really didn’t care. If collecting monsters had been my art, then this was going to be my masterpiece. Most great artists aren’t appreciated until after their deaths. So me, well, I was going to combine my best work with my explosive death—seemed fitting to me at the time.

  “I don’t know if you’re watching the imager there, Captain, but those stub wings, all of those stub wings, are closing in on us and all their plasma cannons are charged.”

  “Good, let them come. And don’t think I missed the insult. If you survive this, I’ll probably kill you for it.”

  “Too late,” Ship said in the meandering bass tones that made him sound like the donkey from the hundred acre woods. “You already killed me, remember? By the way, the Cranks are firing on us.”

  “What?” I shouted, locking eyes on the imager. Ship was one of the very few who could drive me to distraction. Sure enough dozens of dashed lines showed a bevy of fully charged plasma bolts headed our way. “Okay Ship, on my mark shove everything you’ve got into the starboard thruster.”

  “You have got to be kidding me! That little nullifier can’t handle that much juice. I even try and at best we’ll explode.”

  The dashed lines were getting very near our little square on the imager. My heart was pumping so hard I could feel the veins in my temples throbbing. “It will handle it, trust me.”

  “Trust you? You! The girl who killed me and bound me to a flycraft! Do you think I’m crazy?”

  I didn’t have time to argue with him so I shouted, “Just do it! Do it now!”

  “No, I won’t. I’d say run or die but I know what you’ll choose so goodbye, milady. It’s been rotten.”

  Okay, so this was about as out of character as Ship could get. He was a great big coward, terrified of what his death might mean in the afterlife. Ship the chicken heart I could handle, this, well…I was about a second away from never knowing.

  One chance; the air boosters on the thrusters are part of Ship’s primary system, they’re an automated control, meaning Ship couldn’t shut them off. So I had plenty of air in the burn chamber, all I needed was fuel. Normally I didn’t take to carrying magical weapons, but I’d snagged a glow-bolt gun off of the mobster, Boss Geeter, right before I hung him out to dry. Every warning bell and buzzer Ship had went off, filling the cabin with sounds only slightly less annoying than the terrible death tribute Ship was singing. I ripped the fuel line from out of the nullifier, jammed the nozzle of the glow-bolt gut in the hose port, and pulled the trigger.

  Ship dropped so abruptly that my head slammed into the canopy and the straps bit into my shoulders. By the rate which we’d gone from a slow drift to critical rate of fall I’d say I’d completely nullified inertial effects on Ship. I however, was still firmly in inertia’s grip.

  “What in the curse of all life are you doing?” Ship’s squealed question came out a crackle though the broken speaker. At least he’d stopped singing.

  The g-force pulled so forcefully it felt like my internal organs were pressing into my throat and the Not Now Stone, the magical rock of healing I’d swallowed, was grinding into my stomach lining. First I’d felt the stone since Fenrisis made me swallow a prickly and terrible tasting magic absorbing caterpillar. Ship’s gauges spun erratically and un-readably. His low mounted wings blocked my view, but I had a pretty good idea that Mirth was rising up to meet us. “Cut all air pressure to the thrusters!”

  “I can’t you ninny, they’re part of my primary system.” Ship was panicked. “They’re an automated control, I can’t shut them off!”

  Oh yeah, right. I managed to get the serrated edged dagger from my boot sheath, and, by feel alone as the force had my neck bent at an awkward and painful angle, found the air supply hose and cut it. High pressure air rushed in though the cut hose and Ship came to an abrupt halt. I slammed down into the thinly padded operator seat.

  “Oww.”

  “I don’t see what you’re whining about. I’m the one with a cut air hose, an inoperable inertia nullifier, and a nincompoop for a pilot! And we’re still surrounded by Cranks!”

  I looked up at the lingering explosions, balls of fire, and smoke trails of crashing flycraft. “No we’re not.”

  “What are you going on about now?” One by one Ship’s instruments went through a reset sequence, flashed, and then came back on line. The imager screen blinked back to life last, showing only the four oblong dots and the ever present rectangle. Outside, I watched a stub-wing fighter smash into the Foul Island garbage heap, sending trash and smoke cascading into the air. “Oh go on and gloat, so you got them to shoot each other. I’m still damaged and the kriskrossa are headed this way,” Ship said over the hiss of high pressure air and the slapping of the loose hose against his hull.

  I glanced at the screen. Ship was right, the oblong dots were moving into fighting formation and headed our way. The tetrahedron, Toerang, followed at a distance. These guys were pros. They’d box us in then pick us apart like surgeons.

  Go time.

  “Drop your deeter crystal output to minimum, that should lower the air pump pressure,” I ordered as I pulled the small air hose from the thruster port and plugged it back into the Techscore 4340. “Reset the inertial nullifier, and get that fuel flow lowered!”

  “Give me a chance!” he screeched, probably paying more attention to the imager then his tasks at hand…even though he didn’t actually have hands. “I’m going as fast as I can.”

  Sure enough the deeter crystal gauge dropped to minimum output. I heard an unsettling clunk and Ship fell.

  “What are you doing? Maintain altitude!” I ordered.

  “I can’t, you stupid fool! I only have one operational thruster and without the nullifier the docking nozzles can’t hold us.”

  “Right,” I said. I dug around behind Ship’s instrument panel and came up with what was my very last roll of a substance most magical, a remnant of the old Earth, silver-smooth duct tape. I caught the end of the flopping thruster air supply hose and taped the cut ends back together. “How we doing?”

  “Me, we’ll you’ve upset my stomach and given me quite the headache.”

  He’s unbelievable. “How long until we’re in they’re firing range?”

>   “Geeze, you don’t have to shout, my speaker’s broken, not my microphone. The Cranks pulled up. They’re holding a high formation though I have no idea why, we’re falling ducks.”

  “I know why,” I said with a crooked smile. “They think this slow decent is a tactical plan, they think I’m up to something but they don’t know what.”

  “Gloat on, monkey girl, because Toerang just figured it out. He’s coming in fast.”

  “Right,” I said, jamming the patched together air hose back in the thruster chamber port. “Hit it,” I said slipping my boots in the three dimensional pedal straps. “Full deeter crystal flow now. On my mark, all flight and weapon controls to manual.” I took Ship’s twin control sticks, one in each hand, and set my thumbs against the throttles at the end of each stick. Ignoring the screen, I watched through Ship’s floor to ceiling canopy. Toerang’s big Koffer DD7 quadra-wing flycraft dove at us. The jagged trailing edges of his four stacked wings, the flat tailpiece, the black body with the red nose all gave his ship a vulture-like appearance. All four of his nose mounted guns fired in rapid secession. Mallow charged bullets rained down on Ship’s thick hull and canopy. But I wasn’t dead yet. “Mark!”

  “Wait!” Ship yelled. The deter crystal flow gauges both pegged the levels and I jammed the thumb throttles down. To my surprise the inertia nullifier still worked and