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

Ship took off like he’d been shot from a cannon.

  “Woo-hoo!” The force pushed me back in the seat. Not much got me excited these days, but speed, lots of speed, still held some power over me; always had. “Eat my thrust wash, Toe-Cheese!”

  “I tried to tell you,” Ship said in that whiny gloat of his.

  “Tell me wha—”

  Before I could finish, Toerang’s flycraft pulled up along side mine. He gave me a little wave with the hand he had squeezed into the long-cuffed glove.

  I don’t know why but I waved back, that bent bastard.

  “The Koffer’s drawing a lot of energy to a device mounted to his outside hull, more than likely a Techscore 9900 inertia manipulator.

  I switched the wave for the back of my first two fingers. “Yeah, I figured that out.” Sherman Toerang game me an oily smile from beneath his waxed mustache, his big bucked teeth made him look a lot like a beaver. He adjusted the set of his goggles on his face then dove.

  I watched him drop out of sight. “Okay, where’s his squadron?”

  “Strange,” Ship said.

  “Strange isn’t a place—that I know of.’

  “It’s strange that they’re holding position. Ha!” Ship shouted. “They must have heard about us, they’re scared to face us, the mighty Krisskrossa.”

  “They’re not scared, quite the opposite, they’re playing with us.” I pulled up on both pedals and pushed the port stick forward, arching us up into the cloud. It would provide visual cover and slow their sensor response. “They’re letting their boss have first crack. We’re out numbered and out powered so we’ll even the field a bit.”

  “Oh no!” Ship shouted in an almost inaudibly high pitch that lengthened the speaker tare.

  “What now?” I asked craning my neck though the canopy was completely covered in cloud fog. I saw the missile a moment before it hit. I crouched instinctively as an explosion rocked Ship up and over and into a series of barrel rolls. Buzzers buzzed, alarms rang, and Ship cried. We shook so violently that I couldn’t see straight. From what I could see, Ship’s instrument cluster was dead.

  “Stop crying and tell me what’s broken!” I shouted.

  “Everything,” he said though I could barely hear him. “Everything’s broken!”

  We dropped out of the cloud but a plume of black smoke issuing from Ship’s starboard thruster had the canopy covered. “Get those stinking alarms off!” I shouted over the din of chirps, chortles, and rushing air. Nearly as soon as I’d asked everything except for the rushing air went silent.

  “Thank you.”

  “Thank me nothing,” Ship said. “I was going to make the alarms louder, but every low power feed just went dead.”

  We’d gone from rolling and quaking to a flat spin and shaking. We were falling blind. “Ship, we need those instruments on line, need them now!”

  “Yeah, well I need a body, a regular old hover demon body back now. Doesn’t seem like either of us are getting what we want.”

  “I’m talking need, not want here. I die today, nothing I can do about that; so how about you?” I wiped the canopy with the sleeve of my battle jacket as if I could rub the cracks and smoke away. “What do we have?”

  Ship said nothing for a long second, then said, “Limited control surface response, manual weapon systems although targeting accuracy is questionable, port side thruster only. Good news, the tea maker is working perfectly. Oh, and impact in three seconds.”

  “Scrud, scrud, scrud it all!” I knew cursing wouldn’t help, but it sure felt good. Even if we were going slow enough for me to eject, and we weren’t, I wouldn’t get past the spinning flycraft. One hope, but it wouldn’t be pretty. “Ship, switch control back over. I need you to hold full power on the port thruster.”

  “No. Won’t. Can’t. All automatic controls are inoperable, besides, it’s a dumb idea.”

  “They’re all I got. Hold on.” I didn’t know if I could hold this, but I’d try. I jammed the left throttle all the way down, drew both pedals all the way up, and counter-positioned the yoke levers. It took a half a second longer than normal, just enough time for me to doubt anything would happen, and then Ship’s starboard thruster roared to life.

  Ship had been designed to turn within the space of his own wingspan, just not at this speed. With the single thruster at full output, and the yokes set with one fully in and one fully out, Ship flat spun at some inconceivable rate. I’d asked Ship to do it because I wasn’t sure if I could remain conscious through it. I had, in effect, turned Ship into a helicopter, but, since he lacked a rotation inhibitor, a helicopter without aperture control.

  I had no idea if we were going right, left, up, down, or sideways. I assumed, because we hadn’t crashed yet, that I’d at least slowed our decent.

  “Hey,” Ship cried out. “I’ve got a little power back. The imager’s coming back on line. At least we can see where we’re at.”

  “Yeah, great,” I said as my head swam through the first wave of nausea. I let go of the yokes and covered my mouth with both gloved hands to keep myself from hurling. I couldn’t throw up, not yet. If I did the magical stone souring in my stomach would backlash, meaning I’d experience every injury the dammed thing had ever healed. That death was my fate, it was inexorable. But I planned to put it off for as long as I could.

  With my hand off the stick, the thruster stalled.

  “Hey, hey, our spin’s slowing. Speed us up, full power. Full power!” Ship shouted.

  “Yeah, I’ll get right on that,” I said and felt the doubt in my voice. I reached for the stick, but instead of two, I saw eight. My head was swimming, my stomach was lurching, and everything had gone blurry and multi-imaged.

  I made a grab for the yoke and must have passed out. The next thing I knew I was getting wet. Water sprayed me in the face and my hands went to protect my goggled eyes, but the dizziness had passed. Ship rocked in a wishy motion and I couldn’t get my bearings.”

  “Wake up you idiot, we’re sinking!” Ship shouted.

  “What?” my voice sounded dry and cracked. I blocked the stream of water hitting me in the face with a hand, cleared my raw throat, and tried again. “Where are we?”

  “Somewhere in the middle of the greater lake.”

  Greater Lake, a massive freshwater lake that once had been a bunch of much smaller and less great lakes; one that also happened to be home to an untold number of sea monsters.

  “And we’re sinking,” Ship sing-sung in a desperate minor key.

  Ship listed to one side and the water level rose inside the cockpit. Ship was designed for both Mirth and moons orbital operations, normally he wouldn’t, couldn’t sink, but streams of water sprayed in through the cracks that riddled his canopy.

  “Oh, and the Krisskrossa are upon us.”

  No sooner had Ship voiced his warning then the water surface prickled with a rain of bullets.

  I ducked and covered my head; maybe I was still a little dizzy. Bullets struck the back of Ship’s thick hide and rang like a snare drum roll. I looked up as soon as they stopped. Through the cracked and water splashed canopy, I watched four Deltacraft rush past, thruster ports glowing brightly and trailing white smoke. They soared up in a high arc. Sure enough they’d turn and sweep back for another assault. But this run, coming on our twelve o’clock, would hit the damaged canopy and there was no way it would hold against their lead rain.

  I grabbed the flight yokes, applied some port thrust, and pushed both yokes forward. Ship turned a clumsy circle through the water, then, plowing like a freight train through heavy snow, dove below the surface.

  Water sprayed in faster though the cracks.

  “What are you doing? I can’t swim, I’ll drown!”

  I shook my head, partly because of Ship’s absurdity, partly trying to clear my head. Ship’s damaged surface controls would have more effect under the denser than air water, but I’d have to work a lot harder to move them. Forgetting the pedals, I braced my fee
t against his bulkhead and struggled to compensate for only having one thruster. I focused on getting us as deep as possible. Sure enough the lake erupted with a bubbly display of large caliber bullets cutting though the water. A few managed to reach us, but with little force left behind them.

  Still I drove us deeper down. Their proton bolts and plasma missiles, and Toerang’s drift bombs, could still do us a great deal of harm if they hit us, even this deep down. Thing was to get past their instrument range. Crank flycraft have no air generators; they’re strictly suborbital. Problem was the deeper we went the faster the water rushed in.

  “Any idea how deep we are?” I asked and braced for the on slot of insults.

  “Too deep to bother insulting you.” Ship went unnaturally quiet again giving me time to contemplate how I might deal with the incoming water. I had an idea, but even I had to admit it was goofy.

  “Alright, look, I’m going to say this, but only because we’re both going to die anyway. And if I wasn’t going to die, and I had said this, I’d kill myself except that I’d probably die of embarrassment first.” Ship paused like he needed to take a breath, except he didn’t breathe. “Truth is I never liked being a hover demon. I mean ones gotta face it; on the list of preferred demon incarnations, hover demons rate somewhere just above slothgnats and just below sludgerobbers. Next to wrathscallions and cud demons, we’re every power mad maniac’s minion of choice. If we’re not being sent out on some one way suicide errand, we’re