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When Orion felt relatively sure that Bretton wouldn’t murder his new fiancé in the cockpit, he went to man the cannon.
CHAPTER11
KAIA
The needlefin’s sleek controls felt foreign in Kaia’s hands, and when she first tested the yoke, the movement was too sudden, the fighter responding much quicker thanAhton’s Takehad. Bretton shot her a seething glare. Kaia quickly strapped herself in before she could go flying around the cockpit.
But it didn’t take long to get a feel for the sleek carbon fiber in her hands. She planted her feet into the floor, the yoke between her legs, and peered through the visor. The view was severely limited. In her old ship, it spanned the full cockpit. Here, the thermaview coating applied shields to most of the surface, the pilot having to rely on radar. Considering the radar system inAhton’s Takewas unreliable at best, Kaia seldom used it, instead maneuvering by eye. That was gonna be a problem.
She spat a string of expletives rivaling Bretton’s when the ship jerked under another impact.
Loran must have changed his mind. Maybe he thought she was betraying him, that she’d tell Orion everything, and decided to cut his losses. Despite the needlefin being much nimbler than Loran’s craft, Loran was a good pilot—he wasn’t letting them go.
She tried to get a pin on him on the radar screen, but watching two 2D dots on a grid wasn’t intuitive. She struggled to superimpose their relative positions over the physical world in her mind’s eye, but it was no use. Kaia performed choppy evasive maneuvers that she hoped would keep Loran on his toes until she oriented herself. She needed to work him in range of the aft cannon, which meant getting above him. But how was she supposed to do that when she couldn't even figure out where they were in relation to each other?
“What are you doing? Watch the fucking radar, not the visor!” Bretton was yelling, gesturing wildly at the screen.
Kaia chewed her lip, eyes gravitating to the narrow view of space from the front of the cockpit. This wasn’t going to work. She needed a visual.
Orion’s voice came through loud and clear from the cannon bay. “We gonna get in range anytime soon?”
She released the yoke, flexing out the tension in her fingers. Then her eyes flicked to the thermaview release.
Fuck it.
She disengaged the shields. In an instant, the surrounding walls disappeared and she could see everything. Relief cooled the sweat on her brow. She looked to her left and saw it: Loran's Raptor in full view.
“What the fuck are you doing? We’re naked out here!” Bretton snapped. “Put the shields back up!”
But Kaia was in it now. She could see the white glow of heating laser in Loran’s starboard cannon, and with a flick of the wrist the needlefin dipped out of the path of the shot. Not waiting for Loran to regroup, Kaia keeled left, then up and under, into the underside of his hull.
She smirked as Loran bailed, dodging with an ungainly roll.
“Are you playing fuckingchicken?” Bretton gaped.
He shut up when Kaia maneuvered to Loran’s port side and dodged another clumsy laser blast.
“Just a little higher.” Orion’s voice was calm now. The concentration in it mirrored her own at the controls and she pictured him aiming the cannon, thumb hovering over the release. She pinched the tip of her tongue between her lips, focusing. She had to get him a shot.
The next time Loren feinted left, Kaia was the one to cave—the ships must have been no more than a few feet from each other. He was getting desperate. She fired a few warning shots from the lightweight lasers at the bow. They weren’t positioned to hit, and she wasn’t half as good a shot as she was a pilot. Each time she tried to get up and over Loran’s craft, he dipped over them, keeping her beneath his belly. He knew what they were going for, and he wasn’t about to let them have it.
Kaia sucked in a breath, thinking. She killed the engines, then reversed propulsion. Her body jerked forward at the sudden deceleration, the straps of her harness jutting into her collarbone.
“Shit,” Bretton grunted next to her. Kaia couldn’t help but beam through a fresh rush of adrenaline.
The needlefin responded nimbly as she pushed it, grinding the engines into submission. It took no time at all for the ship to halt—not long enough for Loran to realize what was going on. He shot past them, its antiquated propulsion not fast enough to maneuver around the way Kaia had. Kaia twitched the needlefin up higher, above the warship making an arc up ahead.
“There’s your fucking shot,” she said, not sure if Orion would hear her. She didn’t know how to open two-way comms.
Either way he seemed to get it. A thick blast whizzed from the bottom of the needlefin, whipping past in the visor. It missed the moving target, but was soon followed by another, and this one was a hit.
“Fuck yeah,” Orion growled through the speaker.
“Fuck. Yeah,” Kaia concurred. But it wasn’t time to relax. The fighter had turned around and was coming straight for them.
Kaia kicked the aft propulsion back in, preparing to maneuver the cannon into range again. But before she could do so, the Raptor careening for them slowed within daunting proximity, affording Kaia a view into the cockpit.
Loran’s eyes were steel, but the corner of his mouth twitched in the flash of a grin. His chin lowered in a short nod, eyes locked on hers, before he accelerated and sped away.
