“Oh, great,” Cruz said. “Sounds like DJ Geriatric is spinning again tonight. What a surprise.”
“If it’s too loud, you’re too old, Kvothe,” I shot back. “Why don’t you mute me and put on the latest Kidz Bop compilation instead?”
“Perhaps I will,” he replied. “They’re unappreciated musical geniuses, you know.”
The two drones Cruz and Diehl were controlling launched out of the hangar just ahead of me, each labeled with their call sign on my HUD.
“Attention, your drone is next in the launch queue!” my computer announced, with far too much enthusiasm. “Prepare to engage the enemy!”
The belt cycled forward again, feeding my drone into the launch tunnel and then blasting it out in space.
And then it was on like Red Dawn.
The first wave of responding enemy ships was already pouring out of the bottom of the nearest Dreadnaught Sphere like hornets from a metal hive and streaking down on us out of the blackness, approaching fast along our twelve o’clock.
A split second later, the space in front of my drone was filled with hundreds of Sobrukai Glaive Fighters, along with dozens of dragon-like Wyverns uncoiling and snaking through their swarming ranks, all of them moving in unison as they moved to attack the Icebreaker. I held my breath as I targeted one of the lead Glaives. I felt like I had a grudge to settle with the damn thing, for escaping from my fantasy life to invade my reality—and for making me question my own sanity in the process.
My three-dimensional tactical display flashed, warning me of a reactor detonation directly behind me, and I accelerated just in time to escape being caught in the blast.
Lasting longer than a few minutes in a battle of this size wasn’t easy. Evading enemy fire required lightning-fast reflexes, wicked spatial awareness, and a gift for pattern recognition. You had to learn how to find the best route to cut through the enemy’s ranks, retreating and attacking simultaneously.
Once I’d spent enough hours studying how the Sobrukai ships moved and attacked as a group, I gradually began to see the patterns hidden in all that chaos. Sometimes they moved like a flock of birds, chasing its own tail as it circled for a landing. Other times, they made sharp turns in the sky, like a school of predatory fish. But there was always a pattern to it, and recognizing it allowed me to anticipate the enemy’s movements and reactions, and that made it relatively easy for me to get them in my sights—as long as I was listening to the right music. Music was key. The old rock songs on my father’s old mixtapes were perfect, because they had a steady, hard-driving beat that served as my mental combat metronome.
I cut my engines and fired my retro-thrusters, swinging my ship around 180 degrees without altering or slowing my forward momentum. Then I opened fire on the swarm of Glaives converging on the Icebreaker’s tail with a series of bursts from my sun guns.
When I hit my first target, it imploded into collapsing fireballs of superheated plasma in front of me, and a message flashed on my HUD informing me I’d made the first kill of the engagement.
“One down, a few million to go,” I announced over the comm, already buzzing with adrenaline. Killing videogame aliens had always been an outlet for my adolescent frustrations—but tonight it felt as though I was venting compressed rage each time I pulled the trigger.
It didn’t matter that the Sobrukai were fictional—I still wanted to kill every last one of them.
“Guys, I’ve got two Glaives on my tail,” Diehl announced. “Any help?”
“Help yourself, pal!” I heard Cruz say. “We’re all getting our asses handed to us!”
“Not me,” I replied. “I am officially in the zone.”
I scanned my scopes, but neither Kvothe nor Dealio was currently visible, because the Icebreaker was now directly between us. I fired my lateral thrusters and did a series of diving barrel rolls to evade the incoming barrage of plasma bolts streaking past me on all sides. I also teased the throttle to vary my ship’s speed and angle of ascent, while I lined up my omnidirectional laser turret’s targeting reticle with a new threat—a train of three Glaives I’d just picked up on my tail, looming on my HUD’s aft display.
The moment I got a targeting lock on the leader, I thumbed the laser turret’s trigger. The beam only lasted for a split second and it wasn’t visible with the naked eye, but its exact trajectory appeared on my HUD. I watched as it burned through the hull of the Glaive closest to my tail, then continued burning on through the other two Glaives directly behind that one, destroying them in a rapid chain of explosions: Boom! Boom! Ba-Boom!
I powered down my already overheating laser, then switched back to my plasma cannons, which automatically reoriented my HUD so that it showed what was in front of my ship, instead of the dissipating fireball in its wake. Then I threw the throttle wide open. But as I passed under the Icebreaker and prepared to swing up on its opposite side, two more Glaives reappeared on my tail. They dropped in directly behind me and I started to take heavy fire, knocking my shields down by half and putting even more of a drain on my power cells, which were already dangerously low.
According to my HUD, the Icebreaker had been firing its melt laser for less than a minute, and the Sobrukai had already destroyed nearly half of our Interceptors. Reinforcements were still pouring out of the Doolittle’s hangar, but these drones were all piloted by players who had already gotten themselves killed once, and most of them would be destroyed a second time within seconds of rejoining the battle.
Cruz was right—we weren’t going to be able to hold them off long enough.
“Screw this,” I said. “I’m gonna try and create a diversion.”
“Where are you going?” Cruz said over the comm. “Protect the Icebreaker, dumb ass!”
“Sorry, Cruz!” I said, pushing my throttle forward. “But you’ll never guess who just showed up. Leeeeeeroyyy—”
“Oh, Lightman, don’t you even dare!”
“—mmm-Jenkinsss!”
I broke formation with the others, leaving the Icebreaker behind as I moved to attack the nearest Dreadnaught. I slammed my throttle forward and crossed in front of it, strafing the turrets spaced along the sphere’s equator, taking out one or two of them.
“Goddammit, Zack!” Cruz shouted. “Every time! Every goddamn time!”
I grinned and fired my thrusters, putting my fighter into an instantaneous vertical dive, with the intention of slipping under the sphere to strafe its shield. This maneuver cost me nearly a third of my remaining power, because my Interceptor had to momentarily activate its inertia-cancellation field to execute it. But I shook several of the Sobrukai fighters off my tail, because they needed to execute the same move to stay on me, and most of them didn’t have enough power. Instead, they had to fishhook around behind me, then try to get a bead on my Interceptor again—when I was already gone.
Another swarm of Glaives emerged from the nearby Dreadnaught, all diving at the Icebreaker in a straight line, firing in tandem. I shredded them with a single sustained burst from my sun guns, bringing my Sobrukai kill count up to nine. Not bad, but also not up to my usual standards. My aim was a bit off.
“Shit!” I heard Diehl shout over the comm. “I just lost my gorram shields because I’m already out of frakkin’ power!”
“Dude,” Cruz said. “You shouldn’t mix swears from different universes.”
“Says who?” Diehl shot back. “Besides, what if BSG and Firefly took place in the same universe? You ever consider that?”
I heard a thunderous series of explosions behind me and swung my head around just in time to see the IDC Doolittle erupt into a huge fireball amid a hail of enemy plasma fire.
“What did I tell you?” Cruz muttered into his headset. “There goes the carrier, and the rest of our drone reserves.”
“Yeah, and that goddamn Icebreaker still isn’t finished making its stupid ice-fishing hole, either,” Diehl added. “Game over, man. Game-the-fuck-over.”
“Not yet,” I muttered.
Clenching my teeth, I swung my Interceptor back around and returned to try to help defend the Icebreaker, targeting the cluster of Glaives attacking its aft thrusters—but I couldn’t get a lock on any of the targets flashing on my HUD, because I kept having to dodge incoming enemy fire, as well as friendly fire from the sentry guns on the Icebreaker’s armored skin as my drone skimmed over it.
My drone took two more direct hits, knocking my shields down to fifteen percent. One more hit and they would fail, and my weapons would follow soon after. Not good.
I jammed my flight stick forward, cutting into a sharp dive to avoid flying right into the beam of the Icebreaker’s pulsing melt laser. Ignoring TAC’s warnings about my drone’s imminent power failure, I gunned the throttle and continued turning into a barrel roll, both sun guns still blazing.
“Shit!” I heard Diehl curse. “They got me, guys. I’m out.”
I glanced at my HUD just in time to see Diehl’s Interceptor vanish off my scopes.
“Me too,” Cruz added a second later. He unleashed a colorful stream of profanity on his comm and logged out of the game completely.