Tabitha Chirrick - Overshadowed

“Shy!” Tayel warned.

Shy snapped her head toward the viewport and drove the yoke downward.

An ear-shattering snap echoed through the walls as their enemy made contact with the hull. Shields blinked out of existence, flickering back as a warning icon emitted from the console. They were at forty percent capacity. Tayel dug her fingers into the armrests.

“No, no, no.” Shy took a hard turn downward as the three ships came around for another attack.

Arcs of aether flew overhead as she maneuvered left and right. Bursts of darkness exploded into the snow as they flew dangerously close to the ground. Tayel’s heart hammered. They took another hit. The shields dimmed. Twenty-six percent.

“Xite!” Shy grit her teeth and steered upward.

“Do you need help?” Tayel snapped.

“Of course I need help! Why the frag do you think there’s a co-pilot station?” She dodged another line of fire. “I can’t enact evasive maneuvers and target at the same time.”

Tayel swallowed. “Then let me help.”

Shy’s jaw set. She took a hard right.

“Shy.”

“Have you ever manned weapon systems before?”

“No.”

Shy burst out laughing, but she was anything but happy, judging by her narrowed eyes and scowl.

Tayel steadied herself against the console as the ship took another sharp turn. “But wouldn’t you rather me miss targets than chance our shields burning out because you can’t do both at the same time? I’m bound to hit something; there’s an assistive lock!”

Shy grit her teeth.

“Besides,” Tayel said, “I, uh, got passing marks in my aeronautics career workshop.”

“What does ‘passing marks’ mean?”

“Er, means I didn’t fail.”

“Oh ho!”

“Shy, come on.”

“Absolutely not . ”

The shields cracked with another hit, and the cockpit lighting turned red with warning. Shy hissed through her teeth. Shields showed thirteen percent capacity. Tayel’s breath wavered. She imagined the engine exploding from a direct hit, consuming them all in flash fire.

“Okay,” Shy said. She flipped a switch under the dashboard, and the co-pilot station lit up. “Okay, xite , you have control of the weapons suite.”

Relief was temporary. Tayel’s stomach did a flip as dark aether fired to the side of them. Even with Shy paying all her attention to evading attacks, if Tayel couldn’t take the enemy down it would only be a matter of time until evasion wasn’t enough.

She gripped the yoke, and the underside gimbal twitched with the movement. “I’ll do the best I can, Shy.”

“I know.”

The ship veered, coming around for a pass on the enemy. Two of combatants split off, but the third one rushed forward. Tayel moved the yoke. The gimbal responded more fluidly than she expected, and she overshot, missing a potential target lock. She fired anyway, and bright green lasers darted through empty sky.

Guilt and anxiety made her shoulders rise up to meet her ears. “I’m sorry.”

“At least you got a shot off,” Shy said. She steered the ship out of enemy fire. “I’ll make another pass.”

A red light flashed on the console. Two lines followed Shy’s ship on the radar, closing distance fast.

“Shy, what do I—?”

“There’s a back-facing flak cannon loaded with heat-signature emitters.” Shy pointed to a switch on the co-pilot dash. “Wait until the missiles are within twenty meters.”

Tayel’s hand hovered over the button. Heat radiated from the console, warming her fingers. The two missiles closed in. Thirty meters. Twenty-five.

“Tayel! Do you understand? Twenty—”

Tayel pounded the button and the ship shuddered. The flak cannon fired. She braced for impact. The detonation wave rocked the ship but the explosion happened far back against the emitters — a grim fireworks display on the video feed — casting their hull in orange.

“Got it!” she cried.

“Thank Alhyt,” Shy breathed, and she grit her teeth.

An enemy dove out of left airspace, and she rolled the ship wing over wing to evade fire. Tayel’s head spun. She held herself center in her seat with her left hand while her right moved the yoke into position. Her screen blinked every time their attacker came into focus. She pressed the trigger halfway in. Shy leveled out beside their pursuer, and Tayel moved the gimbal until the console glowed green with the lock. She fired.

The stream of laser hit dead-on, causing the enemy ship’s shields to flicker. A cry of elation caught in her throat as it made a sharp, evasive turn. Shy made chase. G-forces sucked Tayel back into the chair as the landscape started to blur.

The radar showed their two other attackers behind, but she tore her eyes away to focus on the one in front. The one with the shields she’d downed. The targeting lock blinked green. She pulled the trigger, heart racing. Lasers lanced through her target’s hull. Orange flames burst outward from the tears, and the ship spiraled down at the end of a smoke trail.

“Hell yeah!” Tayel whooped.

“Yes!” Shy shouted. “Xite, you actually did it!”

“Maybe you should have trusted me sooner, huh?” Tayel chided.

Shy eyed her wryly as she brought the ship around. “Maybe you shouldn’t have mentioned your passing marks . Coming around on the other two.”

Tayel kept the gimbal steady as Shy did another loop through the air, leveling out behind the remaining two enemy vessels. One veered left into open sky, but the other turned toward the mountain range. Tayel pictured a magball field, one opponent heading toward the center of the field — open room, multi-directional strategies — and the other heading toward the field barrier. Barriers meant only one way out.

“Chase the right one,” Tayel said, and Shy steered so that the left wing angled straight up at the sky. Tayel fell against the right side of her harness with all her weight.

The ship in front of them skirted the mountain, peeling off toward open air, but she fired ahead of it, giving a lead. It flew into the fire, shields flickering out. She kept the trigger pulled back, moving the yoke slightly to keep the lock. The ship exploded in a cloud of black and orange.

“Got him,” Tayel said.

“Nice, but where’d the other one go?” Shy murmured. She squinted out the viewport.

In the pause, Tayel noted the battle waging below. The number of Varg on the walls seemed so much less than before. Raiders lobbed incendiary grenades over the defenses, setting fire to the buildings beyond.

“Shy,” she said, “what if we attack the ground forces? We could ease some of the strain for the outpost.”

Shy leaned back in her seat. “You want to do an air strike on the raiders?”

“Yes the—!” Tayel stopped.

If what happened to the refugees in Castle Aishan happened to the raiders, too, then those people down there weren’t bloodthirsty murderers at all. They were brainwashed, and they could have been Shy’s friends — Shy’s family.

“Never mind,” Tayel said. “Sorry. That was a stupid suggestion.”

“No, you’re right.” Shy accelerated downward, her eyes sharp and intense in the low cabin light. “We should take advantage of this position while we can.”

Tayel took her hand off the yoke. “But Shy, they’re your people!”

“I know. So don’t make me shoot them.”

“Shy—”

A proximity alert blared for half a second before the whole ship shuddered. Tayel gripped her armrests. The console went dark. The lights flickered out. The hum of the engines vanished into silence, and suddenly, her stomach rose into her chest. The ship angled downward, the view of the city coming into focus. Her heart stopped. They were falling .