Tabitha Chirrick - Overshadowed

“Tayel?” Shy nudged her arm.

The others trotted down the stairs from the armory to the garage floor. A Varg waved at the bottom to greet them.

“Sorry, coming.” Tayel stepped forward, but Shy stopped her with a firm hand against her shoulder.

“Are you going to be okay?”

“Yeah, Shy. I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“No, I’m… It’s just—”

“Shy!” Locke waved from the bottom of the stairs. “You all need to board. The Varg are preparing to leave!”

“Give us a second!” Shy yelled. She turned back.

Tayel shrugged in exasperation. “I’m worried for everyone.”

“We all know the risks.”

That dread inched its way back into Tayel’s stomach. They didn’t know every risk. They didn’t know about Ruxbane, that he might be looking for her. But if she said anything — even expressed doubt — she might be forced to stay. Forced to stay because she’d gotten cold feet from too many bad dreams. She grit her teeth.

She’d done everything to get here, to be this close to bringing Jace home. She wasn’t going to let fear and doubt stop her from helping.

“I’m okay,” she said. “Just — like I said — worried.”

Shy looked past Tayel into the armory, and clicked her tongue. “You know, I’m a much more experienced combatant than you. In every way.”

Tayel drew back. “Nice, Shy.”

“I’m saying , that if you wanted the prototype shield, I’d understand. I might not be as vulnerable to ending up in situations where it would be useful.”

Tayel mulled over Shy’s words until she felt the tug of a smile. “So you’re offering the opportunity to, what, ask for it?”

Shy crossed her arms.

“You keep it,” Tayel said. “I wasn’t lying before; I do think everyone else was right. If we find a Rokkir, they’ll go for the most skilled target in a fight.”

“Shy!” Locke called again.

Shy swore under her breath. “Coming, Locke!” To Tayel, she said, “Sorry, but, we should go.”

“Yeah,” Tayel said. “After you.”

She followed Shy down the stairs, hugging her arms against the draft. The bustling garage had deflated in activity during their conversation, now with only a few Varg running around, closing hoods or swinging themselves into open seats. Two others stood on either side of the massive metal garage doors, each positioned at a switch.

“Finally,” Locke said when Tayel and Shy arrived. “This is your rover. You’ll be riding with Balcruf. Stick with him, and he’ll lead you to the ambush location within Cryzoar.”

“How long’s the drive?” Fehn asked.

“Long enough the Rokkir will send forces to divert you.”

Jace shrunk against the hull, looking smaller than the bag strapped to his side.

“Are you all ready?” Locke asked.

“As we’re going to be,” Shy said.

Tayel didn’t feel so sure, but it hardly mattered. She’d made her choice.

“Watch each other’s backs,” Locke told them. “The Varg aren’t likely to back you up. You aren’t part of their pack. Once you strip what data you can from the mothership, leave.” He clapped his hands on Shy’s shoulders. “I love you. Don’t die.”

“I won’t,” Shy said.

Their rover’s door rested a full four feet off the ground, and even with a stool to stand on, Tayel had to help Jace inside. She stepped up the edge of the car after him, and shimmied in to take her seat. Shy followed in after her, and then Fehn, filling up the back row. The door slammed shut behind them. Only the front windshield and two slatted windows on the sides of the car let in any light.

Tayel fumbled with her harness while Varg filled in the remaining row ahead of her and the two driver’s seats in front. Another two climbed up the sides of the car, their heavy footsteps dull thuds on the roof.

Balcruf turned in the co-driver’s seat. “Everyone ready?”

His kin’s affirmatory howls deafened Tayel, but the pain didn’t drown out the nerves. She tapped a jittery beat against her seat as the floor-to-ceiling high garage doors pulled apart ahead of them. Visible trails of windswept snow sucked inside with the draft, and half a hundred engines roared. They shot into the white plains.

Tayel steadied against the roller coaster motion, grasping at the bench seat in front of her. For minutes, all she could see was white dust and specks of other rovers as the speed sucked her into the backrest. It was when they inclined up a hill she could finally see the sky. Pitch black as ever — as black as space — the sun a slightly larger dot than the rest of the stars. The rover climbed for what felt like forever, until it reached the top and leveled out. A slow, cautious roll that brought them to the edge of the mountain, and into view of the extensive valley below.

Tayel’s heart stopped.

It was the same view in the flexi-screen Otto had given her back on Delta, as though she’d been transported momentarily to the photographer’s spot. Cryzoar stood in the middle of the valley, an enormous, circular wall encasing it from the vast fields of glittering snow. Crystals as large as ships protruded from around the walls, bright pink, green, and blue things twinkling in the light of the moon and stars.

It was the same view. Except for the fires. Except for the raiders. Except for the massive, disc-shaped mothership which overshadowed everything below.

Tayel could hardly fathom the size of the thing. Easily the circumference of the city below, the mothership loomed above its army, casting everything in shadow. A line of Rokkir fighters dispatched from its glowing hangar bay. The vessels raced toward the procession of snow rovers, forming angular shapes against the stars. Tayel bounced her mag baton in her lap. Alhyt , the thread of ships just kept going.

“Fall back a bit from the others,” Balcruf commanded the driver. He banged the ceiling twice — hard — and something heavy and loud dropped into the snow behind them.

The rover shuddered to a slower pace. Tayel snapped forward against her harness. Other rovers sped past, their enormous wheels kicking up rooster tails of white as each vehicle’s trebuchet arm dipped into the snow behind it. Varg atop the vehicles kept low to the roof, their fur rustling against the wind as their paws hovered near their weapon’s controls. Tayel squinted. A trailing trebuchet arm gathered a ball the size of a boulder in its scoop, compacting and melting the snow into a shiny, rock-like slug.

“Look there,” Balcruf said.

He pointed to the sky, where the undersides of Rokkir ships started to open up one by one, lowering short, sharp-edged poles into the open air.

“Veer left,” he ordered. “Keep plenty of space between the other cars.”

The jutting pieces of metal under the Rokkir ships shimmered, and globules of dark aether formed at their tips. Like a droplet of water, one fell, and Tayel instinctively braced for whatever came next. The aether exploded on contact with the ground. A plume of white erupted from where it dropped, and the shockwaves knocked her around between Shy and Jace. She braced herself against the seat ahead, heart hammering.

Cryzoar’s city walls still loomed in the distance, looking just as far away as when they first entered the valley. An intense longing to be there — to be out of this rover and away from the overhead siege — sparked panic. Her chest tightened, her breathing became more rapid.

A trebuchet on the rover ahead fired. The glassy snowball ripped through the air like a bullet, and made contact with a Rokkir ship. The resulting explosion swallowed them both. Fiery debris crashed all around Balcruf’s rover, peppering the roof like rain. Another dark aether bomb plummeted to the snow, flipping the vehicle to the right, and the shockwaves from multiple attacks started to compound.