Tiny and Fierce Margo Collins (acx book reading txt) 📖

held the slave women we had rescued, I announced, “This your captain speaking. Please move immediately to the walls and use the cargo restraints to strap yourself in as securely as possible. We will be executing evasive maneuvers in forty-five seconds.”

The empress’s ship might not risk firing on us at all, Evik ventured. She would not want to risk harming the slaves, as they are valuable cargo.

“After we subverted her AI?” Alder laughed. “Fat Felgarvian chance.”

“One minute to target lock,” Blue said.

“If they get a weapons lock on us, they can use a gravity beam to pull us in.” Morpheus’s grim tone suggested he spoke from experience.

“Ready, Blue. Give me a countdown, okay?” I tapped my fingers nervously against the control panel.

“Yes.” My ship’s AI paused, running millions of calculations in a few seconds. “Fifteen seconds to evasive maneuvers,” she announced, her voice echoing throughout the ship.

I hoped to all the gods ever worshiped in any universe that the slave women had enough time to get themselves belted in, at least well enough to keep them from being crushed by what was about to happen.

And the second we began evasive action, Blue’s makeshift camouflage would be gone. She couldn’t mimic the space around us, not while moving so fast. This had to work.

Blue’s voice returned to speaking only in the bridge. “Burning Phoenix to Basilisk maneuvers starting in five, four, three, two, one…”

Blue flipped so her nose pointed toward the planet and with a quick engine burst, exploded into motion, dropping toward the globe beneath us. Within seconds, we hit the atmosphere hard, the sudden resistance pressing us all back against our seats.

G-forces pushed against us ever harder as the atmosphere began to burn around us. Flames flowed past us, visible as bright orange and blue flickers, burning out Blue’s side viewscreens one after the other. Soon we couldn’t see out of any of them as they were all destroyed in the Screaming Phoenix maneuver. All that was left was the main viewscreen, which I had reinforced after the last time Blue and I had to do this.

Morpheus managed to grate out, “You’re going to kill us.”

Alder laughed wildly in a kind of adrenaline-inspired mania.

Evik simply clicked his mandibles anxiously but didn’t comment on our chances of survival.

“Blue, where’s the empress’s ship?” I asked. Even speaking was hard with this kind of force. If not for Blue’s special shielding, we all would have passed out by now.

“It’s behind us, entering the Nimbus Prime atmosphere at a much slower rate.”

“Good. That should give us plenty of time.”

“Plenty of time for what?” Morpheus asked.

I ignored his query.

“Nimbus Prime has locked targets on us,” Blue said.

“Keep signaling them that we’re friendly and have refugees on board,” I instructed.

“Point of no return in ten seconds,” Blue announced.

“Time for that energy boost?” Alder asked. I couldn’t turn my head to look at him, but he sounded even weaker than before.

“Better give it a try,” Morpheus said when I didn’t answer Alder.

“Will do,” the fae prince whispered.

“Decelerate and move to Basilisk,” I instructed Blue.

“Deceleration in five, four, three, two . . .”

Adrenaline raced through my veins as she flipped our rockets to burn in reverse, slowing us down. The friction of our changing inertia sent more flames arcing through the atmosphere. To anyone on the outside, it probably looked like we were completely burning up on entry—but I had arranged to liberate several panels from a delivery some time ago—armor that helped protect Blue’s hull against fire. The panels had fallen off the back of a delivery ship, basically. And I had installed them on Blue.

With a dizzying twist, Blue went into a controlled spiral downward and came up facing the other direction—toward the empress’s pursuing battleship.

“Target locked,” Blue announced.

“Give me a few…more…seconds.”

Now that we were hanging motionless in the sky, I could turn to watch Alder. Sweat beaded along his hairline, dripping down the sides of his now-ashen face. His hand still trembled, but this time blue lightning sparked around them. His voice shook with effort when he asked, “Where do you need this to go?”

I hesitated for a fraction of a second.

Fuck it. These are my crew. My men. And more than that.

“EMP cannons.”

All three of my crewmen whipped around to look at me. Well, Evik tilted his head back and forth to watch me through all his eye-facets, which amounted to the same thing.

“You put electromagnetic pulse cannons on an AI-controlled ship?” Morpheus asked incredulously.

I ignored him. Experiments back on Old Earth a long time ago had suggested that AIs tended to go power-mad when given too much autonomy.

That would never happen to Blue, for reasons I wasn’t about to admit to my group. Not yet, anyway.

“Can you funnel your power to Blue’s weapons?” I asked Alder quietly.

“Yes.”

“Blue, fire when ready.”

Alder’s hands glowed brighter, the flickers of electrical power coalescing, then slamming out of him in such a bright flash that I had to close my eyes.

Even from inside the ship, we could hear the blast of those cannons thundering across the sky. When I opened my eyes, the entire bridge had taken on a blue glow. I turned to the viewscreen to watch as the EM pulse hit the empress’s ship.

“Holy starfucked shitballs,” Alder breathed. “That was intense.” Then he sank back against his jumpseat and closed his eyes.

“I don’t think that ship will be going anywhere for a while.” I watched the battlecruiser come to a complete halt, then drop out of the sky. “Or ever,” I amended, as it hit the ground and burst into flames.

I inhaled deeply. “Take us in, Blue.”

“There’s no guarantee they’re going to let us refuel here,” Morpheus muttered as Blue settled onto the landing pad outside the immigration office building we’d been directed to. The local officials had kept their weapons trained on us all the way there.

“No, but at least the empress’s ship is no longer a problem.” I took a quick glance around the cabin. “Everyone okay?”

All three males murmured affirmatives,