She was just about to go to the controls to check the external cameras when rough voices rang out.
“Open up, human!”
That was about the last thing she planned to do. Jerri flattened herself against the wall, as if that would help her to hide.
This was the worst case scenario. The Dinavri had discovered her existence and were trying to get to her. Absolutely fuck everything about that. The banging on the hull was getting louder, and there was no way she was going to sit there and wait to be dragged out by the terrifying creatures. She could not see Atlas anywhere. Had they fucking killed him?
Jerri only knew one way to handle such things. She took the controls and she hit the launch. Hopefully Atlas would understand she wasn’t abandoning him.
Once safely in the sky, she set scanners to target the surface. Atlas’s signal wasn’t pinging, but that could mean he was somewhere shielded. She felt waves of horror and fear at the notion something had happened to him.
“Goddammit. Where’s the Audacity when you need it?”
“What is…”
Atlas palmed his face as he realized the red Authority shuttle he’d been staring at in confusion for the last couple of seconds or so was his shuttle. His first thought had been that another Authority contingent was on its way.
“We sent two soldiers to retrieve the human for your pleasure,” Sithren explained. “Her response was to take the ship from port. We have sent two fighters to escort her back, so you may punish her.”
“Two fighters won’t be enough.”
Sithren took what was fast becoming predictable offense. “I think two Dinavri fighters can handle one human female in a transport shuttle.”
Atlas did not want Jerri to make even more of a mess than she already had, but part of him thrilled to the notion that these Dinavri fighters were about to suffer a true humiliation at her hands. He had no doubt she would put on a display unlike anything these creatures had ever seen. And subsequently become a display unlike anything anybody had seen. This behavior could not and would not go unpunished. There was no Authority protocol that authorized a lieutenant to take a shuttle off-planet while their superior officer was still on it. He had no doubt that the Dinavri had spooked her with their attempts to enter, but discipline would have to be maintained.
Boom! Boom!
That was the sound of Dinavri craft breaking the sound barrier. All eyes were drawn upward, and a smattering of generally excited cheers heralded their arrival.
The fighters were sleek and glistening, moving through the sky at an astonishing pace, two purple and green blazes of color. In comparison, the Authority shuttle was a big red blotch that seemed to have all the aerodynamic agility of a brick.
“It will be over in a matter of seconds,” Sithren said with an almost lethal level of toxic smugness.
The fighters were converging on the shuttle. It did seem as though they would make contact, obtain weapons lock, and give Jerri no choice but to land. They drew closer and closer, two arrows destined to wound their prey. It really did seem as though there was no way out for Jerri. Her shuttle was moving at a fraction of the pace of theirs.
“I have instructed the pilots not to cause any harm to your ship or your human, but they will not tolerate any refusal on her part to land,” Sithren murmured to Atlas. “You understand, of course.”
“Oh!”
There was a collective gasp as Jerri’s shuttle, because that’s what it was now, dropped like a stone. It fell out of the upper atmosphere, plummeting toward the ground so quickly that the fighters above ended up simply passing through the space it had previously occupied. It took them at least three seconds to make a decision as to what to do, during which time Jerri’s red brick had leveled out over the city and was now moving toward Atlas and the Dinavri contingent at a massive rate.
There was an ear-splitting roar as the shuttle tore through the sky above them in a full body roll, then nosed up at an acute angle, caught the fighter attempting to follow it on the way down on the rear with a harmless but poignant photon beam, then lurched into a half backward roll, half barrel roll heading in the other direction.
“She knows how to fly,” Sithren said, deadpan. “You must have advanced methods for teaching animals tricks.”
Atlas said nothing as Jerri made the Dinavri fighters look like first year flight cadets. The shuttle did not have speed, or anywhere near the maneuverability of the other craft, but she knew how to play to its strengths while simultaneously minimizing its weaknesses.
“Tricks will never be enough to out-fly our warriors,” Sithren continued.
Still, Atlas remained silent. It was a lesson Sithren would have done well to absorb.