Jazz: Monster Collector In: Dogfight (Season 1 Episode 14)

Jazz, Monster Collector in:

  Dogfight

  season one, episode fourteen

  RyFT Brand

  Copyright 2014

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to

  persons living or dead are purely coincidental.

  JAZZ, Monster Collector

  Season One: Earth’s Lament

  RyFT Brand

  Episode-14: Dogfight

  Three hours to backlash.

  “Spin!” I yelled through a throat sore from swallowing a prickly caterpillar, getting choked by a tree, and lots and lots of screaming. “Spin! Do it now!”

  “Fine, but if I vomit it’s your fault,” Ship said as he slammed us into a series of fast corkscrews and a steep accent. A half dozen charged plasma bolts whizzed by. Ship’s stubby wings cut through the passing bolt’s smoke trials. One or two white-hot missiles came close enough to bubble a bit of Ship’s black and yellow striped paint. And frankly, although Ship actually couldn’t, I nearly did puke.

  I glanced at the imager. Three grey triangular shapes were in formation, close behind the square in the center of the screen that represented us, Ship and me. Actually the little shapes that represented enemy flycraft weren’t grey; I had no idea what color they were as I hadn’t seen colors in a very long time. A dotted line departed one of the triangles and made a bee-line for the center square. “Dive! Dive now!”

  “Spin, dive, shut up—you’ve gotten extra bossy lately,” Ship said. His lilting, affected voice came out fuzzy though the torn voice modulator speaker. “And would a please kill you?”

  I know it made no sense but I punched the cabin camera lens, it’s the closest thing Ship had to an eye. “Dive you hollow metal dork!”

  “Ouch!” Ship’s cry of pain made even less sense than my punch, but I’d gotten him obeying as the yokes pushed forward and Ship dropped into a belly forgetting decent.

  “Easy!” I shouted though it shot spikes of pain. It felt like a porcupine had crawled down my throat then backed out again. The G force had my head pressed into the seat and my stomach still hadn’t caught up to my gut. My broken ribs ached. An alarm sounded and a light blinked. “We’re crossing control surface speed threshold.”

  “Please,” Ship said and leveled us off before we crossed his mechanical terminal velocity. “Please go easy, sheesh.”

  The plasma bolt passed overhead, tailing a line of white vapor, then was followed by the three Crank Connor fifty-seven, stub-wing fighters. The fighters soared into a loop and rolled over, maintaining perfect formation. These jerks knew what they were doing and they’d have me in firing range in a couple seconds.

  If we were going to survive this we’d need an ace pilot, a bit of luck, and, if I had any say about it, a ton of fun. “Switch flight controls over to manual,” I ordered slipping my feet into the flight pedals and taking the yoke sticks.

  “No, and I don’t care how you threaten me. Every time I give you control, I’m the one who gets shot up, crashed down, abused and abandoned. I’m keeping control and I’m getting us back to Nittsburg without engaging any more Cranks.”

  “You insubordinate, disrespectful, galactic sized coward,” I said intending to sound really angry and menacing but came out desperate. I sounded more like a slighted child than a lean, mean monster hunting machine.

  “Better the fight you survive than the one they remember you for,” Ship said and, for a moment there, his voice lost some of the lilt and gained a little gruff.

  I glanced at the imager screen. The damned thing was color coded, a lot easier to read distances, flycraft classes, and weapon trajectories for someone color-sighted, but even I could see that the Cranks were nearing weapon’s range.

  I watched several of Ship’s nonessential systems shut down and felt him gain a little speed, but he’d never beat the Connors to the border.

  Okay, I needed a new threat and had less than two seconds to spring it. “Fine.” I flipped four retainer clips open, took the panel’s D-handle and removed Ship’s magi-brain cover.

  “Whatever you’re doing, it won’t work,” Ship hissed, the sound exaggerated by the fuzzy speaker. His sing-songy lilt was back.

  I dropped the cover and unscrewed the input modem cover. As soon as I did the Ausite Spirit crystal I’d jammed inside cast a purple glow inside the cabin.

  “Oh go ahead,” Ship said in his basso tone. Normally this made him sound sarcastic. I don’t know if it was the broken speaker or a change in his attitude but it came out sounding resolved. “Break the dammed thing, release my soul to the either, send me to whatever torment the underworlds have planned for me, I don’t care anymore.”

  A crooked smile slid up one side of my face. “Okay, then how about I jam the crystal inside Parry’s favorite kitchen appliance?”

  Ship made an abrupt dip and a plasma bolt ripped past us so close that I felt the heat though the thick canopy. My heart raced and my fingers twitched they were so eager to get a grip on the yokes.

  “No. No, you wouldn’t. No hell dimension has a torture as heinous, demented, or wretched as an existence spent as that twiddly dolt’s toaster.”

  Ship rolled ninety degrees, pointing one wing toward sky and the other toward Mirth and a missile rocketed past, then he flipped one hundred and eighty digress into the opposite, sideways trajectory allowing another missile to narrowly shoot past.

  “Switch the controls and I’ll leave you where you are,” I said then gulped. The missiles were getting closer. “And do it fast.”

  In what I could only describe as the most unexpected of all possible reactions from my ensouled flycraft, Ship said absolutely nothing. He banked right letting a proton charged bolt slide past, then arched down. This time the oncoming missile caught the edge of Ship’s stubby rudder. “Yeouch!” Ship shouted. He shook and I smelled melted aluma-carbium. Shuddering like a rhinelephant shot with a turbo-tazer, Ship jostled my insides. Every bruise, bump, break and cut I’d received during my fight with the wood elves flared with renewed pain. The screen was shaking too hard to read the imager. “Ship,” I said, the rattling had me sounding like Tiny Tim in the tulips.

  “Fine,” he said and I’d have sworn he was crying. I had no idea what had gotten into my flycraft but the yokes went limp. I grabbed them, struggling against the violent shaking, and pulled Ship’s nose up straight. Several plasma bolts followed by the three fighters passed beneath us. Ship was a heavily modified J-class yard switcher; he’s a mule, a workhorse, not a fighter at all. But, thanks to an enhanced and highly illegal Techscore 4340 inertial nullifier; Ship could start, stop, and turn on a microdot. The Crank fighters had no such advantage. Ship was a machine, but had the soul of an evil and cowardly hover demon; he was far too cautious to push the nullifier to its limits.

  Me, well, I had hours to live and only revenge to survive for. I’d push the nullifier past its limits.

  “Damage report,” I shouted, still fighting to get the shaking settled down.

  “We lost the magi-frequency antenna and the rudder tip. The surface around the rudder is a hot, no, wait, the heat sensor’s been damaged, recalibrating. And that disgusting hunk of goblin you jammed in my cargo hold is managing to stink even worse than it stank before you killed it.”

  Ship was right about the smell, and without that antenna we wouldn’t be as accurate at predicting their weapons’ trajectories, but I was relieved to hear the temp issue was just a sensor. I needed to concentrate on those fighters, which were turning into an intercept loop.

  “Getting new data now, looks we’re…” Ship’s voice trailed off.

/>   “Looks like what?”

  “Looks like we’re on fire!” he screeched in such a high pitch that only the broken speaker saved me from punctured eardrums.

  Ship’s floor to ceiling canopy gave me an exceptionally good view all around except directly to my rear. The shaking worsened so I assumed the sensor was correct. We must have picked up active plasma from the missile. It would eat its way clear through Ship’s hull and the Crank fighters were headed straight for us; their plasma cannons glowed with an ominous orange light.

  “Jazz, you maniac, you can’t out fly them with a damaged rudder!” Ship shouted.

  “Just hold on.”

  No more defense. I flipped the trigger covers up and activated the laser-sights. Ship’s field cannon’s are antiquated relics I’d lifted from a trash heap. They’re slower and lack the range of the Crank’s plasma missiles, but their mechanical targeting systems are undetectable by mallow powered instrumentation. The two following cranks drifted back from their point man and fanned out, preparing to cut me off whatever direction I