that ominous tetrahedron was creeping up behind us. His squadron mates weren’t far behind. I glanced at the cannon’s feed tube levels. The starboard cannon had seven balls, and the port had six. Thirteen osriilium balls left. I activated the imager’s targeting screen. “Ship, I need you to tell me every time that crackpot Crank is exactly on our ten o’clock, exactly, got it?”
“What are you—”
“Got it?” I shouted and felt a whole new level of pain in my throat.
“Yeah, I got it, whatever.”
“Here we go.” I had to hope I could hold on though this one more time, but I’d never been much good at hoping. Being outright reckless, now that was my area of expertise.
I swung the rudder hard to port and counter positioned the yoke sticks to augment the spin as much as possible then I jammed the starboard thumb throttle all the way down. The thruster roared to life and, with the canopy off, was deafeningly loud.
“Crud!” I tried to shout but my voice cracked and it came out more of a croak. Ship whirled around like a big, mallow infused Avi-star thruster powered dervish. We were spinning so fast I’d completely lost my orientation and could only hold on and hope I was keeping us something close to in place. It was taking all my remaining strength to keep the controls in position and all my remaining will to keep from passing out.
“Stop! Stop! Please stop!” Ship screeched.
“Tell me,” I said as I could no longer shout, and got my fingers on the cannon triggers.
“Now!” Ship said.
I fired.
“Now!” Ship said.
I fired and saw a piece of something fly by in a flash.
“Now,” Ship said.
I fired and more bits of something went by.
“Now!” Ship said. His voice grew more enthusiastic, indicating to me that my plan was working.
I fired. Something soft, a leg I think, hit the side of the cockpit.
And fired.
And fired until the trigger went slack and the empty feed tube lights blinked to life on the instrument panel.
I let go of the controls and sank my face into my leather gloved hands. “Ship, stop us. Stop us now.”
“Hey!” Ship yelled. “You can’t just let go while we’re spinning like that!”
I felt Ship go into an acentric wobble but I was in no shape to help him out. My brain felt like it was puréeing into mush. I felt something beyond dizzy; something so terrible on such a unique plain of awful that it was an indescribable sensation. And all this shaking and stirring had woken the Not Now Stone back up. I could feel it churning around inside my gut like it was riding an internal centrifuge.
When the pain and dizziness eased off a little I looked up. Even though I felt like we were spinning still, Ship had gotten us straightened out. I wanted to tell him to check on the remaining enemy flycraft, but I couldn’t find the strength.
“Oh I get it,” Ship said like he’d asked me some question, but I was fairly certain that he hadn’t. “By telling you to fire when Toerang was on our ten, by the time you pulled the trigger, and the cannon fired, we would have turned another sixty degrees, putting Toerang’s flycraft directly on our twelve o’clock; brilliant calculations. Oh my dark lords, I just gave you a complement. Now I am going to vomit.”
Even if I’d been able to, I wouldn’t have told him that I’d totally guessed. He did call up our image in my mind though, Ship spinning around like a misshapen top, firing off coal-black osriilium balls; must have looked like a sparkler on the fourth of July. Then a new wave of pain hit me, the stone again. I grunted, gritting my teeth together so hard I was surprised they hadn’t broken.
“Jazz?”
On some level I heard Ship, but it was like he was really far away or talking to me from a dream.
“Jazz…Jazz?—Jazz! Get up; you’ve got to see this.”
As he spoke his voice grew closer and the ache leveled off into a really bad side sticker. I wiped the tears from my eyes and, against the discomfort, forced myself to sit back in the seat. I kept blinking, but my head was still too dizzy to focus. “Let me guess,” I said and I’d never remembered my voice sounding so weak. “The Kriskrossa are moving in to obliterate us and you mean to insult me once more before we die. Oh, and it’s all my fault.”
“No,” Ship said then reconsidered. “Well insult you, yes, of course; all your fault, absolutely. But the Kriskrossa have cut and run.”
“They did what?” I said and straightened my spine. I winced and pressed a hand to my aching ribs.
“They’re running, all four of them.”
“Four?” I asked, easing the words through my tender throat.
“Toerang’s dead,” Ship said in a calm and quiet tone.
I rubbed my eyes until I got them into a quasi focus and looked out. The world still appeared a bit blurry, but one thing was clear, Toerang’s Koffer DD7 was in about a zillion pieces, pieces drifting down and dropping into the lake in little splashes. Apparently Toerang was no longer whole himself. I saw an arm, still in the sleeve of his garish blue and gold coat, fluttering down. I could have sworn it shot me the bird, but I was still slightly dizzy.
I kicked out of the pedal straps, sat back, and hugged my legs to my chest. The contrails of the fleeing Deltacraft were already fading from the sky. For a time we just sat quietly hovering in place. The pain in my side put a shudder into my breathing, but, with the canopy gone, my view was crystal clear and the wind felt soothing on my face.
The sky was a brilliant blue with a hint of red just at the horizon. The thick clouds had moved on leaving a trail of white wisps that decorated the sky like marbled crème filling. For a moment I forgot where I was and enjoyed the Earthen sky, the sky of my youth, the sky I loved. The red rose up and spread into a brilliant orange as the suns settled in deeper. I looked at my chronograph; just under two hours until backlash. So little time left, but one more debt to clear up before I went. Still couldn’t believe Toerang, my nemesis in the sky, was actually dead.
“Ship, I need a little nap, keep the controls on automatic.”
“Oh sure, you go ahead and rest while I fly, it’s not like I did anything today after all.”
I let out a sigh, careful not to stretch my ribs too wide. I was just too scratch’n tired to argue, and what did a dead girl care about reputation anyway. Besides, Ship had done good. “Ship, would you keep the controls so I can take a nap, please?”
There was a long silence before Ship asked, “Where to?”
“The Grand Nitsburg hotel.”
“You have some kind of windfall? Treating yourself to a private suite with room service and a mallow charged status scrub? Even if you had those kind of chips, and you haven’t, we cannot fly to Nitsburg, you ninny. The enforcer corps have issued warrants on the both of us. As soon as I landed you’d be arrested and I’d be scraped.”
I struggled to remain conscious. It was a good thing that Ship’s cabin microphone had a gain control because my voice couldn’t have been more than a whisper. Man, what I would have given for a lozenge. “There’s an old culvert not far from the hotel, a remnant from the abandoned highway system, land just outside of the culvert, it’s beyond the city line. Call DJ. I want her to meet us there with my street cycle. Tell her there’s a fresh ration of jondus juice hidden at Uncle’s. Oh, and she needs to bring Mother Goose.”
“The outlands, we can’t land in the outlands!” Of course with his broken voice modulator speaker, Ship’s voice wasn’t much stronger than mine.
I was fading fast. “The Cranks won’t bother us…ever again.”
“Oh yes, I forgot,” Ship said and gave a little victorious giggle. “Setting course for the Nitsburg hotel.”
At least I think that’s what Ship said. I’m not completely positive as right about then I fell unconscious.
…to be continued
-Next Time-
Jazz has a single hour left to live, and that’s put her in a single mind of purpose, the s
ame purpose she had when she wasn’t about to die a horrible death, kill monsters. So she and DJ head into the monster ghetto to settle a score with the Clowns, a gang of goblins and bvorcs that despise Jazz almost as much as she despises them. Aside from being vastly outnumbered, Jazz may have failed to grant the Clowns home field advantage. May the last being laugh.
Jazz, Monster Collector, Episode 15, Down with the Clowns
Watch for it at your favorite retailer, Jazz Fan
I hope you’ve enjoyed this Jazz adventure.
If you’d like to learn more about the monster collector, or me and my other works, please visit:
www.RyFTBrand.com
Ranting at www.RyftsRants.com
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends