An alarm on Kaede’s control board beeps. A voice rings out in the cockpit. “Pilot, you are not cleared for this area,” it says. (Male, Colonies accent.) “This is not your squadron. You’re ordered to land on DesCon Nine immediately.”
“Negative,” Kaede replies. She pulls our jet up and keeps climbing.
“Pilot, you are ordered to land on DesCon Nine immediately.”
Kaede turns off her mike for an instant and looks back at us. She seems a little too happy about our situation. “Goddy talker’s following us,” she says in a mock authoritative tone. “We got two hot on our tail.” Then she flips the mike on again and replies brightly, “Negative, DesCon. I’m gonna shoot you out of the sky.”
The person in the other plane sounds shocked and angry this time. “Change course and get this one—”
Kaede lets out an ear-piercing shout. “Split the sky, boys!” She rockets us forward and up at blinding speed, then goes into a spin. Streaks of light shoot past the cockpit window—the two jets tailing us must’ve gotten close enough to open fire. I feel my stomach drop as Kaede goes into a sudden nosedive, killing our engine in the process. We drop at a pace that turns my vision black and white. I feel myself fading away.
An instant later I jolt awake. I must’ve blacked out.
We’re falling. We’re plummeting to the earth. The airships below us grow in size—it looks like we’re heading straight at the deck of one of them. No, we’re going way too fast; we’ll be smashed into pieces. More streaks of light rush past us. The jets following are diving after us.
Then, without warning, Kaede fires the engines again. They roar to life. She pulls back hard on a lever and the whole jet spins in a half circle so the nose is facing up again. I’m almost sucked into my chair at the sudden change. My vision blacks out again, and this time I have no idea how much time has passed. A few seconds? Minutes? I realize we’re charging back up into the sky.
The other jets zoom down. They’re trying to pull up, but it’s too late. Behind us, a huge explosion shakes us hard in our seats—the jets must’ve struck the deck of the airship with the force of a dozen bombs. Orange-and-yellow fire churns upward from one of the Colonies ships. We’re now zooming across the empty airspace between the two countries, and Kaede sends us into another spin that saves us from a barrage of fire. We cross the airspace and cut through the sky over the Republic’s airships. One lone Colonies jet, lost in the chaos. I gape at the scene outside, wondering if the Republic is confused that the Colonies attacked one of their own jets. If anything, that’s what bought us enough time to cross the warfront space.
“Best split-S you’ve ever seen, I bet,” Kaede says with a laugh. It sounds more strained than usual.
Not far from us now are the looming towers of Denver and its forbidding Armor, shrouded in a permanent sea of smog and haze. Behind us, I hear the first sounds of gunfire as Republic jets start tailing us in an attempt to shoot us down.
“How are we going to get inside?” Day shouts as Kaede spins the jet, sends a missile backward, and pushes us to go faster.
“I’ll get us in,” she shouts back.
“We can’t make it if we go overhead,” I reply. “The Armor has missiles lining every side of that wall. They’ll shoot us down before we ever get across into the city.”
“No city’s impenetrable.” Kaede sends the jet lower even as the Republic jets continue to pursue us. “I know what I’m doing.”
We’re closing in fast on Denver. I can see the looming gray walls of the Armor rising up before us, a barricade like nothing else in the Republic, and the heavy gray pillars (each a hundred feet apart from the next) lining its sides. I close my eyes. No way—no way—Kaede can get us over that. A squadron of jets could get over, maybe, and even then it’ll be a long shot. I picture a missile hitting us and our seats ejecting us out over the city’s skies, the shots they’ll fire up at our parachutes, our bodies plummeting to the ground. The Armor is close now. They must’ve seen us approaching for a while, and their weapons will be trained on us. I bet they’ve never seen a rogue Colonies jet before.
Then Kaede dives. Not just any dive—she’s headed down at almost ninety degrees, ready to send us smashing into the earth. Behind me, Day sucks in his breath. The buildings below rush up at us. She’s lost control of the jet. I know it. We’ve been hit.
At the last second, Kaede pulls up. We skim above the buildings at mach speed, so close that the roofs seem like they’re going to rip the bottom right off our jet. Immediately Kaede starts slowing down the jet, until we’re cruising at a speed barely fast enough to keep us airborne. Suddenly I realize what she’s going to do. It’s completely stupid. She’s not taking us over the Armor at all—she’s going to try to squeeze the jet through the opening that the trains use to pass in and out of Denver. The same tunnels I’d seen when I’d taken that train ride with the Elector. Of course. The surface-to-air missile systems mounted along the Armor’s wall aren’t designed to take down anything like us from the ground, because they can’t shoot at such a low angle. And machine guns on the wall aren’t powerful enough. But if Kaede doesn’t aim exactly right, we’ll explode against the wall and burst into flames. We’re close enough for me to see soldiers running back and forth on top of the wall of the Armor. Their communications must be flying fast.