“She’s gonna feed us to those damned things?” Rey screamed. He rerouted every shield to the front hull of the ship. Galia did her best to aim that most protected part of the ship for the snapping jaws.
“Captain Galia Hattel,” the Eagle’s robotic tone invaded the bridge. Galia turned to Rey to whisper over her shoulder,
“How’d she open transmission without an invitation?”
“Hell if I know, G! The woman’s about to feed us to giant worms!” Rey screamed back.
“She won’t,” Deidra interjected. She laid a hand on Galia’s back to urge her, “Answer. See what she wants.” Galia reversed the jet-disks and fired them at full blast to buy time. Each stream of invisible heat was a waft if deliciousness to the bevelworm below. It was joined by two more of its tunneling brethren. The three scrunched and snakes around one another, widening the canyon at the bottom with their endless feast of rock.
“Alright,” Galia conceded, “I hear you, Eagle. What?”
“I present you a choice. Both outcomes are largely the same. You live. In one, you take the Dreamweaver with you. In the other, you don’t. I will feed your ship to the bevelworms if you don’t yield,” the Terra Eagle outlined.
“Maybe she will…” Deidra muttered to herself. Galia shot her a look. They confirmed agreement with a silent nod. She found an identical look waiting for her with Rey.
“Why don’t you snap your visor up so you can use that gnarly mouth to bite me,” Galia hissed at her childhood hero. She cut transmissions completely. “Deidra. See that left-hand lever with the yellow grip?”
“Yeah,” Deidra shuddered as the mouths of the bevelworms grew across the viewing screen of the bridge. The Eagle blazed its jet-disks down on the Dreamweaver’s back. The three inside had seconds to decide between the ship’s incineration and its digestion. But then, most ships didn’t have that yellow lever.
“Pull it only halfway back,” Galia instructed. She gave Deidra a moment to internalize that before she went on, “I’m going to point us straight at the bevelworms. I need you to shoot what comes out of the Dreamweaver with the high-caliber round. Understand?”
“Go-got it,” Deidra coughed up.
“Alright, said Galia, then nothing further. Could Deidra know from that alone what she planned, she might have been too petrified to fire. Galia aimed the nose of the Dreamweaver straight at the open maw of one of the bevelworms. She jammed back the thruster.
Even the Terra Eagle couldn’t have predicted so drastic a plunge. Her ship was left hovering above, while the Dreamweaver dropped to the hungry beasts. At a flash of their gnashing teeth, Deidra almost pulled the lever more than once. But she trusted Galia. She waited for the:
“Now!” At Deidra’s halfway yank, Galia pulled the Dreamweaver’s nose up, the fuel storage bays beneath the ship’s swing open. Exactly half of their reserve fuel tanks rained down over the bevelworms. At a single waft, their eyeless heads collided in an attempt to snap the tasty treat from the sky. Before the sweet nectar was theirs, Galia turned the Dreamweaver down again. “Light em up, Deidra!”
Both the girl’s clammy hands clamped down on the turret handles. At a firing rate of eight rounds a second, she didn’t need to be all too accurate. Deidra held strong against the kick of the guns for about three seconds before a round pierced a tank. The fire burst ignited the rest of them. A crimson-orange hellfire surged through the teeth of the unsuspecting bevelworms. Each of their heads snapped back in revulsion, only to strike the walls of the canyon. Galia took the Dreamweaver straight through the fiery gap between them. The ship burst through with a tail of smoke. Galia, Deidra and Rey glided down the long, segmented body of a bevelworm to the far side of the Jousting Grounds.
All through their turn-around, the crowd bellowed and roared. Driven by adrenaline, the crew of the Dreamweaver dissected the chaos. Cries for their victory rivaled the loudness even if those for the Terra Eagle. If her life were in even a knife’s width less danger, Galia might have realized she had stepped into her one-time fantasy brought to life. As it was, all she could focus on were the even louder cheers for Daniel in the next canyon over, and the navigation bars in her hands.
It was a hard time to take a calming breath, but Galia knee it might be their last chance. She forced the air down. The second pass wouldn’t be so easy, she knew. They couldn’t afford to feed the bevelworms again. When the Dreamweaver faced the long crevasse once more, it floated opposite the poised talons of the Terra Eagle. Galia eased her fingers around her sweaty controls.
“Round two,” she sighed to her companions.
“Hope you’ve got something cooking in the upstairs oven,” Rey sighed with a tap to his temple.
“I lost the recipe after that first pass,” Galia admitted, more to herself than we crew. She and the Terra Eagle launched their ships forward, on a direct collision course. The Eagle’s claws lifted straight for them. Then it hit Galia, a second before the steel. Why fight it? She let go of her navigation bars and slid her chair back as far as it could go, which was about five feet. “Rey, focus our shields to the bridge window! Now!”
“On it!” he barked back.
“Deidra, empty the guns. When I get up, you take my chair. Keep us upright, okay?” Galia issued. Deidra’s fingers went cold with the flight of her blood.
“O-okay- where are you going?” Deidra fumbled.
“Just fire!” Galia shouted. She braced, both arms hard against the navigation bars. Deidra pulled two levers with one hand and jammed down a switch with the other.
An explosion of heat and light burst from her side of the Dreamweaver. Their thermal ray burnt into the Terra Eagle’s armor, while high-caliber shells pummeled its bridge window and a single particle grenade arced over it. The ray and the bullets hardly had time to leave scratches. The Eagle tilted up, talons flashing. They spread to snag the Dreamweaver around the bridge. Each of its razor blades ripped into the hull. It gave the Terra Eagle purchase to cock back her ship’s mechanical beak. It hammered into the Dreamweaver’s bridge but bounced off of its focused shields. The quake jostled Galia, Deidra, and Ray in their seats. The captain kept the Dreamweaver pointed up with her tug on the navigation bars, until the particle grenade Deidra had launched burst. Its smoky blue light blasted both interlocked ships downwards. They were a hundred feet from the toothy maws of the bevelworms that raged across the canyon below.
“Deidra, take it! Don’t try to break away from them, those talons will rip us to bits!” Galia cried to her. Confused as she was, she trusted the fire in her captain’s eyes. She bolted for the chair as soon as Galia leaped free. She sprinted from the bridge to the armory, to the deck of the Dreamweaver in minutes flat. Deidra did her best to yank on the navigation bars, to keep the ship’s nose up, despite the repeated crash of the Eagle’s beak into the bridge.
“Shield levels rapidly depleting,” the Dreamweaver told Rey. “Hull punctures in left quadrant and-”
“I know, damnit!” Rey shouted at the ship, “Come on, G…”
Galia steadied her feet on the trembling deck of her ship. Just then, watching it be pummeled and cut from its slanted deck, she was reminded of what it was before she found it. It gave her the pulse of rage she needed to snap open her telescoping shock-blade. She had to exchange it, though, for the flower-launcher over her shoulder, when the Terra Eagle’s gunners appeared on the deck of their own ship. Great minds, I guess, Galia figured. She hoisted the weapon named for its flower-shaped shell over her shoulder. She flipped a tiny lever with her finger, which popped o