Vengeance Read Online Free Page B

“Oh my mark, switch power to your reverse thrusters. We’ll slow right down, launch countermeasures and let them zip right by. See if they can outrun a rocket.”
    “They’re coming right at us!” Nikoz yelled. “Twenty kilometres. Eighteen!”
    “Why aren’t they firing?” Shelz’ah asked.
    Zane didn’t have an answer. The enemy jets were well within missile range.
    “Why aren’t they firing?” Nikoz repeated Shelz’ah’s words.
    “Keep it together,” Zane said.
    “Azoh! Azoh! Azoh!” Nikoz was panicking now. “We gotta get out of here. I’m breaking left.”
    “No!” Zane said. “Stay together, combine countermeasures.” If the three planes stayed in a group, their air-defence systems would work together to defeat whatever missiles the humans could throw at them.
    “We just need to keep them off us until the backup gets here,” Shelz’ah said.
    Shelz’ah, the rookie, was the calm one, Zane thought. Nikoz, the veteran, was the one who was losing it. Maybe that was because he had never been in this situation before. It was different when you had the upper hand.
    “Get ready to slam on the brakes,” Zane said. “In three, two, one … now!”
    He switched all power to his reverse thrusters. His craft shuddered as its speed dropped away, mach 3, mach 2 …
    He saw the human planes flash past overhead. They were small, with narrow wings both above and below the fuselage. Biplanes. There were four tailfins like a rocket, shrouded in the mist of a supersonic vapour cone. Whatever they were, they were like no other human craft he had ever seen. The sky went crazy. The clear air exploded with the violent energy of multiple, overlapping sonic booms, close by. His plane was wrenched from side to side and up and down. His instruments went haywire.
    As he fought for control of his craft, he heard Shelz’ah yell, “Incoming! Breaking right!”
    Zane checked behind and saw nothing. And then, in the last few seconds of his life, he realised.
    The missiles were not behind him. They were in front. The human planes had reverse fired missiles as they had passed, launching them at almost point-blank range.
    Shelz’ah’s plane turned to the right, deploying countermeasures. Zane launched his own and flung his unresponsive plane after her. Nikoz had broken left.
    He opened his mouth to speak but it became a scream as Shelz’ah’s Razer turned from a sleek predator of the sky into a jagged ball of flame. Half a second later, so did Zane’s.

    “Boo-yah,” Wall said, watching three flaming stars trailing down the sky.
    “Tide beginning to turn,” Monster said.
    “Damn right,” Price said. “They’ve had it all their way for far too long. Now the shoe’s on the other foot.”
    “No. I mean tide beginning to turn,” Monster said. “Need to get moving. We must getting into bay before low tide.”
    “Okay, we’re out of here,” Price said.
    The yacht was so close to the hull of the patrol ship that it seemed to be glued there. Now it peeled off, and the burnt-out ship quickly left them behind, bouncing and tossing in its wake. Out of its wind shadow, their sails filled once again and the yacht began to move, turning back to the east.
    The wind turned with the tide, in their favour, flicking around behind them and skimming them across the wave tops like a pebble across a river. Price looked back at the smoking hulk of the ghost ship as it slipped away to the south, plodding its mindless way on a voyage to nowhere.
    They had survived, but only by luck and the grace of the scream jets. Should they have raised their sails earlier? Was she being too cautious? Price felt a little sick. She could have got them all killed. She wished someone else, anyone else, was in charge of this mission. But that wasn’t an option. She couldn’t back out now.
    She looked up at the sky as the scream jets passed back overhead, unseen, but unmistakable with the overlapping thunder of their sonic booms. She waved a hand