Somewhere on Knowhere: Book Three

15

All Loki could hear as they dive-bombed was the ship door he'd kicked down rattling around the back of the ship and Strange screaming, which did nothing to help his headache from the aftermath of contacting Strange, teleporting Strange and saving Strange's life by stopping all the ships temporarily. That guy owed him a lot.

He'd tried this once before, but it was difficult and he would actually feel guilty if it worked and they didn't die. Even though he didn't like the people on Knowhere, not all of them were bad, even if he did have to pay them a couple of thousand units to prevent them handing him over to the Sovereign.

But anyone killed in the process wouldn't know, because they'd be dead. It wasn't like he hadn't killed before anyway. It wasn't an excuse, but...

The time for any guilt was up, because a foot over the buildings he pulled the steering handles hard and shot forward, a perfect 90 degree turn, leaving maybe three quarters of the fleet hurtling into the buildings or the ground and exploding. Loki flew the ship up and they rocketed away, leaving a huge area of the city on fire and crumbling to rubble, a bunch of people screaming that could even be heard from the ship.

Unfortunately, thinking about this was going to have to wait a bit longer, because 20 or so of the pursuing ships had survived the crash (probably by having the sense to slow down) and were just readying themselves to chase after them again. That was the problem with remotely piloted ships. People could still fly them, even if the ship was literally falling to pieces.

Strange had been screaming all that time. Loki reached over and slapped him, careful not to take his eyes from the spaceship windshield. That got him to shut up.

"Woah, we survived?" asked Strange, surprised, as though he expected Loki had been purposely trying to kill them and failed.

"Well I'm not just going to kill you am I?" Loki said, in a more irritated voice than he meant, but he was concentrating on not running into anything. He flicked the switch into Freestyle mode and turned to Strange. "Here's your chance to get a clear shot. Go crazy."

"Wait, what?" asked Strange, and now Loki could see his face, he saw Strange was almost pure white – probably even paler than he was.

"Get ready to shoot," Loki said, then he yanked the steering handles around and pulled them into reverse so they spun around really fast until they were facing the remaining ships and still flying backwards at the same speed they had been – pretty damn fast. "Now!"

At once, both Loki and Strange pressed the guns. Being remotely piloted, there was a lack of any gruesome deaths – the ships just blew up.

Strange was having the time of his life, apparently. In contrast to his screaming a minute ago, he was now laughing as he watched the ships blow up, and it intrigued and confused Loki why he was so good at it if he'd never been in a ship before.

Loki checked the screen that showed what was behind them. He twisted the steering slightly so they flew over the main lane of traffic rather than through. Smoke from the explosion he'd caused with the dive-bombing trick was already spreading everywhere, so visibility wasn't great, but luckily decades of pilot-training on Asgard had sharpened his senses, so neither he nor Strange hit anything they weren't supposed to.

With just one ship left, suddenly they'd ran out of sky and were fast approaching the side of the skull, so Loki yelled for Strange to stop shooting and replicated the move he'd previously done, spinning the ship to face forwards and immediately diving again to avoid it, leaving the last ship hurtling straight into the wall and exploding.

He didn't pull off the move as well as last time though – he hadn't let the ship spin around fully before diving so they'd gone diagonally and there was a crunch as the ship slightly scraped the Celestial bone of the skull. Other than that – looked like they'd completely escaped the Sovereign.