Homestar Saga

Chapter 149: Eight on One

Yvian didn't bother to curse. She couldn't spare the time. Eight humans. Five rounds. With AIMASSIST she could have taken them. Without it...

She wasn't the only one with problems. Fifteen Queenships were entering the sector, each guarded by thousands of Peacekeeper Stinger units. All helpless. Frozen in the anti-tech field. A few hundred gladiators with pixen pilots were scattered among each of the Queens. Should she warn them?

A transmission would give away her location. The moment she keyed radio, one of Reba's ships could cut her in half with a beam weapon. The bitch wanted a Lucendian implant. She needed Yvian alive. Probably. Mims and Lissa had implants, too. Reba only had to capture one of them. Killing Yvian to spite the human was exactly the sort of short-sighted petty gribshit the Synthetic Intelligence might pull.

More importantly, the warning wouldn't do much good. YEET Artillery Barges would already be opening fire. In a few minutes, the Queens would be debris, and there was nothing Yvian or any of the Academy pilots could do about it. Yvian's warning wouldn't save a single soul.

The fleet's only hope was to take out the Techjammer. Yvian couldn't help them with that. The damned thing could be floating anywhere within a three thousand kilometer radius. Even if Yvian managed to spot it, a round from her Bigger Better would take nearly ten minutes to reach the target. Far too late. Not that it mattered. Yvian wasn't good enough to hit a target at that range. No one was.

"The anti-tech ship's past the Gate!" Lissa's voice crackled over the radio. "They've got beam weapons! You'll hav- AAUGH!"

Lissa? Oh Crunch. Or Bright Lady...

"So Lissa was alive too." Commandant Barillas quipped. "Huh. Pretty ballsy giving away her location like that."

Yvian could see it in her mind's eye. A beam of light, cutting her sister in half.

"Doesn't sound like it worked out for her," the pirate continued.

Lissa? No. She couldn't. She wasn't...

"Then again, I guess we only need one of you alive."

The scream came out of Yvian like a punch. Rage and anguish and fear and despair ripped their way out of her, a sound she hadn't known a pixen could make. Her voidarmor vibrated with the fury of it. Tears floated out from her eyes. Yvian blinked, shaking her head to dislodge them, still screaming.

"Kill you! I'll kill you! I'll fucking-" A terrible need welled up within Yvian. A need to rip and tear. Yvian's soul screamed for blood. Her stream of profanity continued as she turned to face the humans. They were almost on her. The closest was within twenty meters. He'd drawn some sort of pistol. A wicked looking thing with a long thick barrel. He wasn't going to get to use it.

Yvian keyed her jetpack, charging straight at the motherless sons. Technically, she wasn't moving toward them. Her new vector was just cutting down on her inertia and slowing her down. Either way, she shot past the leader, angling down and to the right, barely avoiding a collision with a second human as she passed.

Yvian brought up the Bigger Better BFG. She didn't bother with the scope. Fury and focus narrowed everything down, until all she could see were the two humans. She squeezed the trigger at the exact moment they were lined up with her barrel. She roared her triumph as the XTRO Agents exploded.

"Kill you all! All of you!" Six humans. Four rounds. They were reacting. Faster than last time. Yvian tried, but she couldn't get two of them lined up again. The motherless sons shrank in her vision. Yvian changed directions again, strafing to the side. The humans fanned out, approaching quickly from multiple angles.

It would be better to get one more pair with a single shot, but Yvian didn't think she'd get the chance. She felt a thud in her shoulder. Another against her chest. They were shooting her. Yvian changed her strafe, bringing her gun up. The human dodged. Instead of trying to track him, she whipped her barrel to the side and snapped a shot at the woman to his left. In her haste she jerked the trigger instead of squeezing. The MAC round took the human's arm instead of blowing through her torso.