55Panic explodes in me as I realize our entire plan has been blown to hell. Slag, this can’t be happening! Not now, not when we’re so close to the end! We should have another full day before the net drops. Mercury’s calculations were spot on—I know, I checked them myself! The fact that it’s down now can only mean one thing:

The enemy took it down early.

All the blood freezes in my veins. Barely has the thought crossed my mind before I’m sprinting into the center of the camp. “Wake up!” I scream. “Get up now! The net is down! The net is down!”

Confusion reigns as the others jolt awake, their slow-moving brains struggling to comprehend the situation. Heads shake and brows furrow. A groggy Hegit rubs her eyes and asks, “What’s going on?”

I look her straight in the eye, point up to the sky, and very clearly enunciate, “The planetary net is down.”

Eyes slowly follow my pointing finger up into the sky. Time stops for a moment; then understanding crashes down on them like a ton of bricks. Within seconds, they’re up, jamming feet into boots and scrambling for weapons and gear. I grab my own hardware, pulling on my armor with one hand while queuing up my chit with the other. Quickly, I link the other teams, explaining the situation in a few terse sentences before ordering them to get to their posts as fast as possible. That done, I pull up my feed of the spaceport.

Fear rushes through me as I wait for the feed to load. Worst-case scenarios fly through my mind, and I’m terrified I’m going to find that the security shield has opened and the enemy has already left. However, the picture, when it finally comes, is strikingly normal. The shield is up and the ships are still there, locked into the platform the way I remember. I search for signs that they’re about to leave, but there’s no movement, no revving engines. Everything looks exactly as it did before.

My panic ebbs slightly. It’s only been a few minutes since the net fell; no doubt they’re still doing preflight checks. That gives us time. Not a lot, but enough—I hope.

The others are on their feet now, armored, alert, and armed to the teeth in less than five minutes. Grabbing the Z-launcher with its one remaining shot, I activate our transport with my chit hand. “Let’s go!”

The SkyLift drops down from the canopy like a rock. Everyone piles on, and even before the door is closed, I’m sending it back up into the trees. Links vibrate through my hand mere seconds later. The other three teams have reached their own SkyLifts.

We’re ready.

High up in the safety of the SkyLift, I snap back to the feed of the spaceport. Despite my most paranoid fears, nothing has changed. The platform is deserted, and the ships continue to sit locked into the pad below, engines idle and thrusters cold. Unable to make sense of it all, I check the drone readings once again. The shield is still up. If the enemy is preparing to leave, I can see no sign of it.

Though I should be relieved, the knots in my stomach only tighten. Something’s off, I can feel it! The net was due to fall in a matter of hours anyway. There’s no point in dropping it early if the enemy isn’t ready to leave. So why is no one moving?

But wait! Someone is emerging from behind the hull of one of the ships, chit hand to his mouth as he jogs rapidly across the pad. Tension limns his body, and there’s an almost-panicked expression etching his face. It’s impossible to hear what he’s saying, but even I can tell it’s not good. I’m about to zoom in on him when a second person appears farther down the platform, and then a third. Within seconds, squatters are swarming across the landing pad like ants. I watch them dash around the platform, removing fuel lines and performing last-minute checks, and it suddenly occurs to me—

We weren’t the only ones caught off-guard when the planetary net fell.

Realization dawns on me. It isn’t that the enemy took down the net early or that Merc miscalculated. No, for whatever reason, technological or environmental, the net dropped early of its own accord! We both thought we had more time—us to launch our attack and them to prepare for leaving—and now that it’s gone, it’s all come down to this: a final race between us and the enemy. If they win, they’ll be off the planet before we even make it to the spaceport, but if we win . . .

No, not if. We’re going to win.

With a flick of my fingers, I queue up the program Hegit gave me just hours ago. My left combat lens suddenly darkens, then brightens, the view in one eye now replaced by an entirely different feed, that of a massive crater buried deep in the woods. No time to lose, I activate the device lying in wait there.

A deep rumble shudders out through the ground. Branches shake, and trees tremble. The loose soil around the crater shifts, crumbling and breaking beneath the powerful vibrations, and then the weather equalizer slowly emerges, dirt and debris falling from its carapace on all sides as it rises out of the crater and soars effortlessly up through the trees. Like a rocket, it ascends, barreling up through the understory and then the canopy before it finally bursts through the emergent layer and into the sky above!

Exhilaration spikes my veins as I send it zooming like a silver bullet along the tops of the trees, wind whipping across its carapace while just below the leaves bend and flutter in its wake. For a few minutes, all I see is the yellowing green of the canopy where it meets the sky’s pale morning blue, and then suddenly the trees fall away, the dense canopy making way for the rippling flow of the Shoqua as she keens and rushes between her banks. Off to the left, a very familiar platform comes into view.

The spaceport!

My heart leaps at the sight. The fingers of my chit hand tremble, and then tense, seized with a compulsive yearning to stop the equalizer here and now, but I don’t. Instead, I send it on—past the ’port, past the town, past the outer homesteads and over the shield-line toward the jungle to the north. Only when my target comes into view does my trajectory change, no longer skimming across the jungle in a horizontal line but sloping up into the lightening sky. I need speed, I need power. It’s time to climb.

The equalizer barrels into the air as if shot from a cannon. Up it flies, rising nearly vertically now, a glint of silver flashing distantly against the dawn. I watch it go, eyes glued to the sky as I push the acceleration to the max. My lips move in time with its rise, silently urging it on as it continues its laborious ascent. I need it to fly high—as high as it possibly can—and yet the more it rises, the more gravity begins to take its toll. It’s slowing noticeably now, every fried part and cannibalized processor straining to hold its own against a planet that wants nothing more than to yank it back down again. I silently will it on—

Come on, come on!

—and for a few more seconds, it obeys. Then, ever so slowly, it comes to a stop, neither rising nor falling as upward and downward forces finally equalize. It hangs in the air for one perfect moment, a mechanical angel waiting only for my command. I select my target, wait for the lock to acquire, and then I kill the anti-grav thrust with a flick of my chit hand, and down it goes! Faster and faster, its speed only increasing as it plummets straight for the target waiting far below. Not the spaceport, not the settlements, but—

The Hydroelectric Dam.

A jolt of adrenaline shoots through me as I watch it fall. With the security shields protecting it on both banks, we could never successfully penetrate the dam—not from the ground, anyway. I’d assumed it was an impossible target, until I saw the equalizers fall and realized that while we couldn’t attack it from land, we could attack it from the sky.

The equalizer is a third of the way there, a distant gleam of silver plunging through the softly-glowing sky. Anticipation bubbles within me, a heady sensation of exhilaration and terror, pumping harder and faster through my veins with every meter it falls. My hands shake, jittering the holographic feed over my palm, as in my head, an endless litany plays over and over. Come on, come on—

Kaaa-chooooww!

Something blows inside the equalizer, killing the main starboard thruster in a single instant. The weather bot lurches, thrown off kilter by the sudden failure, and the damaged orb goes spinning wildly through the air.

I gasp, heart clutching and eyes widening as the equalizer veers completely off course. My hand clenches, nausea rising in my stomach as the feed spins wildly in cadence with the fleeing orb. A wave of panic flows through me. My fingers spasm, wanting to take control, to do something, but the autopilot is already on it, holographic numbers springing up over my hand as it attempts to calculate its course once more. Heart in my throat, I watch the scrolling numbers, flickering past my eyes too quickly to take in as it attempts to relocate its target . . .

The numbers lock into place. Recalculation complete!

My attention swings back to the visual feed. The spinning slows, then stabilizes, and now the equalizer is coming back around in a hard arc as the secondary thruster fires hot and fast in an attempt to pick up the slack. My eyes go to the holo map over my hand, watching as the equalizer slowly inches back on course, moving steadily closer to target lock with every second that passes.

Tick, tick, tick . . . the targeting brackets glow as the lock is reattained. Relief surges through me, and my hand slowly unclenches. I watch it fly, triumph growing in me as it continues to move steadily toward the target, and then—

The equalizer falls out of lock.

A bad feeling seeps into the pit of my stomach. I wait for the autopilot to push the equalizer back into place, but it only drifts farther afield. Something’s wrong! The autopilot isn’t course correcting! Slowly but surely, the equalizer is losing control, inching away from its target as surely as it was previously moving toward it. A bolt of horror shoots through me.

Slag, it’s going to miss!

My heart seizes. Switching to manual, I frantically work the controls, fingers flying as I manipulate every thruster and air flap at my command in a desperate attempt to correct the equalizer’s course. Again and again, I maneuver the orb back on track using the auxiliary thrusters only to have it slip out again, unable to maintain its trajectory without the main starboard thruster to help me compensate. In desperation, I kill the opposing thruster as well, hoping against hope that that will even out the course, and then reengage the autopilot. For a few seconds, it seems to work as the equalizer, now equally handicapped on both sides, shifts back into place . . . but then the wind picks up, and once again it begins to lose integrity, wobbling in and out of lock as the secondary thrusters struggle against the raging air currents. The dam is coming up fast now, the massive structure almost seeming to rise into the air as the equalizer comes pinwheeling toward it at breakneck speed, and still the target lock continues to flicker off and on.

My heart clenches. It’s going to be close . . .

THHWWAAAAMMM!

The equalizer cannonballs across the top edge of the dam, whacking off a massive chunk of sholanite before skimming over the sap-slicked reservoir and into the canopy beyond. The forest explodes, dirt and trees blowing sky-high under the force of the impact, but I have eyes only for the dam. From the gaping hole across the top, cracks have begun to form, snaking out through the barrier in every direction. Almost immediately, water begins springing through the gaps, gushing forth in rivulets that seem to multiply with every second that passes. The entire dam shudders, its massive structure shaking in visible vibrations that only quake harder and harder with every new crack that forms.

Eyes locked on the dam, I suck in a breath, every cell in my body riveted on the barrier before me.

Please, please, please.

Then, with a roar to shake the deepest depths of Iolanthe, the dam goes down.