Code Breakers: Beta by Colin F. Barnes Page B

took most of the shells as he was too slow to react and headed for the ground, flames and black smoke belched from its engines.
    “Brace yourself, Malik!”
    There was no reply as Malik crashed into the ground. They were no more than twenty metres up and the shallow angle of the descent meant that it didn’t break up on impact, but slid across the ground before flipping over and crashing into the iron gates at the front of the compound surrounding the city.
    Two further blasts struck Gerry’s shuttle, and he put it into a barrel roll, or as close to one as he could, and avoided the rest of the stream of shells from the Jaguar, which had now ascended and gone over the top of his position. It would soon have his rear, making him a sitting duck.
    Gerry didn’t have time to try and hack into the Jaguar. His initial probes found a fierce firewall and heavy levels of encryption. He’d get through it eventually, but not while trying to dogfight in a glorified tub.
    He passed over the top of the gate, hoping to use the machine gun turrets as cover, but was soon dodging away from them too. The Bachians and GeoCity-1 citizens should’ve realised Gerry wasn’t posing a threat, but then he was in a City Earth shuttle and at this stage, it wasn’t clear whose side he was on to the outsiders.
    Critical failure, hull breach, fuel lines cut. Every error code imaginable flashed across the holoscreen. The engines cut, sending him belly-down onto the ground of the compound. He cracked his head against the roof during the collision. A white-hot piercing pain spread from the crown of his skull to the back of his neck.
    The speed of descent skidded him across the rough, boulder-strewn ground, bumping over bodies, and finally coming to rest outside of Enna’s industrial unit at the far rear western edge of the settlement.
    Gerry breathed hard, closed his eyes, and tried to wait out the pain that gripped him. After a few seconds, Mags had controlled the flow of endorphins and adrenaline and got both his pain and heart rate under control. A hissing noise came from the rear of the shuttle. The holoscreen warned him of a breech in the hydrogen fuel tank. Not good. Not good at all. Hydrogen gas was incredibly explosive.
    Trying to be calm about it, Gerry pressed the door release on the holoscreen: no response. He tried the manual latch, all the while ignoring his hand shaking with the increasing levels of panic that itched at his skin as if it were exposed to searing heat.
    The door wouldn’t open. The mechanism had busted. No other way out.
    A ping-ping-clang noise of shell casings hitting the cabin had him jumping as if he were trapped inside a pot of heated popcorn. He kicked out, screaming at the damned door, trying to escape, but it refused to budge.
    An explosion erupted a few meters away. The debris rained down on the shuttle, and a shell crashed into the rear of the fuselage, piercing the structure and striking against the motor. The metal-on-metal friction caused sparks to jump and a fire to start in the cabin.
    He kicked out furiously again as more shells continued to rain down on his position.

Chapter 9
     
    Criborg - Wake Island – 19:00
     
    S asha brushed the hair from her eyes and wished her boss and creator, Little Jimmy, hadn’t given her re-growing follicles. A regular non-maintenance style would have been much better. She pulled her brunette hair into a ponytail and thought about the chances of Jimmy Robertson giving her an upgrade.
    Jimmy Robertson was Criborg’s chief science officer. He hated being called Little Jimmy. Not much a fan of irony, despite his great bulk. He much preferred James, or simply Doctor Robertson.
    She pictured him now, with his hair greying at the temples and even greyer augmented eyes giving her the disapproving look, and the way his multiple chins wobbled with incredulity. So she never called him Little Jimmy to his face.
    The problem with the evening shift was nothing really happened. She’d