Rhodes fired his engines and launched Rio into the Ohait atmosphere. The rest of the battalion launched, vaulted high over the Legion position, and took off racing up the mountains.
The battalion overran the Legion front line in no time. Rhodes didn’t try to help the platoons—not even in those places where the Emal succeeded in fighting their way over the hills.
He zoomed up the last slope, blasted over the top, and took off into the sky. Vast planes stretched behind those mountains.
The Emal covered every inch of territory out there. No one could survive on the ground out there.
Rhodes banked Rio into a steep dive, gunned the engines, and plummeted. Rio whooped with excitement. “Whoo! We’re going in!”
“Pay attention!” Rhodes hollered over the engine noise. “Get me as much information as you can about the Emal base ships. I need to know their vulnerabilities!”
“I don’t know that!” Rio called back.
“Then get it!” Rhodes snapped. “You have sensors. Scan their ships. Find me any place I can hit them and destroy them.”
Rio furrowed his brow for the first time. He actually looked more comic like this.
Rhodes didn’t have time to mess around anymore. He swooped down on the planes and the Emal lasers opened fire from all their base ships. They targeted the battalion and everyone scattered to avoid getting hit.
Rhodes manipulated The Grid faster than he could think. He didn’t have to think. It happened automatically without him even trying.
Grid lines appeared all over him and all over Rio. The lines shifted their shape and position in a blink.
Rhodes compressed the lines to make Rio into a needle arrow whizzing across the landscape. Not even that was enough to dodge the enemy’s fire.
He whipped from side to side, but he dropped too close to the ground. All the Emal on the planes turned their weapons upward to fire at him.
The big laser cannons erupting from the base ships swiveled downward to follow his trajectory. He had to take advantage of that.
He slammed into the ground and transformed into another armored vehicle. He extended rotating blades from the side of his wheels, plunged into the crowd of packed Emal, and plowed through them cutting down hundreds in his path.
The big lasers followed him all the way down and hit their own people instead of hitting Rio. Rhodes took off at high speed toward the nearest base ship, but he didn’t try to target that.
“Come on, Rio!” Rhodes hollered. “Give me something!”
“I got it!” Rio called back. “You have to hit their undersides. That’s their only weakness.”
Rhodes took a fraction of a second to think about it and his resolve hardened. “Interface with the other SAMs and transmit the information to the battalion. All of you—open fire on those ships!”
Dozens of Vipers released from spots all over the planes. So many Emal crowded around Rhodes that he couldn’t see the other Strikers. Only The Grid showed Rhodes where his people were.
He launched a dozen rockets of his own. They soared over the Emal ground troops and dove for the alien base ships.
Four Vipers smashed into two Emal vessels. The rest launched immediately. “NOW!!” Rhodes ordered and he shot upward.
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The enemy ships started to migrate toward the Aevod Gap. He extended his arms in front of him and fired twin thermal cannons at the underside of an Emal craft gaining altitude.
Rhodes hit the ship’s underbelly and it detonated right in front of him. He barely had time to curl into a ball before he smashed straight through the torched fuselage and out the other side.
Three more Emal ships came after him. It was time to get creative.
The rest of the battalion ricocheted off Emal vessels all over the field, harassed them into turning aside, and then Thackery swooped under an enemy craft and fired into its underside.
Rhodes couldn’t break away from his targets long enough to fly under the ships surrounding him. They bombarded him with hellish fire.
He transformed into some kind of agile feline and bounded from one ship to another just trying to stay ahead of their lasers.
He bounced off three ships before he noticed Fuentes not far away. He perched on top of an Emal ship.
Rhodes didn’t see Fuentes’s Striker….and then Rhodes saw Teo sailing around and around three other Emal vessels across the battlefield.
Fuentes balanced on top of the enemy ship. Only his arms transformed.
He changed them into giant rotating drums dotted with spikes and sawblades. He bent over carving his way through the enemy’s hull.
He almost cut his way inside before a different Emal ship halfway across the planes tilted upward and aimed its laser cannons at him.
Twin lasers pelted across the battlefield and came perilously close to hitting him. They would have knocked him off to his death.
Teo plunged in at the last second, took the hit in Fuentes’s place, and left him standing there unharmed.
It couldn’t last, though—not with so many ships in the air.
Rhodes reacted instantly, swiveled upward, and fired his scourge guns at the underbelly of the Emal vessel that attacked Fuentes. The ship exposed its underside just long enough for Rhodes to shoot through it and the ship exploded.
Fuentes kept clawing his way inside his target ship. It responded by veering wildly to one side to knock him off. Rhodes didn’t see how Fuentes stayed on.
That must have been his plan all along. Teo zoomed behind the target vessel, blasted a Viper missile into the ship’s underbelly, and the ship erupted in flames.
The shockwave hurled Fuentes into the air. Teo raced underneath him and caught him back inside the cockpit.
Rhodes surveyed the battlefield. All the remaining Emal ships that had been planning to assault the Aevod Gap now fought Battalion 1 instead.
Rhodes didn’t see any Emal heading for the Gap anymore—until he did see them. Four of them used Battalion 1’s diversion to cut away.
Those base ships raced up the mountain while the rest of Battalion 1 got pinned down on the planes. No one could stop the impending disaster.
Rhodes tore himself away, but not fast enough. He gave chase, but the Emal hounded him all the way.
The sound of gunfire made him look back over his shoulder. The rest of the battalion ran for the Gap, too, but none of them could get there fast enough.
Too many lasers pelted Rhodes from the ground. Every shot slowed him down.
He touched the ground, sprouted legs from Rio’s lower fuselage, and took off bounding up the mountain in long, effortless strides.
He made it as far as the vertical cliffs before he had to change shape again. The base ships were already dropping over the mountainside to the Gap. Rhodes had to act now.
He let his grid lines take over, transformed into a Viper missile, and rocketed upward at full speed.
He didn’t slow down one inch. He smashed into the first ship’s underside and the ship exploded all around him. The flash of burning fuel slowed down the others enough for the battalion to catch up.
Dietz and Lauer pelted in just as fast, coiled outward, and plunged in from both sides.
Rhodes didn’t see what they were doing before they changed shape again, made themselves as compact as possible, and collided with two more base ships.
The impact drove those ships together with colossal force. They smashed into each other just as Thackery and Henshaw plowed up the mountain from underneath.
The two women bombarded the target ships from below and they erupted in flames.
That left one base ship hovering directly over the Aevod Gap. Rhodes burst through the wreck and swiveled Rio into position to face down that last remaining enemy vessel.
It hung back and didn’t engage. The rest of the battalion vaulted over the mountains to fall in formation with him.
The base ship backed off a little. Rhodes glanced around to make sure no other Emal ships tried to take the Gap.
He didn’t even see any aliens on the ground trying to fight their way through the choke point.
Rhodes turned back to the planes to decide on his next move. At that moment, a massive laser cannon spouted from the nearest base ship and hammered Rio right in the nose.
The Striker somersaulted backward and then a dozen other base ships opened fire at the same time.
The battalion wheeled away to avoid the attack, but not fast enough. Another brutal shot smashed Rio on the left side and the ship plummeted toward the ground.
End of Chapter 25.