Jace adjusted the power shunting levers. He pulled all the levers down, then rammed the thruster lever up as far as he could. Shields were nice, but no matter what, they wouldn’t protect a puny starfighter from a hit from a battleship’s main battery. Worse, the generators themselves were drawing too much power and attention from Jace.

The starfighter accelerated. They launched past the smokestacks of a battleship, and for a moment, they hid in the plumes of black particles.

“What, so the Scrapper’s Coalition is helping them out too?” Lessa groaned. “No wonder they’ve got so much junk in their fleet!”

Jace scrunched his eyebrows, focussed on weaving side-to-side to avoid streaks of plasmafire. They shot out of the smoke and into open space. “I have no idea what that—” Orange liquid splattered across the viewscreen. The small starship shook and protested, and Jace asked, “What was that?”

“Scraphawks!” she shouted. “That’s why I was asking! Looks like you just hit one…”

“What’s a scraphawk?”

The liquid—the blood of whatever he had hit—peeled away within a few seconds, but that wasn’t what had him worried. A red warning light flashed on the control panel, bright enough that Jace had to raise a hand to block it out. He turned around as much as he could, peering over his shoulder. An armour panel flew off the ship, bent out of shape and damaged. They hadn’t been hit, had they?

“Scraphawks are used in scrapyards! They dismantle and digest unwanted steel!” Lessa hissed. “But they’ll do just fine consuming active spacecraft so long as they don't get hit head-on.”

Two space-borne birds, the size of vultures but the shape of a hawk, clung to the outer hull. Lines of glowing red Aes ran down their beaks, flowing out of a technique card on a harness. They pounded the metal, bending and ripping it. Thuds echoed through the starship, punctuated by sharp metallic clangs. The scraphawks were right overtop of the boiler and steam pipes, and soon, they’d damage something important.

“I thought you saw them being released from the hold of that warship!” Lessa hissed.

“Shields?” Jace asked.

“Won’t push them off once they’ve latched on.”

Jace grimaced. “I’ve got an idea, then.” He leaned to the port side hard, diving the starfighter down towards the glowing wash of an enemy frigate’s thrusters. The pounding stopped. The scraphawks had disintegrated.

But they had drawn close to an enemy starship. Its casemate turrets trained on them, and Jace pulled upwards. It fired a barrage. Behind him, three of the Thane’s squadron burst into flame.

Sweat poured down his forehead and his lungs ached. He wasn’t losing Aes, but the constant cycling drew on his willpower, and he was already tired from a fight with Stenol.

“It’s right ahead of us, Jace!” Lessa yelled.

They passed underneath another friendly cruiser, then gave a Koedor-Terginian battleship a wide berth as they slipped in front of it.

Then they emerged into a patch of open space, free from enemy starfighters and far enough away from the other battleships that stray plasmafire wouldn’t be an issue. Ahead, the battleship with the queen-core waited for them. Its dark presence pushed against Jace’s own core, and his skin prickled.

“There it is!” Lessa exclaimed. “This is our chance!”

Jace released his grip on the saddle slightly. The thruster quieted. His eyes traced up and down the queen-core ship. While it wasn’t a perfect copy of the Koedor-Terginian battleships, its main hull was similar in shape. Two parabolic sheets of shimmering plastic sprouted from either side of the hull, suspended on long spars—solar sails. Wire rigging and other metal frames braced them.

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A glowing orange torpedo net stretched out all around the ship. Even worse, the hull glimmered with a blue coating of miniature, interlocking hexagon. It had shields as well. They needed a way to damage and destroy it.

Jace looked down. They still had their two miniature torpedoes, but they wouldn’t do much damage to a ship with shields and torpedo nets up. He could use his Wanderer’s Banishment to blast the torpedo through hyperspace at the battleship, but if those nets could stop a starship travelling through hyperspace, they’d be able to stop a tiny torpedo. They had to get rid of the shields and the nets.

“Like Kinfild said, hit the spars,” Jace whispered. “It’ll rip the shields down? Why would that work?”

“The solar sails aren’t shielded, or they wouldn’t get any propulsion,” Lessa provided. But the shields are clinging to the base of the spar. They’ll try to hold the spars in place as long as they can, even if we damage them.”

“That has to use a lot of shield-Aes, right?” Jace asked. “Eventually, it’ll overload the shield fuel cells, and they’ll go down.” Better yet, the loose spars would also rip a hole in the torpedo nets.

“In…in theory,” Lessa said.

“We’ve gotta try it, then.” Jace tightened his legs back against the saddle, and the starfighter raced forward. Hopefully, the others in the squadron understood. Hopefully, the corvette could cover them and protect them from enemy starfighters. According to the scanners, there were ten starfighters left in the squadron. They’d have to make do.

“Keep at the ship’s center line until the last moment, then break off,” Lessa said. “Their heavy weapons can’t cover the bow.”

Jace clamped his legs tight to the saddle, and the thrusters roared back to full-power.

“They’re calling fighters back to them,” he said, glancing at the scanners. “I don’t think our corvette can take them all out.”

Lessa inhaled sharply. “They’re trying to corral us into the line of fire.”

“We have to keep steady!” Jace winced as a starfighter beside them burst into flames. Every second brought them closer and closer to the queen-core ship, and with each, the dark pressure it exerted pushed on him. It took all his concentration to keep cycling and pushing his Aes through the little starfighter.

He would have to time this perfectly. Another pilot pulled out towards the sail’s wire stays early. Within a heartbeat, one of the battleship’s casemate batteries swivelled toward it and annihilated it.

Another second passed. They were close enough to see the glittering operating lights of the ship, and close enough to make out the pipes and machinery that ran along its armour plating. “Now!” Jace hissed.

He leaned to the side, the starboard side, and the starfighter turned. It passed by the torpedo net, only mere feet away from a collision with the neon-orange coating. The starfighter behind him wasn’t as lucky, and it scattered against their foe’s shields in a plume of flame.

“We’ve got a clear shot!” Lessa exclaimed. “Hit the spars, now!”

Jace gave a touch of power back to the weapon’s systems, then shoved Aes into the wingtip cannons, triggering them in perfect time with his will. A volley of smoke and light spewed out. Moments later, the rest of the squadron—what remained of it—fired as well.

Magenta pulses engulfed the spar, but the steel didn’t give in. “We need a torpedo!” Lessa said.

Jace looked down at one of the miniature torpedoes mounted beside him. He pushed the small, pill-shaped tube of brass forwards until he heard a clunk. There was enough room to lock the breach door and seal it with a small hatch—all that remained was a thin cord penetrating through. He gripped the cord and pulled it.

The torpedo streaked out of the starfighter’s prow. It raced through the sky, trailing brilliant yellow light from a pure-aspect Aes thruster. At such a close range, the spar was impossible to miss. The torpedo collided, and a perfectly spherical explosion of plasma seared through the spar. A wire stay ripped free, flinging out and nearly smashing through the entire squadron.

Jace imagined the battleship creaking and groaning as the sail twisted forwards, still propelled forward by…well, he didn’t know how a solar sail worked. But the shields clinging to the spar’s base brightened, straining to hold the vessel together. They couldn’t stand alone against the sail’s forward drive. Sparks and brilliant blue energy burst from the gash, and the wave of destruction swelled across the entire shell of the battleship until the entire vessel darkened, shieldless.

The entire sail and spar ripped off into space, tearing a section of torpedo net free along with it.

“We’re not clear yet,” Lessa said. “They might have shield Wielders aboard to refill the generators. If they get the shields back up, we’re done. And…the queen-core is still alive.”

They’d torn a hole. Now, they needed to finish the job.