Free Children of the Void: Book One of the Aionian Saga by Jack Halls

With the aid of her armor’s night vision, she was able to see as warm gel filled the dark cockpit. The world went quiet as the gel rose over her head and filled the space around her.
    The pod moved as soon as it was filled to the proper pressure. It wasn’t the first time she’d been launched into space this way, but despite her experience, her muscles tightened when the pod came to a stop.
    Before she could take a breath, the pod shot forward and pinned her to the back of her seat. Without the armor and the dense gel that surrounded her, the acceleration would have killed her. Many of the civilian Luzariai volunteers wouldn’t survive the launch, not that it made much of a difference. Those that survived the acceleration would only be blasted out of the sky.
    The acceleration seemed to last much longer than the few seconds it actually did, but eventually it stopped as her pod shot out of the mountaintops and into open air, ejecting the gel behind it. Soon the cockpit was clear and Tloltan could move freely again.
    “Show me the others.”
    Are you sure?
    Tloltan set her jaw, took a deep breath, and nodded. “Do it.”
    A glowing display appeared in front of her, filled with small shapes shooting across the image. Hundreds of pods streaked up out of the mountains and into the vacuum of space. Dozens of large triangular shapes, representations of the Luzariai ships in orbit above the planet, circled above. One by one, they were blinking out as swarms of huge oblong blobs, enemy ships, surrounded the orbital defenses.
    There was nothing Tloltan could do to hold back her tears as she watched the wholesale slaughter of her people at the hands of the Maodoni. Though she desperately wanted to look away, she owed it to them to witness their last hour. The Maodoni ships would now be registering the swarm of pods flying out of the atmosphere, each one with a living body inside. The cloud of pods surrounding Tloltan had one purpose, to distract the Maodoni long enough to allow her to escape.
    The line held by the Luzariai orbital defenses collapsed as the pods reached the gap. The Maodoni capital ships struck out at the swarm of pods, incinerating one after another at an alarming rate.
    It’s going to be close.
    Tloltan nodded. Despite the carnage, the sheer number of pods traveling at high speed allowed for a few of them to break through. Only a handful of Luzariai ships remained, and were now commencing their suicide runs at the largest of the Maodoni ships. Tloltan knew many of the captains and officers of the Luzariai Orbital Defense Forces, and could no longer force herself to watch as they sacrificed their ships and crew. With her eyes shut tight, she pinged Itzau and Ukte in the pods closest to her own. “Ready.”
    The two young Koramoa acknowledged her order, and her pod shook as small rockets moved it into position. She opened her eyes and updated the screen to show dozens of pods around her moving together. Various popping and humming sounds filled the cockpit as the pod transformed, and loud clangs indicated that the magnetic grapplers were pulling in the surrounding pods.  
    Tloltan monitored the display as the pods coalesced and took shape. The image was starting to look like a ship when an alarm sounded.
    Looks like they noticed us. The Maodoni are coming our way.
    “Take care of it.”
    Already on it.
    Hundreds of pods all around them suddenly fired powerful rockets, altering their trajectory on collision courses toward the enemy ships. Instead of carrying Luzariai, these pods were filled with suspended anti-matter, and as the Maodoni turned their weapons on them, the pods exploded in dazzling bursts of blue light. There were too many of them for the Maodoni to stop them all, and one by one the pods slammed into the hulls of the enemy ships, blasting massive holes right through them.
    A grim smile came to Tloltan’s lips as she watched makeshift missiles tear the Maodoni ships to shreds. “Captain Neeza,”