Free Titan's Fall by Zachary Brown Page A

to wrestle down a single raptor and break its helmet or shove a grenade into some key part of the Conglomerate armor.
    We were losing people. Several engineers dropped in the crossfire. Aran Patel started screaming when Mohamed Cisse jumped out and caught a raptor that leapt into the inner circle. It had swung around and ripped open his armor with the wicked nano-filament blades on its legs. In seconds, Cisse ended up shredded, and his armor scattered around the ground before everyone opened up.
    â€œOut,” Min Zhao shouted.
    And more and more of the platoon started tossing weapons to the ground.
    The sound of a loud belch got me to stare back at the jumpship, as I’d almost forgotten what it was we were doing here.
    â€œEveryone get in,” Amira yelled. “I’ve got power.”
    â€œYou’re flying it?”
    â€œNo one else can interface with the systems or has any experience.”
    We fell back. Charlie squad covered us from the doorway, which now was just Aran Patel and Suqi Kimmirut.
    There were too many of us. We crammed into the jumpship face to face.
    â€œAmira?” I asked.
    The jumpship’s engines leapt up an octave, trying to push us into the air. Instead, we scraped along the rocky ground. Metal screamed and something snapped off the bottom of the jumpship.
    Energy beams sliced against the sides of the ship, one of them punching through. Blood and flesh splattered againstmy helmet. The ship bounced off a boulder, spun slightly, and smacked into something. I wiped blood away just in time to see a yellow vacuum suit spin out of one of the large rents in the side of the jumpship.
    â€œHold on!” Amira shouted. The jumpship wobbled higher into the air and the ground started to fall away. “I think I’m getting this.”
    The jumpship shuddered again as we rose slightly higher. Another loud bang from something striking the side made me jump.
    Alarms started whooping from the cockpit. “We going to make it?” I asked.
    â€œI’ll get back to you on that,” Amira said.

9
    Saturn filled the sky, massive and roiling with clouds, the rings casting shadows over the clouds we’d struggled to get above.
    â€œI’m getting comms,” Amira said. The jumpships had direct quantum-entangled linkups into the Accordance. But the minds on the other side of a call could be halfway across the solar system. Getting answers about what was happening overhead, and convincing them she was for real, had been taking up her time as we continued to spiral farther and farther up toward the clouds.
    â€œI can fly the ship. But I don’t know anything about getting a craft like this to orbit,” Amira had said when I’d asked her why she was spending so much time trying to call in rather than getting us the hell upstairs.
    And the engineers only had rough guesses about how orbital dynamics worked. As they pointed out, we didn’t want to run out of fuel trying this. Or end up in the wrong place.
    â€œOkay,” Amira said on the command channel. “I’ve explainedour situation and sent back our fuel levels and dynamics, and Accordance is on the other side talking me through our sequence. It’s tricky.”
    Tricky. It must have been if Amira was happily chatting with Accordance pilots over comms. She was not the type to stop and ask for help.
    â€œThere’s a ticking clock. The ships in orbit are getting ready to punch out and leave. We have a very limited window to get scooped up in time. We don’t have enough fuel to come back down.”
    â€œYou’re saying we may get stranded in orbit,” Ken said.
    â€œIf we make it, yes,” Amira said. The jumpship banked to the right. Yellow and brown clouds far under us appeared through the gaps in the ship’s hull, and the wind screamed through the cabin as airflow changed. The entire jumpship flexed and warped.
    Swearing cluttered the common channel as everyone