Free On Galaxy's Edge: Ascendance by Alex T. Kolter Page B

hours.”
    ****
    The three small shuttles sped out of the cave mouth, briefly illuminating the cave blue as the ion engines flared up, accelerating the ships upward towards the stratosphere. Their speed increased rapidly, until the three black ships, in close convoy, were doing in excess of Mach 4 nearly twenty miles above the planet’s surface. The near-four hundred mile distance to the largest city on the planet was covered in a little less than ten minutes.
    Starting their descent, the three ships slowed down dramatically as they neared the city, circling around and coming in low from the north. Only a few metres above the ground now, the ships sped over the barren desert until they reached the first of the buildings that formed the city. They swept in past the spaceport first, on the outskirts, which was almost deserted at this time, and then flew over the endless factories and industrial buildings that surrounded the city, all low on the ground.
    Weaving above and between these buildings, the ships then came to the first of the Scrapers, extending up far above them, and glittering slightly in the light from the triple moons. Flying down the grand avenues that separated the Scrapers, the ships passed only a few metres above the heads of the startled pedestrians, most of whom yelled up abuse at the ships after being knocked about in the ships’ wake.
    On reaching the central buildings in the city, the three ships slowed down, making a left turn down a perpendicular avenue, finally passing Scraper 8, then 7, then 6, and finally reaching Scraper 5. There, the ships stopped, hovering in the air outside, engines humming slightly as they maintained a constant position. In front of the ships was the sealed-up main entrance of the Scraper - or what used to be the main entrance, in centuries past - with metal coverings now in place.
    Those people standing below the hovering ships, staring up in confusion at this strange spectacle, could start to hear a faint whine build up. It sounded to them as if it was coming from the three ships, and those that had a degree of common sense decided to run, to get away from whatever was about to happen next. Those that had experience with weapons would recognise the sounds of laser weapons building up the juice necessary to fire, and these people ran away even faster. They didn’t want to be nearby when the lasers fired.
    Then the whining ceased, and was immediately followed by a blinding flash of pure, high-energy, blue light, emitted from the three ships in unison and directed at the metal front of the Scraper.

CHAPTER FOUR
    AUGS
     

    “Here comes the wakeup call...” Nero said, firing the high-powered lasers they’d mounted onto the ships.
    The panoramic window at the front of the ship darkened slightly, compensating for the blinding flash of light emitted as the laser fired. When the screen returned to normal transparency levels, and the afterglow from the lasers had disappeared, Nero looked out into the Scraper. A hole, wide enough for all three ships to fit through, at a squeeze, had appeared in the metal wall of the building. At the base of the wall was a glowing red pool of molten metal, smoke still rising from it to obscure their view into the building.
    Nate’s voice came through over the radio. “Bloody hell, Nero! Why haven’t we done this before?”
    Slowly, the three ships maneuvered through the hole, entering the Scraper’s ground floor. Arrayed before them were about thirty scared, frightened individuals, most of whom were collapsed on the ground, still not recovered from the blast. The nearest ones quickly got up when the ships entered the building, though.
    With their landing gear extended, the shuttles delicately settled on the polished stone floor, in the space vacated by the building’s residents. “Keep your engines on standby,” Nero ordered over the radio. “Now, is everyone ready for the party?”
    Killing the transmission, he opened the ramp at the rear