This thing, chrome and square-nosed, kicked like a yurf, and spent brass cases rang as they flew from the pumping slide.
I started to ran back to the plane, expecting a shot in the back any moment. I heard las fire, but it wasn't coming from behind me. Eleena Koi was braced in the open side hatch of the flier, laying down covering fire with a laspistol I hadn't realised she was carrying. Aemos had got into the back, onto the bench seat, giving Eleena access to the door.
Aemos reached out and gathered Medea in his arms. Eleena seized her too and the three of us bundled the girl into the rear beside Aemos.
I was wishing so hard she wasn't dead.
Eleena fired one last time and fell back into the passenger seats. I jumped in, yelling at her to slam the hatch.
There was no time to strap in. Multiple shots slammed against the aircraft's flank. A window panel burst. Dents appeared in the inner skin, spalling fragments off the hull.
I hoisted us off the ground, and spun us to face the charging raiders.
I think, although I can't be sure, I said something singularly unedifying as I pressed the trigger. Something like: 'eat this, you bastards.'
I don't believe I actually hit any of them but, by the Golden Throne, they took cover.
'Sir!' Eleena yelled over the scream of the turbofans.
A ball of light was approaching from the other side of the spinney. I couldn't see the speeder, just its stablight shining like a white dwarf against the night sky.
Time to go.
I kept it low, but pulled away south across the paddock at full thrust, accelerating all the time. We were doing forty, forty-five knots by the time we reached the road. The woods loomed.
In an instant, I weighed my options. Go high, over the trees, and be a clear target for any pursuer. Go through, lights off, and drop speed dramatically to avoid collision. Go through, lights on.
I picked the third way.
The flier's lamps kicked on, lighting a cone of space ahead of us. Even with the lights, and the auspex and the proximity alarm, this course was borderline suicide. Within a few seconds, having only just avoided a head-on smash with a mature spruce, I had to drop the speed to thirty.
'You're… you're gonna get us killed!' Eleena wailed.
'Be quiet!' The black shapes of tree trunks whipped past on either side, forcing me to turn and bank hard, repeatedly, jagging left, then right, then left again. Branches, some as massive as trees in their own right, swept over us like arches or under us like bridges. Several times, we exploded through sprays of canopy, the engine-out alarm pipping as the fans fought to clear away the leaf debris choking them. The phantoms on the scanner screen were almost constantly red.