Chapter Fifty: Of Seas and Sparks
two days remain
Here we go.
"They'll be able to see us on radar in five minutes!" Chris announced over the headsets.
"Sonic, it's now or never," Tails added quickly.
Sonic smirked. Not so much for Knuckles, who was the only one who could see him standing in the engine room in front of the glimmering Master Emerald. No, the smirk was a reminder to himself. A reminder of who he was before he dove into the depths of what the Metarex had done to him.
Sonic shut his eyes and adjusted his stance to better brace himself. The warmth of the Chaos Emeralds he held in each hand pulsed in time with his heartbeat. It was a risk, a massive one, to leave these two Chaos Emeralds with Sonic on the Blue Typhoon, while Tails, Amy, and Angel took the other two with them to the ground below. But Sonic had to keep a hold on the Chaos Double for as long as he could possibly manage.
The Energy of the Emeralds crawled up his arms. His limbs shook with that power. The ache of it took up a certain percentage of Sonic's awareness. Which gave him just enough willpower to drop into the damage the Metarex had left behind.
-X-X-X-
Tails's View
Tails's hands wrapped tightly around the controls of the X-Tornado. He was too aware of Amy's body behind him and Angel in the ship's second seating section further back. Too aware of the other crafts lined up alongside him, containing so many other lives he couldn't bear to lose. Cream and Cheese and C2 and Shadow and Nova. Too aware of the friends left behind to hold down the Blue Typhoon. Chris and Knuckles and Cosmo. Not to mention…
A bolt of blue flashed into the docking bay, leaping for the wing of the X-Tornado without a moment's hesitation. Only then could Tails see Sonic's Chaos Double clearly, his hand wrapped around the edge of the wing for balance. The Chaos Double's eyes twitched toward Tails and he nodded. Tails returned the gesture and turned his gaze forward. "We're ready to launch on your command, Chris," Tails announced.
"Cream, Nova, C2, on my mark…" Chris said. "Now!"
None of them hesitated. They blasted down the runway and out into the void of space. Tails leaned forward in his own seat, bracing for his own mark. They needed to let those ships take the initial heat of Metarex fire before the Blue Typhoon appeared to take the second round. And only then would Tails throttle them toward Greengate, hopefully hidden beneath the confusion.
"Tails, launch!" Chris shouted.
Tails accelerated hard, the force shoving him back in his seat. And a second later, they were at the end of the runway. He yanked back on the controls and pulled up from the Blue Typhoon.
And face-to-face with a sea of Metarex ships.
"Tails!" Amy screamed.
Tails yanked back on the controls and sent them soaring straight up. A missile intended for them slipped beneath them instead to explode against the shield of the Blue Typhoon. "Sonic!" Tails shouted, not risking the backward glance.
"Still there," Sonic said shortly over the headset, through his own voice rather than the Double's. Tails could already hear the tension in Sonic's voice as he focused every ounce of his energy on holding the Chaos Double.
Tails leveled out the X-Tornado without slowing. Missiles raced toward them. Tails spun through the barrage. "So much for the distraction," Angel muttered.
Tails hissed through his gritted teeth. Angel was right. They'd hoped the X-Tornado could give the Metarex the slip by distracting them with the other aircrafts.
But they had barely started the fight and already the only plan Tails had was falling to pieces.
-X-X-X-
Nova's View
Not Mayjk. This will not be Majyk all over again.
Nova propelled the Hyper Tornado into battle. Metarex fighters blasted toward them in kind. The larger Metarex carriers still hung back. They hadn't returned fire yet, but Nova would bet they carried heavy firepower.
Nova's muscles ached as she forced the Hyper Tornado forward, diving through fire. Like her body's survival instincts were kicking in and trying to hold her back from the fight. You're the last of your kind, they said. For the survival of your species, you must survive.
But no one would survive if she didn't fight back now.
"Shadow!" Nova called out.
In response, Shadow pressed the palm of his hand against her blast shield. And with that, he launched himself from the wing to rocket in a spindash toward the nearest Metarex fighter.
Nova twisted in another direction, returning fire at the ships that might otherwise be flanking Shadow. She weaved through the ones that remained whole and met Shadow just as he uncurled from his spindash. He skidded to a halt on the wing of the Hyper Tornado, and Nova twisted the ship away again. Two Metarex fighters collided in her wake.
Cream came up from behind to clean up those fighters Nova missed. C2 soared on ahead, twisting through another line of Metarex forces.
"So much for the distraction," Angel muttered over the headset.
Nova's already anxiously heavy heart thudded. She itched to look back over her shoulder, to check on the status of the X-Tornado. But her full attention was needed to keep weaving.
Shadow launched himself from the Hyper Tornado's wing once more. Nova dove for the Metarex beneath his path. Debris from the fight Shadow waged above crashed against the wings and body of her craft. She gritted her teeth but no siren of warning erupted from her gauges. Shadow dropped heavily down after.
Fire blasted at them from behind and Nova spun to face it. "Cream, cover my flank," she cried.
"Roger," Cream replied without hesitation.
A trio of Metarex fighters barreled toward Nova. Simultaneously, lasers from all three ships blasted toward her. Panic sparked in her brain, but she smothered it after that single spark. Time slowed down, her focus narrowed. Her fingers tightened on the controls.
And she twirled the craft through the laser fire.
Her hands twitched to make minute adjustments as the angle of the lasers shifted with the movement of the Metarex fighters. And once they were close enough, Shadow launched himself from the wing. His spindash smashed into the cockpit of one of the crafts. He sliced his arm down in front of him and Chaos Spear cut toward another. Nova launched missiles at the third. And with that, Shadow grabbed the edge of the Hyper Tornado's wing as Nova cut through the field of debris left behind.
At which point, Nova's eyes landed on the X-Tornado and the couple dozen Metarex fighters surrounding it.
"No!" Nova shouted. "Tails!"
"I can't shake them!" Tails cried in reply. He was twisting between the ships, returning fire, but the Metarex refused to allow him to make a dent. Sonic's Chaos Double was holding on for dear life. Knowing Sonic, Nova guessed it was killing him to hold back from the fight like this, trying to sustain the Chaos Double's limited energy for use when they made it to Greengate below.
If they made it to Greengate below.
The Metarex shot at Nova from behind, even with Cream covering her flank. There were too many Metarex for the Blue Typhoon's crew to have their attention divided like this. But if the X-Tornado couldn't shake the Metarex, they didn't stand a chance. Nova didn't have the luxury of time.
But she did have…
"Nova."
Nova's eyes cut over to Shadow's already waiting for hers. His were narrowed, conflicted, like he could clearly read the idea shaping in her mind. "It's not a death wish," she told him. "It's just what I couldn't do for Majyk. I can do it now."
Shadow's eyes fell closed. He pressed his palm to the blast shield like before. "I have always believed in you." His eyes opened, looking calmer than before. "I believe in you now."
Nova unlocked her restraining harness. She smashed her hand down on a button of the dashboard, and the blast shield opened. She rose to her feet, even with the Hyper Tornado throttling toward the X-Tornado.
Cyan magic sparked around her hands. She felt the stress of it immediately. Her wings burned with pain along the lines of her scars. Sweat beaded against her hairline. Already her muscles shook with the effort.
"Nova?" Shadow said. Guess the effort she was expending was that obvious.
But instead of stopping, she allowed the cyan magic to flow down her forearms. It drenched her skin and still she kept pulling. She tried to pull the magic poisoning her bloodstream from her veins and managed to extract a whisper. She gasped with the effort. Every ounce of magic she could pull, she dragged to the surface until there was nothing left but the magic she could no longer touch.
"Nova?" Sonic's voice buzzed through her headset, risking his already limited focus.
Nova sucked in one more gasp to brace herself. Magic sparked. Her body shook. Her mind though, that just focused on what she needed to do next.
And with a scream, she let her magic fly.
It erupted from her body like a shockwave. It swept for the fighters surrounding the X-Tornado. When it reached the Metarex fighters, it drenched the surfaces of the ships like slime. The fighters melted beneath it. One, then three. Ten, then twenty. The last of her magic slid from her body and toward the final line of fighters. But Nova couldn't focus her blurry eyes to see if it continued toward her mark. She swayed on her feet, feeling too light for anything to be real.
An arm wrapped around Nova's shoulders to steady her. She focused on finding her center. "Tails, go! Don't waste this!" Shadow roared.
Nova shook off the dazed feeling. Her limbs still shook, her wings fell limp at her back. But when she opened her eyes, she turned them toward Shadow at her side. "Told you," she whispered.
His look of concern melted into a small smile. "Are you all right?"
Nova slid back down into the Hyper Tornado's seat and re-secured the restraining harness. When Shadow stepped back, she brought the blast shield back down around her. "My magic's gone, but I'm still here," she told him. She swung the Hyper Tornado back around for the armada of Metarex. Despite her piloting acrobatics and the expenditure of all her magic, the Metarex forces were as innumerable as ever.
But out of the corner of her eye, she saw the X-Tornado diving down for Greengate.
"I can't die yet. Let's give them a fighting chance," she growled.
Just as she went to accelerate forward, a portal tore open on the opposite side of the Metarex forces. Nova's stomach plummeted and she pulled up on her controls. "What is that?" she gasped.
"A warp field," C2 called back, even as she swung Amy's ship toward another line of Metarex fighters in the distance. "Something's coming."
Just when Nova had used the last of her magic? Naturally, this impossible fight was going from bad to worse.
The portal peeled away like the hatching of an egg to reveal a violet spacecraft in the space left behind. "The Doctor?" Shadow said.
A barrage of fire erupted from the spacecraft and raced for the nearest Metarex carrier. The barrage exploded against the side of the carrier, leaving the ship with a smoking hole in its side.
Chris exclaimed through the headset, "Dr. Eggman's fighting with us, like he said he would!"
Nova's eyes narrowed, even as her vision edged with threatening darkness and sweat slid down her skin. "It's the one break we're going to get, so let's not waste it."
She raced forward, once more diving into the impossibly massive sea of Metarex, clinging by her fingernails to the tiniest shard of hope they had left.