Entering the canopy, Adrianne stretched her hands forward. Silent Blur followed suit, obeying her commands perfectly. In this position, the forward legs acted as a shield to protect the control cab from extensive damage.
While the Silent Blur was in this form, every part of Adrianne’s body was used to control the ship. Her arms and legs controlled Silent Blur’s legs. Her wings controlled Silent Blur’s wings if she still needed them for mid-air maneuvering. Even her waist would twist Silent Blur’s mid-section. Only the tail was controlled by the computers to correct Silent Blur’s balance. In many ways, she was Silent Blur at this point. She would look silly to someone watching in the cockpit. However, with the split second decisions she was making it was necessary for controlling the ship correctly.
In years past, she had watched the squirrels in action. They were nearly flawless acrobats, the best in the trees. She modified Silent Blur so she could imitate them. She had perfected a landing technique from watching them. She had never tried it at this speed before but lacked the time for logical decision making.
The sensors gave her all the information they could, but at this speed they had trouble keeping up. Their information fed into a holographic display that surrounded her. It showed the woods around Silent Blur set to her scale. Everything about the woods was there everything down to the shapes of the leaves and vision into the distance. Usually in life-like detail, the objects were mere string outlines and simple shades at this speed.
She found many branches to help her slow her decent, crashing into one after another. The frantic search took an agonizing fraction of a second. She decided that any branch would do and grabbed at one. It bowed heavily with Silent Blur’s weight, but Silent Blur’s sharp metal claws held fast.
The branch bent hitting another branch, then another. The branches took a lot of the energy away from her momentum but not enough to satisfy physics. She had to start moving or risk breaking several branches causing more problems.
The claws sunk deep into the branch shredding it as she and momentum worked around the unpredictable branches. Soon she regained complete control and ran up to the thicker parts of the branches. Reaching the trunk, Silent Blur’s claws dug deep into the bark as she ran around it a few times descending the tree.
By the time she reached the lowest strong branches, she was moving at regular speeds. Much faster than a squirrels, but slow enough for her sensors to pick up the slightest details of the woods around her.
She stopped the ship to think. Though counter-intuitive to escape, it was the smartest thing for her to do at that point. She positioned Silent Blur into a position similar to that of a sitting squirrel. This could fool the gankers temporarily.
No doubt they were finding their own way through the canopy by now. Without her modifications, they would have to slow their ships and descend very carefully. They would ping for motion just as she could, but this could work against them. There was a good chance they knew about where she was, but they would not know exactly. There were real squirrels in the woods too. Without seeing her, the gankers could mistake her for one.
She ran a quick check of Silent Blur’s systems to make sure that she would not be unpleasantly surprised at a very bad time. Everything checked out except her weapons system. They were still in the weapons test mode she had set while experimenting with the missile. In her haste to get back to Rubin’s Trail, she neglected to set the weapons back to standard mode. Those adjustments could only be done from outside the ship?!
With no working weapons she had no way to hide in the woods and shoot them down one at a time, a plan that was just coming to her. She was way too far to reach the city. She had to get out of their jamming range to call for help.
She had a feeling the gankers could be near enough to almost her about now. She had to make sure to stay out of their sight. Though she moved like a squirrel, she certainly looked nothing like one. Even a slight glance would blow her cover. She had to make a quick decision which way to go.
They knew she was headed toward Rubin’s Trail. Her sensors and Captain Bubbles agreed that the city was straight ahead. However, only a fool would continue to head for the city at this point. A tricky person would run left or right to try and approach the city from a different angle; she would have to do that but not now. The only thing she could do to stay alive was run away from Rubin’s Trail.