Ashla grabbed onto the front edge of the wing. Her lungs burned for fresh air “Okay, Nix. Let go of the wing.” He did. Ashla made sure her grip on Nix was firm, then pulled the both of them towards the cockpit, all the while Nix’s gravelly gasping filling her ears. She caught the cockpit with her hand and stopped their flight. She shoved Nix into the passenger seat. His legs still hung up in the air but he was close enough for her to hook up his air.
She risked an exhale and another deep breath. Holding it this time was painful. Her body demanded more air. Didn’t it know there wasn’t any yet?
Ashla grabbed the bundle of tubes behind the passenger seat headrest and socketed them into place. She heard a hiss of air transfer from her ear piece and Nix sucked in fresh air.
“Strap in,” she said. Now she was sounding raspy. Grabbing onto her own air supply hoses, she fumbled to reach the nozzles, trying to get it to bear, then plugged herself in. Fresh air filled her helmet. CO2 was sucked out and she started breathing again, first in short, ragged breaths then in easy, slow ones.
“Are you okay?” she asked, looking down at Nix. He too was still taking long, deep breaths. He managed a thumbs up. “Good. Strap yourself in. We’re leaving.”
Ashla pulled herself into her chair, let her air hoses retract back into the housing in the back of her seat, then closed the cockpit. She strapped back in.
“Are you strapped in?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” Ashla tapped a few buttons on her environmental control screen. “I’m switching your supply to pure oxygen for a few minutes. It might help.”
Nix didn’t argue. Ashla did a quick final check but she could feel in the soundless hum of the engines that Luna was as ready to go as she was.
The cockpit read sealed. All systems were green. “Here we go.”
Ashla unlocked the landing gear and lifted the control stick. Luna lifted from the surface of the cargo container on her inertials. Ashla pushed forward and Luna left the container, entering the long, evacuated shaft walled in on four sides by colorful containers. A long metal pole stood in the center of the shaft and mechanical arms slid up and down it, bringing containers to empty spaces and taking containers away.
Ashla turned the stick and Luna rotated ninety degrees to the right in time for Ashla to see an arm driving a huge container right at her.
Nix shouted. Ashla flicked the stick to the left and Luna spun out of the way. “No big deal. Don’t worry. I’m a great pilot.”
Ashla pushed forward on the throttle and Luna’s main engines sang, propelling them down the shaft to the little square of star-studded space in the distance. She flicked and rolled the stick and Luna dodged and weaved around the arms that came and went. Luna burst out of the shaft and Ashla pulled back on the throttle, tilted back the stick and set Luna into a sharp turn, pointing back up at the station. She pushed the throttle back forward.
Luna soared towards the station. Ashla didn’t know the situation outside, so she stuck as close to the skin of Lodebar as she could, maneuvering to curve as the station curved. Control still felt a little slippery though.
“They need to tweak the response times in those zero-g sims.”
“What?” Nix asked. He sounded a lot better.
“Nothing, sorry.”
The space around the station was dotted with ships. Ashla recognized most of these as cargo haulers. They were parked here and there in loose clusters around Lodebar and the closest were maybe a hundred kilometers from the station itself. Apparently, the Navy was serious about their lockdown. That meant not letting any ships leave until they’ve been shaken down.
Ashla shook her head and sighed. “Luna, use my link to patch me into the channel with my friends.”
“Affirmative.”
“This is Lunar Seed to the Jessamine,” Ashla said. “Is anybody there?” There was a stomach-turning silence for the space of a few seconds. Had they been captured or killed? What would she do if there was no Jessamine to hitch a ride out of the system with? How would they--
“We’re here, kid,” Salazar Kol replied over the group channel. “What’s your status?”
“We’re out and looking for a friendly berth and a ride out of here.”
“I might just have something for you.” Then he said, “Kahula, patch our particulars to the kid through that special channel.”
Ashla didn’t hear a response. Instead her link chimed, and Luna put the information on her screen. The Jessamine’s position, bearing and velocity. Salazar’s ship wasn’t far. It would only take a few minutes to reach him.
“Luna, show me.”
A small green square lit up on the surface of the cockpit window. Ashla couldn’t see the ship inside the square—the Jessamine was a few hundred kilometers away—but she knew Luna would be accurate. She set her course and pushed Luna away from Lodebar station.
“Wow,” Nix said. He sounded a little breathless. Ashla snuck a peak back at him. Nix was looking up and back, at the station. His eyes were wide, and he smiled.
“You okay?” Ashla asked.
Nix nodded. “I’ve never seen it from the outside.”
“You’ve never been outside Lodebar?”
“Never.”
Ashla screwed her face up in surprise but didn’t respond. She had been to lots of places in the system but, of course, she was wealthy, or had been. How many people were like Nix and had never seen the outside of their own station, except as a model? How many had never left their home planet?
Salazar shouted through the comm at the same time that Luna’s threat response system started barking an alarm. A radar orb lit up, showing enemy signals targeting her.
“Jin,” Salazar said. “Listen kid—”
“I know,” Ashla said, reading the warnings as she spoke. “I’ve got two...no, three fighters in bound and targeting me.”
“Get to us as fast as you can. Use the parked freighters as cover if you have to.”
The three fighters zipped up past the cargo silos Ashla and Nix had come from, pushing five Gs. Luna was out in the open. Ashla opened her defensive suite and fed power to her rear energy barriers. Then she maxed out the g-buffers and put Luna into a six G thrust.
“Those freighters have people in them. There’s no way—”
“Navy SOP requires those pilots to hold fire when civilian vehicles might be in danger. Now, you might get a careless pilot or an overzealous commander, or they might hold fire while you’re getting away. The choice is yours. Kol out.”
“But I--” Ashla said and then finished with a wordless growl as Kol cut the comm. “Okay, Nix. Hold on.”
“Yeah, I was already-hurck!” He finished with a meaningless choking sound as Ashla pushed Luna past the capacity of her g-buffers. She could feel the pressure of high-g thrust. She didn’t have to remember the training. Her muscles flexed, and her lungs fell into the correct breathing style. She aimed Luna at the closest cluster of freighters.
The fighters fired on her while she still had empty space behind her. Ashla set Luna to dancing. She flicked, rolled and jerked the control stick, setting Luna into a patternless series of rolls, strafes, jumps and dives, but keeping her nose pointed for cover. Particle bolts whizzed past her. A few struck her energy barrier, but nothing serious yet.
The closest freighter grew in her vision, filling the cockpit’s view. A collision alert flashed and Ashla flipped Luna, aiming her powerful engines at the freighter, while pushing her inertials to maneuver her down, under it.
The collision alert died. Luna passed within meters of the freighter’s hull. Ashla flipped Luna again and pushed her to fly towards the Jessamine. The fire ceased.
Kol came back online. “Listen kid, we’ve got a destroyer gunning for us. You need to hurry.”
“No. Kidding,” Ashla said, pushing the words out against the high-g pressure. She checked the Jessamine’s position. Salazar was moving, but on an intercept course with Luna. Both ships had to survive long enough.
Ashla opened her mouth to speak again but it turned into a shout as Luna shuttered and a red light on the defense console flashed. The fighters were behind her again. Worse still they were catching up.
“Okay,” Ashla struggled to get more than one syllable out per quick breath. For a second, only a second, she wished she only had to hold her breath. “Nix. Tighten all. Your muscles. Take quick. Breaths and. Make a ‘k.’ Sound when. You breath.”
“K,” Nix replied. Ashla didn’t know if that was supposed to be a joke or an acknowledgement. Either worked for her.
“Luna. If you. Can give. More power. To the. G-buffers. Do it.”
“Acknowledged.” The relaxed tone of Luna’s voice felt out of place. Luna should have sounded like she was struggling to talk too.
Ashla thumbed open the guard and flicked off the safety switch, allowing her to throttle Luna faster than was safe. Then she pushed Luna into a fifteen G burn. She knew Luna didn’t feel a thing. The Lunar Seed could withstand enormous amounts of g-force. It was the squishy humans inside that weren’t so lucky.
Ashla squeezed every muscle she could think to and imagined the blood in her veins being held up into her brain, allowing her to think, allowing her to fly. Meanwhile she held her breath. She blinked away at the darkness encroaching on her peripheral vision.
The Jessamine grew. Something launched from her sleek side then burst into a thick cloud of chalky red smoke. Ashla gasped as a piercing beam lit up the smoke like lightning against a summer cloud. The Jessamine’s energy barriers glowed in several spaces. A destroyer Ashla couldn’t see had fired her main laser canon. The Jessamine had deployed heavy smoke to refract the beam and had taken a few minor hits instead of being cut in half.
Ashla spun Luna again, took a deep breath in the momentary lapse of heavy acceleration and then started burning in the opposite direction. Luna slowed, but continued to approach the Jessamine.
But now she could see the fighters bearing down towards her. Ashla brought her forward energy barriers to full and watched the lightshow as particle bolts struck her shields and erupted into colorful aurora. Her defense screen warned that her barriers were failing.
Ashla started the herky-jerky breathing method again, in hopes to get enough breath to call for help or at least scream.
The Jessamine opened up on the three fighters. Now bolts were flying in both directions, one of the three fighters glowed as it took fire. They ceased fire and backed off.
Luna was almost right under the Jessamine. Ashla flipped her again. Luna was still moving faster than the Jessamine, but only slightly. Ashla set the inertials to keep Luna decelerating and looked for the open hold Salazar had told her about.
“Knock, knock,” Ashla called. Now that Luna was only decelerating at three Gs she could breathe easily. “I’m here.”
The Jessamine’s belly opened, and bright light poured from the slit in her big bay doors. A docking claw descended towards her.
“Name’s Lanjer, kids,” came an unfamiliar voice over the special group channel. The Captain must have widened the group. It was gruff, gritty but friendly. “Make sure your main engines are off or you’ll blast me down to my knees when I bring you in.”
Ashla flipped the two hard switches and Luna’s main engines shut off. “Done.”
“Good.”
“Hurry it up back there. That destroyer’s about ready to fire again!” came the Captain’s voice, shrill in its urgency.
“Now,” Lanjer said. “As soon as I got you, shut off your inertials and tuck them in.”
“Understood,” Ashla said.
The docking claw came down like a six-legged spider on a thread. It’s legs closed about Luna’s upper half. Its feet magnetized. Luna jerked at the sudden change in velocity. Ashla shut down and furled Luna’s inertial engines.
“Okay, I’m ready. Bring us in.”
The claw lifted Luna into the bright hold until all Ashla could see was the hold’s shiny walls.
“Lanjer!”
“Just a minute to lock the claw and seal the hold and...now!”
“Alright,” Kol said. “All hands, brace for N-space jump.”
In agreement with the Captain’s command a trio of green lights lit up. Ashla could hear an alarm as well, three blats muffled against Luna’s cockpit shield.
Then the Jessamine shuttered, Luna shook, and the lights went out.
Chapter Thirty-Six:
All You Shining Stars
Salazar could see Naboris wasn’t going to make it. While his nearly magical Shaumri smartskin was able to do almost anything, it’s apparent weakness was high-powered laser fire.
Whoever was shooting at Naboris from the control booth—more marines, Sal figured—they were slagging the deck trying to stop him. Bits of shredded metal sparkled and danced like the glitter in a snow globe. The one that hit Naboris ripped straight through his left leg and scored the decking black in front of him. Then he started running.
For a moment, Sal felt outside of himself. In his younger days, when he was less careful of his health and more experimental, he’d allowed one of his shipmates to talk him into trying something called EZK, a very illegal, very powerful psychotropic. Salazar remembered the out of body experience as advertised, remembered seeing himself from outside of himself, like watching the feed of a security camera but with higher fidelity and lots of video filters on.
He remembered feeling powerless. His body moved, his hands lifted before his eyes, his head turned to look around but it felt like someone or something else was controlling him. At the time it had been funny, thanks to some of EZK’s other components. But for weeks afterward Sal had sweat-soaked nightmares of the experience. In them the drug shunted him outside of his body and indeed some other force took control of him. In the nightmares his head would look up at his out-of-body self and smile menacingly. Ever since then, Salazar had decided to leave recreational drugs to the criminally insane.
As Sal watched Naboris jump for the loading bay, watched his foot land, watched the rest of him begin to fall backwards, he felt that ominous presence holding his body back. It seemed to speak to him. It seemed to say, “Let him go. He’s done what we need of him. Now he’s just dead weight.”
Sal shook his head and rushed for the ledge. He leaned out as far as he could. He reached for Naboris’s grasping hands. Missed. He reached again and caught hold.
“Your ride’s about to leave without you, Naboris. Better get aboard.” Sal heaved and pulled. Naboris and his fancy suit must have weighed well over a hundred kilos. Naboris grabbed the edge of the battered, improvised cover and pulled. Together they collapsed onto the loading bay floor.
“Lanjer,” Sal called, his voice fried as he tried to catch his breath. “Seal us up.”
The loading bay lifted up into the belly of the ship on screaming hydraulic arms. A series of hisses and heavy clicks sounded around Sal as he pushed himself back to his feet.
“We’re sealed, Captain,” Jac said from the control station.
Sal nodded, sucked in air, then spoke through the ship channel. “Bel, take us out.”
“Aye aye, Captain,” Sabella said. Sal felt the ship shift under him.
Sal’s mind raced, trying to prioritize the million things that needed doing. He looked around. “Who’s not injured?”
Kapa, Vance and Lanjer raised hands.
Sal surveyed the others. Yuki had a blackened hole cut straight through his wrist. Besser had taken a hit near his clavicle. Naboris was up but had blood on his smartskin. No holes though. No surprise there. Even non-magical normal smartskins and EVA suits were self-sealing.
Olo lay in a drying puddle of blood, blackened like an overcooked roast.
“Okay,” Salazar said, pointing at Yuki, Besser and Naboris. “You three get yourselves to the med bay. Vance, help them if they need it. Lanjer, you and Kapa seal Olo to the deck, then get to the forward bay so you can let the kids in. Move quick everybody and get strapped down as soon as you can. I
have a feeling we’re going to be moving hard.”
With that, Sal ran out of the loading bay and down the corridor. He grabbed the bulkhead at the central stair, spun towards the steps and nearly collided with Dothin.
Sal shouted and backed off. Dothin lifted his hands.
“What are you doing?” Sal asked.
“I was coming down to make sure Gan made it aboard okay.”
“He’s fine. He’s heading for medbay. Now strap yourself in.” Sal pushed past him.
“If he’s fine why is he going to the medbay?” Dothin called after him.
Salazar didn’t turn as he spoke. “He got shot a few times.”
“That’s not fine!”
Salazar ignored Dothin and jogged up the stairs and the rest of the way to the bridge.
The bridge was dark compared to the well-lit corridors of the ship. Control screens glowed various shades, lighting up the faces of his bridge crew. Tally and Kahula were both in their places, Kahula wearing a headset with big earphones. Sabella was in the copilot’s chair for once. In front of her the starry void was blocked by a series of dark forms.
“Status,” Sal said as he dropped into the pilot’s chair. Sabella flashed him an exultant smile then looked back over her controls and kept flying. Sal smiled back, rejuvenated by her expression alone. “What?”
“I found a spot to hide amongst some old drydock depots,” Sabella said. “Here.” She tapped something on her screen and a holographic display came to life between them. It showed the station and placeholder graphics for all the ships surrounding it. A circle targeted a section of space a few hundred kilometers away.
“Any sign the Navy has noticed us yet?”
“Negative, Captain,” Kahula said from behind.
“But I wasn’t finished,” Bel said. “You see, all the freighters and transports that are stuck here are parked in a loose shell around the station, most around three hundred klicks away.”
“Okay,” Sal said.
“Now that the Navy ships have dropped off all their marines onto the station, they’re all parked outside that shell.”
“They’re in the best position to keep anyone from flying away,” Sal said, mostly to show Bel he was keeping up.
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