by Seven Steps
His sturdy chin moved a bit, but he showed no sign of being injured. He simply too a step back, a self-satisfied smile tugging at his lips.
I wish I had a brick. I’d wipe that smile right off his face!
“I was hoping you wouldn’t remember that part.”
“Well, I remember. If you marry me, then you lose everything. Your father will disinherit you. Did you forget that part? You will be a pauper.”
“No, Sorcha. I didn’t forget. It seems that you haven’t either.”
“No, Ivan Alexi Romanov. I haven’t.”
He rubbed his hands across his chin, though she was sure that she hadn’t hurt him in the least. He was practically squawking with male pride as he took a few steps back, his eyes on her as if she had told a very funny joke.
“What’s so funny?” she demanded, the urge to slap him again rising sharp.
His smile grew wider.
“You’re talking in Emir. That kiss. It made you remember.”
She brought her hand to her lips, his insinuation making her reel.
“I was talking in English.”
“No. You’re talking in Emir.”
His smug smile made her temper explode, and her mouth went a mile a minute, calling him every swear word she knew. For good measure, she picked up one of the gadgets in his work bench and threw it at him.
He ducked, his smile widening.
“See.”
“I thought I was speaking Russian!”
His eyebrows knitted together. “Russian is an Earth language. It was the closest thing to Emir that I could find.”
“I can’t believe you.” Her anger faded, and when she saw the mischief that played in his eyes, she couldn’t help but smile.
“I see you still like to curse.”
She shook her head, and rolled her eyes.
“What can I say? You inspire me.”
She couldn’t help the smile that settled on her face. She looked around the ship with new eyes. That was her home. It had been since she was sixteen.
Ivan was a genius while she was a kid living by the skin of her knuckles. A little more than an orphan hooligan. Two years ago, he’d caught her robbing the science lab he worked in for Magresh, a powerful hallucinogen that was highly valued on the black market. She’d cleaned the lab out of the leafy plants, stuffing enough in her bag for her to live like a queen for the next several years. He could have turned her in to the authorities. She would have spent years in an interplanetary prison, and he would have earned a pat on the head from his too rich father for being vigilant and protecting the family investments. Instead, he offered her a deal. Food, shelter, her very own ship, and a stipend just to stick around and be the one thing that he didn’t have in his life of wealth and luxury. A friend. To her surprise, and his, she accepted his offer. At the very least, it was better than jail. She expected to stick around for a while, then leave again when Ivan’s attention slipped. But, they were two lost, lonely souls, drifting through life, looking for something—anything—to hold on to. An anchor. A rock in the storm. Love bloomed between them violent and quick.
It hadn’t changed much since then.
She walked over to his work bench and picked up a wrinkled photo of the two of them. They couldn’t have been more than seventeen, and were sitting on the steps of that very ship. Her throat constricted, and she sniffled. They looked so happy and innocent. And then, everything changed.
She had every intention of teasing him about the messy state of their home when the ship rocked to the side, throwing Sorcha from her feet. She went flying to the right, landing hard on her shoulder.
Ivan’s eyes pulled upward, scanning the ceiling. “They found us!”
He raced to the controls, sweat forming on the back of his neck.
“Strap in, Sorcha! It’s time to go.”
The screen in front of the controls fuzzed and blanked. The words INCOMING MESSAGE flashed in red letters.
Someone was trying to call them.
Ivan slammed his hand down on a red button and INCOMING MESSAGE was replaced with REJECTED.
She knew who it was without asking, and raw fear crawled up her spine.
Mega-Corp. The same agency whose black suited men chased her back on Earth. Her blood ran cold and her stomach flipped. If the Mega-Corp agents found them, there was no telling what they would do.
Beating back her terror at their discovery, Sorcha stumbled forward, strapping herself into the co-captain’s chair. Her body sank into the familiar warm leather as if it were made for her. Dark blue carpet spread beneath her boots. The same carpet that ran through the bedroom and the common area. A strong urge to reach out and brush her fingers along its rough, worn surface rose within her, but there was no time for that.
Ivan accelerated the ship forward, throwing backward everything that wasn’t nailed down. The ship inclined sharply. Clouds and sky zoomed past them. Her back sunk against the leather seat, and she dug her fingers into the arm rest. Pressure from the change in gravity and the fleeing atmosphere made her head spin. Her dread threatened to suffocate her.
Still, she cried out, “Go faster!”
“I’m trying!” Ivan argued.
The ship broke through the last of the atmosphere and rushed into the blackness of space.
Ivan evened the ship out and accelerated forward, the Mega-Corp ship hot on their tail.
Sorcha felt her rear end raising out of her seat. She reached up and pulled a blue lever, and she was filled with heaviness again.
“Artificial gravity activated.”
“We have worse things to worry about than gravity.”
Streaks of green flew wide past her window.
Great. They’re firing at us. Well, Mega-Corp, two can play that game.
Her hands moved briskly across the console in front of her. Her determination came out to play, wrestling her fears to the ground. It was time for her to stop being afraid and start fighting back. She’d once seen an ad that said: “A purposeful woman could do anything”. Sorcha was full of purpose. Of grit. Of raw resolve.
I’m going to teach those suited jerks a lesson.
“What are you doing?” Ivan demanded.
“I’m changing my tampon. What does it look like I’m doing? I’m engaging weapons.”
“Our weapons are pea shooters compared to theirs. This is a cruiser. Not a battleship.”
“Just keep them off our tail for a few more seconds.”
Ivan grunted as the engines roared. The green lasers flew closer as the larger ship acclimated to their flight pattern.
“They’re too fast!” Ivan cried, pulling the wheel back. The G-force pushed Sorcha further back in her seat.
“Spin it!” Sorcha cried.
Ivan pushed the wheel forward, then swung it hard to the right, sending them in a tight cork screw. Green laser fire exploded around them like fireworks. They spun once, twice, three times before he pushed the wheel forward again, accelerating them.
“You ready with those weapons yet?”
“I’m ready! Ram them!”
“What?!”
“Turn us around and plow through them.”
“What are you; crazy?!”
The ship took a hard blow to the left engine and banked right.
“Ram them or we will die!”
“Their ship is too big. If I ram them, we will die!”
“Do you trust me?” Sorcha sent a hard stare to Ivan. He caught it, and swallowed.
“Do you trust me?” she repeated.
His Adam’s apple bobbed again. She saw his jaw tremble before he nodded his head.
“I trust you,” he said.
The words were like Cupid’s arrow to her heart, but she didn’t have time to coo.
She dropped her voice to a growl. “Then turn this ship around and let’s split them in half.”
Their eyes stayed on each other’s for a moment more before Ivan turned his attention back to the controls, muttered a prayer
in Emir, and shoved his entire body weight against the wheel.
The ship flipped tail over head, making Sorcha’s stomach rise into her throat.
The second they were even again, she slammed her hand on the console, the gun torrents popping out of the bottom of the ship.
Their ship rose slightly, until they were even with the front widows of the large vessel.
The Mega-Corp ship was at least three times as big as her own. It reminded her of a classic UFO. Silver and circular, with a large hump in the middle. It was what was under the hump that she was aiming for. The fuel cell.
She grabbed the two joysticks that controlled the weapons and pressed hard, sending green laser fire right to the other ship’s front window. She could see several agents ducking, as if the lasers would blast through the glass at any minute.
Good. Run like the cockroaches you are.
“Get me under that fuel cell,” she barked.
Their ship raced forward, their own green lasers relentlessly pounding the front of the Mega-Corp ship.
The circular ship banked right, then left, trying desperately to protect its windows that had already started to splinter under its assault.
But Ivan would not be shaken off. He relentlessly dogged the larger craft, as Sorcha’s thumbs squeezed the trigger again and again and again.
The Mega-Corp ship grew closer and closer. In a few more seconds, they would collide.
Sorcha called out, “Engaging hyper drive.”
She heard Ivan sputter.
“What?”
“Get me under the fuel cell now.”
“You’re going to kill us!”
“Ivan!”
A second before the two ships impacted head on, Ivan ducked his smaller ship under the larger one.
“Hyper drive engaged.”
“We’re too close. Everything in a hundred meters will be destroyed if we don’t get clear.”
“Keep with them.”
“We’re going to blow ourselves to space dust!”
“Stay with them, Ivan. Trust me.”
The larger ship’s movements turned erratic. It tried to go left, then right. Then left again.
“Ten seconds until hyper drive!”
The larger ship banked hard, its engines deafening as it sped away.
Above them, there was only clear space.
“Three, two, one.”
The universe around them turned to white streaks. They were going at light speed, running far away from the Mega-Corp ship.
Sorcha let out a breath. They were safe. For now.
Ivan released the controls, and sank back into his chair.
He put his hands over his eyes and massaged the bronzed skin of his forehead.
Sorcha didn’t move. She didn’t speak. An explosion was coming, and, judging by the way his face turned redder and redder, it was going to be a big one.
“If the hyper drive engaged, and we were within a hundred meters of any other ship, both us and that ship would have been destroyed.”
His voice was surprisingly quiet. He didn’t move his hands from his eyes.
Sorcha put her hands in her lap, bracing for the fall out from her reckless stunt.
“I know,” she said, her voice matching the softness of his.
“I just want to know one thing. How did you know that they would move?”
Sorcha let out a breath, and laughed shortly.
“Because they aren’t like us,” she said. “When hyper drive is engaged, it sends out a warning signal to any ship within a hundred meters. If it were me, and I were chasing someone, I wouldn’t have moved. Yes, I might have died, but at least I would’ve died knowing that the mission was complete. That I had done what I could to make sure that the universe was safe. But, to them, we’re just a job. They won’t sacrifice themselves, because they don’t care. At the end of the day, they will go back to Eminence and live their lives. But, for us, there’s nothing to go back to. I knew that we would be safe, because they aren’t like us.”
Ivan finally released the vice-like grip he had on his forehead and looked at her. For a moment, she thought that she would get the tongue lashing that awaited her. Instead, he stood up and shook his head.
“I nearly peed myself,” he said, his thighs spread wide as he made his way back to the bedroom. A moment later, he muttered, low enough that he thought she wouldn’t hear.
“I think I did pee myself.”
Chapter 2
The adrenaline from the space battle wound down as, over an hour later, they arrived in the outer atmosphere of Eminence Nova 1.
“I’d hoped that the next time I saw this place, it would be in flames.” She sighed. “Our salvation and our destruction.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Ivan said softly. “She’s not like him. She can help us. She always has.”
“We’ll see.”
Sorcha picked up a small, metal touch screen from the bin next to the navigational console. The bin was usually filled with chocolate candy, her favorite snack, and trashy Nadir romance novels—with their covers ripped off to protect her reputation—for long trips. Only the touch screen remained.
She pressed a small button on the back of it, and a bright light shot up and into her eye, reading her retina. It was uncomfortable, but only for a moment. Like a pin prick. She remembered reading somewhere that touch screen retinal scanners gave people eye cancer, but she didn’t know if it was true or not. It seemed that most things gave people cancer these days. At least on Nadir. On Eminence, they didn’t even know what cancer was.
She focused on the small red box labeled NEWS in the top left of the screen, and was immediately assaulted with pictures of the latest universal happenings. Universal Council President Turp’s visit to Obraxis, a blue planet located in the Oasis galaxy, holding the pale offspring of one of the tall, blue, alien creatures who lived there.
Must be an election cycle.
She looked at her recent searches and found the first name on the list.
Phineas Zorg.
The search window opened, and she scanned the list, anxious to see what he’d done lately.
Phineas Zorg teases big announcement.
Phineas Zorg plans to double fuel output within ten cycles.
Will Phineas Zorg run for office?
She wondered where the real news articles were. She would have loved to see someone expose the truth about the all-powerful CEO of Mega-Corp.
Phineas Zorg murders billions for fuel.
Phineas Zorg offers jumpers a deal: ‘Work for me or die’.
Phineas Zorg testing cross dimensional bomb.
Not a headline I’ll see any time soon. Not while he still has his finger on the pulse of the universal press. Scum bag!
She looked at the search window again and pulled up another name.
Sorcha Blitz.
A picture of her and Ivan loaded in the middle of her screen, right beneath the word WANTED. She traced a finger over her caramel skin, her full lips, and chestnut eyes. Her hair was straight in the picture, though most days it was always somewhere between straight, slightly curly, and completely out of control. The humidity in the ship made the heavy strands wrap around themselves until all she could do was throw them in a messy bun and hope for the best.
Beneath their picture was a bogus story of how they’d stolen valuable technology from Mega-Corp’s research facility. She nearly snorted. She was the valuable technology!
How can I steal myself?
The obscene reward that Phineas offered for them had her tossing her touch screen back in the drawer in disgust.
I wonder if that price still counts if I’m dead. If I’m worth that much money, then why are his agents trying to kill me?
Sorcha shook the thought from her head and turned her attention back to the growing planet in front of her. She’d been there several times over the last few years, but the sight of the Nova 1 still struck her.
It was as if two different planets
were glued together at the equator. The top half of the planet, the Eminence dimension, glowed and sparkled like a jewel in sunlight. The bottom half, the Nadir dimension, was brownish and smoky, reminding Sorcha of a rotting orange.
Neither the citizens of Eminence nor Nadir had any clue that the other existed. They lived in two different dimensions, separated by fractals of light, radio waves, and shadows. In fact, the only way for an Eminence and a Nadir to see each other would be with a special, implanted chip that would tune the person’s body to that dimension’s frequency and light.
Though the majority of the universe couldn’t see between the dimensions, those with special abilities could both see and move between them. They could even carry objects from one dimension to the other. Those people were called Jumpers, a rarity in the cosmos. Sorcha often thought of it like being in a room surrounded by doors. Most people only had one key to one door. Their own dimension. But a Jumper had all of the keys to all of the doors.
Sorcha Blitz was a Jumper.
Ivan pressed a button above his seat, making the inside lights dim.
“Engaging cloaking mode,” he said.
With no detectable outgoing frequencies, they glided through the sparkling atmosphere of Eminence Nova 1.
The lack of security always shocked Sorcha, but, then again, it made sense. After all, Nova 1 was under the explicit protection of Mega-Corp, the largest corporation in the known universe, run by its egomaniacal maniac of a CEO Phineas Zorg. Any attack on the planet would mean a thousand war ships at the perpetrator’s doorstep, and no one in their right mind wanted that much heat.
Mega-Corp had grown into its empire over the last fifteen years by providing the universe with high-end spaceships and the fuel to power them. If one had to travel across the galaxy, they would do it using Mega-Corp Express Fuel in a Mega-Corp built ship.
Two suns orbited around Nova 1, ensuring that nighttime never darkened the planet’s doorstep. In the center of the planet, a giant volcano pulsed as blue lava ran down its sides. The lava formed bright blue veins that ran through the planet, turning its ground into highly polished glass. Sorcha could make out a bit of the ship’s reflection as they flew along the surface. It was slight, but it was there.
Tall, grey houses shaped like a jagged W broke the glassy landscape. Black slashes in the metallic surface showed the spots where windows looked out over the planet. Green rings floated above each house. The rings were attached to the house by several sets of stairs. Sorcha could see people walking up and down the staircases, brown baskets full of green foliage tucked into their arms.
