Off Planet

by Aileen Erin

  My breath was coming too fast again, and the pressure was building in my eyes, but I didn’t have any tears. Not right now.

  “Is that enough? Is that enough for you?” I gasped. “Please. Let it be enough. Let me go out there and do this one more thing. Help me make this work. Please—”

  He pulled me into him, wrapping his arms around me, stopping me from speaking before I embarrassed myself any more.

  “Yes. Yes, it’s enough.” He rested his cheek on the top of my head. “Amihanna.”

  His voice. My name. It was too much, and yet the glow settled down. For the first time since he’d picked me up, it was almost gone.

  How did he do that? What did it mean?

  I tried to pull back to ask him, but he held on tight.

  “This will get easier. I swear. I’ll do whatever I can to help you. I promise. You’re not lost. Not anymore. You’re home.” His glow was still there. Not as bright as it had been, but it was just enough to show the faint outline of his tattoos.

  “I’m not your responsibility.” I touched one symbol on his arm that looked like a bird flying, and he tightened his grip on me.

  “Yes. You are.”

  I pulled back, and this time he let me go. Once I was free of his arms, I regretted it, but I was too stubborn to go back to him, so I hugged my arms around myself. “I don’t understand. Why would I be your responsibility?”

  “You and I are—”

  The ship started making a soft dinging sound, and I stared at the vidscreen. We were closing in on the surface of the moon, but there were a bunch of red dots on it. “What are those?”

  “Those are people on the surface of the moon. No doubt they’re investigating what happened to you.”

  “I thought that they’d left?”

  “They did, but while we left to get Declan they must’ve come back.”

  My mouth went dry, and I realized that I couldn’t blow up the moon while there were people on it. “What now?”

  “I don’t know.” He slid his fingertips across the desk. “Declan?”

  “I’m having some issues.” There were sounds of fighting. “Audrey’s in bad shape. Got info on the weapon. Bad news all around. Need that distraction or we’re not getting out of here alive.”

  I met Lorne’s gaze and swallowed. This was tricky. So very tricky. “Your ship is fast, right?”

  “Very.”

  “And weapons.”

  He shook his head. “Just some light defensive ones. The ship was built for speed. Weapons add weight.”

  Okay. The speed would have to be enough. “Uncloak the ship. That will draw their attention while I get down there to set off the crystals.”

  Lorne placed his hands on the desk and closed his eyes. “If I do, you won’t have much time before SpaceTech will rally their squadrons. We’ll be floating dead if—”

  “I’ll be fast. I know what crystals to hit. We have to help Declan—”

  “I’m not saying we’re leaving him.” He turned his head to give me a slashing look. “I just want to give you a clear picture of what you’re asking. I sped here from the Naustlic System. I made it in three days.”

  I gasped. I knew the Aunare ships were fast, but I never imagined they were that fast.

  “Exactly. You can imagine how much fuel I burned doing that. I exhausted what I could spare healing you, and then I towed Declan’s ship. And it’s not small.”

  Fear gripped my heart and twisted. I hadn’t known we’d be so close. I wasn’t sure if it would change my plan if he’d told me, but I…

  “If we uncloak, I’m not sure we can make it across the galaxy without getting caught before your dad meets us. They’ll anticipate our jumps. They know we have to go through some heavily populated systems and they’ll have ships waiting. I’m not sure…” He stood up and ran his hands through his dark hair. “Gods above. I can’t believe I’m actually thinking about doing this. I honestly can’t think of an alternative.”

  We were getting closer to the moon. I could see Spider and the SpaceTech IAF officers inspecting it.

  I stepped toward him. I was scared and angry and worried that this was more dangerous than I’d thought, but we couldn’t stop now. Not with Declan fighting for his life on Abaddon. And he was forgetting something big.

  I was going down there to activate crystals. If Lorne could barely jump with how I was now, how were we going to get away after I hit the crystals?

  “If you’re going to do something, do it now! I—I need help. Now! Shit!” Declan’s voice came through the com before it cut off abruptly.

  I couldn’t think about anything but helping him. I didn’t care if I was hurt by the end of it. “Do it. We’ll make it.” We didn’t have another choice.

  “My father will have my head for this.”

  My mouth dropped open for a second. Lorne’s father was the King. “You mean literally?”

  Lorne gave me a wicked grin that sent shivers down my spine. “No. Not literally. But he’ll be mad.”

  I let out a breath and laughed. “Blame me. That’s fine.” I’d survive. Somehow. But I wasn’t sure how much of me would be left after this.

  “Never.” His grin faded and he was all business. “If I uncloak it, then you are going down there alone. It seems like Ahiga managed to wipe out the cameras for good, but the rest of the weapons on Apollyon are active. I need to be here.” He closed the distance between us. “I know you don’t remember me, but I also know you don’t feel nothing.” He caressed my neck, and my skin burned bright.

  He stepped back from me. “I need you to give us a chance. And to do that, I need you alive. So be careful.”

  I nodded, not really agreeing to the rest of it, but I really hoped the alive part was happening. “I will be.” I hoped he didn’t hear the uncertainty in my voice.

  “Take these.” He pulled an earbud out of his pocket and held it out for me. “I don’t care if you blow up the moon or not. Do what you can and straight back here. No unnecessary risks.”

  This was all one massive risk—one I was willingly taking—but he didn’t have to know that.

  I grabbed the earbud from him and took off running.

  The ship wasn’t big enough that I’d get lost. I pushed the earbud in place, followed the hallway to the hatch, and waited. My mask and tool were still on the floor. I picked up the mask and flipped it on. The suction was slightly less painful this time since I knew what to expect. It had hours left on it, but if I needed more than ten minutes, we were going to be dead.

  Lorne was right about one thing: no unnecessary risks.

  “I’m opening the hatch now,” Lorne said through the earbud. “They’ll know we’re here when I do it.”

  “I’m ready.” I felt the ship lower and bent down to pick up the tool. A soft plink sounded behind me.

  “What the hell?” Another came right after it from outside the hatch.

  An officer stood twenty feet in front of me, weapon out, and fired again. I dropped to the ground.

  Some guy was actually firing at me?

  I looked back up. Just like I’d seen on the vidscreen, the ship that Santiago had prepared for me—Spider—was still where I’d left it. Three SpaceTech officers were near it, watching me with their weapons out, and more officers were inspecting where I’d fallen. One had my broken wrist unit in his hand.

  My heart sped up and I was instantly flooded with the need to move.

  “Hurry, Amihanna! Now!” Lorne’s voice kicked me into motion.

  Running toward gunfire was a special kind of idiocy, but I did it anyway.

  Because, after all the times I’d nearly died, risking my life to save my friends and take down SpaceTech? That was an easy choice to make. If I lived, then good. And if I died? What an honorable way to go.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  I ran as fast as I could out of Lorne’s uncloaked ship and landed ten meters away from the edge of the mine. I couldn’t believe I was back on Apollyon, but it w
as better than being on Abaddon. My short time in the pod had definitely helped. I had a lot more energy than I did before, but this was still pretty damned stupid.

  I ran toward the SpaceTech officers firing at me, heading for the edge of the mine, and yelled, “Get to your ships. If you don’t want to die, leave. Now!”

  One of the officers shot at me again, but I kept moving.

  “I’ll take care of them,” Lorne said through the earbud. “You take care of the crystals.”

  The officers all stopped shooting to find cover as Lorne started firing at them from the ship.

  I jumped down two levels into the mine and then got to work.

  I pulled out the tool and hit crystals that I knew were bad—the ones I’d only hit once. The ones with my purple marks.

  I moved down the mine, running along the edges. As I activated more and more crystals, my head started to throb. I stumbled and nearly fell, but I gripped the crystals on the wall to stay upright. I took only enough time for my vision to clear a bit and then kept going.

  Each crystal I activated was more excruciating than the one before it.

  My vision started to double and dim, but I kept moving. The memory of Declan’s cry for help kept me rushing along as fast as I could. I didn’t give myself time to deal with the pain. And as I moved, I wondered if a part of Carl knew what I was going to do.

  He’d given me the key to destroying this whole moon. If anyone hated this moon more than me, it had to be the guy who’d trained all the volunteers only to watch them die.

  Two hits to make them volatile. Set one crystal off and the whole place would be blown. Add in his method of marking them up, and I had a recipe for how to destroy Apollyon.

  Still, it’d be hard to time the explosion right. Carl’s endless afternoon training had drilled into me how unstable lucole were and also unpredictable—they didn’t necessarily always blow up right away. Sometimes the vibrations would crescendo, which could take from thirty seconds to ten minutes.

  There was a cluster in particular that I was looking for. It was the one that had nearly killed me. It was highly volatile and bigger than any other cluster in the mine. If I could get that one to blow, it should produce an explosion big enough to tear the moon apart. Add in the rest of the activated crystals, and I’d have one hell of a distraction. I wasn’t sure if the timing and orbit would work out for the debris to land on the base itself, but even if it landed on the other side of the planet, that should be enough to cause the whole lava surface to destabilize. No matter what technology was built into the base’s pylons, it couldn’t combat that.

  I hit more. And more. And more crystals as I searched for the one I was looking for. Ignoring the shaking of my legs. Ignoring the blood dripping from my nose. Ignoring the sounds of gunfire around me. I kept going, trusting Lorne to have my back.

  The more crystals I hit, the worse the pain got, and I knew I should stop, but I couldn’t make myself stop. I couldn’t get this far only to fail. So I kept hitting crystal after crystal. The thwump-thwump in my head grew and grew. Just like when I’d been here earlier. Even if I felt better after the pod, I knew what Lorne had said. I needed another healing session, which meant I was going to be in bad shape before this was done, and I couldn’t even begin to worry about the fuel we needed to get away.

  I jumped down another level and slipped. My back hit the ground, and I wanted to stop, but I thought of Audrey. Of how she saved my life. Of how she held my hand in the med bay, telling me her life story. I had to help her.

  I’m a di Aetes. Di Aetes never quit. Not ever.

  I got moving again, slower this time. The one I needed had a unique formation. One of the crystals in the group had arced instead of spiking out of the bedrock. The ones around it grew out of the arc. It looked like a spiky, black-and-white rainbow. The fat arc crystal. It nearly killed me the first time I hit it.

  Two more taps and Apollyon would be dust.

  Shots rang out around me, but I trusted Lorne to do what he said. To protect me. And I knew that he was going to keep me safe. So I kept running, hoping that my vision wasn’t too messed up to actually find the right one.

  There.

  I blinked a few times, making sure I actually saw it.

  Yes. There.

  Right freaking there.

  I spotted the one I wanted, but I was on the wrong level. Not surprising since the mining had been hard and every level looked the same, but I found it.

  I jumped down to the sixth level, and my knees ached with the impact.

  “Stop! Don’t! You’ll blow the whole moon!” A SpaceTech officer held a gun, pointed straight at me. He was one level above me.

  That was exactly the point.

  “I’ve got him.” Lorne fired from the ship, and the man fell to the ground. “Do what you need to do.”

  I didn’t look back to check on the officer who would’ve killed me. I did what I had to do. I brought the hammer end down on the crystal with a loud thwack.

  The high-pitched tone felt like a spike being dug into my head. I moaned as hot blood ran down my cheeks, and it felt as if one of my molars had cracked in two.

  “Are you okay?” Lorne said. “We’re about to have more company.”

  I had blood running out my ears and nose, my muscles would barely hold me, and my vision was cutting in and out. “I’m fine.” Liar. I was such a liar.

  “There’s blood running out of your ears.” I didn’t have to know him very well to hear the cold fury in his voice.

  I wiped it away. “I’m fine,” I gritted out the words, knowing I was anything but. “Be ready to pick me up. I might pass out again.”

  “You better not pass out on this godforsaken moon! Get your ass back to this ship.”

  “Sorry. I might’ve lied to you and Declan about how I was feeling.” My words were slurring. “And I’m way worse now than I was the last time you picked me up.”

  Lorne let out a stream of curses in two languages, but I didn’t regret it. No matter what anyone said, I would never regret going back to help the people that kept me alive on Abaddon.

  “Wait,” Lorne said. And then started yelling in Aunare.

  “What?” I blinked, trying to clear my vision, but it was like I was drunk. I gripped the crystals as the moon spun.

  “Declan doesn’t have a ship. He says that it was already loaded up and SpaceTech took off with it.”

  I knew there was going to be something that messed this up, but I didn’t think of that. It was too fast. How did SpaceTech get his ship refueled already? It hadn’t been that long.

  I needed to think of something. There had to be a way. There had to— “Santiago’s ships. There were two other fast ones he was working on. Use one. It won’t get them far, but it’s better than nothing. Then we’ll pick them up. Either tow the ship or transfer them to ours.”

  “Towing is out. My ship can’t tow while running from SpaceTech’s fleet and not being able to jump because your brain is bleeding, again.”

  “I’m not arguing with you. Tell Declan what I said! And then tell Rysden to pick up the pace. I’m hitting this crystal the third time. Be ready!”

  I took a steadying breath and slammed the hammer down for the last time.

  I was blind again. My ears were ringing. I wasn’t sure what had happened, but I was pretty sure that was the ground digging into my back. I’d fallen. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been lying there, and I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be able to get back up.

  “Move! Now! Now!” I could hear Lorne faintly yelling through my battered ears, but I couldn’t move.

  Everything was black.

  I couldn’t see.

  I couldn’t move.

  We were so fucked.

  “Get up or I’m coming down! Right now!”

  I blinked my eyes open, surprised that I could see again, even if things were still blurry and spinning, but I wasn’t sure I could move. “Just leave me here.”

  “Like h
ell. I’m dropping a line. You have to grab it. And we have to go.”

  A second later something shiny appeared in front of my face.

  “Grab it.”

  My arms felt like they were filled with impossibly heavy lucole, but I managed to hold onto it. Something warm wrapped around my body and then I was flying fast toward the ship above me, making me so dizzy I started gagging. Before I could take another breath, Lorne was picking me up off the line.

  “You hang in there.” He ripped off my mask and ran with me in his arms.

  Lorne yelled something in Aunare, and I felt the ship jolt under him, but he didn’t pause or falter. Not even for a second. Not even while carrying my limp body.

  He gently placed me on the floor against the side wall in the bridge. He took a second to press two fingers to my pulse point while he stared into my eyes. “Stay here, okay?”

  “I can’t move. I think I’ll just watch the show from here.”

  “Good.” He stood up and went to his desk. “We’re to you in five. You run!”

  I wasn’t sure who he was talking to, but I assumed it wasn’t me because I wasn’t in shape to run anywhere. Not for a while.

  I slid my gaze up to see the vidscreen. One screen showed us moving fast toward Abaddon, entering its atmosphere. A second screen was zoomed in on seven figures running across the crusty lava. Cracks opened up as they ran.

  They were on foot? “Where’s Santiago’s ship?”

  “Blocked,” he said. “You’ve got five more seconds, and then I’m leaving without you.”

  He couldn’t. He had to pick them up. My heart pounded.

  The ship rocked as something hit it. My head slammed back into the wall, and I winced. “What was that?” I tried to sit up, but the pounding in my head grew worse, so I gave that up.

  “Your plan worked. The moon’s gone. Good job.” His tone was so sharp, I wondered if he was joking.

  I closed my eyes. “Really?”