by Jack Archer
The explosion sent her flying backward, and the little fighter zoomed on by, heading back towards the border gates, its job done. Thankfully, the Firehawk wasn’t far behind and approached the Gloriosum, turning slightly in her direction.
Rystar hoped they saw her, and she closed her eyes in wait.
The explosion had wrecked her a little more thoroughly than she originally thought, but Rystar supposed the adrenaline of escaping a dying ship would do that.
When she awoke, she was in her old room on the Firehawk, and she groaned. Every part of her was sore, and she sat up with care, rubbing at her ribs as she did so. Not as alarmed to find herself back on the Firehawk, she shook her head and tried to remember the last thing that happened before she blacked out.
“My ship!” she cried, throwing off the blankets and trying to stand up, but she found herself pushed back in bed by a pair of strong hands. Looking up, she saw Cobalt, his straggly brown hair falling in his face as he nestled her back down into the bed. She gazed up at him, brow furrowed.
“Why are you here?” she asked, not caring at the moment if she sounded rude or not.
“Neutral party,” he grunted, sitting back down in the chair next to her bed when she was sufficiently snuggled.
“So, no one wants to be here with me,” she huffed, moving down deeper into the blankets and pulling them up to her chin.
“Chích,” Cobalt said, flipping through his comms tablet and leaning back in his chair, “no, too many people want to be in here.”
She frowned at that, staring up at the ceiling and trying to figure herself out. It wasn’t easy. Now, she had the death of the Gloriosum to deal with as well as the tangled feelings of three or more crew members.
“So, does that mean you don’t want to be in here?” Rystar asked coyly, turning her head to look at him. Cobalt squirmed in his seat and narrowed his eyes.
“Didn’t say that,” Cobalt grumbled, still staring intently at his tablet.
Rystar sighed, wondering when she would be released from this hell. Cobalt began typing on his tablet, and Rystar looked over to him, her eyes becoming slits. “Hey, what are you typing?”
“Just telling the others you’re awake,” he replied, tapping away, and Rystar cursed to herself. Hopefully, the entire crew wouldn’t come clamoring through the door to check on her well-being. It was short-lived, as not a few minutes later, a knock came at the door, and Cobalt stood up to answer it.
“Are you alright with a visitor?” Cobalt asked from the doorway.
Depends, Rystar thought. “Sure, send them in.”
The door clicked shut behind Cobalt before he sat down again, and Lupe appeared, sitting down on her bed and smiling. “Second neutral party, they said.”
“I see,” Rystar huffed, looking up towards the ceiling again.
“Kyran wasn’t sure you wanted to see him, Shea is too upset, Na’gya’s afraid, and Enzo is too busy figuring out how our friends found us again,” Lupe explained, setting their hands in their lap.
It pained her to know that Shea didn’t want to come see her. She didn’t know what she did to offend him, but maybe he needed space after she rejected his advances to come with her. Rystar might have saved his life. What struck her was what Enzo was up to.
“Who found us again?” she asked.
“Enzo said there was no traffic from the Firehawk to any FDDS personnel since Shea severed those ties a couple cycles ago,” Lupe explained. “So we don’t know who this is. We’re sifting through the wreckage of the Gloriosum now, but I don’t think we’ll find anything useful.”
A bolt of lightning shot through Rystar’s chest as they mentioned the Gloriosum, and she closed her eyes at the thought of its wreckage strewn about the cosmos. After a moment, she opened her eyes again and sat up, fixing Lupe with a concerned stare. “What was that? That attacked me?”
“I have no idea,” they said, spreading their hands and shrugging. “Shea is looking it up now, but no dice so far. It was a small ship, a very powerful one, too. Couldn’t have been a match for a full-length Mach IV, or they would have come for us, as well.”
“Was it Terran?” she asked.
“Don’t know, but it wasn’t Sustri either,” Lupe chuckled. “We can’t make ships that powerful.”
“I appreciate you coming in here, Lupe,” she said after a moment. They smiled at her and set a hand on her leg.
“I’m just glad you’re okay,” they said. “We had a scare for a moment. We thought we lost you.”
“You almost did,” Rystar muttered, thinking back to the alarms and lights going off in her ship just before her assailant demolished her. “I was lucky to get out alive.”
“You most certainly were,” Lupe said, their eyes narrowing at her. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m okay, I think,” Rystar responded, prodding at her ribs and wincing. “Going to be sore for a while, but I was damn lucky you all found me.”
“This ship has a hell of a radar,” Lupe chortled and patted Rystar’s leg. She warmed at the touch and sighed when they stood up. Lupe was a solid presence, their neutral tone smoothing out any bad feelings she had towards the rest of the ship.
“Let me know when you’re ready to see the rest of the crew,” Lupe said, heading towards the door. “I know they’d love to see you.”
Rystar nodded, exchanging glances with Cobalt, who gave her the smallest of smiles before going back to his comms tablet. The door shut, and she was plunged into silence once more.
The Firehawk had been holed up at a tiny spaceport near the border gates in Oprezzo for the past few hours, and Rystar figured it would be in bad taste to hold them up any longer. Especially since an unknown spaceship was on their tail.
Rystar limped to the bridge, a small blanket wrapped around her shoulders. The elevator doors opened, and she spotted Enzo in the corner of the room and Kyran and Shea in the center seats, both watching vids on their comms tablets. When the elevator opened, they all turned to face her.
“Rystar,” Shea cried, bolting up from his seat and heading to her. Rystar’s entire body ached, from her fluffy-socked feet to the top of her bedraggled head. She wore a long-sleeved t-shirt she found in her closet and a pair of old and grey sweatpants that did nothing for her figure. But she was comfortable, which was all that mattered.
“Hi, Shea,” Rystar greeted, smiling carefully and standing near the top of the stairs. Kyran followed Shea, and they both stood a few steps down from her. Hugging the blanket closer, she gazed at both of them, and grief welled up in her chest for no reason at all.
“How are you feeling?” Kyran asked.
“Not good,” Rystar snorted, wiping at her face with a blanketed hand and looking at the ground. “How are things up here?”
“We were waiting for you to wake up before we jumped,” Kyran said, placing one foot on the stair above him and folding his arms. “We’re pretty sure that ship might think they killed you, and they might catch on to the idea that Shea is still with us. We should head out soon.”
She appreciated his straight-to-business demeanor but hated the lack of nicknames, the impersonality of his tone. Suddenly, she wasn’t mad at him anymore. “I’m ready. Let’s go now.”
“Are you sure?” Shea asked, stepping up a stair and holding a hand out. She took it and smiled.
“I’ll be alright,” she said, “just a little headache is all.”
“Alright,” Shea responded, the worry clear in his tone. They had to leave as quickly as they could. There was no sense waiting around longer than necessary.
“We’ll have to figure out who tried to kill me later,” Rystar said.
“Lupe is still asleep. We’ll have to wait until they wake up to leave,” Kyran said, unfolding his arms and scuffing at the stair with his foot. “Shouldn’t be more than a couple of hours. Why don’t you go rest?”
“We can’t wake him up?” Rystar said. “My attacker might be here as we speak.”
“Enzo hasn
’t alerted us to anything,” Kyran responded, “and they were after you and Shea, not us. For all they know, the both of you died on the Gloriosum.”
Once again, an icy stab shot through Rystar’s chest, but she recovered quicker this time. “Fine. I’ll go lay down for a bit and try to sleep.”
Kyran’s face said he wanted to ask her something, but his lips were set in a thin line, and he nodded at her before turning away to sit back down in his seat. Shea said nothing more, giving her a small smile before heading back down to sit with Kyran.
Had they talked? Rystar thought. Now would be a horrible moment to talk about relationships, but part of her wondered how that conversation would go.
With a sigh, she headed back to her room to painstakingly wait for Lupe to wake up so they could leave, the memory of her exploding ship fresh in her mind. The entire ship seemed even more like a prison now, and she couldn’t wait to escape.
About the Author
At the age of five, Jack published their first book, "My Lost Cat", and it all went downhill from there. Jack has splattered pages across the writing genre spectrum, from post-rock songs to short stories, fanfiction to legislative policies. In 2012, they finally settled down for seven years and penned the first of the Homestead Trilogy, "Florida is Gone", based on the apocalypse predictions of the same year.
Jack is working as a cyber security architect and raises a son with their two husbands in the middle of a Florida swamp. In between taking their son to explore the corners of the state and working, Jack finds time to write as much as they can and hopes to one day leave the technical life behind to live a life in a swampy, solitary fantasy world. Until then, they'll stick with their day job.
Also by Jack Archer
Firehawk: Rystar and the LASSOS Book One
Florida is Gone
The Government is Gone
Futeuropa
Beautiful Apocalypse
Beguiling Beasts
Love Sucks