Venturers

by Bella Forrest

  A split second later, Angie barreled toward her, trying to ram her in the side. Throwing the gun up into the air, Pandora grabbed Angie by her blond curls and wrestled her down to the floor. It all happened so fast, but when she stood up again, catching the gun deftly in her hand, her boot was pressed to my friend’s skull. And, by the looks of it, she was giving it some force.

  I stumbled to my feet, leaning one hand against the window to steady myself.

  Pandora had both my friends in her grasp, and all I had was a knife. An incredibly sharp one, yes, but if it missed, that wouldn’t matter. Lauren’s struggling form was more or less covering all of Pandora’s upper body, and I couldn’t hit the coldblood in the thigh without causing her to smash Angie’s head with her foot. There was only one place I could aim for. If I threw the knife, I had one shot.

  I shifted into my throwing stance, my head throbbing,

  “I could easily kill them both, Riley,” Pandora warned, a glint in her eye. “But where would be the fun in that?”

  “Just… stop it. You need… us,” I rasped.

  She smirked. “I do not need all of you,” she said. “So I will give you the choice, Riley: which of your friends is less important to you? Which one is the most dispensable?”

  I glared at Pandora, my attention diverted by Angie’s muffled shouting. “Me! I’m the useless one!” she yelled.

  “No, I am—choose me!” Lauren countered frantically, trying to buck away from Pandora’s vise-like grip.

  I didn’t know what to do. There was no way I was picking between my friends, but everyone was shouting, and it was all so confusing. Every time I glanced down at Angie, all I could picture was Pandora squashing her head like a watermelon. But, when I looked at Lauren, all I could see was Pandora twisting her neck until it snapped or firing off a round into her temple. I couldn’t let any of those things happen.

  “Choose Lauren! She’s better with gravity!” Angie called out, confusing me even more.

  Lauren nodded. “Choose me! I won’t topple under the pressure!” she yelled. My foggy mind cleared as I caught on to their meaning.

  “Let Lauren go!” I said frantically, gripping the hilt of the knife in my sweating palms.

  “Good choice,” Pandora remarked, roughly shoving Lauren forward. The momentum sent her slightly off balance, giving Angie the opportunity to surge upward, knocking her off her feet. As she collapsed on the floor, Pandora raised the gun to her attacker, but I was ready for her. I let the knife fly, praying my aim was true. It sliced through her trigger finger, the savage blade cutting it clean off. She dropped the gun in horror as blood spurted from the wound.

  I felt a surge of triumphant adrenaline. It had been a one-in-a-million shot, but I’d made it.

  I sprinted toward Pandora, snatching up the fallen knife before pinning her to the ground, raising the blade to deliver the final blow. My hands were shaking, my breath coming in short, sharp bursts. I was staring down at my enemy, knowing I had to kill her… and yet, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring my hands down. Lauren picked up the gun that had clattered to the ground and aimed it at Pandora’s head.

  “Say your last words, Pandora,” she threatened, her finger moving to squeeze the bloodied trigger.

  “Wait!” Pandora yelled. “I have information about Earth!”

  “You’re lying,” I said, but I hesitated.

  It was all the time she needed. Before I knew what was happening, she had headbutted me as hard as she could and thrown me off her. Lauren tried to fire at her, but the trigger was too slippery, the mechanism refusing to work. Sprinting for the door, Pandora jabbed in a code, which raised it quickly, and she disappeared out into the hallway.

  Lauren tried to shoot her again, pulling down hard on the trigger. The gun fired, Lauren staggering back with the recoil, but the bullet pinged off the wall, narrowly missing Pandora’s retreating shoulder. I raced for the door, knowing she would try to close it again to keep us trapped inside.

  “Riley!” Angie called, but I ignored her.

  On the other side of the threshold, Pandora was punching a code into the control panel, just as I’d suspected. A second later, the hydraulics whirred as the door came crashing down once more. Diving for the rapidly narrowing gap, I rolled through, just as it closed with a deafening thud.

  Pandora charged down the corridor ahead of me, unaware of my presence on the floor behind her. Shaking off my roaring headache, I struggled to my feet and set off in hot pursuit, leaving Angie and Lauren behind. I would have to face Pandora on my own.

  Chapter Twenty

  By the time I’d caught up with her, feeling completely bruised and battered, Pandora had reached the cockpit. Believing we were all trapped on the observation deck, she’d left the door up. She was hunched over the controls, wrapping her finger in a strip of fabric she’d ripped from her shirt. Keeping my eyes on her back, I crept toward the open hatch, praying she didn’t notice the sound of my boots on the metal floor.

  The ship lurched forward unexpectedly, the vibrations of the engine juddering through my already-shaky legs. We were taking off. I slipped into the shadows of the cockpit.

  Her hands darted across the control panel, the ship swinging to the right, the front windows turning to face the Draconian temple head-on. Any explosion, at such point-blank range, would decimate the site. Glancing back to the controls, I saw the flash of the button that primed the cannons blinking to the right of the screen. She punched it, and I felt the mechanical clunk as they reared up, preparing to fire.

  A strange whine filled the air as the blast-cannons charged to full capacity. All Pandora had to do was slam her four-fingered hand down on the auto-fire button, and Freya’s temple would be a pile of dust within minutes. I wouldn’t stand around and wait for that to happen, not after everything we’d promised them. The Draconians were not going to suffer again because of a Vysanthean’s actions.

  Gripping the knife in my hand, I took a deep breath. My body was still shaking with adrenaline, but I could make the shot. There was a clear gap between me and Pandora, and she had no idea I was here. If I could make a one-in-a-million shot, I could make this easy throw. Pandora’s gaze was fixed on the control panel, her face twisting into a pained grimace with every movement she made with her injured hand.

  Lifting the knife, I felt everything go still. This was it. If I could take her out now, then nobody would have to suffer because of her, ever again. My muscles flinched as I flung the knife forward, the blade leaving my hand, hurtling toward its target.

  It was mere inches from Pandora’s neck when she whirled around, knocking the blade clean out of the air, sending it rocketing back in the opposite direction. I ducked, and the knife thudded into the metal wall behind me, propelled by Pandora’s immense strength. I turned sharply to retrieve it, yanking as hard as I could, but the blade was embedded too deep.

  “Nice try,” Pandora growled, moving toward me.

  I glanced around in a panic. I needed something to defend myself with, but there were no guns, no knives, no bazookas tucked away that I could use. My eyes rested on a blue fire extinguisher fastened to the wall on my left. Lunging for it, I snatched it off the wall and pointed it at Pandora’s face, pressing down on the top button and releasing a dense mist.

  Her hands flew to her face, and it was exactly the moment of distraction I’d hoped for, though the chemicals in the spray strung my eyes, too. Ignoring the burn, I swung the heavy extinguisher at Pandora’s head with every ounce of strength I had, catching her hard in the side of the face, the metal smacking into her temple with a sickening thud. She swayed from side to side, dazed, her hands gripping the control panel.

  Her gaze was foggy as she stared up at me and laughed. “You’re too late. You are always too late, human,” she wheezed.

  Glancing at the control panel, I forced my mind to focus. The ship was fixed on autopilot, and I had no idea how to set the ship back down on the ground. Bashrik and Navan were the ones wh
o knew how to fly these things. We’d told Queen Brisha I could fly the Vanquish if things went awry but, in truth, I had no clue how to man something of this size, with a seemingly different set of controls. If it were a fighter ship, it would’ve been different, but I was just as likely to crash into the temple as save it from destruction. I did, however, understand Vysanthean weapons systems. I could stop the cannons, but I would need some time to find the right controls on the screen in front of me. Time that I didn’t have, while Pandora was still around. If she managed to break free of her disorientation, it would take a second for her to regain control of the ship. No, if I wanted to turn the cannons off, I needed to get her off this ship first, where she’d have no way of turning them back on.

  “Move!” I shoved her toward the cockpit exit. She staggered forward, a trickle of blood meandering from her ear canal. By some miracle, I’d managed to cause some real damage, but it wouldn’t hold her off for long. I didn’t have the code to the isolation chamber or the med-bay, but I did know one door that stayed unlocked.

  The airlock was my safest bet.

  I opened the interior door and pushed Pandora inside. She tumbled to the ground, sinking down to her knees. It would only buy me a few minutes to contact Navan and Bashrik, but they could capture her once she escaped through the exterior door to the ground not far below.

  “A taste of my own medicine?” Pandora said as the hatch slammed down again.

  “Something like that,” I remarked, sprinting back toward the cockpit. Panting, I looked through the window at the horrifying scene beyond. Beams of energy roared away from the ship, firing down at the temple and all those within. They pummeled into the far side of the building. An entire section crumbled away to nothing, the minarets turning to dust.

  Scanning the panel frantically, I looked for anything that might stop the cannons, but the symbols weren’t clear. This was probably the exact reason Pandora had kept me away from these controls—I couldn’t be trusted on the main system.

  My heart pounding faster, I scrutinized the control panel for anything that might help me. The button in the top left corner looked familiar. I’d seen the symbol in training before. Pressing it quickly, a drop-down weapons menu appeared on the screen, with several buttons flashing at once. It reminded me of something I’d seen in an advanced fighter ship during aerial training back on Vysanthe.

  Focusing, I pressed the buttons in a set sequence, drawing from what I’d learned on the training field, and from what Pandora herself had taught me about the controls. I had no idea if it would work on this warship, but I was hopeful.

  As soon as I pressed the last button, silence descended. The whine of the charging engines ceased immediately, the cannons coming to a halt. Meanwhile, the ship stayed hovering, the engines thrumming in autopilot. I let out a sigh of relief, though I couldn’t see how much of the temple remained. The smoke was too thick, obscuring my view.

  Turning back to the control panel, I pressed another button that seemed familiar. It held the symbol for communications, which I’d seen countless times before on Vysanthean devices. A moment later, four lines appeared on the screen.

  “Navan, Bashrik, can you hear me?” I asked.

  A voice crackled through. “Riley, is that you?” Navan replied. I’d never been so happy to hear someone’s voice.

  “I stopped the cannons, but I can’t set this thing down! And Pandora is on the loose—I had to get her out of the ship. I put her in the airlock, but she’ll have escaped by now. The two of you need to go after her!” I said rapidly, my eyes staring out through the window at the crumbling walls of the temple. The smoke had cleared. It broke my heart to see it in that state, black plumes rising up from the shattered stone, all of its minarets destroyed. A gaping hole stood where the entrance doors had once been, but much of the temple was still intact beyond it.

  I heard him conferring anxiously with Bashrik.

  “The Draconians are already gathering to pull the ship back down to the ground. They wanted to drag it down to make the cannons stop, but Bashrik is trying to convince them to help us now. As you can imagine, they’re angry… You may feel a couple of jolts,” he explained. It was better than me trying to land the ship and causing more damage.

  “Go after Pandora! We can’t afford her having too much of a head start!” I warned.

  “We’re on our way to find her. Are you all okay?” Navan pressed.

  “We will be,” I promised, before switching off the comms.

  Right now, I needed to get my friends out of the observation deck, and I had a bright idea for how to do it. Tearing down the corridor and through the main chamber of the ship, I sprinted along the hallways until I reached the closed hatch I’d rolled under. Stepping up to the panel, I typed in the code I’d used on the airlock, which opened most doors on the ship. The only one it didn’t open, unfortunately, was the isolation chamber. I’d have loved nothing more than to shove Pandora in there as a bit of sweet justice, but she was the only one with that password. To my relief, the general code opened the door to the observation deck too—Pandora hadn’t tampered with it. The metal door shot up, revealing the shocked faces of my two best friends.

  “Riley!” they cried in unison, hurrying over to where I stood. I gripped them in my arms, not wanting to let go.

  “What the hell happened?” Lauren asked, holding my face in her hands.

  I grimaced. “Pandora’s on the loose. We need to go after her.”

  “We were so worried! We thought you were going to lose an arm, Indiana Jones-ing it under that door!” Angie chided. “How did she get out?”

  “I’ll explain everything later, but right now we need to get to the bay doors. The Draconians are pulling the ship down,” I urged, ushering them out of the observation deck.

  “I wish I could watch them pull it down,” Angie remarked breathlessly as we sprinted along. I imagined her gawking at the bulging biceps of the Draconians, though only when Bashrik wasn’t looking.

  I glanced at her, dumbfounded. That girl could think about men at any time of day, even with danger lurking over our heads. “Never mind you looking at them, Ange. We’ll have to find a tasty morsel for Lauren,” I teased, though my heart wasn’t in it. All I could think about was the terrible loss the Draconians had just endured, watching part of their holy site get blown to pieces by Vysanthean cannons.

  Lauren shook her head. “I’m not sure about a man with scales. I like my men less lizard-y.”

  We were quiet as we reached the main chamber of the Vanquish. I keyed in the code that opened the bay door. This time, with the ship safely on the ground, the hatch opened. Waiting on the grass beyond were Cambien and the other Pyros, many of whom were tugging on thick ropes strung across the top of the ship, hauling it down to the ground. With the engines still going, they needed to keep it strapped down until someone could turn the power off.

  Navan and Bashrik hurried up the gangplank as soon as it was fully released.

  I frowned at them. “What are you two still doing here? I told you to get after Pandora!”

  “We’ve sent some of the Pyros after her. Bashrik figured you might need some help stopping the engines, and I needed to see that you were okay,” Navan explained. “Is Pandora injured?”

  I nodded. “I hit her in the head pretty hard. She was woozy when I left her, so hopefully she won’t be as quick.”

  “Good. We should be able to track her down,” he replied, though he didn’t seem entirely convinced. “Bashrik, stop the engines. I’m going to take off after Pandora—join me when you’re done.” He took off down the gangplank, disappearing around the side of the ship. Bashrik moved toward the cockpit, the layout second nature to him despite his Draconian delusions.

  “Let’s find that evil bitch!” I shouted, following Navan down the gangplank, with Angie and Lauren in hot pursuit. He’d already vanished by the time we reached the spot where Cambien stood. Regardless, I wasn’t going to stand around waiting for someone to
tell me what to do. I already knew what had to be done. Pandora was on the loose, and we had to catch her.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Have there been any leads? Does anyone know which direction she went?” I asked frantically, turning to Cambien, who wore a troubled look on his face.

  He shook his head. “My people are out searching for her, but we’ve heard nothing yet.” His amber eyes bored into me. “How did she get out?”

  “She escaped through the airlock on the other side of the ship. We need to find her as quickly as possible, before she does something terrible,” I explained rapidly. “Remember the rebels I told you about? If she gets word to them, your planet is doomed.”

  “I’m clever enough to have figured that out, Riley. What I want to know is, how did she get out of that tin can?” he asked sternly.

  “Look, we just need to find her. Getting her out of there was the only way to stop the cannons,” I said, knowing we were wasting time.

  My answer seemed to placate Cambien, who barked orders at the remaining Pyros. “Chase the female coldblood and bring her back here!”

  Watching them disperse, I wished the Draconians could take their true forms, knowing it would take half the time to scour the landscape if everyone had wings.

  Bashrik came down the gangplank, and I gestured for him to come over.

  “Will you head up and get an aerial view of things? Pandora can’t have gone that far,” I said.

  “If she’s nearby, we’ll find her,” he promised. “Don’t do anything stupid down here. If you find her, call for backup,” he added, darting in to kiss Angie on the hand, no doubt following some unspoken Draconian code of chivalry. She looked at him strangely, smiling a little.

  “I will,” I assured him.

  “There’s no way I’m letting her do anything to my home planet!” Bashrik added before taking off, his leathery wings stirring up a gust of wind and dust.