by Kyle, Celia
In no time at all, Swipt’s led us out of the alleyways and back to the hoverpod. It sits alone in the copse where we’d left it, waiting for us to return. Never in my life have I been so glad to see a shuttle. We climb on and are just about to secure the doors when a group of IHC marines decked out in class-four armor, complete with supply packs, burst out of the alley we’d just exited.
“Halt right there!” the leader commands as he points what I assume is a fully loaded blaster in our direction. “Place your hands up and drop any weapons.”
“Fuck that,” Swipt says. “We’ve been in this town long enough and we have what we came for. I’m getting us out of here.”
I don’t wait for him to tell me what to do. I throw myself down onto the seat beside him and flip the switch to close the pod door, keeping my eye on the marines the entire time. They look pissed, but I don’t care. If Swipt says we’re going, we’re going.
“By the authority of the IHC, I command you to exit your vehicle with your hands up!” the lead marine shouts, his voice loud enough to hear through the walls of the pod.
I watch as Swipt flips switches and turns knobs, clearly not giving a shit about the authority of the IHC. Within seconds the hoverpod’s display is lit and the engine hums to life, drowning out the shouts of the marines.
“I may be one of the best pilots in the skies, but this won’t be as easy a ride out as it was in. Buckle in and brace yourself,” he says as the pod lifts into the air.
As long as we leave the marines down in Markov’s Gulch, we should be able to make a quick getaway once I have the Queen’s engines back to full capacity. I turn to look out the window to check their position, dismayed to discover that the packs they have strapped to their backs aren’t for supplies at all.
They’re personal rockets, and the marines are now airborne and giving chase to our tiny pod. Just what we didn’t need.
Chapter Fourteen
Swipt
My heartbeat pounds in my ears, almost as loudly as the triple roar of thrusters propelling the marines through the air behind us.
I had thought they were wearing simple class-four hard armor, but I was wrong. Those are full-on exoskeletal suits, each as expensive as a star fighter if not as well armed. I wonder what their range is. Most self-contained backpack jet modules have a limited flight time for a variety of reasons, mostly having to do with fuel.
Unless they’re very, very expensive exosuits and there’s a fusion block generator stuffed under that metal skin, in which case this hoverpod will power down a long time before they do.
I glance over at Ilya, and for the first time in my life I think I truly know fear when I see the panic in her eyes. Not for myself, but for her sake. The idea of finding my fated mate, against all the odds, only to have her snatched away from me is more terrifying than the thought of actual death.
“Brace yourself. It’s gonna get bumpy.” We’re speeding away from Markov’s Gulch toward the rolling plains. Before, I had taken things slowly to avoid a rough ride for myself and Ilya. Now, there’s no choice. I have to push this hoverpod to the limits of its engineering if we’re going to escape these ardent pursuers.
We hit the first shallow hill, and the chassis of the pod slams into it hard enough to raise a gout of dirt behind us. One of the marines hits it dead on and drops back a bit while he clears his vision. But the others are pulling up abreast of us, their top speed far greater than my own. Unfortunately, the terrain won’t slow them down at all.
My pistol is tucked behind my back, and I need both hands to control the pod. I consider having Ilya dig it out and fire, but that might make the marines shoot back, and I can’t bear the thought of putting her at risk.
One thing is for certain. If we stay on these open plains we’re as good as caught.
“Halt your vehicle and power it down, by authority of the IHC.” The jet trooper’s eyes narrow behind his helmet goggles, and he points sharply at the hoverpod just in case I didn’t know he was talking to me. The loudspeaker built into his helmet was at such high volume my ears are still ringing.
I jerk the pod hard to port, hoping to sideswipe the marine, but his armor proves to be quite maneuverable. He skims out of my path as easily as a water bug skims across the surface of a placid pond.
Worse, the move nearly costs us dearly as I struggle to regain control of the pod. We bounce hard off of a waist-high rise in the terrain, and if not for the crash webbing Ilya would surely be ejected. As it is, she’s jostled about so roughly I cringe on the inside.
Okay. No more of that stupidity. It’s not just my neck on the line out here this time. I spot a dark patch on the horizon and steer the pod toward it. If I’m lucky, it’s a copse or maybe even an actual forest.
One of the marines jets up ahead of us, leaving a long white plume in the hot, humid air. Then he banks sharply to the right and pivots in midair, leveling a wrist-mounted blaster at us. I grab Ilya’s head and firmly shove her down below the dashboard right as he fires. The shot melts a hole right through the windscreen and leaves a charred black patch on Ilya’s seat.
We flash past him, but the other two are hot on our heels, and he’ll rejoin the chase swiftly enough. I peer ahead and find that the smudge has resolved itself into tall, thick bowled trees with deciduous leaves as wide as my hand. Not much further, and we’ll have some cover at least.
The marines catch on to my plan, and the air fills with the hackle-raising buzz of short-range energy blasts. Most of them go wide of us, but several pepper the golden-skinned hull of our elegant hoverpod. If I weren’t so concerned about Ilya’s safety, I’d be pissed at what they’ve done to a literal work of art.
Then fortune smiles at last. The last hundred yards before the plains give way to the forest is a magnificently flat patch of smooth ground. I open up the throttle all the way, and we begin to pull away from the marines.
I angle the pod toward a portion of the tree line where branches sag heavily near the ground. It’s going to be tight, but our low profile should allow us to make it. Whereas the marines will have to slow down or even land to enter the forest.
“Get your head down.” I prepare to do the same, watching until the last moment as Ilya ducks below the dashboard again.
When the branches are mere feet away, I duck my head just in time. A branch takes out our windscreen entirely and smashes a nasty dent in the top fuselage, but we make it into the woods. Instantly I’m scrambling to avoid the trees as they seem to rush up at us in pure verdant madness.
I whip the pod around a massive, ancient tree and shoot back toward the tree line. If I time this right, I should take them by surprise. I reach behind me and grab the handle of my photon blaster pistol, its comforting weight giving me confidence in our chances.
The pod rips out of the shaded forest realm and into the bright sunlight, and I take aim on one of the hovering marines. My pistol crackles, buzzing hard enough to numb my forearm, and a solid beam of light rips through the air, superheating it to the point of a thundercrack. The marine stiffens as the shot rips through his helmet, right between the eyes. He drifts slowly to his left, limbs dangling limply as his jets continue to thrust.
Before we’ve gone more than ten feet, I’ve already taken my second shot, this one blasting through the guidance system of a high-flying marine’s pack. The man zips about crazily, like a fly on stimulants, his direction completely random until he vectors straight into the blue skies. I hope he has a parachute on that suit, or he’s in for a long fall and a sudden stop.
One of the marines seeks to block our path, standing right in front of me and letting rip with both of his wrist blasters. His shots score dark lines across the front chassis, and then he launches himself into the air. But as we pass underneath, I send a shot right up his thruster array. I hear him hit the ground as I whip the pod around one hundred and eighty degrees. Both Ilya and I cry out from the intense G-forces the maneuver causes, but then we’re vectoring right back into the shelteri
ng forest.
Unfortunately, in the chaos of the chase I didn’t realize there weren’t three adversaries but four. The final marine gets off a one-in-a-million lucky shot, blasting my guidance console to a smoking ruin.
We’re going to crash. It’s inevitable. Time seems to slow down as I unsnap Ilya’s crash webbing and pull her into my arms.
A tree looms ahead, and the hoverpod is set to wrap itself right around it like a lover. I bunch up my knees beneath me, and then leap out of the cockpit, holding Ilya in my arms.
The hoverpod continues and slams into the tree, exploding with a gout of flame and a pillar of black smoke. I land hard but tuck my chin and roll with it, coming back up to my feet with Ilya still safely cradled in my arms.
I draw my pistol once more, wary for pursuit, but then I see the white plume of smoke streaking across the sky, heading back toward the gulch. The marine has decided to go for backup, I assume.
“Put me down. Put me down.” Ilya squirms out of my grasp. I arch an eyebrow at her eagerness to be away from me, but then she goes to the dead marines and starts stripping equipment off of their still-warm bodies.
I join in the effort, taking their weapons and as many detachable components of their armor as we can easily carry. Ilya still has the phase converter safely tucked into her backpack, and I thank the Precursors we hadn’t put it in the hoverpod’s cargo compartment or we’d be stranded here on Harkana IV.
“Ilya, we must go. Others will be coming soon.”
“I know. I know, but I can’t pass up a chance to scavenge some of this shit. Do you know how hard it is to find an inverse servomotor chip outside of Novaria?”
“No, I actually don’t.”
“Well, they’re pretty difficult. Oh, and it might be a good idea to grab any sort of comms system they have and any sort of identification,” she says. “You know, to maybe get some idea of who we’re up against and all.”
That’s not a bad idea. We rummage around, and I pull the ID tags and mobile emitter from whom I assume is the commander of the group.
“We should take these things back to Fiona to see if she can crack through anything.”
I look at the landscape and realize we’re not very far from the Ancestral Queen.
“Ilya, I believe we can make it back to the Queen on foot. Are you finished?”
“Done.” She rises to her feet, dusts off her knees, and then grabs me around the waist and kisses me on the lips. “You were amazing, Swipt.”
I grin ear to ear and want nothing more than to keep kissing her, but the thought of flying space marines swooping in and shooting at us is a real mood killer.
Chapter Fifteen
Swipt
“Took you long enough.” Leaning against the corridor wall with his arms folded over his chest, Montier punches the panel to his side. There’s a beeping sound, and the door Ilya and I have just stepped through locks itself in place. “Is that the—”
“The phase converter, yup,” Ilya says. Patting the metal block on her arms, she gives Montier a triumphant smile. “Wasn’t easy, but we managed to find a merchant who had it in stock. We got a nice discount on it too.” Glancing at me, she gives me a little wink. Montier doesn’t even notice, his eyes already busy taking in every detail of the phase converter. He takes it out of Ilya’s hands and feels its weight.
“I heard you were back on the ship at least three hours ago,” Montier says. “Why the holdup?”
“That’s on me,” I say. “I wanted to brief Solair on what we went through and pass him some data on some of our attackers.”
“Be good to see who’s after us.”
“They have Fiona trying to encrypt it,” Ilya chimes in. “In the meantime, does this phase converter work for you?”
“It looks like it’s in good condition,” he mutters, more to himself than to us. “I’ll take this to the engine room and see if I can get started on the installation. Shouldn’t take more than a day.”
“Yeah, I don’t know if we have a full day.” Crossing my arms, I look straight at Montier, the chief engineer’s meaty shoulders rolling up in a questioning gesture. “The town we were in was crawling with IHC assholes.” Already anticipating what Montier will say next, I continue hurriedly. “I’m not talking about random foot soldiers, Monti. They had full-on exoskeletal suits, and they didn’t look like they were there to make friends.”
“Shit, that’s not good,” he says. “Why would the IHC have tactical teams on such a shithole?”
“Wanna guess?” I ask him, pointing at Ilya with my head. “They’re still looking for the Frontier’s cargo. No other explanation for it.”
“Something very strange is going on.”
“No shit,” I say with a laugh. “They literally shot at us. It’s like they’re determined to silence the women and anyone helping them before asking any sort of questions. Highly unusual for humans.”
“Well, as long as they don’t know where the Ancestral Queen is, we should be—”
“Yeah, about that.” Scratching the back of my head, I give him an apologetic smile. “We might have killed a couple of ‘em on our way back here. They might not know our exact coordinates, but they know we’re here...and they’re looking for us.”
“Crap.” Looking down at the phase converter, he knits his eyebrows, and I can almost see the gears turning inside his head as he tries to decide how much time he can shave off the installation. “I hate to cut corners, but it looks like we don’t have a choice.”
“I can help.” Taking one step forward, Ilya straightens her back and points at the metal block in Montier’s hands. “The phase converter takes a long time to install if you’re using it to process all the energy coming out from the engine, but there’s a workaround. All you have to do is—”
“Use the ancillary converters to assist it?” Montier finishes her sentence. Pursing his lips, he looks down at his feet and then nods to himself. “Yeah, I think that might work. Have you ever done that before?”
“Once or twice,” Ilya replies. “I think we can set it up in just a couple of hours.”
“All right, sounds good to me.” Turning on his heels, Montier makes a straight line toward one of the service lifts. The three of us climb inside and, just a few seconds later, we’re stepping into the engine room. A few Kilgari engineers and mechanics are already in there, replacing wires and performing a dozen different maintenance checks with their hand terminals. “Pack it up, guys. We’re gonna install the phase converter.”
Obediently, the few Kilgari grab their tools and leave the room, most of them happy to be relieved of their duties earlier in their shifts.
“We have the phase converter,” Montier continues, this time talking to his comms unit. “Swipt has just told me there are IHC teams looking for us on the planet, so we are going to try to speed things up.”
“Shit,” Solair growls. “All right, make it fast, Montier. And keep me posted.”
Pushing the comms unit into the breast pocket of his engineer’s overalls, Montier grins and looks at Ilya and me. “You heard the man. Let’s get this shit done.” Before we have the chance to say something, he bends down to place the phase converter at his feet. Ilya rushes to join him, and the two of them start removing the panels covering the main circuitry feeding into the engine.
“Bring that over here,” Ilya says, holding a tangle of wires in one hand while using the other to point at the phase converter. Once I put it in her hands, she offers me a warm smile, and only then does she start connecting wires into it. Kneeling next to her, the phase converter between us, I take a few wires from her hands and join her.
Our fingers touch occasionally and, every time that happens, Ilya looks up at me and smiles, a pale tone of red coloring her cheeks. More than once, I stop putting the wires in their right spots and just let my fingers rest against Ilya’s, enjoying the soft touch of her skin.
“Your hands are soft for a grease girl,” I tell her after a few minutes of sil
ence. To my side, Montier looks up from his hand terminal and cocks one eyebrow up. Clearing my throat, I look away from Ilya and get back to work.
“Your hands are pretty soft too,” she says, completely unaware that Montier’s listening to our conversation. “I mean, they’re calloused but, at the same time…” That red tone returns to her cheeks, embarrassment and excitement turning into color, and she ends up dragging her teeth across her bottom lip. “I like your hands. That’s all I’m saying.”
Reaching for me, she lays her hand on top of mine. I look into her eyes, not saying a word, and feel my heart speeding up inside my chest. The atmosphere around us grows heavy and electric, and soon enough my attention is drawn to her full lips. I remember how it felt to kiss her, her sweet fragrance driving me crazy, and I—
“Get a room, will ya?” Montier interrupt us, and we both look at him, startled.
We were so damn focused on each other we forgot about his presence, even after I noticed him listening to us. Shaking his head, Montier rips a mess of tangled wires from inside the panel he was working on. He cuts them open with a knife, and then throws them to the side. “I’m done with the auxiliary converters, anyway. How’s it going on your side? Are you making any progress? I mean...progress on the phase converter, not on whatever you guys have going on.”
He doesn’t sound annoyed.
Instead, he sounds amused.
I’m not too sure how I should feel about it, but one thing’s certain. In just a couple of hours, the entire crew will know something is going on between Ilya and me. It’s hard to keep a secret inside a spaceship.
Well, fuck it.
As far as I’m concerned, we could let the entire galaxy know we’re mates.
“Yeah, we’re almost done,” I reply, awkwardly shifting my focus to the block in front of me, dozens and dozens of multicolored wires streaming out from the phase converter. Ilya has done the same, her face now tomato-red. “Give us a couple of minutes and I think we’ll be good to go.”