Starflight

by Melissa Landers

  She forced herself to focus on the scene outside. It was an obstacle course of floating debris—everything from shuttlecraft and hull fragments to a few frozen bodies. Once a path cleared, she used both legs to push off into the icy chill of space and braced herself to collide with the Banshee’s cargo hold. She met the end ramp with a thud and grabbed on tight, hauling to the top as Gage and Cassia followed. When she turned around, the tail end of the pirate ship was practically torn off from the captain’s detonation, blowing even more debris outside. She scanned the carnage for Doran but couldn’t find him.

  “Doran,” she called through the link. “Where are you?”

  He didn’t answer.

  She gripped the edge of the ramp while frantically searching for him. Part of her view was obstructed by a floating sheet of metal. Once she pushed it aside, she spotted him, and her stomach lurched so hard she nearly heaved inside her helmet. Because there, far below the ruined pirate ship, Doran was caught in the planet’s gravitational pull, tumbling out of control and free-falling to his death.

  Doran couldn’t scream. His fear was beyond that.

  He flailed both arms to right himself, but stars and soil alternated in his field of vision until he couldn’t tell up from down. The spiraling images triggered his gag reflex, forcing hot bile up the back of his throat. He shut his eyes, swallowing hard as he curled into a ball and focused on filling his lungs. Each of his gasps seemed amplified, like breathing underwater through a snorkel. So he counted breaths—one Mississippi, two Mississippi—and tried to ignore the question burning at the edges of his mind.

  When will I hit?

  He reached twelve when voices invaded his helmet.

  “Kane!” Solara shouted. “Do you see him out there? He’s falling!”

  “I see him,” came the reply. “Doran, I’m on my way. The shuttle hatch is open. All you have to do is grab on and climb inside.”

  Doran opened his eyes and tightened his core, extending all four limbs in an effort to provide enough wind resistance to keep from tumbling. It didn’t work right away, but after a few tries, he finally faced the planet below, then yelped when he noticed the surface rising up to meet him.

  He tapped his com-link and shouted, “Kane!”

  “Right behind you,” Kane said. “I’m almost there.”

  Doran tore his gaze away from the planet and glanced over his shoulder. The nose of the shuttle kept pace at his heels, not quite fast enough to catch him. Kane must have known it, because he shut the hatch to eliminate air drag and increase his speed.

  It worked. The shuttle accelerated, but now Doran had no way to get inside.

  He made the mistake of looking down and nearly wet himself. If something didn’t happen in the next ten seconds, the crew would be cleaning his splattered remains from the shuttle windshield. He turned his head to the side and made eye contact with Kane, who flew next to him on the right.

  “New plan,” Kane shouted, zooming ahead of him. “I’m dispatching the tow cables. Grab one and don’t let go.”

  Doran’s first thought was that it wouldn’t work, that the weight imbalance would send the shuttle into a tailspin, or his grip wouldn’t hold. But then he looked down and saw the landscape so near he could make out a pirate’s toilet seat that’d hit the ground ahead of him. That was all it took to send his arms into action. He reached ahead and gripped one of the metallic coils snaking out from the rear of the shuttle, ignoring the slap of a second cable against his shoulder. He struggled to wrap the cable around his wrist for more security, but the line was too tight.

  “Hold on,” Kane said, and pulled the shuttle up hard enough to send Doran swinging forward like a monkey on a vine. The frigid wind sliced through his gloves as a jolt of raw pain ricocheted from his wrists to his fingertips.

  When the backward swing came, he held firm while his muscles trembled. A quick glance below showed the landscape whizzing past in a blur of ice about four feet from his boots, probably near enough for him to survive the fall. But as predicted, the burden of his weight caused the craft to wobble. Kane overcompensated for the imbalance, which resulted in Doran’s arms jerking halfway out of their sockets. His hands ached, and he knew he couldn’t hold on much longer.

  “I have to let go,” Doran yelled.

  “Give me a second,” Kane told him. “I’ll slow down as much as I can.”

  As the shuttle teetered closer to the surface, Doran mentally calculated the best way to meet the frozen ground without fracturing every bone in his body.

  Kane had just announced, “This is the best I can do,” when Doran lost his grip on the cable. With inertia propelling him forward, he crossed both arms over his chest and tucked into a roll. The impact took his breath away. His helmet absorbed a blow hard enough to make his ears ring. Rocks jabbed at his shoulders and forearms. He tumbled fast and hard until an upward hill decreased his momentum. Then, as abruptly as the fall had begun, Doran found himself lying on his back, staring at the stars.

  And blessedly alive.

  His lips spread in a manic grin, and he filled his helmet with so much laughter that his stomach cramped. He moved his limbs one by one to test them. He’d broken his left wrist for sure, maybe a few ribs as well, but despite that, the smile never left his face. Pain could be treated and bones healed, but all the medicine in the galaxy couldn’t fix dead. And he wasn’t dead. He couldn’t wait to tell the crew.

  “I’m okay,” he reported. “A little banged up, but nothing major. Kane, when this is over, I’m going to have your baby!”

  Still grinning, he waited to hear Solara chime in with a laugh or for Kane to quip that he’d settle for a month of galley detail instead. No one answered.

  He tapped his link again, wondering if the impact had shattered it. “Can anyone hear me?” He pushed onto one elbow and scanned the moonlit horizon for the shuttle. “Kane? You all right?”

  The link crackled to life, and he detected Renny’s voice. “Copy that, and glad to hear it,” he said. “From the suit trackers, it looks like Kane went down about half a mile north of you. Sit tight while we check it out.”

  “Is he okay?” Doran asked.

  When he didn’t receive a response, he sat up to peer at the sky for the North Star, then remembered that he wasn’t on Earth. His only hope of finding Kane was to reach a vantage point high enough to spot him at a distance. The act of standing up told Doran he’d twisted an ankle. He limped his way uphill and scanned the terrain in every direction.

  No luck. He would have to wait.

  Figuring he’d be easier to spot here, he took a seat on the ground and let the adrenaline work its way out of his system. With nothing but the whistling wind to fill his ears, the thoughts he’d banished an hour ago began creeping back in—questions about his parents, his newfound brother, and, most of all, his future. But Doran wasn’t ready to face any of that yet, so he turned his attention to the sky and studied what was left of the orbiting pirate ship.

  A great crack divided the rear of the hull from the rest of the ship, but if the emergency systems were operational, there should be survivors within the sealed-off areas. He was thinking about the best way to reach them when a shuttle engine roared nearby. He glanced over his shoulder to flag it down. Solara must have stolen one of the pirate crafts.

  The shuttle landed, and he limped down the hill to meet it. As the side hatch opened, an unfamiliar pair of boots swung into view, definitely not Solara’s. They were attached to a man of average height and built like a bull. His chest was so broad that it stretched the silvery fabric of his thermal suit to its limits. Doran stopped in his tracks. The man seemed to be alone, though judging by the array of gadgets hanging from his belt—two curved blades, three pairs of cuffs, and a coil of electrified rope—he didn’t need backup.

  Multiple restraints, Doran thought, taking a backward step and feeling along his hip for the pistol that wasn’t there. A bounty hunter, or maybe a slave trader.

  But then th
e man turned his head, and the light from his shuttle glinted off something inside his helmet. Metal studs dotting the skin at his temple—prefrontal cortex blockers.

  Doran scrambled up the hill so fast he fell to the ground, where he frantically kicked and clawed his way over the ice to put some distance between them. His hand flew to his throat, but much like the pistol, his cyanide pendant was locked away on the Banshee.

  A dozen gruesome scenarios played out inside Doran’s head, all of them ending in his death. Which wouldn’t be an easy one. His fingers trembled so hard it took three tries to press his com-link. “Renny,” he said, voice cracking. “If you can hear me, get Cassia out of here—and do it now. One of the Daeva found us.”

  Solara and Gage were on their hands and knees, searching for extra weapons in a hidden storage bin beneath the floor when Renny’s voice came through the cargo hold speaker.

  “We’re almost there.”

  Solara glanced out the nearest porthole into the blackness, wishing Doran was safe on board. He’d said he was fine, but his com had gone silent since then. “If the shuttle’s not too banged up,” she said, “I can find Doran while you guys tend to Kane. Or maybe the captain can—” She realized her mistake and cut off while a lump rose in her throat. She kept forgetting the captain was gone, and each reminder was an icicle to the heart.

  After that, she fell silent and went back to her work of searching the compartment. Gage didn’t try to strike up a conversation. He seemed to know that now wasn’t the time to talk, not with two crew members unaccounted for. And he was right. The words and grief could come later, after they’d safely reunited the family.

  Family.

  She hadn’t realized it until that moment, but that’s what the people on this ship were to her. At some point during this haphazard journey, she’d fallen in love with a bespectacled kleptomaniac, a star-crossed seducer and his displaced princess, and, most of all, an infuriating blue blood who used to call her Rattail. She’d learned that home was a fluid thing, and whether on a planet, on a satellite, or on a rusted bucket of a ship, this crew was her home.

  She refused to lose another one of them.

  When the Banshee landed, Cassia was the first person down the ramp, already suited up with the medic bag tucked beneath one arm. Solara fastened her helmet and jogged after her. In the time it took Solara to reach the crash site, Cassia had already climbed onto the shuttle and was peering through the windshield.

  One look at the craft told Solara it wasn’t flight-worthy. Its nose had crumpled like an accordion and the passenger-side wing was bent at a ninety-degree angle, indicating that Kane had gone down headfirst when he’d lost control.

  There seemed to be no movement inside.

  Solara glanced at the moonlit stretch of landscape in the distance. Doran was out there somewhere. A sense of urgency churned in her stomach, but when she looked at the shuttle, she couldn’t make her feet move. If nothing else, she knew Doran was alive. She couldn’t say the same for Kane.

  “How is he?” she asked through the link.

  “He’s unconscious,” Cassia answered. Without missing a beat, she crawled across the wing to manually open the pilot’s hatch. She tugged on the lever, but it didn’t budge. “It’s jammed. Renny, bring the crowbar.”

  “I’ll get the hydraulic pliers, too,” Solara said. “Just in case.”

  She ran back to the ship and returned to the shuttle to find that Renny and Gage had already forced open the hatch. Tossing aside the heavy pliers, Solara moved closer and peered on tiptoe at Kane. The pilot’s harness kept his body upright, but his helmet hung low between unmoving shoulders.

  Fortunately for all of them, Cassia didn’t waver. She plucked a vial of ammonia gas from her kit and filtered it into Kane’s helmet. The smelling salts made their way into his oxygen supply, and he jerked awake so quickly that his face shield struck Cassia’s, sending her tumbling into Gage, who in turn fell off the wing and landed on his backside.

  Cassia scrambled to Kane’s side and blurted in a rush, “Are you okay? Does it hurt to breathe? Is anything broken?”

  Groaning, he tipped back his head. “How’s Doran?”

  Cassia replied by smacking his helmet. “Answer me!”

  “Okay,” Kane called, shielding his head. “Yes, no, and maybe.”

  Cassia released a long breath through the com. Her shoulders rounded, and then she abruptly began crying. In between sobs, she probed Kane’s shoulder and asked him if it hurt. When he told her no, she slugged him hard and shouted, “I thought you were dead!”

  “Ow!” He rubbed the spot and started to make a wisecrack, but Cassia shut him up by raising both their face shields and kissing him hard on the mouth. He didn’t seem to mind the oxygen loss. The way he gripped the back of her neck and held her close said he’d rather suffocate than break the kiss.

  That was when Solara knew they could manage without her.

  “I’m going on foot to find Doran,” she announced. She set her com-link to track his signal, then followed the beeps until she faced the right direction. “He’s not very far. I’ll report back when I get there.”

  Gage handed her a pulse pistol and mouthed, Take this.

  She tucked it beneath her utility belt, nodding in thanks.

  Doran couldn’t run forever—or at all, really—so he decided to hold his ground. If he was going to die anyway, he might as well go down fighting. He didn’t have a utility belt stocked with gadgets, but fate had gifted him a quarterback arm and all the rocks within reach.

  They would have to do.

  He palmed a stone and stood tall as the bullish man approached. After testing the rock’s weight in his hand, he drew back and hurled it at the Daeva’s face, where it dinged off the side of his helmet and disappeared into the night.

  Unaffected, the man marched slowly forward until Doran could see his eyes, cold and hemorrhaged into a webbing of red where the whites belonged. With a slight tilt of his head, the Daeva fixed his crimson gaze on Doran and held it there for a few moments as if scanning him through a database, which was a very real possibility.

  The man tapped his com’s external speaker. “Doran Spaulding,” he said in a flat, robotic distortion that chilled the blood. “Where is your shipmate? The girl called Cassia Rose.”

  Doran snatched another frozen stone from the ground and swung it at the man’s knee, but the Daeva was twice as fast, grabbing Doran’s wrist and squeezing until the rock fell from his fingers.

  “Where is she?” the Daeva repeated.

  “Gone,” Doran yelled, wincing in pain as the vise on his wrist tightened. “She changed ships at the last outpost.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I swear! She took a medic job on a luxury liner. I think it was called the Zeni—”

  Quick as a cobra strike, the man clutched the base of Doran’s throat and lifted him up until both boots dangled in the air. Doran’s windpipe constricted under the pressure. Hungry for breath, he clawed at the fingers gripping his neck. His face tingled and swelled, eyes throbbing as they met the bloody gaze in front of him.

  “Let’s try again,” the Daeva said. He turned and dragged Doran toward the shuttle. Once there, he set Doran on his feet and allowed him to breathe right before slamming his helmet into the steel hull. “Where is the princess?” the Daeva said.

  He pounded Doran’s head against the shuttle until his face shield cracked wide open. Steam poured from the gap, and Doran fell to the ground, disoriented. To compensate for the breach, his helmet released a burst of heated air in a steady hiss that ate through his tank’s reserves. With his helmet spewing oxygen, he had a few minutes left—at best.

  “Suffocation is a horrible death,” the man said, and swept a gloved hand toward his shuttle. “I can fill my craft with warm air for you—if you take me to the girl.”

  Against Doran’s will, his eyes turned to the cushioned pilot’s seat, visible through the open hatch. He was tempted to say yes, and
then sabotage the man during flight or lead him in the wrong direction. But if Kane’s shuttle had crashed half a mile away, it was only a matter of time before the Daeva spotted the Banshee on his own.

  Doran had to keep the man on the ground. “You can take that warm air,” he growled, “and blow it up your ass.”

  The Daeva bent down, tracing a finger along the edge of his blade. “Once your lungs are flat and screaming, you’ll change your mind. Or maybe I should carve the information out of you. That would be faster.”

  “So arrogant,” Doran muttered. “Guys like you never learn.” He kicked the man squarely between the legs, but his boot met the resistance of a plastic cup.

  For the first time, the Daeva smiled—a mechanical curve of lips revealing two rows of dull, metal teeth. “You’ve never met anyone like me,” he said, and unsheathed his blade. With one hand pressing Doran’s helmet into the ice, he used the other to slash through the open face shield.

  Doran cried out in pain, his cheekbone burning as warmth oozed over his skin. The Daeva drew back to make another cut, but he halted when pulse fire sounded from behind them. His head whipped around, and in a flash, he sprang to his feet and ran to the open door, leaving Doran bleeding on the ground.

  Doran pushed to his elbows and found Solara aiming a pistol at the shuttle. She fired two warning shots, which struck the hull on either side of the Daeva.

  “Shoot him,” Doran told her. “Don’t hold back!”

  “I’m trying,” she yelled.

  When another round of fire failed to strike him, the Daeva leaped onto the pilot’s seat and closed the side hatch. Soon the engine rumbled to life. The craft lifted off the ground, its thrusters sending gusts of heat that scattered pebbles in every direction.

  Solara ran over to protect Doran from the debris, but he shook his head and pointed at the shuttle. “It’s the Daeva. He’s going after the crew; we have to stop him.”