My nerves are singing as I position the table in front of Cat. The GIA agents are coming for me, but I know they’ll take out everyone here. There’s no way back to the Longbow now without a battle, no chance to repair it, to escape. This is the place we’ll make our stand. And I’m terrified.
“The GIA shuttle is now inbound on our position.” Over by the window, Zila lowers her binoculars, calm as ever. “ETA three minutes.”
“Idea,” Scarlett says. “Could we use their ship to get back off-world?”
Finian rises up from where he’s crouching by a half-dissected computer system, moving with a soft whine of his servos. His containment unit has been rigged up to the core, in a tangle of cabling and pipes that look held together by prayers and duct tape. Apparently his rig is synthesizing the elements we’ll need to repair the Longbow’s reactor for when we get out of here.
If we get out of here.
Limping to the window, he squints at the incoming ship, shakes his head.
“It’s just a puddle jumper,” he says. “Meant for short atmo to surface transit. If we want to get back through the Fold, we need the Longbow.” He looks at Tyler. “But that shuttle could get us back to the Longbow fast. If, say, we had a genius tactician with great hair and a daring plan to steal it.”
Tyler glances up from where he and Kal are mounting a disruptor rifle on a makeshift tripod near the window.
“I’m working on it,” he mutters.
“Well, while you find your hairbrush, I’m going up a level to main control,” Fin declares. “See if I can boost the output and override the safety protocols on the power supply.”
“What for?” Scar asks.
“I can run a current through the metallics in the structure. Gantries, stairwells, that kind of thing. Cut off access. Electrify them.”
“Won’t that electrify us, too?”
He shakes his head. “If we stick to the concrete, we’re fine. Before I was saddled with you pack of no-hopers, I was tinkering in the propulsion labs back at the academy in my spare time. I figured a way to give the basic DeBray power systems a seven percent bump, and I’m seeing a few similar components here.”
“The propulsion labs you were messing around in,” Tyler says. “Would those be the ones you irradiated?”
“Hey, don’t complain. You got out of your spatial dynamics exam, too.” He’s trying for his usual grin, but none of us have it in us right now.
“This sounds like a bad idea,” Ty says.
“Yeah, but they’re the only kind we have left. I can do this, Goldenboy.”
Tyler chews his lip and sighs. “Zila, go with him. See if you can help.”
“Yes sir,” Zila says quietly, turning away from the window.
Tyler grabs Finian’s arm as he limps past. “Hey, listen up.”
He looks at me, lowers his voice. But not quite enough.
“These agents are here for Auri.” He glances at Cat, back at Fin. “Letting them get hold of her isn’t a good idea. Can you rig something up quick? I mean, if it comes down to a choice between getting captured and …”
Finian meets Tyler’s eyes, all the jokes and bravado gone.
“I can do that.”
Tyler nods. And without another word, Fin and Zila head upstairs.
My breath’s coming too fast, my heart singing. The new parts of me are trying to push their way to the surface, but I don’t know how to control them, or how to just let them take me.
If it comes down to a choice between getting captured and …
How did this happen? How did we get here?
I flex my fingers and clench my fists, trying to get myself under control as I circle the table to sink down cross-legged beside Cat.
Everything around me is screaming at my nerves, sending my limbs tingling, the back of my neck buzzing with danger. I’m sure the plants and vines are monitoring us, that the pollen drifting in through one broken window and out through another is part of the way the planet’s keeping tabs on our every movement.
It’s pushing me close to the edge of my courage, but I feel it pushing me closer to the edge of something else as well.
I can feel myself on the verge of …
Cat stirs beside me, and I take her hand in mine, giving it a gentle squeeze. Her lashes lift, and she fixes those flower-shaped pupils on me, her eyes the brightest blue. We gaze at each other for a long moment, and then