might depend on their poker faces.
“They’re sending us an ultimatum,” Jarren says to the pilot.
“Already?” she asks. “No trading insults first?”
“I know. Rookies.” He tsks. “They say if we don’t release our prisoner, they’ll damage our engines so we can’t escape. But if we let her go, they’ll allow us to leave.”
“Nice of them,” she says. “Do you want to tell them about our extra armaments or should I just blow them to pieces?”
Fear spikes through me. I need to do something to stop Jarren. Then it hits me and I’d slap my forehead if I could. The Q-net. But can I worm into the shuttle’s programming? Shuttles and space ships have high level protections for just this very reason.
“While I’m tempted to gloat,” Jarren says, “I suspect they’re trying to delay us, which means more of them are on the way.”
I shove the doubts aside and concentrate. The barriers around the controls for flying the shuttle are impenetrable. Maybe if I go into the program for the weapons. The defenses are thick and complex.
“All right, I’m targeting all three at once,” she says.
No time to be delicate, I bulldoze right into the protocols, sizzle-zapping everything. Desperate, I call to the Q-net to help. To stop them. To do something. Anything! Please!
The engines and lights turn off.
“What the—” the pilot says in the sudden quiet.
I sag back in my seat. Thank you.
“What’s going on?” Jarren demands. “Did they hit us with an EMP?”
An EMP is an electromagnetic pulse. If it’s strong enough, it can knock out anything that uses electricity.
“No, we’re shielded. All the shuttles are. It’s just turned off.”
“Can you turn it back on?”
She pushes various buttons, but nothing happens. I suppress my smile as her actions become more frantic.
“No. There’s a disconnect from here to the rest of the ship.”
“That’s…” Jarren turns and meets my gaze. “What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
He aims the kill zapper at me. “Want to try that again?”
I lift my hands and spread my fingers. “I’m stuck here. I can’t do anything. No tangs. No terminal.”
“Don’t kill her,” the pilot says. “We need her alive to negotiate.”
Jarren curses. “Safe passage in exchange for her?”
“That’s our only play. We can take another shuttle,” the pilot says.
He slams a fist into the seat next to me. I jerk in surprise.
“Going to another shuttle will expose us,” Jarren says. “And they can cut the engines like they did to this one.”
“If they’re honorable, they’ll keep their side of the deal,” she says. “We don’t have anything else.”
“I can’t leave her behind or she’ll ruin everything. DES doesn’t get to win. I’ll do anything so they don’t. Even die.”
A buzzing sounds in my ears as all the air is sucked from the shuttle. Except no one but me notices this lack of oxygen. What little comfort I scraped together during their conversation has fled. No way I’m going to survive this.
Jarren returns to the cockpit, but the pilot is eyeing me with a piercing gaze. A dark brown braid spirals around her head like a cap. There’s nothing friendly in her expression.
“I’ve an idea,” she says and then leans close to Jarren and whispers in his ear.
His frown deepens and he shoots me a look. It’s not encouraging. He appears sick to his stomach. In the end he agrees. To what, I’ve no idea.
While she goes to the back of the shuttle to rummage around for whatever supplies, Jarren messages Niall and the others. There’s a bit of back and forth until Jarren’s satisfied.
He comes over and unbuckles my harness. This is it. My one chance to escape. Then he frees my left wrist. I brace. When my right wrist is free, I surge to my feet, striking out with the heels of my palms for his Adam’s apple. Jarren steps back with a cry so the blow isn’t as hard. That’s okay, I aim my fist at his face and—
A sizzle sounds behind me right before I’m hit. I collapse on the ground as a million pinpricks of fire spread out from my back. My jumpsuit keeps me from being knocked unconscious. Although as the pain increases, passing out seems like a really good idea. I curl into a ball. Enduring another minute of torture, I suck in deep breaths to keep from losing the contents of my stomach. Eventually the sensation eases.
Jarren yanks me to my feet. “A wasted effort. You’re still dangling on your hook, Little Worm.”
“I caused you pain. To me, that’s well worth the