The Final Six (The Final Six #1) - Alexandra Monir Page 0,78

in from her computer.

I watch her leave, wondering if that’s really all the instruction we’re going to get, and then I slide into one of the two reclined seats in front of the glass cockpit. The seats are folded all the way back, and I turn my face just as Leo angles his toward me—so close.

“Hi,” I whisper.

“Ciao,” he says with a smile, his breath tickling my cheek.

We slip on our headsets, and the ground beneath us lurches. The capsule begins to shake, rattling the interior with a power that makes last week’s earthquake seem modest. This can’t be just a simulation; it feels too real. But the roar of an engine muffles out my thoughts, and now the cockpit glass surrounding us is filling with moving 5D images, placing us at the center of a rocket barge anchored over the sea.

“T-minus zero . . . and liftoff!” a voice blares from the cockpit speakers. And then we are hurtling forward, my body nearly flying out of my chair before the strap stops me. We are spinning, our bodies turning upside down with breathtaking speed as the reflection in the glass changes from a blue sky to the inky vacuum of space.

“Something’s heading toward us,” I hear Leo say. “What is that?”

I peer closer at the glass.

“Looks like a used rocket stage . . . but if I’m right, wouldn’t that kill—”

I break off with a shout as shards of matter come flying in our direction. Through my headset it looks like the shards are aiming straight for my eyes, and I duck in my seat.

“We have to move around it,” I yell as Leo grabs the pilot’s joystick. “Do you know how to work that thing?”

“We’re about to find out.” He pushes down on the joystick and turns it to the right, sending us swerving sharply, nearly tearing out of our seats yet again. I exhale with relief as we pass the spinning shards of matter, but now—

“Do you smell that?”

Leo pauses in midair as the unmistakable stench of fire fills the cockpit. And then an enormous blue flame, as tall as my own body, starts ripping through the cabin.

“It’s not real, it’s not real,” I chant under my breath, but it doesn’t matter what I tell myself—this moment, this danger, is as tangible as anything I’ve experienced before.

Leo scans the capsule for a way out of the fire, and as he takes his hand off the joystick, we plunge downward.

“Damn it!”

“Keep steering. I’ll take care of it!” I shout above the noise.

He returns to the joystick, and we soar back up as I climb out of my seat and crawl through the shaking cabin, trying to escape the fire’s path and yelping as the flame almost singes the back of my shirt. There has to be an extinguisher in here, there has to be, right by the—

Door! A red fire extinguisher is mounted by the cabin door, and I yank it out of its case and start firing the water-based foam, until the whole cockpit is drenched and the fire simmers to ash.

“Great work!” Leo calls as I stumble back to the acceleration seat. “And check this out.”

He points to the window, and I catch my breath.

“Beginning orbit insertion to Mars,” the voice echoes over our speakers.

The red planet looms below us, a massive, bright orb. Up ahead, rotating around Mars, is a dragonfly-shaped floating satellite—the Athena’s supply ship! But as I look from the scene out of the window to the scrolling numbers on the cockpit’s navigation display, I spot a glaring flaw.

“The supply ship’s coordinates don’t match where it was plotted to be on our trajectory,” I tell Leo, frantically swiping the tablet above my seat until I find the Orbital Dynamics page. “You need to plug in the new numbers before we even attempt the rendezvous, or else we’ll overshoot it.”

“What?” Leo’s palm freezes on the joystick. “But how—”

“The fuel leak—it caused the ship’s orbit to start changing.” I shiver as it occurs to me: the general must be preparing us for this very scenario, one that could get far more complicated the longer the leak continues. “We need to recompute our navigation to direct us to the supply ship’s new coordinates, now!”

“Got it.” Leo’s hands fly over the touchscreen while my eyes sweep across the cockpit console, searching for the switches General Sokolov showed us in our training, the ones that deploy the robotic arm for docking. They were somewhere on the left side