The Lost Ship of the Tucker Rebellion - Marie Sexton Page 0,102
on the map. But this can’t be the course.”
“Why not?”
“It doesn’t go all that far. Not astronomically speaking, at any rate.” Denver could feel Laramie’s frustration. “The trail just ends. There’s nothing there.”
“Maybe it’s just the first leg of the journey,” Denver said. “Maybe the next leg will show up once we get there.”
“Do we want to gamble on that?”
Suddenly, the entire ship shook. Denver hung on to Laramie as the floor rocked beneath their feet.
“What the hell was that?” Laramie asked. “It felt like a shock wave.”
Dusty had her hand against her ear, obviously listening to somebody over a private comm. “They blew up the asteroid.”
“What?” Denver and Laramie asked in unison.
Dusty stared down at them, her eyes dark with fear. “They now have a clear shot on the Legacy.”
“We need to get the hell out of here,” Denver said.
“Then give me a target!” Laramie almost yelled.
Denver kept his focus on the ship, eyeing the button. It was glowing a faint blue color—charging, but not charged enough. He could feel the difference in his feet, though, the change between running on auxiliary power compared to the massive energy welling in the engine room.
“Oh shit.” Dusty stuck her head in the door. “We’ve got problems, guys.”
“They won’t really fire,” Laramie said gamely. “They want this ship intact, right?”
“That doesn’t mean they won’t disable it,” Denver said.
Dusty shook her head. “That’s not it. The fleet’s broadcasting a new cease and desist order to us. It’s coming in on all the ship radios, and it’s not pretty.”
“What are they saying?” Denver kept a weather eye on the indicator while he waited for Marit’s answer. A light began to flicker—what the hell did it mean? It seemed to get more and more insistent as he watched. He carefully, hesitantly, reached his awareness out to it. God, this was strange, felt like he should be finding his brother’s mind on the other end and instead all he got was—
No, not so strange.
Once he let go, it was like wearing a second skin. He could feel the engines somewhere down in his kidneys, her life support near his left fingertips, her defense mechanism someplace near his right shoulder.
He shuddered, resisting the urge to pull away, and instead plunged deeper into the sensation of the ship.
She had a pulse, a heartbeat. This was her body, and she needed her shield, needed to suit up before they sent her out into the galaxy. Denver nodded even though the ship surely couldn’t see it, and instinctively nudged at it mentally, pushing to fill the gap he felt near the fingers of his right hand.
The Legacy shuddered. Denver stared at the icon of their ship, watched a thin, watery bubble slowly close around her. She sparkled like platinum, like diamond, like an actual jewel instead of the rough-grade industrial stuff they mined these days. She was gorgeous.
“What the hell did you just do?” Laramie asked.
Dusty spoke before Denver could answer. “They say if we surrender and hand over control of the ship now, they’ll grant everyone on board pardons and passage back to Titan X. If we don’t open communications for handing over the ship within the next sixty seconds, they’ll fire on us. Denver, can this thing take a direct hit from one of their cannons?”
“I don’t know,” he said absently, not quite able to pull his eyes away from the Legacy. “I doubt it.”
“Then we need to—what?” She was talking into her comm now, and it was easier to ignore her. The ship’s pulse almost seemed to sync to Denver’s. He felt like a part of her.
A headache spiked from temple to temple as he thought it, but Denver’s discomfort was nothing compared to the sudden shock that flashed across his brother’s mind.
Denver had just spoken directly into Laramie’s mind without even thinking about it.
“What the hell?” Laramie demanded. “How’d you do that?”
“You mean how’d I get into the ship, or how’d I talk to you?” Denver shook his head. “Either way, I don’t know. It just felt possible, at the time.”
“You’ve never done that before! Now I see why you find it so disconcerting. You—Denver.” His tone went from astonished to concerned in a second. “Your nose is bleeding.”
“It’s fine.” Denver wiped it away. There was no time to waste on a nosebleed. “We need to get her moving. You got the path laid out?”
Laramie exhaled noisily but nodded. Denver felt the movement more than he saw it. “Yeah.