Synnr's Hope - Kate Rudolph Page 0,58

her idea. She didn’t want to ruin things again.

A whir, sort of like a power drill, was their only warning before a security robot shot a beam of light their way, tearing through the floor. Solan’s wings flared out and he sent a blast of his spark at it. It popped and fizzed and stopped moving. Dead.

“Is that going to notify the other robots that we’re here?” Their intel didn’t say whether or not the machines were networked, only that there were potentially dozens of them. If they weren’t careful, they’d be overwhelmed.

“I guess we’ll find out.” He wasn’t concerned. And Lena supposed it hadn’t been that difficult to kill one. They could handle more.

But they still moved carefully, because of the fragile state of the ship and to avoid alerting the robots. The gravity was unstable and they both kept their wings out to improve balance. It only took Lena two tries to pull out her wings and she was calling that a win.

To get to the lab they had to walk across a long catwalk, and the damage had severed some of the planks, leaving a gap of about twenty feet. Too far to jump. Well, too far if the gravity was right and they didn’t have wings. Lena looked down. It was a long way to fall, and she wasn’t sure how she’d get back up.

“If you miss, use your wings to guide you down,” Solan said gently. “I’ll follow after. We’ll find another way around. But I think you can make this jump.”

Lena took a deep breath and gave herself as much of a running start as she could. Height was important here and she launched, pumping her wings as hard as she could to rise a couple of feet. They couldn’t do much more than that, but it was enough. Then she spread them wide and glided down gently, clearing the gap with two feet to spare.

Solan landed after her a minute later.

She heard the whir of a robot powering up and lashed out with her spark before she could over think it, her power tearing it in two.

“Ha! Take that!” She pumped her fist in triumph and grinned at Solan.

His own smile was proud, even if his eyes were warning her to keep quiet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. She knew.

The lab was just around the corner and there were no other robots lurking. Solan watched her back while Lena transferred the sample from where it was stored to the container she was carrying. Once it was all ready, she stood and squared her shoulders.

“You know this thing is about to go all wrong, right?” Two robots and one jumpable gap were no challenge at all, and Lena was beginning to think the computer lady running their lives was bit of a sadist.

“You think?” He took a second to squeeze her arm, and Lena would have kissed him if not for the survival suits.

“Yeah. I really do.” She normally loved to be right, but when they spotted three robots lurking right outside the lab door, she could have cursed her instincts. “See?”

“Not the time to gloat,” he warned, letting his wings flare out.

“The computer lady isn’t as smart as she thinks she is.” Lena hoped she was listening, then realized that taunting the computer in charge of their life and death was probably not the best idea.

“Not the time,” he repeated. “I’ve got the one on the far left and center. Take out the one on the right.”

She had retracted her wings when they made it to the lab and regretted that when they misfired, flaring out for a second before disappearing. What was the fucking trick? In the time it took her to get her wings out and stable, another security bot joined the fight, whirring up in warring.

“Fuck. How many robots are there total?” This was an easy place for the robots to overwhelm them, but she wasn’t going down. They were going to win this damn mission.

“Intel doesn’t say.” Solan was calm as could be and Lena wanted to emulate that. “You start from the right. I’ll start from the left. You can do this.”

She appreciated his faith, even if nothing to this point said she deserved it. She was going to live up to his expectations. They blasted through the doors, which the robots didn’t seem to expect. Lena took out her first one with one shot, and sent a second blast towards her other target, but that robot had enough time to