Starflight (25 page)

“Then I guess this is good-bye.”

“Yeah,” he said, lifting a shoulder to blot the sweat from his face. “Guess so.”

A gust of fiery air pelted them with smoldering bits of sand, ensuring this wouldn’t be a drawn-out farewell. Solara jogged back to her shuttle to take shelter. Right before she closed the door, Doran shouted, “Wait.”

Shielding her eyes, she turned to him.

“I never asked where you’re going,” he said. “In the outer realm.”

“A brand-new terraform called Vega,” she hollered.

“Vega,” he repeated to help him remember. “If I’m ever out that way, I’ll look you up.”

“Make sure you do. And bring some birds.”

She waved and disappeared behind the metal door, then gave him a minute to scale the ramp into his ship before she fired up the thrusters. Once he was safely inside the open cargo hold, her shuttle lifted off and spun to face southwest before speeding away. He watched the craft grow smaller in the distance until it faded from view. Afterward, he waited there for a full five minutes, expecting her to return.

She didn’t.

While moving through the ship’s narrow hallways, he told himself this wasn’t really good-bye. Assuming he cleared the charges against him, his work for Spaulding Fuel would send him to the far reaches of the galaxy, occasionally to the fringe, where new elements were discovered every day. It was completely within the realm of possibility that he could find her on Vega.

But then he imagined what that visit might look like.

She would probably have a new circle of friends by then, a place within the budding community of outcasts and runaways. What would he have in common with any of them? And what if she had a guy in her life? Doran felt a sharp tug in his chest when he pictured her with someone else.

Whatever,
he thought.
I’ll worry about that later.

He reached the cockpit and searched the hidden compartment beneath the floor until he found a sack of fuel chips. After tossing a handful of chips in his pocket, he returned the rest to the cubbyhole and booted up the ship’s navigational equipment. His father hadn’t told him anything about his destination other than
You’ll know what to do when you get there
, so Doran entered the coordinates and sat in the pilot’s seat to read the results.

The map displayed a nameless moon-sized planet located at least a day’s journey beyond the farthest fringe settlement. Classified only by its chart number, the tiny planet orbited too far from its sun to support human life, which meant it would never qualify for terraformation. Doran had seen worlds like these, nothing more than useless boulders in orbit. Why would his father send him to a place like that? For a new element, perhaps?

There was only one way to find out.

He’d just plotted a basic navigational course when, from outside, a ship’s engine rumbled with enough force to vibrate his control panel. He shifted his focus out the front window, and what he saw made his stomach hit the floor.

The Enforcers had found him.

An armed Solar League vessel twice the size of his ship hovered above the dunes, its thrusters blowing clouds of ebony sand in every direction. For a fraction of a second, it occurred to Doran that someone had betrayed him, but then his mind shut to all coherent thought outside of escape. His hands flew into action, powering on the ship’s engines and auxiliary systems. The thrusters on either side of his craft rumbled to life, ready for takeoff, and he grasped the wheel with trembling fingers.

As if anticipating his move, the Enforcers fired two perfectly aimed blasts that turned his thrusters to useless shards of metal.

The impact shook Doran out of his seat, and before he could gasp, he was on the floor with a chorus of fire alarms blaring from above. Tendrils of smoke crept and curled inside the cockpit, poisoning the air and forcing him to belly-crawl to the rear exit.

Fed by canned oxygen, the fire shot like lightning through the walls and shorted the electrical system. By the time Doran reached the rear hatch, not even the emergency lights were operational. Blindly, he felt for the hatch’s manual lever and hauled the door open. Blazing sunlight spilled inside, along with a gust of hot air and a face full of sand.

He stumbled outside, shielding his eyes from the desert’s assault while he spun in a circle to search for a safe haven. Logically, he knew there was no place to hide, but it took several moments for his eyes to get the message. He tried telling himself this was for the best, that eventually someone would’ve caught up with him—better the Enforcers than the Daeva or Demarkus Hahn. At least now he’d make it back to Earth in one piece, maybe even receive a fair trial.

By the time the Enforcers touched down, Doran almost believed his own lies.

But then he noticed another craft bearing toward him, so high in the sky that he had to squint to make it out. The colossus sailed nearer, blocking the sun while remaining just outside the planet’s gravitational pull. Even from so far away, Doran recognized the battered ship, bigger than a lowland giant and twice as ugly—much like the pirate at its helm. Its belly opened and belched out half a dozen shuttles, which flew like arrows in his direction.

Doran sat back on the dune, not bothering to run. The kohl sand scorched his backside, and he dismissed that, too. Because no matter what he did, his ass was cooked.

S
ister Agnes used to say that trust was like a flower unfolding in the sun: The more you opened yourself to the warmth of this world, the more of God’s blessings you would receive. But in Solara’s experience, trust was like a switchblade: Give it away too quickly, and expect to find a knife in your back.

As much as she wanted to believe that Kane was a friend, she’d found it suspicious when he offered to pilot the shuttle to Obsidian. He’d never volunteered for extra duties before, so why would he start now? Even more suspicious was his reaction when he’d learned that she wanted the job. He’d gone pale and offered his services as if his life depended on it. Clearly he was hiding something. Behind the goodwill and the easy smile, she’d sensed a simmering anxiety that warned his feelings toward Doran hadn’t changed.

That was why she’d insisted on flying here, and why she’d spent the last several minutes surveying the desert for a safe place to watch the skies.

Just west of Doran’s location stood a wide, curving cliff that surrounded a sooty valley resembling the Grand Canyon. Halfway up from the base of a long-dead river and concealed from above by a stone ledge, she’d discovered a crevasse just wide and deep enough to hide the shuttle. No sooner had she climbed out to stretch her legs than an Enforcer craft appeared on the distant horizon. It seemed Kane had cashed in on the reward.

A cold weight settled in her heart. She’d predicted this, but she didn’t want it to be true.

She strapped into the pilot’s seat and made two incog radio transmissions, first to the captain, asking him to let her shuttle go off the grid for twenty-four hours. If her plan went sideways, she didn’t want him wandering into this mess. As for the second transmission…that might’ve been a mistake. But the deed was done, and now she had to let the chips fall.

Traveling due east, she pushed the shuttle to the limit and arrived just as complete and utter hell broke loose.

A swarm of mismatched pirate shuttles circled like vultures above the smoking ruin of Doran’s ship, seeking a safe place to land and dodging cannon fire from the Enforcers on the ground. She peered through the dark fog and spotted Doran sitting twenty yards behind his craft, its shell consumed by flames that stretched toward the clouds. With any luck, the smoke would provide enough cover to scoop him up and make an easy getaway.

Keeping the flaming ship between herself and the Enforcers, she touched down dangerously close to Doran, hoping he’d have enough sense to get out of the way and open the passenger hatch. Sand flew in every direction, but she couldn’t afford to cut the engine and wait for it to restart.

For the longest five seconds of her life, she bounced a heel against the floor and waited for him to join her. When he didn’t appear, she opened the pilot’s hatch and lifted a hand to protect her eyes.

“Doran!” she yelled, earning herself a mouthful of sand.

She spat downwind and scanned the dunes, her stomach dipping when she spotted a red uniform heading toward her. If one Enforcer had made it to this point, others wouldn’t be far behind.

From somewhere above her head, the scream of metal rent the air, followed by the sickening crunch of a shuttle as it crashed to the ground. She needed to get Doran out of here before the cannons disabled her craft, too. She called his name again and found him striding into view with his T-shirt pulled over his nose and mouth. He seemed to realize who she was, and then he finally snapped out of it.

A foot soldier moved into Doran’s path, but that didn’t faze him. Doran bent and charged the Enforcer, planting a shoulder in the man’s midsection. The soldier flipped forward in a blur of red, and the next thing Solara knew, the passenger hatch opened and Doran leaped inside.

She lifted off without a moment’s hesitation while Doran wrestled the door shut. Another pirate shuttle went down in flames, nearly clipping their starboard wing as it spiraled toward the ground. Solara rolled away while trying to hug the sand. The closer she stayed to the dunes, the better her chance of avoiding the cannon blasts raining from above. As soon as she cleared the battle scene, she sped toward her hiding spot in the canyon.

“What are you doing here?” Doran asked.

She cut her eyes at him. “I think what you meant to say is, ‘Thanks for saving my pretty hide, Solara.’”

“But you—”

“Never left.”

He watched her while picking grains of sand off his tongue. “Why not?”

“I had a feeling someone would sell you out.” While Doran reached over to fasten her harness, she explained everything. “I should’ve told you sooner, but I didn’t want to believe it.”

“Kane,” Doran said, sounding wounded. “He even called Demarkus.”

“Um, actually…” She trailed off, focused on finding her bearings, then veered farther west. “I’m the one who radioed Demarkus.”

A moment of silence followed. “Come again?”

“I had a feeling he’d be lurking near Obsidian. So I called in an anonymous tip.” She shrugged and added, “I just didn’t mention that the Enforcers were here.”

Though she couldn’t see Doran’s smile, she heard it in his voice. “You were banking on them fighting each other instead of me.”

She couldn’t help smiling in return. “Looks like it worked.”

“You’re diabolical. No wonder he married you.”

A rogue shuttle rammed them from behind, sending Solara lurching forward in her harness straps. Her heart lodged in her throat, and she wished she’d given Doran the wheel. He had plenty of experience with flying. She could barely land, let alone pull off evasive maneuvers.

“How do I shake him?” she asked. A glance at the nav screen showed the shuttle still trailing her. “I’m going as fast as I can.”

Doran placed a steadying hand on her shoulder. “You can do this; I promise. I’ll talk you through it.”

She drew a deep breath and blew it out slowly.

“On my mark,” he said, “pull up as hard as you can and come full circle. Don’t look out the window or you’ll get disoriented. Watch the screen, okay?”

Solara nodded.

A few moments later, he shouted, “Now!”

With both hands, she gripped the wheel and tugged it all the way back, never taking her eyes off the nav screen until she’d completed a full rotation and the shuttle was upright again. As soon as she leveled off, she discovered the pirate craft in front of her.

“Now be ready,” Doran said. “Because he’s either going to do the same thing or circle around horizontally. When he does, I want you to use the nose of the shuttle to clip his outside wing—not hard, just a love tap.”

“A love tap?”

He nodded. “Any harder than that, and we’ll go down with him.”

Gritting her teeth, Solara stared at the craft in front of her for the slightest change in his trajectory—anything to betray his next move. When he veered right, she was ready. Her hands took charge as if operating independently of her brain. She steered sharply to the right and dipped the shuttle just enough to bump his wing, then pulled a hard left as his craft barreled out of control.

When she circled back around, the pirate shuttle was upside down in the sand.

Doran gave a loud whoop and ruffled her braids. “You’re a natural!”

She laughed while her fingers trembled from the adrenaline surge. Tears flooded her vision, but they were the happy kind. Her body simply needed a release. Doran seemed to understand. Instead of telling her to calm down, he rubbed her neck. Then he finally said, “Thanks for saving my pretty hide, Solara,” and her tears turned to laughter.

After making sure no one else had followed them, she descended into the great smoky valley and found her secret hiding place.

“Let me guess,” he said. “Now we wait for the coast to clear?”

Solara cut the thrusters and rubbed her palms together. She was still shaking. “We should disconnect the battery while we’re here. Even with the engine turned off, we’ll emit a low-enough electrical pulse—”