Gal’s wide eyes turn up to meet mine.
I slap him lightly. “Face front, dumbass. Eyes on the sky if you’re gonna drive. Gods of all systems, that was the academy’s main relay. If you’d taken it down, you’d have knocked out the military comms keystone for this entire system.”
Gal lets out an anxious scoff. “Hey, worst-case scenario, they sue my parents for the damages.”
We both crack at the same time. The laugh comes from my stomach, blasting out of me so violently that I almost choke. The ship’s vector wobbles as Gal bends over the controls, wheezing. He’s trying his best to bite down on his hysteria, but when I’m laughing, he can never stop. I lean back in the copilot’s chair, letting out a wild howl as we blast toward the stars above.
Then an alert flashes on the dash. Gal glances down at the warning, rubbing the tears from his eyes as he tries to make it out. “Rut me sideways,” he says.
“Now what?”
“They’ve launched missiles.”
CHAPTER 6
OUR EYES MEET. “Switch,” we whisper simultaneously.
I didn’t strap in, but Gal did. As I rocket out of my chair and scramble to the other side of the cockpit, he struggles with the restraints, his sweaty fingers slipping over the belts. The ship lists dangerously, and I lean over him to grab the controls before we start to plunge. The panel beneath me shows the inbound missiles. Thirty seconds until we’re bits.
As Gal keeps floundering, I crank the engines up as hot as they’ll go, practically daring the heat seekers to hump us. The Beamer handles like a bar of soap, a far cry from the Vipers I’m used to.
“Gal,” I warn.
“I’m trying, I just—”
I know what I need to do. I twist over the seat, trying my best to keep the controls steady as I climb into Gal’s lap. The cockpit clearly wasn’t meant for this—I barely have room to maneuver, but at least I can reach everything I need to.
“Ruttin’ unreal,” Gal chokes from beneath me.
“One, you brought this on yourself. Two, I’m really, really sorry about this,” I snap, then yank the controls and point our nose to the sky.
Acceleration crushes us as we climb. Gal whimpers, and it occurs to me that I’m probably not going to like the consequences of collapsing an Umber prince’s rib cage. My eyes are on the instruments as the missiles close. I have to time this right. Two inbound heat seekers fly in parallel, dissolving the distance between us far too fast for my liking.
“Gal?”
I get a grunt. Can’t blame him.
“Hold on.”
He takes a second to catch my meaning. When his arms lock around my chest, I twist the Beamer’s controls, throwing us into a tight spin. This ship can barely handle these kinds of forces—the whole thing creaks and groans. It’s a struggle to keep my eyes open and focused. With no belts to hold me in, Gal’s the only thing keeping me from flying across the cockpit. Even in the tumult, the warmth of his chest pressed against my back isn’t lost on me.
Focus. I need to focus. Just for a minute more.
The spin has thrown the heat seekers into a spiral that twists wide. Wide enough? We’re about to find out. Because here’s the problem with heat seekers: they get a little confused when you go cold.
I cut the engines with a flip of a switch. Our acceleration drains away. The Beamer goes terrifyingly quiet. Nothing but our breaths, our heartbeats, and the rush of air around us. Nothing but the incoming shriek of the missiles.
We reach apogee. We drop. Gal’s grip around me goes tighter. The instrumentation whistles a warning. I squeeze my eyes shut.
Nothing I do can save us now.
The missiles scream past us, recalculating, converging. A fraction of a second later, there’s a bloom of light beyond my eyelids and an explosion that shakes us like a world shattering.
My eardrums ring, but distantly I hear Gal’s scream. The engines are still dead, and the ship is just shy of tumbling out of control. We’ve gone weightless, but Gal clings to me, keeping me anchored to the pilot’s seat. My hands find the controls again, my fingers shaking as I flip the engines back on. Feel the ship warm beneath me. Feel Gal press his forehead into my shoulder.
I open my eyes, jamming down the attitude thrusters to tear us out of our spin. The stars outside steady, and I twist the Beamer until we’re pointed at the vast dark of the open prairie below. The ship moves grudgingly, and I groan. These things weren’t designed to maneuver like a Viper, and I’m getting nowhere trying to fly it like one. My fingers itch for drag fins that aren’t there, and dimly it dawns on me that I might have humped our chances of walking away from this.
Gods of all systems, I’d better not have. If Gal and I die together and it’s my fault, the afterlife is not going to be a pleasant place. And there’s no way in any system’s hell I’m dying in a goddamn Beamer.
I let the engines spin up, then turn them loose. The Beamer creaks in protest, but slowly we pull out of our plummet. My shoulders go slack as we streak across the night, climbing once more for the stars.
I don’t release the tension completely until we’re pushing toward the outer limits of Rana’s atmosphere. Finally, as the planet’s gravity starts to loosen its hold on us, I flip on the autopilot and rise, shrugging out of Gal’s grip. In the micrograv, a little push takes me to the ceiling of the cockpit, but Rana’s still there to bring me drifting back down.
Back down to meet Gal’s bugged-out eyes.
“I told you…” I wheeze, “I had clearance codes. So we wouldn’t trigger the academy’s ruttin’ automated defense systems by taking off with an unauthorized ship and nearly flying it right into the main relay.”
Gal squirms guiltily underneath me, glancing sideways as if his excuse is somewhere in the copilot’s headrest. “Whoops?” he offers.
“Out of my chair.”
Gal obliges, scrambling out of his restraints and sinking into the other seat. He instinctively reaches for the harness, then thinks better of it. I slide into the pilot’s chair in his wake.
“That was…I don’t know how you do it, honestly.”
“If you had paid attention once in Dr. Ridan’s sim class—”
“Don’t even start.”
“Just…Just let me do the flying from now on, okay?”
“She’s all yours,” Gal says shakily, patting the dashboard. The whisper of rushing air fades around us. We’re past the realm of Rana’s breath. I flip another switch and wince as the grav generators spin up with a tug that feels like a hook snagging my bones. Gal groans as he’s pulled even deeper into his seat. “I didn’t think…I didn’t know…”