“It’s a chance we’re going to have to take,” Andi stated, seeing no other viable options. She buried her nerves deep as she typed in the coordinates for Solera, fingertips flying across the dash. “Dex, why is it that ever since you first boarded this ship, we always seem to be crash-landing?” she asked.
“Because our love is impossible to keep afloat?” Dex suggested jokingly.
Andi let out a shaky laugh.
She wanted to be confident, but her hands shook, the traitorous things. She hadn’t known how much strength she’d actually pulled from her crew until they were gone. Lon and Dex were worthy partners, but they weren’t her girls.
You’ll get them back soon, Andi told herself. To Lon and Dex, she said, “Time to make the jump.”
“You sure?” Dex asked, furrowing his brow.
“Yes,” she confirmed. They couldn’t risk waiting for something else going wrong, if that was even possible. Everything that could have gone wrong just had. So Andi entered in the last command and offered up a silent prayer to the Godstars.
“Destination confirmed: Solera,” Memory announced. “Warming engines for full thrust to hyperspace in ten...nine...”
The ship jolted, throwing them to the ground. “Crap!” Andi said, grappling to stand and read the control board. One of the ship’s engines had just blown.
“Can we still make the jump?” Lon asked, pulling himself up into a chair, his eyes wide as he looked between Andi and Dex. Havoc clung to his shoulders like a rabid leech.
Andi shot a questioning look at Dex. He knew this ship as well as she did, and right now, she didn’t know the answer.
“I’d say it’s a forty percent chance,” Dex said, looking at the stats.
“Thirty-five percent,” Memory corrected in a crackling tone. Even the Marauder’s AI was failing.
“I’ll take it. Strap in, boys,” Andi said, settling into her captain’s chair. Even in the middle of this disaster, she couldn’t help but melt back into the smooth leather, perfectly molded to her form. Like a queen sitting upon her throne.
Dex took the pilot’s seat and Lon buckled himself in behind them. The ship shuddered again and dipped to the right. Andi’s head smacked painfully against the headrest.
Damn things were supposed to protect her head, not give her a concussion.
“Make the jump, damn it!” Andi growled, looking sideways at Dex. They would get to Solera. They had to, even if the ship was just a husk when they landed.
They had to make it.
There wasn’t any other option.
Dex hit the throttle, launching them into hyperspace.
Rainbow streaks streamed past the windows, but Andi didn’t have any time to marvel at the sight. She was too busy watching the Marauder’s diagnostic array to make sure the ship wouldn’t explode around them.
At this point, there was no going back.
“May the Godstars guide us,” Lon prayed. Andi hoped they were listening—otherwise, they were essentially screwed. And not in the way Dex enjoyed so much.
The three of them fell into a tense silence for a few minutes as they hurtled through space toward Solera. Andi typed some calculations into the navigation system and readied the ship for arrival—or at least she tried to. Half of the systems were off-line and the other half weren’t functioning correctly.
“What are we going to do when we get there?” Lon asked.
That was a great question. Andi thought they’d have more time to plan, but with the current situation putting a huge snag in their mission, she wasn’t quite sure.
“We need to fix the ship,” she said. “That’s our top priority right now. Without the Marauder, we can’t do anything.”
“But how will we get the parts we need when we don’t look like Nor’s followers? You know, those silver veins?” Lon wondered.
They were going to have to improvise. Andi had done it before—with Dex, actually.
She turned to him. “Do you remember Ricar?”
Dex smiled wide. “I was just thinking the same thing.”
“What’s Ricar?” Lon asked nervously.
“It’s a small planet in one of the rogue systems. Dex and I had to stop there once for fuel, and it didn’t work out too well.”
“You see,” Dex continued, “Ricar is essentially a terraformed planet made of metal. Most of the people who live there fancy being more machine than human. We didn’t think stopping there would cause any issues, but apparently the locals aren’t too fond of outsiders.”
“So what happened?” Lon pushed.
Even in their current situation, Andi had to laugh as she glanced back at him. “We had to become one of them. So we took wires, metal plates...really anything that might seem mechanical, and we dressed ourselves up.”
Andi could still remember how Dex had wound a metal coil around her neck and arms to hide her skin. He, on the other hand, had glued small aluminum sheets to his face for his disguise. Surprisingly, it had worked. No one batted an eye at them as they refueled. Everything went smoothly, at least until they were back on the ship.
She took off her disguise easily, but Dex... Well, he hadn’t really chosen wisely when he’d adhered the metal to his skin. The glue turned out to be rather permanent, and the tiny sheets of metal were stuck to his face for a full week before they finally managed to pull them off.
“Let’s just say we got the fuel, but it wound up causing more problems in the long run.” Dex rubbed a bare spot on his stubbly cheek.
“Still can’t grow hair there, I see.” Andi smirked.
“Shut up,” Dex mumbled.
“It’s time,” Lon said, pulling them back to the present.
The radar flashed, marking the Tavina System up ahead.
Dex placed his hand on the throttle and eased it back, exiting hyperspace as they approached Solera. The ship shook around them, far too aggressively as it entered the planet’s atmosphere.
They’d made it. The ship was breaking apart around them, but against all odds, they’d made it.
Andi let out a sigh of relief. The Godstars must be liking her today.
Using the last dregs of fuel, Dex directed the ship toward the planet’s icy surface. But as they passed through Solera’s outer rings, Andi realized that they were utterly alone. It was a known fact that Solerans didn’t like mingling any more than necessary with outsiders, but every populated planet had some type of space traffic around it.
It was beyond eerie that this one didn’t.
So when a pulse of light shot through the empty airspace toward them, it caught them unaware. The light encased the Marauder for a moment before resuming its path in their wake.
Dex swore. “What the hell was that?”
“Solar ray?” Lon guessed, but Andi shook her head.
“Let’s just get down there,” she said. “We don’t have much fuel left. Bring her down nice and easy, Dextro. You wreck my ship, you pay for it.”
Dex grunted. “I can’t,” he gritted out as he tried to engage the thrusters.
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
“The thrusters aren’t at full power.”
“They’re only giving twenty