Brun slid her headset down around her neck, but did not follow his example. Too much was at stake.
“I’m really tired,” Hazel whispered. “And my legs . . .”
Brun mimed sleep at her, and watched as Hazel dozed off. The man was snoring now, snores of such complexity that she was sure he couldn’t have faked them. She put out her hand to the controls, and he didn’t stir.
So here she was, on her way . . . she touched her knives, reminding herself that she was not going to be recaptured, if anything went wrong. And out there somewhere, Fleet waited. She was sure it would be Fleet; her father would not have risked anything less in taking on a whole planet. She hoped it wasn’t far out, and she hoped very much that whatever ships were there did not include one Lieutenant Esmay Suiza. She was not ready to face that, on top of everything else.
An hour passed, and another, and another. Despite herself, she yawned. She would have taken a stimulant if she’d had one; she scolded herself for eating such a big breakfast. Another yawn . . . Her eyes sagged shut, and she struggled to open them, only to yawn again. She looked at her shipmates. The man was snoring in a different pattern now, but just as loudly. Hazel slept neatly as a cat, curled into herself on the bench seat. Brun tried pinching herself, changing position, taking deep breaths . . . but in that steady, warm stillness, she slept in spite of herself.
Chapter Twenty
Brun woke abruptly with the feeling that something was very wrong. They were in free fall . . . but they had been on insystem drive, with the artificial gravity on. The pilot was awake, and changing switch positions on the main board. Brun looked at Hazel, who was also awake, hanging upside down above the bench where she’d slept. She reached back, tapped her arm, and nodded toward the pilot.
“What are we doing?” Hazel asked. Her voice was high with tension.
“End of the line, girlies. I been talking to them over there—” He gestured, and Brun looked out to see a dark shape against the starfield. What it really was, or how far away, she couldn’t tell, but she could see the ovoid shape of a warship. Fleet? “I get more from them, for turning you in, than from you, for taking you on. An abomination was one thing—I didn’t bargain on a runaway from Ranger Bowie’s house.”
Not Fleet. Brun’s stomach tightened. The pilot smirked at them, and opened his mouth to speak into the headset. Brun uncoiled from her seat, twisting in midair, and slammed both booted feet into the side of his head. Hazel squeaked—no other word for that short alarmed sound, but then pushed off the overhead to get her forearm around the man’s neck and hold it against the tall seatback while Brun untangled herself from the cords and wires her attack had landed her in.
“What do I do if he—” Hazel began, when the man jerked against her arm, and then grabbed at her arm and tried to free himself. But he was strapped in, and Brun already had her knife out, and a firm hold on the back of his seat for leverage; she jammed the knife under his ribs and up, just as she had been told. He twisted, struggling, for a moment longer, then slumped . . . that long elephant-skinning knife had the length to reach his heart. Brun stared at Hazel, who was white with shock.
But they had no time for shock. Catching her feet under the copilot’s seat, she unhooked the pilot’s harness, and started pulling his body out of the seat, pushing it to the back. Drops of blood followed it, floating, dispersing.
“Can you . . . pilot?” Hazel asked. Brun grinned at her and nodded, then clambered into the seat. Hazel climbed over the pilot, still snorting a little but beyond help, and made it into the copilot’s seat, strapping herself in quickly.
Insystem drive . . . where was insystem drive again? And she didn’t want to run them right into that warship . . . she gestured to Hazeclass="underline" rotate us, point us that way. Parallel to the warship’s axis, toward what she hoped was its stern. Hazel touched the controls, and the stars wheeled crazily. Brun ignored that, and her ears, and found the inset black square that should be the insystem drive startup. She pushed it. Nothing happened. What else . . . oh. Yes. Safety release . . . she tried again, in sequence. Release, startup, drive on . . . and the sudden apparent lurch of the dust in the cockpit told her they were under drive again. Now for the AG . . . down there. One tenth . . . and the dust settled, leaving the cockpit clearer. Behind her, the pilot’s body thumped to the deck. A little red globule slid past her gaze and attached itself to her shirt . . . blood. The pilot’s blood.
And she’d never thought about what would happen if she’d cut his throat in zero-G. They could be drowning in the stuff, unable to see any of the controls . . .
Maybe her luck was back. But she wouldn’t count on it. She notched up the insystem drive. If she had the pilot figured right, he was a smuggler or something and his personal shuttle would be overpowered, up to and maybe beyond the structural limits of the craft. She found the accelerometer, and the V-scale, but the blasted thing was in mph, whatever that was, rather than meters per second. Still—it was fast, and going faster.
Hazel touched her arm. She had found the scan controls. Two screens came up: systemwide and local. Local was the problem, Brun thought. The warship behind them was lighted up like a Christmas tree with active weapons scans. But according to Esmay, anything as small as a shuttle was hard to hit . . . if it was far enough away. Well, the answer to that was to get far enough away—and that meant speed. She notched the drive up again. The little craft still felt stable as rock. Corey’s had gone faster—she notched it up again, and again.
Hazel tapped her arm. On the system scan, several ships were flagged with weapons markers. And behind, the warship had swapped ends and was in pursuit.
It had always been a small chance. She’d known that. Better to die out here, than back there. She hoped Hazel felt that way—she cocked her head at the girl.
“It’ll be close,” Hazel said. “But I like it.”
Well . . . close or not, that was the right attitude. Brun pointed at the drive controls, and mimed shoving it to the line. Hazel looked at the scan, and nodded. What the hell, Brun thought. It can’t be worse. She rammed the control all the way to the end of the slot. The drive rose from a deep whine to a high one, and the shuttle vibrated down its length.
And behind them, on the scan, an explosion marred the pattern. If she had not accelerated—
“We could jump, couldn’t we?” Hazel asked. “These shuttles are jump-capable.”
They could jump, but where? Supposedly, there was a Fleet ship insystem, waiting to pick them up. If only she could find that—
Another explosion; the little ship shivered as fragments impacted its minimal shields.
“Another one!” Hazel said, pointing. Brun glanced at the scan—and saw another weapons-lighted warship. They weren’t going to make it through this—she might as well jump, and sort it out later, if she could. She found the jump controls, and started the checklist . . . never leave out the checks, Oblo had told her, because you can get killed just as dead by a malfunction as by an enemy.
Navigation computer on; target jump point selected; insertion velocity—not good, but she dared not slow. Her hands raced over the controls, but she left nothing out. When she was ready, she tapped Hazel on the shoulder, and pointed to the jump-initiation control. Hazel nodded, and Brun pushed it.
Nothing happened. Brun pushed it again—some of these controls stiffened if not used regularly.
“It’s asking for a validation code,” Hazel said, nudging Brun and pointing. On a side panel, a small display had lit, with the words Voice recognition validation required prior to jump insertion.