“Way to go, Captain!” Beckett slaps me on the back.
“You okay?” I ask Kali, visually checking her over for any damage. Miraculously, short of a few bumps and bruises, she seems to have gotten through that whole debacle okay. We all have.
“Kali!” Rain shouts, running into the tiny loading bay and throwing her arms around the princess. “Don’t ever do that to us again! Sneaking away in the middle of the night is a really awful thing to do.”
Yeah, I want to say. It was a really fucking awful thing to do. But if I say that, she’ll think I care more than I do. And I don’t give a shit. If she wants to leave, she can have at it. She just can’t go back to the damn Empress and bring down half the solar system with her.
Suddenly, the Starlight shudders, nearly knocking us off our feet.
“What was that?” I demand, racing for the bridge.
Beckett’s right behind me. “What did you do?” she demands of Gage, who’s standing next to the pilot’s chair like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
“I didn’t do anything.” He points at the Starlight’s front console. “She did.”
“Beckett,” I say warningly. It’s one thing for the ship to fly us out of here on her own. It’s another thing for her to decide to take matters into her own hands.
I slide into the captain’s chair. “Get control of this ship,” I bark at Beckett.
“Thanks for the suggestion,” she snarls back as she jams her hand down on the controls.
The Starlight doesn’t so much as acknowledge her presence. It’s like autopilot on steroids. But you can switch off an autopilot.
I glance at Gage. “Can we do anything?”
He just shrugs.
“Thanks,” I tell him.
Another shrug. Useless bastard.
“Everyone get to your seats!” I order. “Now.”
Because something tells me things are about to get ugly. And with the Starlight in control, there’s nothing I can do about it.
“I thought Gage fixed this,” Max grumbles as he buckles himself into the nearest seat.
“So did I,” Gage answers.
“You mean you don’t know?” What the hell am I supposed to do with this guy? So glad Max thinks he’s a freaking genius.
Gage rolls his eyes at me. “Well, she hasn’t gone into autopilot since I thought I fixed her. Hence, I assumed she was fixed.”
“Yeah, well, you might want to try again. She—” I break off as a message pops up on my HUD.
Short-range ballistic missile attack. Evasive actions imminent.
“The fuck?” I demand, right before the Starlight jerks us several meters to the left.
“That was close,” Merrick comments as we watch a missile fly right by on the viewing screens.
Not this again. “Gage!” I yell. “Get your ass under that console and figure this out!”
“I’m on it—” he starts, but then Starlight starts to spin and he’s hurled halfway across the bridge.
“Everyone okay?” Beckett shouts from the pilot’s seat. Apparently, she and Max were the only two smart enough to buckle up （yes, fucking including me）， because everyone else is on the floor with me.
The Starlight finally calms down and pulls herself out of the spin, so I take advantage of the quiet and crawl my way back to my chair. I click the harness into place just as the ship spins in the opposite direction. And then we’re upside down. Then we’re right side up. Then we’re upside down again.
There’s a lot more screaming and a few more crashes and bangs. My stomach—usually made of iron—lurches, and I swallow down the sick. No way am I puking in the middle of this. Beckett would never let me hear the end of it.
We flip right side up again, and I dare to dream that the Starlight has finally calmed the fuck down.
Evasive actions successful. Missiles avoided. No further action required.
Fuck yeah! That sounds promising.
I glance around at the bridge. Beckett is in the pilot’s seat grinning like she’s just been on the most kick-ass ride of her life. Rain, Merrick, and Max are all looking a little green despite being seated and buckled in, while Gage and Kali are still picking themselves up off the floor. I give Gage a cursory once-over and Kali a more thorough inspection, but neither seem damaged.
Maybe they’ll be quicker to follow my advice in the future.
On the plus side, once they’re up, they both lunge for their seats and buckle in. Just as well, as another message comes up on my HUD.
Laser attack. Evasive action imminent.
Fuck me. This ship is determined to kill us all in her efforts to keep us alive.
Except I can see the lasers now, coming one after the other. Beams of yellow light blasting up from the planet’s surface, strong enough to follow us out of the atmosphere, which I think we’re just about to pass through. I grip the arms of my seat, prepared for the worst. But all that happens is some sort of shield comes up that covers the outside of the ship. The screens at the nose end of the ship reflect what’s going on, and I brace myself as the laser blasts come straight for us, filling the whole screen with white light.
A faint shudder runs through the ship as they hit, followed by a couple of bigger shudders that have Rain gasping and Max swearing.
But we’re still here at the end of them, so whatever damage the attack caused I’ll still call a win.
Targets acquired.
“Oh shit.” Beckett slams her hand down on the control panel, pressing button after button in an effort to stop what’s about to happen. “Stop, stop, stop!”
“Let her go,” I tell her.
“What do you mean, let her go?” Beckett demands. “She’s about to destroy the Empress’s palace. I’m pretty sure that’s an act of war.”
“Like killing dozens of her guards and stealing off into the night isn’t?” I ask, brows raised. “Besides, better to know what the Starlight’s going to do now instead of later, when she might get us in a whole heaping pile of drokaray shit.”
I’m in the mood to live dangerously. Not to mention completely fucking pissed off that the Empress is apparently okay with firing on a craft she knows her daughter is on. That’s some cold-blooded shit if I’ve ever heard it.
Especially when I glance back at Kali’s face and realize she’s figured it out, too. The guards aren’t firing on us on their own. They obviously had permission to do so, considering the Empire’s crown princess is on board.
My HUD shows the Starlight’s acceleration out of the Askkandian atmosphere has slowed. We’re centered over the Imperial Palace.
Targets locked.
A bright white light that looks a lot like what she fired at Kali’s and my attackers on Glacea shoots out from the front of the Starlight, straight at the bank of anti-spacecraft weaponry that’s been shooting at us since we took off.
I see flashes as she hits something—what, I have no clue. At least not until…
Enemy weapons eliminated flashes across my HUD.
The shields lift, and through the viewing screens I can make out the rooftop of the palace. There’s a lot more smoke, now, and guards are scrambling—for safety or weapons, I don’t know.