I throw myself at her, tackling her around the midsection and taking her down. Not Rain, is all I can think as we hit the ground hard. Not Rain, not Rain, not Rain.
“You didn’t have to do that!” I scream as I try to wrestle the gun away from her.
“Of course I did,” she answers, throwing an elbow that catches me in the jaw. “You’ve already proven that you aren’t woman enough to do what had to be done.”
Behind me, I can hear Merrick and Ian grappling with Vix, and panic nearly consumes me. Both are good fighters, but Vix is a mountain of a man—the best fighter I’ve ever seen in my life. Together, they might stand a chance against him, but it isn’t a good one.
I start to turn around to warn them, but my mom is rolling on top of me now, her fist pulled back. And I really, really don’t want to get in a fistfight with my mother, but I’m not sure I’m going to have a choice. Especially when she brings the fist forward, aimed straight at my nose.
I throw my own fist up, catching her in the mouth. She laughs—cool, Mom—and then rolls off me and fires another several rounds toward the top of the ship.
I’m assuming Kali and Rain aren’t ridiculous enough to still be standing there, but that doesn’t matter. These are the only people I care about in the whole fucking system, and enough is enough.
I punch my mother full in the face, and when she rears back in shock, I wrench the gun from her hands and level it at Vix—who is more than holding his own against the other two guys.
I don’t know where Max went, and right now I don’t give a shit. “Back away, Vix!” I yell, firing a blast at his feet to make sure he knows I mean business. I’d never shoot him, but he doesn’t need to know that.
“Get the guns and run!” I yell to Merrick and Ian, who are looking at me in shock. I guess this isn’t how either thinks a family reunion should go.
My mother rears up, tries to grab the gun from me, and I kick her in the face just hard enough to knock her back down. I don’t want to kill her—I just want to keep her out of commission for a few more minutes.
Ian reaches down to grab his gun, but I move so that I’m between him and Vix. No more shots are being fired here today unless I’m the one doing the firing. “Go!” I yell again. This time, I swing the gun around toward them, just so they know I’m an equal-opportunity asshole.
They don’t argue again. Instead, they each grab a box of weapons and haul ass up the ramp to the Starlight like death herself is after them.
When they get to the top, they turn around and wave at me to join them. But it’s too late. I’ve already made my choice. Besides, if whatever the Corporation did to me ends up killing me, I’m going out alone. No way am I dragging Rain down with me.
But as I watch the Starlight fly off into the system without me, I can’t help wondering what happens now. And if I’ll live long enough to find out.
Chapter 93
Ian
“What the Light just happened?” Merrick demands as the Starlight’s ramp retracts behind us.
“We got fucked, that’s what,” I growl. “Beckett’s mother fucked us.”
I glance around, desperate to lay eyes on Kali. And where the hell is Max?
“Over here!” he calls from behind me, and I whirl around to find him and Kali gathered around Rain, who is spread-eagle on the floor. It looks like she just lost a shitload of blood.
I’m ashamed to admit that my first thought is gratitude that it’s not Kali, but then I’m leaning over her, trying to get a look at the wound.
“How bad is it?” Merrick asks as he drops to his knees beside her. He looks like shit—nearly as bad as Beckett did as she waved that gun and ordered us to go.
“Not good,” Max answers. “It’s an arm wound, but she hit an artery.”
“We’ve got to repair it,” Merrick says, his eyes lifting to mine. “Do you know how—”
“I could try,” I answer grimly. “But Rain was really always the better healer of the two of us.”
“I’ll get the kit.” Kali jumps up and races off toward the sick bay, and I’m struck again by an overwhelming sense of thankfulness that she isn’t the one on the ground right now. Doing one surgery on the woman I love is more than enough for me.
That’ll be a thought to unpack another day.
“Gage!” I shout. “You’re the new pilot now.”
“Beckett didn’t come after us?” he asks as he emerges from the bridge, then blanches at the sight of Rain. “Where are we going? I know there’s a hospital in Rodos—”
“She won’t last that long,” I tell him. Even though Max has a torniquet wrapped around her biceps, she’s already lost a lot of blood. We need to fix this thing now. “Set course for the asteroid.”
“For where?” Merrick growls. “No way are we going after them right now—”
“We don’t have a choice. The rebels know our plans. If they trade the information to the Corporation tomorrow or next week, then we’re fucked. They’ll know we’re coming.”
“We don’t have a distraction,” Gage tells me.
“Yeah, well, you’re supposed to be the brains of this operation,” I say. “You’ve got just about an hour to figure one out.”
Kali comes running back down the corridor, brandishing towels and a bottle of gerjgin in one hand and the large med kit in the other. “I think I got everything,” she tells me.
“You did,” I answer, then take the bottle of gerjgin and hold it up to Rain’s lips. “You’re going to want to drink a hell of a lot of this, sweetheart. Because this is going to fucking hurt.”
Chapter 94
Ian
An hour later, I’ve got Delta V47 in my sights. The crew is a little tense—between losing Beckett, nearly losing Rain, and then having Gage give a blood transfusion straight from his arm to Rain’s, we’ve all had better afternoons.
And while I don’t think Beckett would ever betray us to the Corporation, her mother has proven she can’t be trusted. And she knows exactly what our plan is.
Currently, the Starlight is situated behind and slightly to the left of the asteroid—which is a huge hulk of gray rock bigger than my home planet—hidden in the lee of another chunk of rock. This place is lethal. There’s a good fucking reason it’s called the Wilds.
Luckily, the buildings we’re aiming for are all on the inner side of the asteroid belt. I don’t think the Starlight would have survived a journey deeper inside. Even out here, there are chunks of rock flying everywhere that she’s constantly having to evade.
This is the part of the plan when the rebel ship would have attacked and created a distraction—but that’s gone now. It looks like we’re the distraction and the rescue operation.
Gage has rigged a kind of computerized bomb that the Starlight is supposed to hurl straight at the front of the buildings as we fly on by. It’s got a timer that should set it off about two minutes before we reach our chosen extraction zone. It’s weak—really weak—but it’s all we’ve got.
Fucking rebels. If we make it out of this alive, I’m not going to forget anytime soon just how badly they screwed us.