Capture the Sun by Jessie Mihalik

Author:Jessie Mihalik
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-06-20T00:00:00+00:00

Anja clung to my waist as the lev cycle skimmed up the hill at a speed just shy of reckless. We’d attached the transponder to the vehicle with a quick release, freeing Anja’s hands, and she had a rifle strapped to her back in case we ran into trouble we couldn’t outrace.

Not that it would do much good if they sent a ship after us.

I’d only worked with Anja during our previous short trip to Valovia, but she’d proven herself steady and dependable, even when things went sideways. She was exactly the kind of person I wanted guarding my back when I was doing something stupid—like pretending to be Starlight with nothing but the air around us for protection.

Unfortunately, the lev cycle wasn’t really equipped to track incoming ships until they were almost on top of us, so we were relying on Starlight’s sensors, but the more distance we put between us, the less reliable they became.

I was following a flight path that sent us north and east, toward the next largest city in the area, and away from Starlight’s route to Tirdenchia. We were moving far faster than Starlight, which was built for spaceflight rather than atmospheric flight and lumbered through the air. Kee was having to keep the speed down in order to stay close to the ground without accidentally hitting an inconvenient hill.

So even though my and Anja’s flight path to Tirdenchia was more than twice as long as Starlight’s—thanks to us playing decoy—we should arrive in the city about the same time as Kee, Nilo, and the rest of the crew because they were taking a more direct route.

We descended toward a wide, flat plain surrounded by distant hills, and I pushed the throttle wide open. Anja’s arms tightened as the lev cycle jumped forward. The ground blurred under us, but my eyes were already on the horizon. The extra speed was nice, but being in the open set my teeth on edge.

We were halfway across when Kee’s voice echoed over the comm. “Two ships heading for the landing zone,” she said. “They are rapidly approaching from the south. ETA five minutes. Based on their current speed, they will overtake you in fifteen minutes if they continue north.”

“Copy,” I acknowledged.

We wouldn’t make the next city in fifteen minutes, but at least we’d be out of the plain. Kee and I had plotted some very rough escape points along the route—places where it wouldn’t be immediately obvious to the ships following us that “Starlight” was just a box with a transponder. The next one was twelve minutes away, which was cutting it dangerously close.

But I needed to buy the real Starlight as much time as possible. “How close are you to your destination?” I asked, leaving out the city name just in case someone was listening in.

“Twenty-five minutes.”

I swore silently as I did the mental math. The chase ships were moving nearly six times Starlight’s speed. Once they started searching, they could fly a circular pattern and still find Kee before she made it to Tirdenchia’s spaceport.

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