Traitor Game by Kate Sheeran Swed

Author:Kate Sheeran Swed
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kate Sheeran Swed

CHAPTER 13

Sloane wasn’t sure why she’d pictured an entire battleship landing on—or hovering beside—one of the Fleet Tower’s skinny landing pads, but that was definitely the image she’d been carrying since Candace mentioned Sabre and an extraction plan she apparently already had in the works. Let no one say that the woman couldn’t multitask.

Of course, the frigate itself did not land or hover in atmo. It probably couldn’t, if she considered the question logically. Instead, it sent a capsule. Which made a lot more sense.

To be fair, there hadn’t been a lot of extra breathing time for activities like thinking.

The capsule that waited for them on the pad outside Gareth’s office resembled an oblong pill, with metal bands holding together a couple of curved walls of glass. She wasn’t sure it even had a pilot’s seat, just benches and straps and handles. Meant to be controlled, she assumed, by someone on the frigate.

And not to put too fine a point on it, but the shuttle also looked incredibly flimsy. Like one well-placed bullet could collapse the whole thing.

Which was unfortunate, because—and sometimes it was truly hard to believe that this was her life now—the strip of a landing pad that divided Gareth’s office from the capsule was a rainstorm of gunfire, all coming from above. Because the Fleet apparently hadn’t considered the soldier-against-soldier possibility when designing their fancy Tower, and their enemies had had the foresight to install snipers in the windows of the floor above.

Not the best setup for the Fleet Commander’s office.

The friendly soldiers didn’t seem fazed. They ran across the landing pad, covering each other’s backs with efficient expertise while simultaneously sprinting for the capsule.

Gareth dragged Sloane along behind them, pulling her sideways across the landing pad and zigzagging toward the capsule as if to evade the sizzling shots that scattered across the pad at their feet. Whether anticipating the enemy’s firing patterns—he’d probably taught them those firing patterns—or making extremely good guesses, Sloane couldn’t say.

He let go of her hand so he could twist around and fire off a shot that might or might not have been a stun round. They’d tipped over the barrier into chaos, and her senses were overflowing with chattering gunfire and the acidic char of plasma rounds, the soldiers’ shouts going unheard beneath a roar of engine noise and general mayhem.

And then they were diving through the shuttle doors, and it was lifting off before the door had a chance to slam shut. Sloane threw herself at one of the seats, but she wasn’t fast enough; a blast slammed into the capsule, rocking it to the side and nearly tossing her to the floor—or splattering her against the wall—but Gareth was there, catching hold of her waist before she could fly away. She heaved her body into the seat and strapped in as the capsule righted itself and rose through the atmosphere.

Heartier than it looked, thankfully, and faster, too; in a matter of seconds, the rockets pushed the shuttle out of range.

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