Under the Cape by Rachel Kenley

Author:Rachel Kenley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Riverdale Avenue Books
Published: 2020-09-04T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

“Spitfire. C’mere.”

Spitfire rolled herself out of her bunk and came up behind Vixen in the cockpit. She looked at the display graphic and shook her head. “What am I looking at?”

Vixen tapped the screen. “This is us—no, don’t zoom in, argh, this is a new interface, sorry—ok, this is us, and this is the incoming group of ships. I think we have about two hours before they get here. You need to do anything besides suit up?”

“Yeah,” Spitfire said. There were so many dots. So many. “I need to call the Squadron.”

Vixen rotated in her chair and fixed Spitfire with a strange look. “You already tried that.”

“Well I need to try it again!”

“They’re not going to like my involvement.”

Spitfire gesticulated wildly at the screen. “Well I don’t like dying!”

Vixen stood up and held her head high. “Fine. Call the Squadron as many times as you like. See where that gets you.” She stalked past Spitfire to the back of the ship.

Fine, let Vixen be haughty about Spitfire still wanting her stupid teammates to join her on this stupid mission with a stupid Spaceball and stupid aliens. Fuck. She sat in the co-pilot chair and hailed the Squadron. Again. And again. Each of their individual comms. Nothing. She was about to give up when she got an answering blip. Yes! She put it through.

Blink’s young face appeared on the screen, with Chasmos behind him. “Hey Spit,” they said.

“Finally! Thank gods! Blink, can you get the others on the horn? There are alien ships incoming in about two hours and…”

“Spit, you gotta stop comming them.”

She stopped. “Come again?”

Blink and Chasmos shared a strained look. “Listen, when you left with Vixen, Dr. Kettler said not to contact you. He said… you’d turned.”

Every muscle in her body tensed. “What. Turned? Turned to what? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“He said you’d do anything to get to the rest of us, too. And… well he said a lot of stuff, I’m sorry, I could get in a lot of trouble for even talking to you, but… I don’t really believe them. I think you just made a bad decision, and they should let you come home. But I don’t exactly have a lot of pull.” Chasmos made a similarly helpless shrug.

Spitfire waved frantically towards the window. “That also doesn’t make any sense! Is this real life? It’s not a lie! There’s bad stuff coming, and people are going to die!”

“Are you sure? I mean, it’s not like you can trust Vixen.”

“Take a damn telescope outside. You should be able to see them by now!”

“I’m sorry, Spit,” Blink said, and the comm died.

Spitfire sat for long moments in the chair, feeling like there were explosions going off inside her head. It didn’t make any sense. Nothing made sense. She wanted things to stop spinning out of control and make sense. She was really stuck on that word, “make sense.” When did the world go upside down, and how could she right it?

She felt a hand on her shoulder.

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