Adrift by Isabelle Adler

Author:Isabelle Adler [Adler, Isabelle]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: action, Gay, Lgbt, Science Fiction, Pirates, age gap, slow burn, demisexual
Publisher: NineStar Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Matt still couldn’t believe it had actually worked. He stared at the newly emerged skylight like he couldn’t trust it not to disappear. All movement had ceased, though the light around the charge glowed steadily.

“This is it, right?” he asked in a low whisper. He didn’t know why he was whispering; it just seemed appropriate for the moment.

“I think so,” Ryce said. “As long as we don’t touch any more activation symbols. This should hold, at least while the charge is inside. I don’t know what will happen when I take it out.”

“Okay then,” Matt said, assessing the climb. The most difficult part would be scaling the smooth, thirty-feet-high walls of the chamber; the exposed rock beyond offered more purchase. Down here, there was nothing he could hold on to, nothing that offered a foothold or an initial boost.

He touched the wall. He couldn’t feel the texture of the stone through his gloves, but it seemed solid, untouched by time. There was no dent or chip to be found on its surface, and he doubted that any of the basic tools he had in his kit would make an impact on it. But then again, they had something far more powerful than a chisel, didn’t they? They’d spent their entire duration here using it.

“Do you think that laser of yours can do some damage to the walls?”

“If it’s regular stone and not some superstrong alloy I previously haven’t heard of, I don’t see why not,” Ryce said. He sat down gingerly at the base of the plinth, leaning back against it. He must have been utterly exhausted by now. “Crank up the intensity a bit, and use a direct beam, no coordinates.”

Despite Matt’s reluctance to handle the laser, it was solely up to him at this point. The beam cut into the stone like a knife, raising a cloud of dust and small shards. The process was slower than he would have liked, but Matt wasn’t aiming to carve out actual steps, just make a few gouges deep enough to hold on to. With the gravipull function turned off, he’d be buoyant, his weight significantly reduced in the weak local gravity field, so the effort of climbing wouldn’t be as strenuous as it would have been in other circumstances.

It felt like time had slowed down, but he just kept going, working as methodically as he could, though at some point his hands began to ache from holding the device steady. Gouge after gouge, each only about an inch wide, appeared on the wall, going up to the edge, where the artificial smoothness met the rough texture of the rock.

“Well, there’s that,” he said once he judged the work was finished. His helmet light picked up every detail as he eyed the wall critically, its pristine slick surface now marred with ugly, uneven scars that looked almost obscene against the austere backdrop of the rest of the structure. But Matt’s reverence toward Mnirian legacy had diminished somewhat over the last hours.

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