Rebel's Flight by Kate Pearce

Author:Kate Pearce [Pearce, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kate Pearce

Fifteen minutes later, she and Fulgarite were flat on their backs squeezed between the complex bones of the ship’s engineering skeleton and the formidable engines. The heat and noise were overpowering, and for the first time Nia wished she could use thinkspeak. They both wore protective glasses that offered them a constant stream of data about the section on which they were focusing and helped zero-in on the defective shielding.

Fulgarite was doing the talking and Nia did her best to keep up with the increasingly complex terminology.

“If we patch here,” Fulgarite jabbed at the miniscule line of the join, “we should be able to land safely.”

“Patch it with what?” Nia asked. “And how many of these microscopic breaks are there in the lines?”

“That’s something we’ll have to work out,” Fulgarite said. “I think coating the entire outer surface would be our best option.”

Nia frowned. “Well, whatever we going to do, I suspect we’ll need to do it fast. I don’t like the way the temperature keeps rising.”

She’d barely finished speaking before an alarm went off, flashing a red light across her glasses.

“Time to get out,” Nia said and started reverse crawling out of the tube.

“But—”

“That’s an order.” Nia had to shout to be heard over the wail of the alarm. “I don’t like this at all.”

They’d barely made it out into the service passage before a series of small explosions rocked the ship.

Nia hung onto the wall grab as the smell of burning intensified and the automatic sprinkler system activated.

Fulgarite shouted across to Nia as she grabbed the manual extinguisher and put out a couple of flames licking at the hatch, “Did we introduce too much oxygen into that area?”

“Possibly.” Nia was already moving fast. “Let’s get back to the bridge and see exactly what’s going on.”

The control station on the bridge was a mass of flashing buttons and alarms which took them a few minutes to deal with.

An emergency transmission from a Jasorite satellite flashed on the screen and Nia activated the comm link.

“Imperial One, please report.”

“Jasorite, we had some minor onboard damage. Everything is now contained. We will contact you if we need further assistance in the morning.”

“Copy that.”

There was no further reply from Jasorite, and Nia shut off the channel and stared at Fulgarite.

“This isn’t looking good. Last chance to bail before the emperor nails me to the wall for ruining his new toy.”

“I’m not going anywhere, sir.” Fulgarite raised her chin.

“Well, if we’re going down together you should at least tell me your real name rather than your planetary designation?”

For a second Fulgarite smiled. “It’s Sylvie.”

“Nice.” Nia keyed in a set of numerals and briefly closed her eyes as every siren and warning system on the spaceship went off. Better to die than live as the emperor’s slave…

One second later the ship disappeared from the tracking screen and every alarm in the place suddenly went quiet.

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