“Thanks, I—”
He pushed her behind him and flung the collar into a metal barrel. The collar exploded, sending sparks and fire a meter high. As it fizzled out, the stink of burnt plastic and fried electrical parts permeated the air.
“Thanks again…”
Remy nodded, wiping his hands off on his fatigues before returning the multitool to his belt and heading toward the docking bay door.
“Wait, what’s next?”
Placing the kitcoon back in her jacket pocket, she followed Remy. The docking bay door led down a cramped hallway with more mechanical hardware, forcing her to slide sideways. When she reached the cockpit at the other end, Remy was sitting in the captain’s chair, punching in coordinates and revving up the engines.
“One minute,” he said.
“Until what?”
“More trouble.”
“Chak,” she muttered, strapping into the co-pilot’s chair.
As he rebooted the holographic nav systems, she chimed in: “I can navigate on star charts. And I’ve flown A-2200s,” she said, referring to the junked-out star cruisers from the interior.
Remy lifted anchors and locks just as the first Dominion fighter broke through the clouds.
“Hang on,” he said, hitting the accelerator. Rex’s stomach lodged in her throat as he launched them into the upper atmosphere. Enemy fire scorched the dash screen, punctuated by cannon blasts. Rex gripped her chair’s armrest with one hand and braced the kitcoon inside her pocket with the other.
“Watch out—” Rex yelled as Remy narrowly dodged oncoming Dominion fighters, sending her jerking forward and to the right, testing the strength of her harness.
We’re surrounded, she thought just as another blast hit the aft shields, knocking them down to critical levels.
Rex glanced over at the soldier. Remy was sweating profusely, eyes glazed over and breathing heavily. He didn’t respond to the oncoming fighters from the rear, or the incoming transmissions flashing red: “Stand down and prepare to be boarded.”
No response, not even when a second volley of plasma fire knocked out the rear shields. Internal alarms sounded and all four engine lights came on. Still, the soldier didn’t move, breathing rapidly.
“Remy,” she said, shaking him by the forearm. “REMY.”
His shoulder twitched. Something between a grunt and a wheeze came out of his mouth.
Take control, she thought. But even a cursory glance of his modifications and manual overrides to normal starship controls was enough to kill that idea.
She checked the starships pinged on radar. Even if she could reach that far with her telepathic talent, she could never affect all twenty or more fighters surrounding them above the blue and red planet. Not without devastating consequences.
Rex closed her eyes and projected herself through her physical connection with the soldier’s shoulder. Remy. Come back.
She slid into his consciousness, finding the same battle scene unfolding in his mind: The surprise attack, blacking out. Waking to chaos, pain, and terror. Blood, gore. Everyone’s dead—
Rex partially withdrew her consciousness back into her own body, enough to carefully pull out the kitcoon from her pocket and place it on Remy’s arm. The furry critter yawned and licked his hand gripping the nav stick.
Placing her hand back again on his forearm, she sank beneath his skin.
“I’m here, Remy,” she said, putting herself in the middle of the battlefield with him. “You already fought this battle and survived. Be here, with me.”
She pulled his sights up with her own, showing him the incoming fighters, and the shields failing.
Dipping back down into his psyche, into the pains and hurts of a long-lost soldier, she offered him the sound of her heartbeat, and the rhythm of her breathing.
“You’re not alone in this. You never have to be alone again.”
Remy jerked back. The kitcoon leapt off the dashboard and onto her shoulder, anchoring his tail around her neck and meowing.
“Chak,” he muttered, inputting something into the computer.
“Remy,” Rex said, her voice just above a whisper as a black battleship came into view from the starboard side, its tractor beams deploying in shimmering distortions. The starship rocked and creaked as they were pulled into the belly of the battleship.
“Where are you going?” she asked as he unstrapped from his chair and unbuckled her harness.
“Wait, what’s happening?” she exclaimed as the red-striped soldiers with their shock wands, waiting on the battleship’s deck, came into view.
He pulled her up by the arm. The kitcoon scampered down her jacket and dove into her right pocket as Remy took her hand and guided her back through the junk-filled passageway and into the garage.
As he switched on his hovercycle and motioned for her to get on the pillion, she scoffed. “I’m not about to rampage through the decks—or take a very short, very cold trip outside.”
“Get on,” he said, shoving a stack of old motherboards, network/graphic cards, and wiring aside to access a wall-mounted interface. The white robotic arms she’d noticed earlier lit up with blue and green tracks, and a glowing white circle appeared around the hovercycle.
“Where to?” he asked, punching in numbers into the interface.
As the Dominion battleship’s locking clamps took hold that she blurted: “La Raja, Neeis.”
He ran back and mounted the bike as orange and red sparks from laser cutters melted through the garage door.
“Hold on.”
When she didn’t hold him tight enough, he held one of his hands over hers. His strength surprised her, but not as much as intense vibration of the robotic arms or the tingling sensation crawling up her spine.
“Remy, what did you—?”
The garage door crashed to the floor. Dominion soldiers poured inside, shock wands sparking.
“Stop right there! Don’t move—”
Rex closed her eyes and went rigid, anticipating the pain of the shock wands. Instead, her entire body lit up from the inside out with exploding stars, and the vibrations of a massive earthquake. She yelled, but she didn’t have lungs or a mouth—
—Not until they rematerialized in a dingy, half-lit parking lot under a light-polluted night sky. Her voice came back, and she screamed until her lungs emptied and the surrounding sparks and static fizzled out into smoke.
“You can stop screaming now,” Remy said, this time with a sentence long enough she heard his drawl. He got off the bike, his legs unsteady, but offered her a hand.
She took his hand and half-fell off, catching herself on the side of the hovercycle. “W—what was that?”
“Algardrien teleportation tech, an FTL booster, and a few other mods and tweaks.”
“Algardrien tech? How’d you get that? Most of the planet is…”
She couldn’t say the rest out loud: Destroyed.
Remy’s face remained hard set, but his words were gentle. “Helped a few Algardriens once.”
She didn’t know if she could believe him. The entire galaxy hated telepaths.
“Guess it beats an escape pod,” she whispered.
He nodded, scratching the stubble on his jawline. “Yup.”
Rex eyed the sizzling remains of a Dominion soldier’s arm and a piece of a boot. “Are they going to track us here?”
As Remy stretched and drew out his response, she surveyed the empty parking lot. An abandoned warehouse, covered with graffiti and moss, crumbled to the north, next to a billboard advertising a casino on the main drag.
In Rajan.