“You’re a criminal mastermind?” Spinning on her heels, she stalked into the warehouse. “Where’s this ship?”
“Hold on there, little traitor. Breaking out of jail is one thing, but assisting a psychotic Lunar is a bit out of my league.”
Cinder rounded on him. “First, I’m not psychotic. And second, if it wasn’t for me, you would still be sitting in that jail cell ogling your portscreen, so you owe me. Besides, they’ve already got you pegged as my accomplice. You look like an idiot in that picture, by the way.”
Thorne followed her gesture to the screen. His own jail picture was blown up beside hers.
“I think I look pretty good…”
“Thorne. Captain. Please.”
He blinked at her, a touch of smugness wiped quickly away by a brisk nod. “Right. Let’s get out of here.”
Cinder sighed in relief, following Thorne as he marched into the maze of ships. “I hope it’s not one in the middle.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said, pointing up. “The roof opens.”
Cinder glanced up at the seam in the middle of the ceiling. “That’s convenient.”
“And there she is.”
Cinder followed Thorne’s gesture. His ship was larger than she’d expected—much larger. A 214 Rampion, Class 11.3 cargo ship. Cinder pulled up her retina scanner and downloaded the ship’s blueprint, speechless at everything it could claim. The engine room and a fully stocked dock with two satellite podships took up the underbelly, while the main level housed the cargo bay, cockpit, galley kitchen, six crew quarters, and a shared washroom.
She rounded to the main entry hatch and saw that the seal of the American Republic had been hastily painted over with the silhouette of a lounging naked lady.
“Nice touch.”
“Thanks. Did it myself.”
Despite her worries that the painting could make them more easily identified, she couldn’t help being faintly impressed. “It’s bigger than I expected.”
“There was a time when she housed a twelve-man crew,” Thorne said, petting her hull.
“Should be plenty of room for avoiding each other then.” Cinder paced beneath the hatch, waiting for Thorne to open it, but when she glanced back she found him lovingly rubbing his temple against the ship’s underside and cooing about how much he’d missed her.
Cinder was in the middle of rolling her eyes when an unfamiliar voice ricocheted through the warehouse. “Over here!”
Turning, she saw someone crouched over Alak’s body, haloed in a square of light. They wore the unmistakable uniform of the Eastern Commonwealth military.
Cinder swore. “Time to go. Now.”
Thorne ducked toward the hatch. “Rampion, code word: Captain is king. Open hatch.”
They waited, but nothing happened.
Cinder raised panicked eyebrows.
“Captain is king. Captain is king! Rampion, wake up. It’s Thorne, Captain Carswell Thorne. What the—”
Cinder shushed him. Beyond the ship’s hull, four men were making their way through the crowded warehouse, flashlights shining off the assorted landing gear.
“Maybe the power cell is dead,” said Cinder.
“How? It’s just been sitting here.”
“Did you leave the headlights on?” she snapped.
Thorne harrumphed and crouched against the ship. Footsteps grew louder.
“Or it could be the auto-control system,” Cinder mused, racking her brain. She’d never worked on anything larger than a podship before, but how different could they be? “Do you have the override key?”
He blinked at her. “Yeah, let me just pull it out of my prison-issued pocket and we’ll be on our way.”
Cinder glared, but was silent as an officer passed two aisles away.
“Stay here,” she whispered. “Keep trying to get in and take off as fast as possible.”
“Where are you going?”
Without answering, she slinked around the side of the ship, a blueprint already streaming to her retina display. She found the access hatch and pried it open as quietly as she could, before crawling up into the ship undercarriage, contorting her body to avoid the wires and cables that crammed the space. She pulled the hatch shut behind her with a dull click, and found herself encased in darkness. The second interior door was more difficult to break into, but between the flashlight and her screwdriver she was soon wriggling out of the insulating layer and into the engine room.
Her flashlight beam zipped across the massive engine. She found the computer motherboard on the blue lines overlaying her vision and squirmed toward it. Pulling the universal connector cable from her hand, she snapped it into the main computer terminal.
Her flashlight dimmed as her own power was diverted. Pale green text scrawled across her eyesight.
DIAGNOSING COMPUTER SYSTEM, MODEL 135V8.2
5% … 12% … 16% …
Ten
Thorne jumped at a clang overhead.
A man’s voice followed—“Hear that?”
Thorne crouched down between the ship’s landing feet and flattened himself against a metal beam. “Captain is king,” he whispered. “Captain is king, captain is ki—”
A subtle hum pulsed over his head. Pale running lights flickered on near the ship’s nose.
“Captain is—?”
Gears started to rattle before he could finish. The hatch opened, the ramp lowering onto the concrete. Heart leaping, Thorne dodged out beneath it, just in time to avoid being squashed.
“Over there!”
A flashlight beam fell over Thorne as he swung himself up onto the descending ramp. “Rampion, close hatch!”
The ship didn’t respond.
A gun fired. The bullet pinged off the ship’s overhead light. Thorne ducked behind one of the plastic crates that filled the cargo bay. “Rampion, close hatch!”
“I’m working on it!”
He froze, glancing up at the pipes and tubes that lined the ship’s ceiling. “Rampion?”
The following silence was punctuated by the clang of the ramp on the outside concrete, the thumping of booted feet, then the ramp creaked again and started to rise back up. A shower of bullets lodged into the plastic storage crates, pinging off the metal walls. Thorne covered his head and waited until the ramp was closed enough to block the bullets’ path before shoving himself away from the crate and running toward the cockpit.
The ship vibrated as the ramp slammed shut. A volley of bullets pinged against the hull.
Thorne scrambled toward the emergency lights that framed the cockpit, shoving aside unopened crates. His knee smacked something hard and he let out a string of curses as he collapsed into the pilot seat. The windows were dirty and all he could see in the dark warehouse were the faint lights of Alak’s office and the flashlight beams darting around the Rampion, searching for another way in.
“Rampion, ready for liftoff!”
The dash lit up with controls and screens—only the most important ones.
The same sterile feminine voice came over the ship’s speakers. “Thorne, I can’t set the automatic lift. You’re going to have to take off manually.”
He gaped at the controls. “Why is my ship talking back to me?”
“It’s me, you idiot!”
He cocked his ear toward the speaker. “Cinder?”
“Listen, the auto-control system has a bug. The power cell is on the fritz too. I think it can make it, but you’re going to have to take off without computer assistance.”
The words, too dry in the computer’s tone, were punctuated by another round of bullets against the ship’s closed hatch.