Author Archives: Kyler Barton

Sound disappeared. Jyra felt the penetrating chill of snow soaking through her clothes. She lay still; if she didn’t move maybe the creeping cold would retreat, maybe the ice would forget she was there. Her ears registered a noise. It seemed like it should have been louder: a muted explosion that caused the ground to shudder beneath her. Or maybe she was just shivering.

Jyra rolled over and stared past the towering mountains at the clouds she had been above moments ago. She had never seen clouds like them. Tyrorken’s sky had always been choked with sand and soot-colored vapors created by the oil extraction industry. Jyra felt her body shaking and pushed herself out of the snowdrift. The feeling of the cold was utterly unfamiliar, but that didn’t make it any more pleasant. She thought of when she had a fever when she was fifteen and how the chills had swept through her limbs, freezing her joints and muscles. She had imagined then that her blood was freezing and thawing as her sickness persisted, warping her tissue and waking her, crying, from sleep. Then Dario had laid the cool washcloth across her forehead.

Jyra shivered and surveyed her immediate surroundings. She was on the ledge they had been aiming for. The level patch of snow stretched two hundred feet either side of her before the cliffs of the mountain interrupted it. From her position, it looked like the edge of the ledge was about six feet in front of her. The snow had been disturbed there, likely from the ship as it passed. A deep valley stretched below and the four peaks that formed it rose up before Jyra. Now that she was out of the open ship cabin, the air wasn’t as harsh—a crisp breeze lifted her hair in passing.

Jyra pulled her hands out of the drift. They were pink and the gentle wind made them sting. She stood up and couldn’t tell if it made her feel warmer. She could now see two dark shapes to the left of where she’d been sitting. It only took a couple steps toward them to see the straps. Both of the duffels had made it. But Craig had jumped after Jyra threw the bags. He should have landed between her and the luggage unless—

The snow on the edge of cliff had a hole, like a row of teeth with one missing, right where Craig should be. Jyra waded toward the spot, fighting the pulsing panic in her shaking limbs. She dropped to her hands and knees and crept the last three feet to keep from falling through the unsupported snow. She peered over the edge and saw Craig. He was standing on a craggy outcropping, too small to even sit on. His foothold was one of the few on an otherwise sheer face that offered a fall no one could survive. Based on the marks in the snow near the edge, Jyra guessed what had happened.

“Close one,” she said through chattering teeth. Craig looked up and smiled wearily.

“I needed to be about a foot closer to the mountain,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“I’m lucky to be here at all. Check around. There’s a cave nearby. Derek’s friends likely heard the ship when it blew. They’ll be out soon. I had a good view of the explosion.”

Jyra stood up and gazed in the ship’s direction of travel. Cinders and black debris covered a large snow bank on an adjacent mountain. Scanning down the cliff, she could see smoldering remains of the ship. She shuddered as another chill combined with panic motivated her to search for help. Jyra never thought that she would die from the cold. For the first time, she realized how far she was from home.

The snow deepened as she walked away from the edge. The warmth of her blood faded, her legs seized, and she fell forward into the snow. She lifted her head and saw figures emerging from an unseen opening in the face of the mountain.

Two pairs of hands, protected by thick furry gloves, grabbed Jyra’s shoulders and pulled her out of the snow. She staggered out of their grasp when she was upright and got a better look at the people she hoped were Derek’s friends. They were all similarly dressed in long fur coats and their trousers disappeared into tall boots that began just below their knees.

“I’m Jyra from Tyrorken,” she gasped. “My friend, Craig…he needs a rope…help getting up the cliff.”

Jyra nearly fell forward again and one of the people stepped forward to catch her.

“We’ll get him,” the person said. “But I’ve got to get you inside now.”

“The bags…”

“They’ll get them.” The voice sounded feminine. “Come with me.”

Jyra walked through the snow, following the path the group had made from the cave. Her guide helped her up the rocky ledge. Once through the narrow mouth of the cave, the chill of the wind subsided. A flickering glow on the wall and the smell of smoke indicated a fire nearby. Jyra glanced over her shoulder and saw Craig safely upon the ledge and moving toward the cave with assistance. She rounded a bend and saw a large fire, surrounded by benches, crackling in the middle of the cavern.

“Take a seat,” the woman said. “My name’s Macnelia. I’ll be back in a moment.” She removed her heavy coat and disappeared into another passage. Jyra sat on one of the benches and felt the heat of the flames rush through her clothes with the swiftness of the wind. She turned around and saw Craig, assisted by two figures, staggering into the cavern. Jyra made to stand up, but the larger man gripping Craig below the shoulder waved her back.

“Keep warm,” he said. Jyra thought his voice should have been much lower to match his size.

Two more people followed Craig’s escorts, one of them coiling a rope with gloved hands, the other dropped the bags inside the cavern. Jyra slid sideways on her bench to give Craig space. He sat and looked into the shadowy faces of those who saved him.

“Thank you—” both the men above him belatedly realized it was an opportunity for introductions.

“Berk,” the larger man grunted.

“Leonick,” the second man said.

They pulled off their furs and hung them on the wall. Berk shook his shaggy black hair from in front of his eyes. Leonick pulled a wool hat off his blond hair, which looked bronze in the firelight. The men walked by their guests back to a bench. As they passed, Jyra recognized new smells: smoky clothes and stale alcohol. The fur coats must have concealed the odors.

Craig rubbed his legs and moved them closer to the fire. Though Macnelia still hadn’t returned, the last two people joined the group. They were both women.

“Where’d Macnelia go?” one of them said. Though her coat was gone, she kept a scarf around her neck.

“Probably getting tea,” Berk said.

“Good guess,” Macnelia said, returning from the passage with a large tray of steaming mugs.

Berk and Leonick, who had their backs to Macnelia, twisted where they sat to look at her. Jyra noticed a tattoo on the inside of Berk’s left wrist. It was composed of vertical lines, equal in length. Macnelia set the tray next to Craig and took a seat on the only unoccupied bench on Jyra’s right.

“You meet everyone?” Macnelia said, directing the guests to help themselves to tea.

“Shandra,” the woman with the scarf said on cue.

“Neeka,” the last woman said.

“Now we have,” Craig said with a nervous smile over his mug.

“I think we can tell who’s Craig and who’s Jyra,” Macnelia said. “Are you two all right? Looks like you had a rough landing.”

“Not as rough as the ship,” Jyra said.

“You’d have been warmer in the ship before it fried you in the explosion,” Berk said.

“I’ll show you where you’ll stay and then you two should probably get some sleep,” Macnelia said. “Start getting used to the routine here.”

Jyra hadn’t thought about rest. Despite the smoke in the cavern, the air still seemed as fresh as it had in the ship and it gave her a sense of renewed strength. It was hard to believe only two Tyrorken nights had passed since the funeral. As her thoughts returned to Dario and then to Derek, she felt a hot surge crackle under her skin, a fierce desire to do something to oppose TF. It was too late to save her brother, but what was happening to Derek right now?

“How can we wait?” Jyra said, spilling tea over her hands; she didn’t realize her hand holding the mug shook. “We don’t have time.”

“You two need to recuperate,” Shandra said. “We can’t get you working on the efforts here and have your bodies give up halfway into the tasks.”

“They’re right,” Craig said. “I’m exhausted. It’ll hit you soon.” Jyra wanted to argue, but Neeka diverted the conversation.

“What happened to Derek?”

It took a moment for Jyra to realize that of course no one here would know why a member of the party was missing.

“He was shot in the leg before he could get on the ship,” Jyra said. She didn’t recognize her own voice, but felt her tears gathering.

“TF agents got him,” Craig added. “We don’t know anything after that.”

Neeka’s expression made Jyra wish she had been the one left behind, wounded and captured.

“I thought he was going to try and get more people,” Neeka said, her words distorted by her quivering throat.

Jyra wondered why no one had mentioned Derek’s absence earlier. It seemed like they should have asked about him. Maybe he had told them he was looking for more people. It would have kept them from worrying if he was gone for a long time. But he certainly had been planning on traveling with Craig and Jyra to Drometica.

When Jyra refocused on the room, she sensed a shift in the mood of those in the cavern. Every face showed concern or anger. Only the gentle pops and whistles of the fire spoke into the silence, which lasted until Jyra drained her cup of tea.

“New motivation to execute our plan,” Macnelia said with a tone of finality. “Let’s get you two to bed. We need your help and Shandra’s right. You’ll be useless without rest.”

They all stood together, leaving their mugs on the benches. Macnelia stepped forward and clasped Craig’s hands briefly, then repeated the gesture with Jyra. Then she raised her right hand and touched her fingertips to her forehead and her eyes fixed on Jyra’s Mourning Mark.

“Welcome,” she said. “May your efforts speed the downfall of Tyrorken Fuels.” Jyra saw the others tap their fingers to their foreheads in her peripheral vision.

“Sleep well,” Macnelia added. Jyra thought she might have been imagining the tears in Macnelia’s eyes.

The guests collected their bags and followed Shandra down the passage into the rest of the cave. A string of blue lights hung near the craggy ceiling. The floor was uneven but the rock was smooth.

“This is you,” Shandra indicated a narrow opening in the wall for Craig. “Don’t worry. The room itself is pretty large.”

“Night,” Craig said.

Jyra followed Shandra around a bend in the passage and stopped outside her quarters.

“If you need anything, just keep going down the passage and you’ll find the rest of us,” Shandra said. Jyra felt a little claustrophobic as she looked at the ceiling of passage, which seemed to be getting closer to the floor the longer it ran. How did Berk navigate this?

She thanked Shandra and stumbled into her room, dropping her duffel almost immediately. A washbasin stood in a corner and cot, complete with a thick blanket and soft pillow, had been set up near the opposite wall. Suddenly drowsy, Jyra dropped onto the cot and pulled off her boots, listening to the sound of Shandra retreating in the passage. She wrapped herself in the blanket and took several conscious deep breaths before falling asleep.

*

Jyra woke from her dreamless slumber. The light overhead glared through her eyelids. She sat up and stared around the room. Everything was much clearer than she remembered it. The ceiling was low and thin fissures spread in the granite as though it were a pane of cracked class. The floor was rough and cold. The washbasin was where she remembered it. A dresser of dark wood sat next to the towel rack. Though the room had no door, the entrance from the main passage joggled so Jyra was invisible to those walking by. The controls for the light must be somewhere else, because there was no switch. Jyra rolled over and reached for clothes, but realized her duffel was across the room.

She got up and brushed her hair from her face. The clothes in her bag were cold as if the duffel had soaked the chill from the snow and hadn’t had a chance to warm up again. She pulled on a clean pair of trousers and a button-up shirt. Once she had her boots tied, Jyra ventured into the main passage.

Like her room, she saw details out here that had escaped her the night before. The sides of the passage had been chiseled to widen it: white marks scuffed the stone. She had somehow missed the metallic buttresses placed every few yards. Even when she saw the main cavern, it was as though this was the first time she saw it.

The entire room sloped up toward the entrance passage. Jyra observed how the smoke from the smoldering fire gathered on the ceiling and moved toward the mouth of the cave. The benches were made of some sort of metal, the same that had been used to make the buttresses. The mugs had been cleared away. Two racks on the either side of the room held the fur coats. Jyra felt one of the sleeves. The fur was coarse and thick.

She walked back toward the passage and found Macnelia emerging from it.

“Sleep well?” Macnelia said.

“I did, thank you. It must have been the air here.”

“It’s much better than what you breathe on Tyrorken, I know.”

“You’ve been there?” Jyra asked.

“I used to work for TF,” Macnelia said. “I’m from Jiranthem. A recruiter came to my planet and I thought it sounded like a good job. My mistake.”

“How did you escape?”

“Ran off during a mission to this planet. If I hadn’t known Derek and Neeka, I wouldn’t have survived.”

They began walking down the passage. Macnelia explained how she and Derek had plotted their escape. They had kept their conversations brief and didn’t discuss details at first. Each had been wary of the other exposing the plan.

“TF agents would tell stories of employees who were caught trying to desert the company,” Macnelia said. “I never knew if they were true, but it made one thing clear: I’d only share my plan with one person and only after I had their trust. Up you get, Craig!” she added as they passed his room.

“I don’t remember whether Derek or I noticed the other’s intentions first, but luckily neither of us was going to alert authorities.”

At that moment, the passage opened up onto a cavern three times the size of the one with the fire pit. It reminded Jyra of the pictures in the book Dario had given her of different ship cockpits. Consoles and control panels filled the middle of the room. Neeka sat at one, typing energetically on a keyboard. She shot a cold look in Macnelia’s direction. Jyra blinked and Neeka had returned her attention to a large screen while pushing her blond hair behind her shoulders. The lights of the buttons and panels added a colorful glow in cavern compared to the stark glare of the overhead fixtures. The variety of hues flickered on the granite and reflected back to the floor.

“Morning,” Berk said, raising a mug in greeting. He was standing next to a table in a dim corner where Shandra and Leonick were eating. Both of them waved and Jyra realized they had their mouths full.

“Breakfast?” Berk asked.

“That sounds great,” Jyra said. She hadn’t eaten for hours and now that food was on her mind, all she wanted to do was eat.

“I’ve got some work to do,” Macnelia said. “Go ahead.”

Jyra walked to the corner alone and Shandra handed her a platter of toast and eggs.

“Dig in,” she said.

“Care for a sip?” Berk said, offering his mug.

Jyra accepted, not catching Shandra’s half-hearted interjection, and nearly choked on the stinging drink that had a familiar flavor.

“It’s tea mixed with Nova whiskey,” Berk said. “Sorry.”

“More like Nova whiskey with a drop of tea,” Shandra said.

“It’s fine,” Jyra said. “I could do with a drink, but I need some food first.”

She devoured the toast and was shaking salt on her eggs when Craig appeared from the passage.

“Morning,” Berk repeated. Craig stared at the instruments in the cavern, obviously impressed and surprised to see all the equipment.

“Was there something in the tea last night?” he asked with a yawn as he approached the table. “I don’t remember the last time I slept so well.”

“Yeah,” Berk admitted. “Why do you think the mugs were already poured when Macnelia brought them out?”

“You drugged us?” Jyra said.

Berk replied with another swig from his mug. Having already seen his tattoo, the rest of his arms caught her attention. The veins bulged beneath the skin, as though yearning to burst through.

“Needed you fresh for today,” Berk said. “Didn’t need you asking questions and lying awake wondering what was in store half the night. Plus we’re up against an interplanetary corporation with plenty of influence and money to make us all disappear if they knew where to find us, so we take precautions.”

Jyra didn’t know what to think. She kept eating her eggs, noticing Shandra consuming the remainder of them from the skillet on the stove. Right before she entered this cavern, Macnelia had spoke of the importance of trust and she had deliberately drugged Jyra and Craig.

“They did it to me when Leonick and I got here, too,” Berk said. “Don’t worry. It won’t happen again.”

“All I can do is hope it won’t,” Craig said as he filled a plate from the platter. “We’ve got nowhere else to go.”

“That won’t be true for long,” Shandra said. “We’ve got some missions for supplies that have to be carried out in the next day or two.”

Jyra couldn’t ignore Macnelia’s deception with the tea. And how could Berk be so cavalier about it? Security made sense, but they could have been told right after they emptied their mugs. She looked over at Neeka and thought of the expression she had aimed at Macnelia earlier.

“Why’s Neeka angry?”

“Derek, of course,” Berk said, draining the last of the whiskey in the mug. He produced a flask from a pocket near the knee is his trousers. He tipped it over and refilled the mug.

“Why not just drink from the flask?” Craig said, scooping up eggs with his fork.

“Why don’t you eat your eggs with your knife?” Berk shot back. Then he leaned in and continued speaking with such directness, keeping his eyes fixed on Craig, Jyra couldn’t tell if he was serious. “I’ll tell you why. It’s slower.” With that, he threw back the mug and swallowed the contents in one gulp.

“Macnelia’s got her way of doing things,” he said. “So far, she’s held us all together. This lapse with Derek is the first time something serious has gone wrong.”

“Is drugging newcomers part of her way?” Jyra said. She didn’t mean for her tone to be so bitter. She was well aware that without Macnelia, she would likely have frozen to death on the ledge.

“We’ve already established that it is,” Berk said. “Point is, she won’t always tell the whole truth, but she’s got good reasons for it generally. Take Neeka for example. Macnelia knew something happened to Derek ‘cause he sent a distress signal. At the time, Neeka was crunching numbers, running necessary calculations for a ship to head for Tyrorken from here. Rather than distract her with the bad news about her man, Macnelia told Neeka that something had come up and Derek would be delayed. In the conversation, all Macnelia suggested was maybe Derek was recruiting more people.”

“But he wasn’t. He’d been shot,” Jyra said. “Macnelia was lying outright.”

“Do you know that Derek is not recruiting others?” Leonick said. He was staring at the ceiling and didn’t seem to care whether his question was answered.

“We didn’t know he’d been shot,” Berk said. “In fact, we didn’t even know if your ship was en route. Had it not exploded, we might not have come out looking. A distress signal from Derek could have meant anything, including that the ship hadn’t or couldn’t launch.”

“You didn’t see us come in on radar?” Craig asked, pushing his empty plate away. He nodded toward Neeka’s console and Jyra recognized two locator scopes.

“Neeka’s working on getting our radar system up and running again,” Shandra said. “She’s also prone to anxiety attacks. She’s a brilliant programmer, but she gets too emotional for her own good, especially while working under someone like Macnelia.”

Jyra looked across the room again and watched Neeka, whose fingers twitched over the keys as she stared the monitor while her lower lip trembled. Jyra knew who Neeka was thinking about and doubted the radar would be fixed soon. Macnelia had said without Derek and Neeka, she wouldn’t have survived. Jyra wasn’t sure what such commitment meant to Macnelia if she treated Neeka in such a misleading manner. Perhaps Macnelia was so accomplished at holding back parts of the truth, she wasn’t even aware of when she did it. She recalled how easily her hostess had suggested the fresh air had allowed Jyra to sleep so well.

“Did you say Neeka had been making calculations to send a ship back to Tyrorken?” Jyra asked Berk.

“Yep.”

“So you have a ship?”

“Nope.”

Shandra pulled up an empty chair and sat between Jyra and Craig at the table.

“Since you two are new here, it’s best to get acquainted with the kitchen area. Why don’t you start by doing the dishes? After that, we can sit down and figure out how we’re going to steal a ship.”

Jyra returned the book to her bag as Craig climbed toward her from the cockpit.

“Why didn’t they try to shoot us down?” Jyra said. “They had guns.” Craig shrugged and swept back his sandy hair as he sat in the seat that should have been Derek’s.

“Not sure. I’d guess their bullets weren’t big enough to harm the ship. Or they were satisfied with what they got.”

Jyra stared at the galaxy before her. It seemed terribly unfair that she was finally able to see it, but under such grave conditions she couldn’t enjoy its beauty.

“They won’t kill him, will they?” she said. Craig didn’t reply immediately and Jyra caught him looking at her.

“What?”

“I was trying to think of a general answer to all the questions you’re asking and likely going to ask. ‘I don’t know’ will have to do, I’m afraid.”

“Well, tell me you’re guesses.”

“I guess we should try to activate the scanner so it can tell us when we need to begin landing this thing on Drometica.”

“How do we do that?”

“I’m not sure.”

“How to set up the scanner or how to land?”

“Yes.”

“Perfect,” Jyra said as she climbed into the cockpit. “At least we’re both mechanics so we’re equally inept when it comes to actually flying the machines we work on.”

“Drometica’s the white planet to the left,” Craig said, pointing across Jyra’s shoulder.

She stared at the console, matching controls to what she remembered from the book. Jyra placed her fingertips on a joystick. For the main thrust, she thought. The two levers next to it provide auxiliary thrust for maneuvering to port or starboard.

“The gravitational pull is strong so we shouldn’t have a problem getting to the planet,” Craig said. “Keeping something this small stable while passing through the atmosphere will be the real challenge. There’s a lot of wind to keep all those clouds moving.”

“Wait,” Jyra said. She saw a red cable running in the crevice where the console met the wall of the ship. “That’s a com line. One of the ships we worked on had the same wire and it ran to a display.” She followed the cable and it led to a blank panel above the console on the right wall. Jyra pushed it and the panel flipped 180 degrees to reveal a screen that lit up with a schematic of the nearby planets and features of the galaxy.

“Of course,” Craig said. “Naturally something so important shouldn’t be easy to locate. Now we just need to find the scanner and hope for the best when it comes time to land.”

Jyra glanced at Craig as he pushed himself off the back of her seat. His sarcasm helped put her at ease; it reminded her of their banter when they worked in the garage. Craig moved aft, opened a locker, and stowed their luggage. As silence settled inside the cabin, Jyra couldn’t help but imagine what horrors Derek might be facing in some dark interrogation cell and the torture performed by sinister TF agents. She blinked her brimming eyes, forcing herself to concentrate. The sooner we land, the sooner we can figure out how to save Derek. She thought of him clutching his bleeding leg while she hunted through the options on the screen. Then she reflected that if it hadn’t been for Derek, she would still be on Tyrorken, mourning Dario, unaware that she would be recruited for work at TF as required by a deal her parents had arranged. Jyra swore that she wouldn’t return to her home planet until she had a plan to rescue Derek.

A chime sounded and Jyra saw the screen had changed. She didn’t recognize it at first.

“Good news?” Craig asked, glancing up from the papers he’d extracted from his bag before placing it in the locker. Jyra didn’t answer immediately. “Jyra?”

“I found it. The scanner’s up,” she said. Craig came forward and nodded his approval.

“Perfect timing. I dug out the information Derek gave me. Coordinates on Drometica where we can meet some of his friends.”

“Can we trust them?”

“Do we have an alternative?” They stared at each other, possibly competing to come up with an answer. Craig broke eye contact to survey the screen.

“It’s got Drometica sighted and here’s the data field.” Craig entered the appropriate digits and a status bar appeared at the top of the screen.

“We just need to wait for that to load and we’ll get a course plotted.”

Faced with more silence Jyra indicated the papers in Craig’s hands.

“What all did he give you?”

“We’ve been working on this together,” Craig said, handing over the documents. “It’s all very preliminary and now much of it’s changed. He’s no longer in the position he held at TF and some of our plans depended on his access privileges.”

Jyra tried to read and listen at the same time.

“What kinds of things would you do?” she said.

“Crashing some key networks. Sabotage mostly.”

“Any direct attacks?”

“What?”

“Direct attacks,” Jyra repeated. “With weapons. Killing the top members of TF.”

Craig blinked and a sheepish tone crept into his voice as he spoke.

“We hadn’t gotten that far.”

“Why not? They got that far already,” Jyra said, rising with her voice and pointing over Craig’s shoulder. “We don’t need to kill anyone, but we do need to make a statement of some kind. I want TF to be afraid of us.” She stopped to catch her breath and noticed the furrows forming in Craig’s forehead.

“Right now, the only ‘us’ they need to be worried about is you and me,” Craig said gently.

“I know, but we’re going to get more people now, right?” Jyra glanced at the papers again. “Hold on. Do you know what networks you were planning to disrupt?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “What if it caused accidents in the field? We might kill those who should join us.”

“I meant what I said when I mentioned we didn’t get very far,” Craig said, an edge to his words now. “It hasn’t been easy. Planning should be simpler to do off Tyrorken.”

The chime of the scanner interrupted him. The ship began to orient toward Drometica. Craig leaned in and selected a tab marked “details.” He studied the screen and Jyra tried to make sense of the topographic schematic that had materialized on it. She made out steep peaks of a mountain range. She realized she had always envisioned other planets to at least resemble her own. The oilrig towers and TF headquarters were the closest things that bore any likeness to mountains. Craig double-tapped the screen on a pulsing purple dot. The image zoomed in on the dot and Craig leaned back, exhaling a low whistle.

“That’s impossible,” he muttered. Jyra continued to scrutinize the lines of the schematic and it gradually made sense.

“We have to put the ship down there?” she said, pointing at the purple dot, which flashed between three craggy mountains and next to a deep trench. “Are we supposed to survive the landing?”

“That’s the idea,” Craig said, rubbing his temples.

“Why do his friends live in the middle of the mountains?”

“Probably because they’re the type who incite rebellions.”

“Lots of injustice to resolve in the snow?”

“That’s enough,” Craig said with a wary smile. “This is a much trickier end to this trip than I thought.”

“We’re heading for those coordinates right now,” Jyra said, swiveling nervously in her chair. “How does this thing land?”

“Ideally we’d have a lengthy skid path,” Craig said. “As I said, Drometica’s got an angry atmosphere that will either help slow us down or it might kill us. We’ll have to fire the engine to help us through and to stabilize the ship I think. Once we get out of the atmosphere, then we’ll cut the engine and deploy the parachute.”

“I didn’t think parachutes were used anymore.”

“Surprise.”

“Can we maneuver after we’re hanging from a mushroom?”

“We’ve got navigation thrusters,” Craig said. “It’s just going to be difficult.”

“How did Derek get this ship?”

“He stole it from another repair shop.”

The engine fired automatically, pushing the ship further into Drometica’s orbit. Jyra watched the white and blue planet fill the view from the cockpit. Craig took the papers back to the locker and replaced them in his bag.

Jyra wasn’t sure why the thought appeared in her mind, but she had the sudden suspicion that Derek hadn’t told Craig the entire plan. It seemed far too arbitrary that they were going to meet some friends in the middle of a treacherous mountain range.

Her thoughts returned to Dario when she caught sight of the Mourning Mark upon her forehead reflected in the cockpit window. She wondered if Dario had been the one to approach Derek. Maybe the resistance had been his idea. If only he had told her about it. They could have left, he’d still be alive, and they might already be striking back against TF.

A light above the scanner monitor began flashing. Jyra sat up and took in the scene outside the cockpit. A canvas of gray clouds streaked with white had replaced the panorama of Drometica. The ship shook and Craig lurched into the cockpit.

“That happened fast,” he said with a note of panic. “Get back to your seat and get your harness on.”

Jyra struggled past him and fumbled for the straps of the harness before sitting down. The ship bounced again, like a stone skipping on water. Any second, it was going to plunge.

Jyra’s hands were shaking as badly as the ship as she slid the straps through their rings, lashing her body to the seat.

“I’m turning off the gravity drive!” Craig shouted. Jyra could see he had only secured half of his harness.

“Okay!” she said, hoping he knew what he was doing. A moment later, a wave of nausea rocked her stomach and Craig was trying to finish securing himself as he floated toward the ceiling. The ship jerked violently again.

“Still doing okay?” Craig said.

“No!”

“Good. If you said anything else I’d know you were lying.” Clouds blew across the nose of the ship. As her body protested, Jyra realized how even the clouds, things she’d always associated with calm and peaceful moments, were now causing her great distress. She pressed her head back against the seat, closed her eyes, and hoped for a landing they could walk away from. The engine fired its stabilizing bursts and Jyra was aware of their increasing speed.

Don’t think about the strength of the parachute, she told herself and then cursed her mind.

“We’re through,” Craig reported. He didn’t sound relieved, just sick. Jyra wished he’d kept his voice down when he said, “Where the hell are the flaps?” She retreated into her dizzy brain, summoning the images, calling the console into view.

“Check the left side!” she suggested before hastily closing her mouth. The bile sloshed and burned her throat. The queasiness and sweating set in and she held her breath without realizing it.

As if shooting into a lake, the ship jerked and began to lose speed indicating that Craig had activated the flaps.

“Parachute!” he called by way of warning.

It was too much. The world outside the cockpit was blurred beyond recognition so Jyra couldn’t judge how fast they were going, but her body reacted as the parachute opened behind them. Water, the only foreign matter in her stomach, spewed from her mouth as she heaved against the straps, her head spinning and joints aching. She glimpsed Craig retching as well. Jyra wiped her mouth with her sleeve.

“Now what?” Craig coughed. The ship jerked and a faint whining sound, accompanied by the stench of stressed electrical apparatuses, overwhelmed Jyra’s senses.

“The smell!” she said.

“I know!” Craig fidgeted with the controls. “I need to override the engine. It’s still firing for some reason.”

Jyra tried to recall where the override system might be, but thinking made her sick. Every movement required painful effort.

“Got it!”

The surface of Drometica came into focus through the cockpit. The ship hung under the parachute supported only near the stern. The cables near the cockpit had snapped so the nose of the ship pointed directly at the ground. Jyra felt the pull of the planet’s gravity tugging her against the harness.

“How do I get down?” If Jyra freed herself from the straps, she would fall right onto the glass of the cockpit.

“Carefully,” Craig said. He found a rag and was scrubbing his vomit off the screen.

Jyra reached around the back of the seat with one arm to take her weight off the harness. She started loosening a strap, when something occurred to her.

“Am I going to wish I was still secured in a few minutes?”

“At this point, we’ll be lucky if we can just jump for it.”

“I’d say you can explain to me later how that’s lucky, but it sounds like later’s never coming,” Jyra said.

“Not from a high altitude,” Craig clarified. “The scanner’s processing the final approach.”

The ship swayed from the parachute’s cables as it glided toward mountains that stood high, waiting to greet the spacecraft. The peaks were composed of dark stone, but it was only visible on steep cliffs where the snow couldn’t accumulate. As the ship descended, the wind caught the parachute in its strong breath. Jyra gasped as they flew past the tip of a mountain, barely avoiding a collision.

“Here we go,” Craig said. “I found the nav thrusters.”

“Well use them!” Jyra said. “If they even work when we’re like this. Keep us away from the mountains.

The sound of hissing air filled the cabin. Using the scenery outside the cockpit as a frame of reference, Jyra could tell Craig was maneuvering the ship across the breeze.

“Is the course set?” she said.

“Yeah and we’re getting close.”

The proximity to the valleys and trenches suggested the ship had dipped below the top of the surrounding mountains. The power of the wind increased. Jyra could hear one of the thrusters fighting to counteract the force of the gusts.

“We’re on course!”

Jyra looked out the porthole and found Craig’s news less than comforting. All she could see were treacherous ledges covered in snow. She caught sight of a plateau, just as white as the rest of mountains. The ship wobbled and, as though he took it as an order, Craig began fumbling to free himself from his harness.

“Get the bags out of the locker!” he shouted. Jyra threw her arm over the back of her seat again and pulled the straps loose with her free hand. Another wobble almost shook her grip on the seat, but she held on and swung sideways toward the locker. The duffels fell into her as she opened the door.

“Got them?” Craig spoke right behind her and she nearly dropped the bags.

“Why aren’t you flying this thing?”

“I’ve got the nav thrusters locked to guide us to the landing point as best they can. We need to be ready to go.”

“How exactly are we getting out of here?”

“Quickly,” Craig said. “The ship will hit the ground and we need to have the door open and jump for it when that happens. The wind is going to keep pulling the parachute. I have no idea if the ship will lodge firmly enough in the ice to anchor itself, but if it doesn’t it’s likely going to go off the cliff and I don’t want either of us aboard if that happens.”

“So we should open the door,” Jyra said.

“Yeah. Get the duffels on top of your seat, then we can work on the door.”

The hiss of the navigation thrusters grew louder as Craig shut off the door safety locks. Jyra could see the patch of snow they were aiming for through the porthole. It looked so small, she thought that even if she were directly over the ledge in a stable ship and jumped, she would miss it.

“Prepare to open the door,” Craig said. Jyra climbed on top of the duffels on the back of her seat and braced herself against them and leaned her back on the floor. Craig clung to the side of the seat and tapped the button with his foot.

The blast of frigid air turned their skin to marble. The chill robbed the of any flexibility or dexterity. It continued to pound them and they had to turn away, huddling where they were as the mountain weather invaded the ship.

Craig shielded his eyes and pushed himself forward, trying to catch a glimpse of their landing location.

“Twenty seconds!” he shouted over the howling roar of air. “Toss the duffels when I tell you!”

Even the cold couldn’t still the fear and adrenaline charging through Jyra’s body. It hurt to breathe; the pure oxygen of the cabin had been flushed by the punishing wind. She grabbed one of the duffels and shoved it forward. All she could see outside was white.

“Bags now!” Craig ordered. Jyra launched them as hard as she could. She gritted her teeth from the effort and felt her muscles protesting. The ship struck the mountain and lurched. Snow billowed into the cabin.

“Jump!” Craig said, hauling himself into the doorway. Jyra swung off the seat and grabbed the doorframe. Craig jumped and vanished into the white beyond. The ship jerked again with a second impact. Jyra suspected it was scraping the ledge. She let the thought go and allowed no more enter her mind as she pushed off, leaping into the unknown.