“Jyra Kyzen.” Serana switched off the microphone and replaced it on the hangar wall. Jyra sank further into her chair, hoping no one would ever hear her voice played back.
This hangar was much larger than the one she had visited that morning. It wasn’t much wider but at least four times the length. The center of the hangar was kept clear for service traffic. At this hour, many mechanics had retired for the evening. Four ships were parked on the left wall while three stood on the right.
“This way,” Serana said.
Jyra followed her toward the mouth of the hangar past the line of four ships. Her breaths were short and her heartbeats seemed to echo all around her, reverberating through the cavernous room. Serana glanced back at Jyra and saw her knuckles locked around her wheels, the color draining beneath the skin.
“This ship made it back today,” Serana said, knocking a fist against its hull as she passed it. “We’ll return, too.”
Jyra nodded. She had been through so much. What was different about this mission? Flying into a forest to rescue people seemed much more straightforward than bombing the TF complex.
“I know,” Jyra muttered thickly. Her tongue didn’t want to leave the base of her mouth. This would be easier if I wasn’t in this chair, she thought. Between her feelings in the control room earlier and departing for the mission, Jyra felt more inconvenienced than ever by her wounded leg.
As they neared the end of the hangar, voices obscured the tromp of Serana’s boots.
Three people stood next to a ship that, compared to the others in the hangar, seemed rather small.
“We’re taking this?” Jyra said, hoping her voice didn’t betray her doubt and fear.
“I wouldn’t take anything else,” Serana said with her usual smile before turning to the group.
“Thank you all for coming,” she said. Jyra circled around to join the others, two men and one woman. She parked next to a man who glanced down at her. He was dressed in a black flight suit. The color matched his short hair and eyebrows. His eyes were wide set, but his endearing smile eased Jyra’s fears.
“Ditch the wheels,” he said. Though Jyra hadn’t seen his face before, she recognized his voice.
“Del?” Jyra said, staring at him. His voice sounded different without the hazard helmet altering it.
“Kip Deleanor,” he said, extending a hand. “That’s my full name.”
“Jyra Kyzen,” Jyra said. “That’s my full name.”
Kip nodded and lifted something from behind his back.
“Serana thought you’d want this.”
He passed her a crutch. Jyra couldn’t help but laugh. She accepted it and placed it under her arm. Kip helped her out of the chair and Jyra stood with the rest of the team. She was still nervous, but most of her fears remained with the chair that sat empty on the hangar floor.
“Everyone, this is Jyra,” Serana said. “You’ve met Kip and this is Rina and Fritz.”
They exchanged brief nods before Serana pressed on in a much more serious tone.
“We are initiating a mission to recover all passengers and crew of transport Emarand Liberation. A report indicates enemy rounds damaged the ship and forced an emergency landing. No casualties, though several passengers have medical conditions that require constant treatment. Drenal went with the mission and is doing all he can to assist passengers, but they’ve been on the ground for seven hours at this point. Two hospital scouts are sweeping an area fifty miles north of Emarand Liberation’s location as I speak. They’re closing in.”
“I assume the scouts are too close to send in a ship to collect everyone and abandon Liberation,” Rina said. Jyra noticed one of her fingers compulsively twisting through the ends of her blonde hair.
“Correct,” Serana said. “We can fly in undetected, but the closer the scouts get, the easier it is for them to see us. And because they are scouts, you can bet they’ll investigate any abnormal reading they detect. Liberation has to get out on her own. The scouts will see her, but that’s where we come in.”
“Radar knockout?” Fritz grunted. He was larger than Kip and the deep lines on his cheeks made it look like his frown never left his face.
“Indeed,” Serana continued. “Liberation will get beyond our blast zone and we ensure the scouts get close enough then we can disable their navigation and radar.”
“Any details on what’s wrong with Liberation?” Jyra asked.
“One of the pilots hiked an hour or so away from the crash site to contact us so the signal wouldn’t give away his position to the enemy,” Serana said. “He only got a quick look before he left, but the control lines to the starboard engine were definitely blown away. They lost a stabilizer as well. Aside from that, we don’t know. Any other questions?”
Everyone shrugged or shook their heads.
“All right,” Serana said. “Let’s load up.”
“You’ve got repair parts?” Jyra said, limping up beside Serana.
“Everything we know we’ll need,” Serana said.
“Where’d you store it?” Jyra asked, giving the ship a skeptical look.
The top of the ship curved down toward the cockpit and sloped to the two exhaust ports at the rear. The twin engines attached to pivoting brackets on either side of the ship. A pair of stabilizer fins attached above each engine. The cabin door slid back into the hull, revealing a cramped hold with four chairs and a narrow passage to the cockpit.
“You can say the ship’s small if you want to,” Serana said.
“It just doesn’t look like it’s right for the mission.”
“It was designed for it,” Serana said. “She’s a modified stunt skiff called Detritan. Some of the other ex stunt pilots and I came up with the idea. Stunt skiffs are ideal for gathering intelligence and evading pursuers. Detritan is built a little larger to accommodate crew and supplies. She’s not quite as nimble as a true stunt skiff, but she’s still one of the fastest planet-bound ships we have.”
Jyra managed to clamber into the cabin with some assistance.
“You’re in the cockpit with me. Injured person’s privilege,” Serana said. The others had already taken their places in the compact cabin on the small chairs complete with bulky harnesses. Fritz took up more room than anyone and looked twice as uncomfortable. Jyra wondered if he’d volunteered for this mission or if Serana had coerced him into it.
Jyra limped and ducked into the cockpit. She glared at the harness on her seat as a spasm of pain seared through her shoulder. It won’t happen again, she thought.
Serana flipped three switches and the low whine of the engines coughed to life from the stern. Jyra studied the cockpit, partly to figure out the controls and partly to find a place to stow her crutch. This cockpit looked similar to the ship she had inspected with Serana, Graze, and Kip.
“Sorry,” she said. Serana gave her a curious look as Jyra wedged the crutch between the foot of the console and the rear wall and took her seat. “I have only a general idea of what a stunt skiff is.” It seemed a lifetime ago Berk had explained many stunt pilots lived on Silanpre.
Jyra decided nerves must trigger Serana’s smile. Ever since they entered the hangar, the corners of Serana’s mouth were upturned. They twitched now and then, but it seemed as though she had no choice but to keep grinning.
“It’s smaller than this,” Serana said, taking the cyclic between her knees. She eased the lever away from her and the engines roared. The howl filled the hangar and Jyra was sure the noise would wake half the base. How is this considered a stealth vessel?
Jyra’s skepticism must have registered on her face, because Serana laughed and leaned toward her.
“Don’t worry,” she hollered. “It quiets down once the engines heat up.”
Black smoke billowed around Detritan, coiling and twisting in thick clouds.
Jyra coughed on the smell of the fumes as she identified the nav computer and brought it online. Serana continued preflight procedures and handed Jyra a scrap of paper.
“Punch that in,” she said.
Jyra glanced at the paper and chuckled.
“These don’t look like coordinates.”
“Encrypted,” Serana said. “Standard coordinates in a nav system are easy to hack. Just enter them as they’re written. The ship knows what to do once we’re clear of base interference.”
Jyra tapped the appropriate keys, green lit up the monitor, and the computer set a course.
The engine noise disappeared so abruptly, it seemed as though the whole ship shut down.
“Close the door!” Serana commanded. Kip obliged and Serana glanced at Jyra.
“Now we’re ready,” she said. “Hang on. You’ll never have more fun flying in anything else.”
She pulled two levers back and Detritan shuddered as the launch thrusters fired. Jyra watched the floor of the hangar fall away from the cockpit as the ship rose toward the steel ceiling trusses.
“Watch that beam!” Jyra shouted, stiffening in her seat.
The words had hardly left her mouth before Serana leaned forward. The launch thrusters cut out and Detritan lurched ahead, dropping away from the ceiling and tearing toward the hangar exit.
The floor filled the view from the cockpit. Jyra plunged her fingers into the armrests, certain she was about to rip the upholstery loose.
Serana leaned back, taking the cyclic with her. Detritan leveled out, its belly nearly skimming the last stretch of the hangar floor. Serana brought the ship under the rollup door into a dark cave beyond.
Detritan’s lights reflected off jagged slippery boulders below. The dingy walls and roof of the cave huddled in shadow. Jyra only caught glimpses of what lay beyond. She couldn’t believe Serana was flying at such speed in close quarters. Jyra tried to keep her eyes shut. Flying Berk’s pod out of the mountain on Drometica had taken seconds. This cave never seemed to end.
“All clear,” Serana said.
Jyra opened her eyes to see damp walls no longer surrounded them. The congregation of stars arranged themselves overhead, casual observers of the forest and mountains below Detritan.
“How did we leave the base?” Jyra asked.
“Through an old lava tube in one of the mountains,” Serana said. “Detritan’s too valuable to be left outside.”
Jyra could barely see the trees beneath them. In the open air, Jyra saw what Serana meant about the near total silence of the engines. Kip and Rina were chatting and their voices alone made it hard to hear the purr of the ship.
“How long until we get there?” Serana asked, keeping the cyclic locked in place.
Jyra checked the monitor.
“Just under an hour,” she said. The number suddenly dropped, then increased. “Hold on.”
“It’s the mist,” Serana said. “Sorry. We need to wait for a moment.”
She glanced to the south. The sky was even darker there, but a distant flash of lightning illuminated the thunderheads.
“The clouds are coming in from the ocean,” Serana said. “Hopefully we don’t get caught in that.”
As Detritan flew west, however, the storm hastened its approach. Jyra didn’t like the prospect of fixing Emarand Liberation in a downpour.
“Couldn’t we shoot down the scouts to gain enough time to get a rescue ship to fly everyone off Liberation?” she asked. Serana shook her head.
“We’ve crossed swords with the enemy too much for one day,” she said. “Every interaction is a risk. The hospital might acquire something that leads them to us. We blow them out of the sky, other ships will take their place. It’s time to give stealth a shot.”
Serana descended until they cruised two hundred feet above the forest. The nav computer finally generated an accurate reading.
“Forty minutes away,” Jyra said. “How fast are the scouts moving?”
“Depends how thoroughly they’re scanning,” Serana said with a shrug. “We might get a visual on them before we land.”
“How close are we?” Kip called from the cabin.
“Forty minutes,” Serana replied.
“I suppose my leg can stay asleep that long,” Rina said.
Fritz only coughed.
*
“Looks like we’re beating the storm,” Jyra said.
“We’d better be,” Serana said. “If we weren’t traveling across its path, we’d have left it behind long ago.
Jyra tapped the monitor as a wave of interference passed across it. Her eyes narrowed with suspicion, but before she could say a word, Serana spoke, her voice tense and sharp.
“Hold on everyone!”
Jyra gripped her seat as Serana sent Detritan into a steep dive. The trees below stood still in the tranquility that preceded the storm. Serana brought the nose of the ship up, returning to a cruising course less than fifty feet above the forest canopy.
“Over there,” Serana said, pointing.
Jyra stared toward the hills that replaced the mountains. She had to scan the ridgeline for a few moments before she saw them. Under the stars, two ships each cast a bright white beam of light. They moved methodically, crossing back and forth in front of the other, combing the ground below.
“Liberation is on this side of those hills, right?” Jyra asked.
“It’d better be,” Serana said. “What’s the computer say?”
“Five minutes from the crash site,” Jyra said. “And we need to turn further north.”
“Perfect,” Serana said warily. “That brings us closer to the scouts.”
“Does anyone on Liberation have a radio we can use to reach them?” Jyra said.
“Even if they do, we can’t use it,” Serana said. “Those scouts are already too close. They might hack the signal. Speaking of that, kill the computer.”
“What?”
“You heard me,” Serana said. “Take it offline. They might detect it.”
She nodded toward the patrolling beams of light.
“We have to finish the search by sight?” Jyra said, as she shut down the nav software and prepared to switch off the computer. Serana only nodded, her face grim in the dim lighting of the cockpit.
“I plan on being the finder, not the found tonight,” she said.
Detritan decreased speed as Serana limited the fuel supply to the engines. Nearly all the navigation functions were mechanically controlled on stunt skiffs. The cyclic repositioned the engines by way of the pivoting brackets. Tugging a cable activated a set of flaps on the larger pair of stabilizers. Cutting fuel to one engine, while flooding the other allowed the pilot to make sharper turns.
Jyra leaned forward, the better to survey the forest slipping by beneath her. Both she and Serana saw breaks in the forest ahead, but they proved to be either empty clearings or lakes.
“Anything yet?” Kip asked.
“Negative,” Serana replied.
Based on the speed with which the flight began, Jyra didn’t think she would ever have to worry about Serana flying too slowly. Now, however, Detritan’s nose bucked several times, as the ship fought gravity.
Serana gunned the engines enough to turn to the left to sweep over the forest in a new direction.
“Doesn’t hurt to look around,” she muttered. “The computer only gets us in the general area.”
They changed direction again. Jyra realized they were circling back to where they broke off from their original trajectory. Fritz coughed again.
“Keep your eyes open,” Serana said.
A gust of wind surged from the south, bending the trees and pushing Detritan toward the scouts.
“There!” Jyra said, pointing. She couldn’t tell how the trees shifted, but several red lights had been visible beneath the foliage for a moment. Serana brought the ship even lower. Jyra felt the treetops brushing the belly of the skiff. Detritan glided sideways, and the crash site appeared below.
“They must have dropped straight down,” Serana said. “They didn’t leave a landing trail through the forest.”
She took her ship into the clearing, drifted over a small patch of clear ground, and cut the engines. Detritan fell and the launch thrusters caught the skiff at the last moment so that it settled lightly on the forest floor. As the crew assembled outside, they saw two people approaching from Liberation.
A few emergency beacons on the crashed ship were the only source of light, save the stars. From a distance, the ship looked like most of the hospital transports the resistance had stolen.
Rina jumped up and down several times, trying to normalize her circulation. Fritz had an arm inside his jacket. For a moment, Jyra thought she saw a muted red flash reflect off his jacket sleeve. Kip saw it, too.
“What are you hiding?” he asked. Jyra couldn’t tell if he meant the question to be sarcastic or serious, but Fritz didn’t answer.
Instead, his arm lashed from his side, punching Kip to the ground as he wrenched his other arm from his jacket. Jyra’s eyes went wide as she staggered on her crutch. The object in Fritz’s jacket was only a little larger than his hand. A small red light flashed on one end with a frequency Jyra recognized as the rate of a transmission. Fritz was sending his position to someone.
Both Rina and Serana charged at him. Fritz lobbed the transmitter across the clearing. Rina turned, mid-sprint, and planted her feet. Simultaneously, her hand flashed to her hip, pulling her gun loose. The transmitter flipped end over end, the edges glittering in the starlight. Rina fired once. Just before the transmitter plunged into the trees, the bullet blew through it. The red light went dark.
Fritz seized Serana as she plowed into him. He exploited her momentum, using it to flip her over his shoulder and throw her to the ground. Kip kicked from where he lay; his boot crunched into Fritz’s knee. Fritz grunted as he collapsed. His hand caught a nearby tree and he started to pull himself back up, but Jyra had closed in on him by then.
Careful to keep her weight off her injured leg, she gripped her crutch like a sword and struck Fritz in the face once, then twice. His arm clutching the tree went limp from the second blow and he fell face first onto the grass.
Rina helped Serana to her feet. Jyra replaced the crutch under her arm before offering Kip her hand. His cheek was already swollen and he looked dazed as she pulled him up.
“Another spy,” Rina said and Serana nodded, rubbing her back.
“My fault,” Serana said. “I was in a hurry. He didn’t show undue eagerness or fear. They’re getting too good at fooling us. Nice shot,” she added, nodding at Rina. “By the time we located the tracker in forest, the scouts would be on us. If they aren’t here in thirty seconds they didn’t get our location.”
“Is everyone okay?” a voice called. The adrenaline from the struggle had pushed the Liberation crew from Jyra’s mind.
“All clear now,” Serana called. “Approach.”
A flashlight beam flared as two men stepped into view behind Detritan’s engines.
“Pilot Terrance Higgs,” the first man said before indicating the shorter man with the light. “This is my copilot, Dirk Mallard.”
“Serana Makrinn, pilot of your rescue mission,” Serana said. “This is Jyra Kyzen, mechanic, Kip Deleanor, mechanic, and Rina Dranas, security.
“Who’s the ground man?” Dirk asked, aiming the flashlight at Fritz’s body.
“Spy,” Rina said. “I blew his tracker to pieces, hopefully before it beamed our entire position. Cover your ears.”
She stepped forward, gun in hand, and put two bullets into Fritz’s back.
“If his tracker did give us away, they weren’t listening. Let’s get to work,” Serana said, after the last echo of the gunfire faded. “We don’t have much time. Jyra, you can’t carry much of anything. Head to the ship now and begin assessing the damage. Everyone else grab supplies.”
Liberation was ten times larger than Detritan. The moment she limped around the skiff, Jyra could see the dents and smeared soot on the hull of the fallen ship from across the clearing. Once she stood beside it, she saw the engine control lines hung loose as reported, mangled just forward of the cowling. Only the twisted stabilizer mount remained. The emergency beacons didn’t provide enough light for Jyra to examine much else.
The voices from the main cabin distracted her. The door was ajar. She considered looking inside, but she heard the others approaching. Serana and Kip dropped a refurbished stabilizer on the grass.
“We’ll need a ladder,” Kip said.
“Or two,” Jyra said, looking at the stabilizer. It wasn’t heavy, but it would be rather ungainly for one person to handle. Except for Fritz, Jyra thought. Why did he have to be a spy? And why did Rina say “another spy?” What did Serana mean by them fooling us?
The blast of Rina’s gun sounded in her memory. It gave way to the voice of the guard in the shipyard on Drometica. “Converge on number nine’s position! Intruders! Repeat, intruders!” Despite the professional tone, Jyra still heard fear in the guard’s voice. The crack of Berk’s shotgun shook her skull. Even in her thoughts, it drowned out the sound of Rina’s pistol. Jyra clamped a hand to her temple, reacting to the dull thud of the guard’s lifeless body landing on the floor of the engine room.
I wonder how Berk is doing, she thought, trying to push the memories away. She didn’t have time to be thinking these things. Her thoughts about Rina killing Fritz as he lay unconscious threatened to overwhelm her, but she clenched her hand on her crutch with such force it felt like her palm would blister.
A drop of rain struck her face. Rina dumped two toolboxes on the grass and passed Jyra a headlamp.
“You’ll have this ship flying in about ten minutes, right?” she said. She smiled and returned to Detritan to haul more supplies. How is she able to joke right now? Jyra thought, pushing her hair back while strapping the lamp around her head.
One toolbox contained tools and a variety of ship parts filled the other. Jyra dug through the parts box as the sparse raindrops struck her arms and the back of her neck. Despite the storm she experienced when she arrived on Silanpre, the feeling of rain had lost none of its novelty.
At the bottom of the box, her hand closed on a tin canister. She unscrewed the cap with trembling fingers.
“Control lines,” she said, pulling the end of the armored flexible tubing from its package.
“Excellent,” Serana said, falling to her knees as she set a supply crate down. She crawled forward eagerly, shining her headlamp into the parts box.
“Those should be the right diameter,” she said. “We’ll still need the splice couplings. They’re in there somewhere. I’m going to check out the bottom of the ship.”
Serana flopped onto the ground, facing the sky. As she prepared to pull herself under Liberation, she winced. When Fritz deflected her attack, she had landed squarely on her back.
“You all right?” Jyra asked. The glow from her headlamp reminded her of the white beams of lights from the scouts and she fought to ignore a sudden jolt of nerves.
Serana’s eyes gleamed against her eyeliner in the light of Jyra’s headlamp.
“Just another day,” she said, before sliding under the ship. “Get those lines hooked together!” she added just before her feet disappeared.
Jyra uncoiled the roll of control line tubing. It felt as though her hands were pulsing with her heart. Her fingers felt warmer than usual as she cut the lines to length. She caught sight of the scar on the back of her hand in her peripheral vision. First day of work, Jyra thought. That’s what I get for rushing.
Kip set the last supply crate on the grass behind her with Rina’s assistance.
“Give me a hand,” Jyra said, crouching awkwardly on the ground as she slid the splice couplings onto the control lines.
Rina strode forward from the crate toward the ship. She tugged the door back and curious faces poked into view. Several children held their hands out to feel the rain. Thunder echoed in the distance.
“We’ll get you on your way soon,” Rina said, as the people near the door began murmuring questions. Jyra saw most of them surveying the sky. The trees hid the scouts for now. Once they were visible from the crash site, it would be too late.
“Are you in charge of this mission?” a voice asked, but Jyra recognized it.
“Drenal?”
His face came into view, his eyes twinkling in the dull light of the emergency beacons, his smile as wide as ever. When he turned toward her, Jyra saw a deep gash on his forehead. Streaks of dried blood congealed above his eyebrow.
“Are you all right?” Jyra asked, abandoning the last control line on the grass.
“I’m a doctor,” Drenal said. “I can deal with it. How’s the leg?”
Jyra glanced at it and shrugged.
“Feels better since you rewrapped it,” she said.
“That’s my specialty,” Drenal said. “No one knows wound dressings better than me.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
Jrya saw someone tugging Drenal’s sleeve and he retreated inside the cabin with a small smile.
“Wrenches,” Jyra said, talking herself back to the task. Kip had already trimmed the ends of the mangled lines so they were ready to bond with the couplings. They tightened the compression fittings over the splices to reconnect the lines.
“Ready to check engine control,” she said. “We need to start on the stabilizer.”
“Hold off on power up tests!” Serana called. “We’ve got trouble under here and we don’t need any circuits getting fried.”
“Not too much trouble, right?” Rina said, jumping out of the cabin. “Those scouts will pick up their sonar waves bouncing off the hull if they get much closer.”
“Hard to say,” Serana said. “We’ve got exposed and severed wires.”
Jyra’s leg prevented her from scurrying under the ship to check the damage herself.
Just as well, she thought, holding one of the lines while Kip tightened it in place. One thing at a time. Finish this and move on.
Kip stepped off the ladder to pick up the next control line. His forehead crinkled as he twisted the couplings. He gave Jyra a small smile, his black eyebrows lifting slightly.
“Once you’ve got that last connection tightened, you can prepare this last line here,” he said.
“How much time do we have?” Jyra asked.
“Not much,” Rina said from above. “They’re moving to the east.”
Rina had been checking the ship’s cabin moments ago. Now, she stood on top of Liberation, her eyes fixed to the north. Her blonde hair shimmered against the gathering gray clouds.
“The east?” Dirk the copilot asked. He walked around the nose of his crashed ship.
“Correct,” Rina said.
“Good,” Dirk said. “I left a distraction behind.”
“What is it?” Rina said, refusing to break eye contact with the scouts.
“I hiked away from the crash site before contacting base,” Dirk explained. “After reporting our position, I dropped a transmitter when I headed back to the ship. That’s probably what they’re tracking.”
“Fritz almost did the same thing to us,” Kip said. “Except he was on the wrong side. Good thinking, though,” he added to Dirk. “You bought us some time.”
Dirk nodded, then turned away when Terrance called him from inside Liberation.
At the mention of Fritz’s name, Jyra heard the gunshots that killed him again.
“How many spies make it into base?” she asked.
“Couldn’t say,” Kip said. “Once they’re in, though, the mist scrambles any transmitters or locators they might try to use. We have stations near the base outside the dead zone to boost our radio traffic in and out. They are mobile and moved often to avoid detection. It’s an isolated system only a few people can access. If a spy is caught trying to contact the Allied Hospitals from base, they get treated much worse than Fritz.”
“Wouldn’t the hospital notice all their equipment losing contact in the area around the base?” Jyra asked.
Kip shrugged as he secured the control line to the hull.
“Most of them would enter the dead zone in ships with shielded cabins in transports like this,” he said, knocking a fist against Liberation and tucking his ratchet into one of his many pockets. “They can’t transmit from inside them either.”
“What if the Allied Hospitals locate base?” Jyra said.
Kip bit his lip then beckoned for the control line Jyra had fitted with the splice couplings.
“If they find it, they’d better have the wisdom to keep their distance,” Kip said. “We have no record of any enemy ships getting anywhere close to us.”
Jyra suspected Kip didn’t want to discuss the matter further. Serana reappeared from under the ship. Thunder growled with a low, extended note. Serana eyed the sky and shook her head.
“Seems I’d be happier under the ship in a couple minutes,” she said, brushing dirt and grass off her legs.
“Really?” Jyra said, raising an eyebrow. “It’s better down there than out here?”
“Not a chance,” Serana said. “I need to grab fluid to refill these lines. There’s a light at the work area down there. Soldering iron and solder should be in one of the toolboxes. Get busy.”
By the time Jyra located supplies, the rain had started in earnest. Jyra didn’t realize she’d paused to feel the drops, until Rina reported the scouts were returning to their standard course.
Jyra crawled under the ship, pushing her tools before her. The glare of the work light negated the need for a headlamp. The smell of smeared grass and dirt mixed with the acrid stench of overheated steel and scorched wires.
Jyra reached the work area and saw what Serana meant. Three panel covers were missing, which allowed several low voltage cables to spill from the confines of the ship like entrails. Liberation had landed on a fallen tree. Unfortunately, the ship hadn’t made a perfect vertical landing as Serana had supposed; it had skidded on the trunk, dragging its wiring right through the pinch point between bark and hull. Jyra noticed insulation from the wires clinging to the lichen in the downed tree.
With a heavy sigh, she rolled onto her back, switched on the soldering iron, and got to work. She could hardly hear the shuffling footsteps in the cabin over the rain drumming on Liberation’s hull.
A plume of smoke billowed from where the tip of the solder touched the heated wire. The smoke coiled and spread against the underside of the ship. Jyra remembered walking into the shed behind her parent’s house to find Dario bent over circuit boards with a soldering iron. The smell in her memory mingled with that of the cooling solder before her.
Jyra worked fast, clutching the two severed ends of a wire together, heating the conductors, and applying the silver bond. Despite her speed, she had only repaired a quarter of the cables when the cuffs of her trousers grew damp as the rainwater advanced under the ship.
Something heavy hit the ground with a splash beside Liberation. Several curses followed the sound and Jyra realized Kip and Serana must have dropped the stabilizer.
“At least it’s waterproof,” Kip said, as he bent to retrieve it.
By the time Jyra moved onto another cluster of small wires, both of her calves were soaked. A cramp developed in her wounded leg. Thunder roared again. The smell of the heated solder filled Jyra’s nose. Water pooled around her elbows, running in from the opposite side of the ship. The grinding noise of an impact gun rose over the thunder and rain.
The moment Jyra started on the last wire, something heavy hit the ground again. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Rina scramble out of the mud. She must have jumped from the top of the ship.
“They’re heading right for us!” she yelled, as another round of thunder covered her words.
Two pairs of feet struck the mud next to the legs of the ladders positioned near the aft end of Liberation. Adrenaline drove its icy knife through Jyra, colder than the water soaking into her clothes.
“Jyra!” Serana shouted. “Tape up what you’ve soldered and get out of there!”
Jyra dropped the iron, which hissed in protest then shorted in a puddle.
“I don’t have anything to reattach the panel covers!” she yelled. Serana fell to her hands and knees to look at Jyra. Her eyeliner streaked her cheeks and her wet hair swung around her face.
“Don’t worry about that!” she said. “You’ve done enough to get this piece of junk in the air. Just tape everything up so no wires get crossed!”
Jyra began binding up the soldered joints as Serana commanded. While wrapping the second to last connection, her skin brushed a bare conductor and her muscles locked. The wire carried live current.
Her head and slipped sideways and a puddle was rising around her lips. The first thing Jyra registered was the soldering iron, half submerged next to her nose.
Then a hand closed around her good leg. That’s right, one of my legs still hurts, she thought numbly. Kip’s voice returned her to reality.
“WE NEED TO MOVE!” he bellowed.
Jyra was drenched. She opened her mouth to speak, but only coughed, spewing muddy water. Kip tugged on her leg and she slid a few feet.
I almost drowned in a puddle, she mused to herself. No one had to worry about that on Tyrorken.
Then she regained full comprehension of what was happening. Rina’s warning about the scouts and Serana’s command echoed in her ears.
“I didn’t finish yet!” Jyra protested.
“It doesn’t matter!” Kip replied. “We’re under attack!”
Jyra felt him dragging her from beneath Liberation. The work light remained behind. In its fading glow, Jyra saw a white burn on her index finger. They powered up the ship without telling me, she realized with a surge of anger. The electrical shock could have killed her.
Suddenly, the hull began to vibrate and a roar, louder than the thunder overhead, filled the clearing.
“What’s happening?” Jyra shouted, feeling another rush of adrenaline course through her.
She couldn’t hear Kip’s reply but read his lips just before the work light blew sideways, shattering its filament: “They’re taking off!”
Liberation lifted into the air. The launch thrusters pinned Jyra to the grass and made it feel as though her eardrums were about to burst.
A missile streaked above the trees faster than the shooting stars Jyra used to watch from her parent’s porch on Tyrorken. It missed Liberation, but Jyra noticed sparks flying from the cables she’d partially repaired. Just make it to base, she thought fiercely.
“Move!” Kip said. Her stood over Jyra with a hand outstretched. He pulled her upright and held her arm around his shoulder. They ran for Detritan, but couldn’t see it through the downpour, nor could they see the second missile.
A cloud of fire, water, and mud materialized as the projectile detonated on impact with the ground. Jyra screamed and Kip automatically collapsed, pulling her down with him, knocking her headlamp free. Metal and soggy earth tumbled around them. Jyra never heard the explosion, but the whine of Detritan’s engines filled her ears instead.
“Wait!” she shrieked, but Serana and Rina were already in the air. Another missile struck where the modified stunt skiff had just been. Jyra struggled to her feet, waving her arms at the departing ship.
“Get down!” Kip shouted, but it was too late. The same beam of light Jyra had seen from afar fell upon her.
She sank onto the mud, shielding her eyes against the glare, which grew brighter. Jyra tried to crawl, but bullets struck the earth right in front of her. Kip seized her leg again and she turned to see him shaking his bruised and mud-spattered face.
“It’s no use,” he said, his eyes blinking away the rain. “They’ve got us.”