Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
Elena
The raiders hit before I could process what Will's last words meant.
Tell her to live. That's an order.
I didn't have time to fall apart. Didn't have the luxury of grief or guilt or the crushing weight of knowing Will had sacrificed himself so two people could survive while I'd been aboard Mothership eating three meals a day and sleeping in climate-controlled quarters.
Vaxon's hand clamped on my arm, dragging me backward as weapons fire scorched the bulkhead where I'd been standing. The sound ricocheted through the narrow corridor, high-pitched whine of energy weapons followed by the sizzle of superheated metal.
"Move!" His voice cut through my paralysis. "Now, Elena!"
Training I didn't know I had kicked in. I ran.
The derelict shuddered around us, ancient metal groaning under the assault.
Through my helmet display, I saw the raider ships, three of them, small and agile, weapons systems lighting up like predators circling wounded prey.
They'd been waiting. Probably monitoring the debris field for salvage opportunities.
We'd led them straight to Will and Lisa.
Rage burned through the shock. These scavengers wanted to pick over the remains of my dead crewmates, steal the last remnants of Liberty, and profit from our disaster. Over my dead body.
"Elena, status report." Vaxon's voice stayed level despite the chaos, but I heard the edge underneath. Fear, carefully controlled. "Can you get the shuttle operational?"
I pulled up the shuttle's systems on my wrist display while we ran, my free hand gripping the datapad with Will's final log. The damage assessment scrolled past, not good. Not good at all.
"Main engines took a direct hit. Shields are at eighteen percent and dropping. We've got partial maneuvering thrusters, but we're sitting ducks until I can reroute power and bypass the damaged systems."
"How long?"
I did the calculations in my head, factoring in the jerry-rigged repairs I'd have to perform with limited tools and raiders actively shooting at us. "Fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty if the power couplings are fried."
"You have ten."
"Vaxon—"
"Ten minutes." His voice went hard, commander mode fully engaged. "After that, their ships will be in optimal firing position. They'll cut through what's left of our shields and breach the hull. Ten minutes, Elena. Make it work."
I wanted to argue. Wanted to explain that physics didn't negotiate and engineering had limits and I couldn't just magic a working shuttle out of damaged components and hope.
But the look on his face through his helmet visor stopped me.
The absolute certainty. The unwavering faith that I could do the impossible because failure meant death.
So I'd do the impossible. Again.
We reached the shuttle's docking port as the first raider boarding party breached the derelict's outer hull.
I heard them through the thin walls, the clang of magnetic boots, harsh voices speaking a language my translator struggled to parse, weapons fire as they cleared compartments searching for survivors and salvage.
Er'dox's voice crackled over the general comm. "Commander, we have hostiles in sections three and seven. Pel'kra and Jov'eth are holding the perimeter, but we're outnumbered three to one."
"Fall back to the shuttle," Vaxon ordered. "Defensive formation. Priority one is protecting Elena while she works."
"Negative," I cut in, already stripping access panels from the shuttle's power relay. "Priority one is getting Will and Lisa's stasis pods aboard. They don't survive if we leave them behind."
Silence. Then Vaxon, dangerously quiet: "Elena—"
"Non-negotiable." I met his eyes, saw the ice-blue flare with something that might have been anger or might have been respect.
Hard to tell with Zandovians. "You said I need to choose what I'm fighting for.
Well, I choose them. Will gave up his life for those two people. I'm not leaving them to raiders."
For three seconds, he just stared at me. Then: "Er'dox, Yren, retrieve the stasis pods from compartments two and three. Sax'ka, provide cover fire. Pel'kra, Jov'eth, defensive positions at the docking port. No one gets through to Elena."
"Understood, Commander."
The team moved with practiced efficiency, and I forced myself to focus on the work.
Ignore the weapons fire getting closer. Ignore the way my hands wanted to shake as I traced power conduits and isolated damaged circuits.
Ignore the weight of Will's datapad in my utility belt, his final words playing on repeat in my head.
Tell her to live. That's an order.
The shuttle's main power coupling was worse than I'd hoped, not just damaged but partially melted, the superconducting alloys fused into useless slag.
I'd have to bypass the entire system, reroute through secondary and tertiary conduits not rated for engine power loads, and pray the whole thing didn't explode when I brought the engines online.
Piece of cake. Just like every other impossible task I'd tackled since landing on this alien ship six months ago.
I worked fast, fingers flying through connection sequences while my brain ran probability calculations.
Seventy-three percent chance the bypass would hold.
Eighty-nine percent chance I could restore minimal shield capacity.
Forty-two percent chance we'd make it out of the debris field without catastrophic system failure.
Better odds than we'd had during the wormhole. I'd survived that. I could survive this.
Weapons fire intensified. Through the open docking port, I glimpsed Vaxon and his team engaging the raiders, controlled bursts of energy weapons, and tactical positioning that turned the narrow corridors into a killing field.
Vaxon moved like violence personified, all lethal grace and absolute precision.
Every shot found its target. Every movement served a purpose.
He was magnificent. And terrifying. And I absolutely could not afford to be distracted by how my stomach flipped watching him fight.
"Elena, update." His voice cut through the combat sounds, steady despite the chaos surrounding him.
"Power reroute in progress. Engines at forty percent capacity. Shields—" I pulled up the diagnostic, swore viciously. "Shields are gone. The emitters are offline. I can't fix them in time."
"Can you fly without shields?"
"Can you fight without armor?"
"I have before."
Of course he had. Because Vaxon was apparently invincible and suicidal and why did that combination make my chest tight?
"We'll be vulnerable to direct hits," I said, forcing my focus back to the work. "One good shot to the engines and we're debris. But I can get us mobile. Get us running."
"Running is enough. Just get me an exit route."
Er'dox and Yren appeared at the docking port, carrying the stasis pods between them with careful urgency.
The pods were intact, thank god, power cells at critical but still functioning, vitals reading stable for both occupants.
Will Peters and Lisa Tran, alive by the narrowest margin, held in technological suspended animation by Will's brilliant, desperate engineering.
I couldn't look at Will's pod. Couldn't see his face through the frosted viewport. If I looked, I'd break, and I couldn't break yet. Not until everyone was safe.
"Pods secured," Er'dox reported. "Raider forces are regrouping. They're bringing heavier weapons."
"How heavy?" Vaxon dropped back to our position, took cover behind a bulkhead. Energy fire scorched past his head, close enough that I felt the heat through my suit.
"Plasma cannons. Enough to cut through this bulkhead in approximately ninety seconds."
I keyed in the final connection sequence, watched the power flow stabilize through the bypass. "Engines online. We're flight-ready."
"Everyone aboard. Now." Vaxon moved to the docking port controls, began the emergency separation sequence. "Elena, pre-flight checks?"
"Skipped. We're flying on hope and jury-rigged circuits."
"My favorite kind of flight." His marking patterns flickered, not fear, I realized. Amusement. The massive Zandovian warrior was actually enjoying this insanity.
Men. Alien men. Whatever. They were all crazy.
The team scrambled aboard. I slid into the pilot's seat because no one else knew the modifications I'd made, and Vaxon dropped into the co-pilot position despite it being comically small for his eight-foot-eight frame.
His knees hit the console. He adjusted without complaint, hands moving across the tactical displays with the same lethal efficiency he'd shown fighting.
"Separation in three," he announced. "Two. One. Release."
The docking clamps disengaged. The shuttle lurched away from the derelict, and I immediately felt how wrong everything was. The ship handled like a drunk elephant, sluggish response, power fluctuations sending shudders through the frame, warning alerts screaming about a dozen critical systems.
But we were moving. That's all that mattered.
"Raider ships adjusting intercept vectors," Vaxon reported, his voice clinical. "Weapons locked. Firing."
The first volley hit our port side, and the shuttle spun. I fought the controls, using the erratic maneuvering thrusters to our advantage—unpredictable trajectories were harder to target. Another hit, this one aft. Alarms blared about hull breaches in non-critical sections.
"I need a flight path," I said through gritted teeth. "Something with cover."
Vaxon's fingers flew across the tactical display, calculating angles and trajectories faster than the shuttle's computer. "Asteroid cluster, bearing two-seven-three mark six. Dense formation, multiple collision hazards."
"Perfect." I banked hard, pushing the damaged engines to their limits. The shuttle screamed in protest, metal groaning, systems redlining, every component performing beyond rated specifications because physics was more of a guideline than a rule when your life depended on it.