Chapter 55 Lacy
Lacy
I was sucking in air by the time we reached the shuttle and I wasn’t sure that I would ever lose the tension in my shoulders. I put my palm on the outside and rested a moment, trying to catch my breath.
“You can rest when you’re dead,” Burn hissed from behind me. “Get your ass in the shittle and get ready to boogie.”
“Shuttle,” I gasped, in between breaths.
“I. Don’t. Care,” Burn ground out. “Get. In. There.”
“I’m going, I’m going.” I hauled myself through the open door and stumbled into the cockpit.
After we were off this damn planet, I was going to sleep for a week.
Then I’d figured out what to do with the rest of my life, since I was pretty sure that Layla’s big reveal had nuked my relationship with Dax and the rest of the crew.
Practically on autopilot, I ran through the pre-flight checklist, saying each step out loud so I wouldn’t forget one.
I didn’t want to miss a step, especially since this was a new-to-me shuttle that had been tinkered with by people who probably didn’t know what they were doing.
We’d gotten here in one piece. Now I had to make sure we got back to Fortuna safely.
I was tired, stressed out, and probably running on pure adrenaline by now, but there was some exhilaration there too. We’d found Layla and she was okay. Or, at least, she seemed okay.
As I ran through the checklist, there was a thump on the roof of the shuttle. I froze. It was followed by the sound of scrabbling up there. “Um, Burn, I think something just attacked the shuttle. Can you take care of it?”
Her laughter rang through the shuttle. “That was me, you idiot. I’m up here watching their backs.”
My cheeks flamed and I was glad that I was alone in here. “Oh, uh. Okay. Thanks.”
That actually helped ratchet down part of my stress level. Knowing that she was watching my sister’s back—and Dax’s—made me feel a lot better. I was able to run through the rest of the pre-flight checklist a lot quicker knowing that there was another layer of protection for the people I loved.
Loved?
Well, shit. There went my concentration again.
Only having done this a million times before helped me make it through the last of the checklist. All the while, my brain was scrambling to make sense of the emotions I’d just admitted.
Love. Pfft.
Sure, that might be what I felt for Dax, but I’d probably blown it all to hell when I didn’t tell him that I was Blazer’s daughter.
A pang in my heart confirmed my suspicions.
“We have incoming,” Burn said.
Heart in my throat, I asked, “Ours or theirs?”
“Ours.”
“Good.” I flipped the ignition switch and was rewarded with a smooth purr from the shuttle. “We’re all set here.” Lowering my voice, I patted the console. “Thank you, baby.”
When we left Kottke, I wasn’t leaving her to the mercies of those bastards. She deserved better. And Dax and his team could use a shuttle for Fortuna in their cargo business.
“Be ready to launch when I give you the word,” Burn said.
I kept my hands on the controls and strained to hear anything happening in the back.
All I heard, though, was the rush of blood in my ears and my breathing, which had slowed but wasn’t anything approaching normal.
My dad always said he got “in the zone” on missions. Apparently, I didn’t get that gene.
Waiting sucked. After what felt like forever, someone boarded the shuttle. I heard movement, but no one spoke. “Burn?” I kept my voice low, but there was no disguising the anxiety in my voice. “Was that ours?”
“Yep.”
Ugh. I hated this.
There were more footsteps behind me. “Please let that be them, please let that be them,” I muttered under my breath before I turned around.
“Them who?”
I jumped at Mercer’s voice. “You asshole!”
He laughed.
“Where’s my sister? Is she on board?”
“She’s fine,” he said, “just a little green around the gills. Dax is strapping her in. At least she missed him when she puked.”
A rush of sympathy for my sister filled me. “But they’re okay?”
“Yes, they’re okay. I’m fine, too, thanks for asking.”
Turning back to the controls, I rolled my eyes even though he couldn’t see me. “What about Orion? Is he on board?”
“Yep, next to Dax,” Mercer said.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Burn swing down from the roof like a gymnast, uncurling and landing with her feet just inside the door. “We’ve got incoming.”
“Bad guys?” With everyone on board, that was the obvious answer.
Mercer slid into the co-pilot’s seat. “Time to go.”
I pulled back on the controls and the shuttle hovered over the ground.
With slow and steady movements, I aimed the shuttle toward town. “Let’s see how fast you can go, baby,” I whispered. The quicker we got back to Fortuna, the quicker we could be airborne and off this backwater planet.
Shots pinged the outside of the shuttle and my heart jumped into my throat.
“Why doesn’t this thing have weapons?” Mercer snarled next to me.
I glanced over at him. “Because it’s a shuttle. You want weapons, you buy ’em. I’ll install them.”
“You could do that? Give our little shittle some claws?”
“Yes. But only if we’re in one piece. So shut up and let me fly.”
More shots pinged the outside of the ship. “Aren’t you going to do something?” I yelled over my shoulder at Dax.
“Burn and Orion will take care of it.” He sounded way too calm for me.
I took a moment to glance back. Burn and Orion were each hanging out one of the open doors. They were firing at whoever was following us. Burn was laughing like an idiot, the same way she had when we’d picked her up from Pangaea.
“You guys are crazy,” I muttered.
“Get higher,” Mercer said. “They might have more trouble hitting us.”
I increased our altitude and aimed for town. And hoped our ammunition outlasted our pursuers.