Chapter 7 #2
In the east hangar, my skimmer waits under its cover like a secret trying not to vibrate. Sleek, a little vain, painted the exact color of midnight if midnight could flirt. Sneed grounded it after the last time we borrowed our idea of good behavior. Sneed underestimates CynJyn’s pettiness.
“Cloned the lock last week when he grounded it,” she says, flipping a coin-sized device against the access pad. “Blessed be hubris.”
The cover rolls back with a sigh. The cockpit lights blink awake, soft and welcoming, like a bar that knows our order.
I slide into the pilot’s chair and the leather exhales against my spine.
My fingers find the controls like they’re bones I was born with.
The canopy seals; the cabin fills with the smell of ionized air and old, good oil.
“Ready?” CynJyn asks, buckling in, grin wild and bright.
“No,” I say, hands trembling on the yoke. “Yes.” I breathe. “Yes.”
“On my mark,” she says, eyes flicking to the perimeter feed she’s spoofed on her wrist. “Three, two—now.”
I ease the skimmer up, gentle as a secret.
The hangar door slides, slow and silent, into the roof.
Night pours in, crisp and tasting faintly of stone and salt and maybe forgiveness.
The courtyard shrinks beneath us; the house spreads out like a map I don’t have to read tonight.
We slip through the Gate Seven blind spot as the cycle flickers.
No alarms sing. No Sneed-shaped shadow stands in the doorway.
The stars stretch out before us, cold and clean and full of answers I’m not ready for but going toward anyway.
The old shuttlepad on the outskirts looks like a scrapyard trying to remember its glory days—floodlights half-dead, wind shoving grit in sideways sheets, a corrugated hangar yawning like a missing tooth.
The skimmer sighs as we set down, and CynJyn’s already unclipping, eyes bright with the kind of mischief that gets saints demoted.
“Left bay,” she says, jabbing a finger toward a row of doors painted ceremonial white. “The pretty one with the chrome fins. That’s the royal showboat. They park it out here so no one scuffs it by accident.”
“By accident,” I echo, palming sweat off my lip. “We’re more… intention-forward.”
“We’re philanthropists,” she corrects, kicking the skimmer hatch open. “We’re liberating an underused asset for a very worthy cause: your lungs.”
The wind hits—cold, metallic, laced with old fuel and rain.
Gravel crunches under our boots. Somewhere behind the hangars, a night-train moans and the sound folds into the city’s low thunder.
I shove my braid inside my collar, squint through flying grit, and follow CynJyn to a personnel door with a keypad that’s seen better fingers.
“Talk to me,” I say, stealing a glance at the sky—star-pricked, indifferent.
“I flirted with this lock last summer,” she says, cracking her knuckles like a stage magician. “We had a moment. She’ll remember me.”
“She?”
“Always personify your crimes.” She pops the cover, coaxes out a ribbon of wires, and sighs like a lover. “Hello, old friend. Did you miss me?”
“Tell her the feeling’s mutual,” I mutter, shivering as a gust sneaks fingers down the back of my jacket.
The keypad coughs, surrenders a tired green.
The door unlatches with a sound like a secret giving up.
We slip inside and the hangar swallows the wind.
It smells like wax and ozone and the starch of unused canvas.
Overhead, strip lights flicker awake in a reluctant ripple.
The cruiser sits under a ceremonial tarp the color of milk, shape sleek and ridiculous—long flares, gleaming nacelles, a nose like a smug rumor.
CynJyn whistles. “There she is. The crown’s favorite peacock.”
“She’s gorgeous,” I say despite myself, fingers itching to stroke the fabric covers like skin. “You’re sure security’s—”
“Looped. Smurfette spoofed the cams for six minutes then scheduled a ‘fire test.’ Every lens on the property will be very busy staring at a holographic extinguisher parade.” She flicks her wrist pad and the tarp unspools up into the rafters.
Chrome winks. Painted sigils pout. The cruiser preens, even asleep.
“Keys?” I ask, heart galloping.
“Please.” She tosses me a coin-sized chip. “Starter’s in the console. I’ll handle bay doors.”
We move with the economy of people who’ve been caught before and learned.
I climb the ladder rungs to the cockpit and the leather breathes out something expensive when I drop into the pilot’s seat.
Controls gleam, everything too polished, too ceremonial, the way clothes feel when someone else chose them.
The difference is I’m the one touching the throttle.
My pulse thuds in my throat like it’s trying to kick the cage.
“Power,” CynJyn says over the intercom, voice tinny and thrilled. “Doors arming. Two minutes of grace if anyone gets clever.”
“Copy,” I say, and the word tastes like sinned sugar.
I slot the chip into the cradle. The console blooms cobalt, a halo of soft chimes cascading like poured glass.
Systems scroll: flight, nav, life support, VIP climate control set to ‘regal.’ The ship hums awake under my hands, the vibration a cat settling.
“Say it,” CynJyn prompts, hands hovering over the big red bay toggles. “Say the thing.”
“I’m not saying the thing.” My smile tries to break free anyway.
“Say the thing, Star.”
I inhale. “Preflight complete. Chickens disgusted. Let’s go.”
“Captain’s orders,” she laughs, slamming her palm down.
Hydraulics protest; the hangar doors shudder, then begin to rise, night knifing in under the lifting lip.
Wind shoves a ribbon of dust across the polished floor.
The cruiser’s external lights blink to life, casting us in soft gold like an apology in advance.
For a breath, I don’t move.
I just sit there, fingers curled around the yoke, watching the slice of outside grow from ribbon to horizon.
The city is a necklace of small lights, and beyond that the black mouth of the sky waits with its old, patient hunger.
The hesitation hits hard and fast—like vertigo, like grief, like standing at the top of a diving platform and remembering water is a choice.
There’s a word in my mouth that tastes like a bruise I keep tonguing.
CynJyn hears the silence change. “Talk to me.”
I lean forward until the windshield fills my vision, until the wind’s moan threads the edges of the ship’s hum, until all I can smell is ionization and the lemon-clean ghost of fresh polish. I press my lips to the heel of my hand like I’m telling a secret to a saint.
“Rayek,” I whisper, and the sound disappears into the soft machinery like a coin into a fountain.
“Okay,” CynJyn says, and she doesn’t tease. “Okay.”
I push.
Thrusters spool. The cruiser glides, first cautious, then sure, nose cutting the last of the hangar’s shadow. Air wraps us; the floor under my boots reminds me we’re not on it anymore. The acceleration lays a warm hand on my chest and presses me back into the leather like a promise kept.
“Altitude steady,” CynJyn calls, eyes flicking between a perimeter overlay and the raw joy on my face. “Traffic clear. Say goodbye to the consequences of your birth.”
“Goodbye, consequences,” I say, and grin so hard my cheeks hurt.
We slip over the fence line like a rumor.
Below, the scrub unspools in dark strips, then the vineyards combed into neat waves, then the river jittering silver under scatterlight.
The estate shrinks into geometry, then into a suggestion, then into nothing and everything at once.
I feel the city’s breath let go of us when we skim past the last grid tower; the sky opens its jaws.
“Punch it whenever,” CynJyn says, already buckling herself tighter. “We’ll clear atmosphere in two. I set the autoplot to the back door out of airspace. Kaspian’s attaché will have to file a poem to catch up.”
“Coordinates?” I ask, because asking is easier than thinking, easier than feeling my heart try to climb into my mouth.
She grins, feral. “Rook’s Rest. You know it?”
“Smuggler breakfast place,” I say, laughter bubbling up uninvited. “Sausage pies. Broken jukebox. The server with the gold tooth who calls everybody ‘captain’ and nobody ‘sir.’”
“That’s the one. No questions, plenty of grease. We’ll hide in their shadow while I run interference on every nosey ping Sneed’s gonna shoot our way.”
The cruiser shivers as we hit the thinner stuff, and the sound inside goes from air to light.
Stars sharpen. The planet curves under us like a shoulder turning.
The cockpit smells like leather and static and the faint, guilty sweetness of a ceremonial air freshener trying to convince us we’re important.
My fingers flex on the yoke. The ship flexes back.
“Ready?” CynJyn asks, and she doesn’t wait for the brave lie. “Three, two—”
“Go,” I say, and the engines stop purring and start singing.
We launch.
The pressure is a steady hand, firm and possessive, the kind that knows how hard to hold without bruising.
Akura falls away in layered blues and thin clouds, the atmosphere dragging its nails across the hull as if to mark us.
The sound ramps into the bones: a rising hymn of engineered thunder.
My teeth hum. My ribs hum. My fear hums and then lets go.
“Gods,” I breathe. “Oh.”
“Uh-huh,” CynJyn crows, rocking with the climb. “That’s the sound of not being a chess piece.”
The sky goes black at the edges, then at the center, then everywhere.
Stars punch through—cold, clean, sudden—and I swear I can taste them, iron and ice on the back of my tongue.
The planet rolls under us, banded with clouds, freckled by cities.
The glass throws ghost versions of our faces over the view, and for once I don’t hate the girl looking back.
“Say it,” CynJyn prompts, softer now. “Say how it feels.”