Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
"Buckle in, everybody, we're heading out," Sinclair said over the ship-wide comms.
Pride had the pilot's seat, and Edward had the co-pilot's spot beside him. If he angled his head, he could just see Sinclair at the comms console.
"Firing up the engines, Captain," Pride said, with a glance at Edward.
Right. He was the acting captain now.
Edward nodded.
Pride's fingers fluttered over the console. Once. Twice. A pause, then a third time, slower and more deliberate, before, finally, he shook his head. "The engines are offline. So's navigation. All we've got are thrusters, and we won't get far on those."
Edward gritted his teeth. "Show me."
Pride brought up the display, pointing to one error message after another. Nothing was working, and even when Edward tried to reset them, like he had the food fabricators, the errors remained.
"Are those systems usually controlled by the Central Intelligence?" Sinclair asked suddenly.
"Of course. No one's crazy enough to navigate through the asteroid field without a big-arse supercomputer with lightning reflexes at the helm," Pride said.
"Switch it to manual," Sinclair said, suddenly leaning over the seat between Edward and Pride.
Stars, he could smell her. Soap and something sweeter he couldn't identify, just like she'd smelled yesterday when they'd kissed. What he'd give to do that again…
"You can't fly on manual controls through an asteroid field!" Pride squawked, his eyes wide with fear. "Guard, tell her she's crazy!"
"What's crazy is sitting here, waiting, when we should be headed back to Tito.
" She pointed at Edward. "As the captain of this ship, you have the authority to change the operating system settings.
Normal mining ships do have to go to manual, when they're out of range of the Central Intelligence.
There's enough computing power in the ship's databanks to chart a course to Tito. Flip the controls to manual."
Pride threw his hands up into the air and pushed away from the console. "I can't fly this ship on manual. I'll get us all killed."
Sinclair snorted. "Then get out of the pilot's seat. I'll fly us home. Because you're sentencing us to a slow death right here on this asteroid, if we stay here and wait for help that's not going to come."
To Edward's surprise, Pride surrendered his seat to Sinclair.
"Get back to your cabin and buckle up," Sinclair said over her shoulder as she strapped in. "Give me the controls, Captain." She didn't even look at him as she spoke – she had eyes only for the console in front of her.
Edward swallowed. Fae couldn't lie, he told himself, as he disabled the prison ship security protocols. Now it was like any other mining ship. He prayed he wasn't making a horrible mistake.
"Can you actually fly?" he asked.
Sinclair screwed up her nose. "Technically…
maybe. I've kicked his arse every night on the flight simulators in the rec room, and I hold the current record for the asteroid belt flight path.
Of course, on the sims I fly a space yacht, not a century old mining ship, but it shouldn't be too different. "
So they could die out in the asteroid field, or die here. Or, by some miracle, they might survive…
Sinclair smiled at him. It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
"Relax, Captain. I'll get you to Tito. Or at least out of the asteroid field and into clear space, so autopilot can take care of the rest."
Against his better judgement, he believed her.