Page 11 of Rebel
The planet loomed below us, and then we were burning through its atmosphere. Hurtling down through flames. The shuttle shuddered and jolted, and I gripped Vex’s hand and Lore’s thigh.
The Athion made a strangled sound, but then there was nothing but the roar of our exit from the stratosphere and into the atmosphere of the planet. Orange-tinged skies gave way to blue as we descended.
“Fuck!” Tide cursed some more in a language I didn’t understand.
“What is it?” Lore asked.
“The fucking coordinates were off. We’re miles from the damn station.”
There was a huge expanse of orange and yellow land beneath us.
“We’ll go in buggy mode,” Xavier said.
“Which will get us halfway across the damn dustlands before we run out of fuel.” He gritted his teeth. “Coming in to land.”
The shuttle expelled a jet of fire, slowing our descent, and then we touched down on the dusty ground as light as a feather.
Xavier hit some buttons, and the shuttle began to whirr, and then we were in motion, rolling across the land toward the horizon. The tense silence was back until Tide broke it.
“I don’t understand how the systems could have gone down like that,” he said. “I checked everything last night before handover. We were at full power. We were fine.”
“Yes, well, a hull breach can fuck things up,” Xavier snapped.
“We’re in hyperspace,” Tide said. “There are no meteor showers in hyperspace. No debris can move fast enough to touch us.”
“Then it was an internal malfunction.” Xavier turned on Tide. “If you’re going to accuse me of something, then just fucking do it. Otherwise, shut the fuck up and steer.”
Tide clamped his mouth shut. From my vantage point, his profile was stiff and stern. He was pissed and blaming Xavier.
I sat forward in my seat. “Enough. It doesn’t matter why the systems went down. Dwelling on it won’t change the fact. We’re here now, and we need to focus on the present. On getting to that station and sending a signal to Athion.”
“It’s not that simple,” Lore said. “The signal bounces to the next station and so on, and we wait and hope that an Athion ship tuned in to the frequency picks up the distress signal.”
“But there is somewhere we can wait, right?”
“The station is stocked with supplies,” Xavier said, one eye on Tide’s profile. “We’ll be fine.”
A vein in Tide’s jaw ticked. “Right.”
I sat back and shook my head. “You’re telling me this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to you?”
Xavier snorted.
Lore let out a bark of laughter, and then Tide’s tense jaw eased. “There was that one time we were surrounded by Trad ships …”
“Ha, the maneuvers we had to make,” Lore said.
“Or Gannet V,” Xavier said. “Remember the snitch we did on that planet?”
The guys chuckled.
The tension was relieved.
Thank God.
Vex leaned in and whispered in my ear. “Nice move.”
I shrugged. “Just survival. Every time something bad would happen on Vesper V, I’d remind myself of something worse or imagine how the situation could be worse. Believe me, there was always a worst-case scenario, usually ending in death.”
