Page 141 of The First Spark
“Destroyers. Seven of them. The stargate’s blocked, and warplanes…” Zane glanced at Kalie, and the words stuck in his throat. Blood matted her hair and coated her skin. The bandages around her thigh were soaked.
His throat swelled shut. This couldn’t be happening. Not Kalie.
“Cybel!” Mira yelled. “Zane, listen to me.”
The blood had drained from Kalie’s face. Her eyes were closed. When he blinked, he knelt over a body on Oppalli. Blood crusted Lysa’s hair and her lifeless eyes stared up at him. When he blinked again, it was Kalie in his arms, and he was screaming her name.
“Zane!”
The ship lurched again.
“If you want to make it out of this alive, listen to me!”
Alive. He needed to keep Kalie alive.
“Cybel’s going to hack into the mainframe and remotely maneuver your ship. I need you to read me the serial number and switch the controls to autopilot. Do you hear me?”
Zane crawled across the steel floor and removed a wall panel. The sixteen-digit serial number was etched into a metal block. As he read the code to Mira and flipped the switch to autopilot, his ship veered away from an incoming laser.
“Good. I need you to talk to me, Zane. Tell me what’s going on.”
He stared at her.
“Status report, Marine!”
A switch flipped in his mind, and he slid into his chair, scanning the room. A wounded noncombatant was sprawled in the seat beside him.Kalie. A cluster of warplanes trailed him. They’d left Etov’s atmosphere and were following the nav computer’s route to Renan, and an ally, Cybel, was controlling the ship.
“Etov was compromised. Three destroyers here, and one on each of the neighboring planets. The closest available stargate is over Renan, but that’s at least a forty-minute flight. Kalie’s wounded. I don’t have any medical supplies, and she needs immediate attention.”
He could shave the time down. The motions came back to him, and he seized the lever regulating the heat, lowering it to zero. Cold seeped into his toes and chilled his skin.
“Lowering the heat,” he said, shivering. It was risky; Kalie needed to be kept warm. But more than that, she needed to be alive. “Frees up more power for engines. It should cut the time to…”
The math eluded him, but Mira nodded. “Good. Lower the oxygen levels, too. That should cut the time to Renan in half.”
With shaking hands, Zane twisted the knob regulating the oxygen level. He flicked off the lights, too. On the energy readout, eighty-five percent power was diverted to the engines and thrusters. That would get them there in… twenty minutes? Twenty-five?
“I’m on my way, but I won’t get there in time. Head for Renan’s gate. Gar has an outpost across the border in Seven. I’ll have him send a frigate to meet you after the first connector.”
An explosion boomed, and as a laser struck the hull, Zane lurched into his safety harness. Seizing the cannons, he tapped a plane on the radar and fired. The ship burst into flames.
“Do you hear me, Zane?”
“Yes, I hear you!”
“Good. Thought I lost you there for a second.”
Another blast connected with the hull, and the ship lurched into a steep dive. The planet Ason loomed before them, but a black shadow blotted out the stargate.
Mira’s holo turned away. “Dammit. I have to go. Cybel will keep?—”
Her crackling projection disappeared.
“Mira?”
No response. He was alone.
The ship rocked, and he threw his arms up. Fires tore across the viewport. He punched a flashing button on the dashboard; gray foam spurted onto the glass and squelched the flames. He tapped a plane on the radar and squeezed the trigger. It exploded, and its comrades met the same fate.
