Page 61 of Tail, Dark and Handsome: Celestial Mates
“Oh.” Silence. Then, “The door is stuck.”
If luck was on her side, she could turn the ship around. They’d lose days but get to keep everything unperforated, which was her preferred state of being.
“Stand back,” Winter said. A tool box sat open at his feet and he swung a wrench at the control panel. It sparked and the air smelled of burnt wiring, but the locked released. Using his claws, he dug into the seam and slowly worked the door open. When the gap was wide enough, Mari joined in. The door protested but rolled back on the track.
The entire time, Zero babbled apologies. She shimmied through, ignoring him. There was no time if she wanted to keep the ship from being Swiss cheese. She had no idea what the “Swiss” part of Swiss cheese meant—apparently it had something to do with old Earth—but it was the mild cheese with holes in it. That was what she wanted to avoid.
“Visualize your goals,” she muttered, slinging herself into the pilot’s seat. Not being Swiss cheese. Goals. She called up the navigation screen and did calculations in her head.
“Ever fluffing mother fluff.”
“That is good?” Winter stood in the door, Zero crowding behind him. “Your face says that it is bad.”
“I could turn us around, but we don’t have enough fuel for the journey.”
“The nearest station, then,” Winter said, as if she hadn’t set the computer to search for the nearest port of call and calculated the distance with available fuel.
“None that I can see, but the computer is calculating. We’ve got about ten minutes before staying the course is our only option.” She rolled her shoulders to ease the tension she carried. First, she needed to reduce speed. If they had to do it the hard way, she wanted to do it at a crawl.
The ship lurched with deceleration. Zero made a panicky whimper. Her heart was in her throat too.
“That was on purpose. Stopping fast is not elegant,” she said.
Zero seemed unconvinced. He pressed himself into his father’s side, truly showing his age. Fourteen was old enough to think you knew better than all the adults, but still young enough to want your father to hug you when things got scary.
Not to say that feeling was exclusive to youth. She wouldn’t mind a squeeze from Valerian right now. Her mother had a way of talking about little things that made the big things seem less overwhelming. Better.
“You know what’s great about a ship like this?” she asked, barely pausing for an answer. “They’re designed for comfort, yeah, and frequent entries into planetary atmospheres. A ship like this is not nimble, but it is sturdy, so a little shudder like that is nothing,” she said. Zero seemed to calm at her words. “I still don’t understand how you changed the route. It was locked.”
“I used the override code. They never changed it from the factory settings,” he said, peering up at her from Winter’s side.
That cheeky…
Mari wanted to share with Winter exactly what she thought of Zero’s behavior, but his furious expression implied he was on the same wavelength.
The computer chirped, calculations finished.
“Luck is not on our side. We have to go through the asteroids,” she said. Panic threatened to swell up inside her. She took a deep breath and slowly released, letting it draw out the stress and anxiety. She could do this. She would do this.
“Zero, go to your cabin,” Winter said.
“But Dad—”
“No. We will discuss your punishment later.” The unspoken wordsif we survivehung in the air.
“Fine. Fiiiiiiine,” Zero said with a surprising amount of attitude for a meddling child whose shenanigans might get them Swiss-cheesed.
Winter watched his son retreat. “He carries my heart and nothing will change that, but he is a manipulative little shit,” he said at length.
Mari hummed noncommittally, not wanting to say anything detrimental as she wasn’t Zero’s biggest supporter at the moment.
“I will change the codes when the crisis has passed,” he said.
“A little late, but good thinking. And I’ll start monitoring the flight plan. I never thought to check. Based on fuel usage, he changed course a week ago. I should have caught this immediately.”
“Are you able to traverse the field? We can turn around and send a distress signal.”
“And risk pirates showing up? No thanks.” Rich men were like chum in the water.
