Holy Mordir. She was going to die.
Zane sucked in a hitching breath. He had bandages. He could make a tourniquet. Then…
Then what?
As he turned to Kalie, his jaw dropped. Her head lolled to the side. Her hands had lost their grip on the shirt.
“Kalie!”
She didn’t stir.
His throat sealed as he dragged her into the cockpit, strapping her into the co-pilot’s chair. With shaking hands, Zane unrolled the bandages, wrapped them around her thigh, pulled them tight and knotted them. His crumpled shirt was stained red. Flicking open his pocket knife, he cut the excess bandages from the makeshift tourniquet, wrapped them around the shirt, and tied it around her wound.
The chair was covered in crimson fluid.
He needed help, needed to call someone. She was bleeding and there was so much blood…
Alarms wailed as the ship lurched violently. The dashboard beeped, an explosion boomed, and the ship shook again.
Zane dropped into the pilot’s seat as black warplanes streaked by, spraying red lasers at his ship as they shot into the atmosphere. He grabbed the controls and threw the ship out of the way. Shoving the control sticks aside, he gripped the cannons and squeezed the trigger. The ship rocked. He groaned as his ribs slammed into the dashboard.
Blinking spots from his vision, Zane looked down at the atmospheric radar. Fifty thousand feet above the ocean. He inhaled sharply, cut the engines, and threw the ship into a nosedive. His stomach dropped as the ship plummeted; alarms whined and fires raced along the ship’s hull. The temperature meter shot up. A blast clipped their left thruster. They spiraled downwards.
Ten thousand feet. Five thousand feet.
Flames reflected on the waves, casting them in shades of red. Lightning split the sky.
Eight hundred feet. Five hundred.
Black warplanes streaked after him, unloading a barrage of lasers.
One hundred feet.Now.
Zane grabbed the controls and wrenched them upwards. The hull of the ship skimmed the roiling waves as he strained against the lever. Ships crashed into the ocean, and water sprayed the viewport as a flash of lightning struck a warplane down. Then his ship lurchedup, and they rose into the air, leaving the wrecked enemy planes behind.
The radar whined. Another cluster of warplanes, incoming.
Dammit, he couldn’t do this alone.
He fumbled in his pocket for his holocomm, but it was a splintered mess of wires and scrap. He gritted his teeth, then his hand closed around a small sphere, and he let out a puff of air. Thank Mordir. Pressing his thumb into the crevice shaped for it, he set it on the dashboard.
“Zane?”
A holoprojection of Mira’s head appeared in front of him. Her eyes widened, and the background shifted as she leapt to her feet.
“What’s going on?”
They’d been attacked, he was trying to escape Etov, and they were going to die. It sounded logical in his head, but what came out was, “I can’t—I think she’s dying and it’s my fault?—”
“Zane, calm down and tell me what’s happening.”
An explosion thundered, and their ship jolted. “Left thruster destabilized,” a robotic voice warbled. “Engines down to fifty percent power.”
Zane stared at the diagnostic scans. The left thruster was gone.
“Are you under attack?”
Mira. Right, she was talking to him. Why had he called her? Help, he needed help…
