I stared at it, slowly turning back to her. She had to be joking. “Absolutely not.”
Elias barked out a laugh. “See? Terrible idea.”
Kit crossed her arms. “It’s fine.”
Kit’s spacecraft looked like she’d bolted thrusters onto a cargo crate and decided to see what might happen. It was tiny. In fact, I was pretty sure it was a leftover escape pod welded to a jet thruster from one of the shuttles.
“It should survive,” she added. “It will at least get you to Station Nine.”
“Should?” I repeated, pushing off the floor to drift past it.
“I would fly it right now if Elias would let me. It’s barely one hundred and forty kilometers to Station Nine.”
I snorted. “Yeah you might have lost my support, Kit. I think I’m team Elias now.” My gaze drifted to the other side of the bay, where against the far wall sat a much oldercraft. Faded markings stretched across the hull plates. It was a government issued transport. I bounced toward it, landing against the side with a dull thud. “I’ll take this one.”
Kit groaned behind me. “Oh, come on.”
I ran a hand along the metal plating. It still looked better than Kit’s welded-up cargo crate.
“That one has an automated flight system,” she said. “It was used during the exodus transports before the shuttles were finished.”
I glanced back. “Perfect.” I didn’t even need to pretend I could actually pilot it.
She paused, then reached up to her suit’s outer rigging and unclipped her badge. The metal caught the bay lights for a second before she stepped forward and pressed it into my hand. “Here,” she said. “You’ll need it to start the ship and authorize dock clearance at Station Nine. After that you’ll have to take an exodus shuttle to Earth.”
I turned the badge over once between my fingers, then looked back at her. “Thank you.”
“Anything for you,” she replied with a shrug. “You’re family.”
Elias let out a low whistle behind us. “This is insane.”
I couldn’t argue with him. It was insane.
I pushed off, drifted toward the shuttle’s hatch and swung myself into the entry. The cockpit was cramped, utilitarian, and used old interfaces. Sliding into the pilot’s seat, I pulled the straps tight over my chest, clicking them into place before sliding Kit’s badge into the slot on the dash. My wrist comm vibrated sharply before the hatch had even fully sealed. I glanced down at the flashing ID and answered with a sigh just as Commander Zhang’s voice tore through the tiny cockpit speaker.
“Why the hell am I being alerted to unauthorized entry into the command center in the middle of the night? What did you take from the arksuit vault? I can see you, Lieutenant Jones, and—is that Kit Jones? What the hell are you three doing?”
I leaned back in the pilot’s seat, unfazed. “No worries, Commander. I’m taking care of it. Go back to bed.” Before she could answer, I cut the transmission and powered up the shuttle.
The console blinked awake before the cargo doors opened beneath me without sequence delay. Gravity vanished and the shuttle jolted hard, drifting free for a second.
“Hey—” Elias’ voice snapped into my headset. “Heads up, Commander Zhang is awake. We’re going to try to give you a head start, but my guess is she’ll have Admiral Pike and the entire habitat locked down in less than twelve minutes. Do what you have to do—and be safe.” The line cut into static before I could answer.
I tightened my grip on the controls and shoved power into the engines. The shuttle surged forward.
Station light spilled across the hull in fractured bands as I cleared the bay, the world outside snapping into scale. Then I was out, and space swallowed the station whole with its slow-moving rotating rings. I glanced back to where my pack lay beside SOL on a bench. Everything was going to be fine.
The engines burned steady as I plotted the burn path, slipping into the space between structures. Ahead, Station Eight came into view—its silhouette broken and scarred. A clean impact wound gouged into its outer ring, debris still drifting in lazy spirals where the asteroid had punchedthrough. For a moment I watched it pass. The damage was more extensive than I imagined.
Space had a smell to it, a faint chemical bite. Like sulfur, or burned matches and metal. The rotten egg scent was always a shock to the system whenever I managed to break out of the never ending metal tube of my station.
Station Nine grew in the viewport, which unlike the others, wasn’t built for defense or habitation first—it was the transport infrastructure. A rotating hub of docking corridors and transfer lanes. Lucky for me, the bay was open when I arrived.
I slipped the shuttle in behind a much larger transport rig, tucking it into the shadow of its bulk. The ship’s systems whined as I cut thrust and killed the drift, letting magnetic clamps bite down and hold us steady. Unbuckling, I grabbed my pack, and booted up SOL.
“Systems nominal,” it chimed, blinking awake.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Keep up, and try not to get me killed.”
