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Julia’s voice came from directly behind me. She sounded nervous. I didn’t take my eyes off the ship in front of me. “You need to stay in bed.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
The ship in front of us fired a rear-facing missile and Andy dropped down to avoid it, but he wasn’t fast enough. A tremor went through the ship, and I grunted.
“Snails!” Julia’s voice was quiet and afraid, but there was still an underlying layer of strength. None of us would give up without a fight.
“You better sit down and buckle up.”
She didn’t reply. Instead, I heard her press a button on the wall, and another seat unfolded. She sat down and buckled in. I heard her feet tapping against the bar that anchored the chair to the wall, as if testing its strength.
Andy pointed at the screen. “There’s a weak spot where the particles are less dense.”
I took a few precious moments to study it. “That’s barely below critical levels, and the gap is small. Can we fit through that?”
“Yes. I can fly us through it. There is a high probability that the ship will be seriously damaged, but it should still be flyable.”
“Is the risk greater than us fighting with these guys until a safer path appears?”
He was silent for several seconds. “We stand a better chance if we go now versus waiting for another weak spot.”
I drew in a deep breath. “Then let’s go.”
Andy gave up his pursuit of the other ship and immediately steered us in the opposite direction. The other ship turned and began firing at us again, but Andy managed to avoid a good deal of their firepower.
Within moments, he was pointing us towards the atmosphere. I checked the sensors. They were still scrambled, but they gave a general idea of where the other ship was. It looked like they were hanging back. Obviously, whoever was piloting the ship knew flying through the storm would render the ship inoperable and they’d fall to their deaths. I prayed Andy’s calculations were correct and we could make it through intact.
As the dark clouds crowded the view outside the windows, I took a deep breath and held it. Andy pressed buttons and switches, and I watched him out of the corner of my eye, looking cool and composed, and tried to tell myself not to be afraid.
Once we hit the cloud, the whole ship shuddered. Alarms went off all over the board. I watched the power level for the shields drop steadily. They were keeping the worst of it at bay, but it was draining everything we had. The ship shuddered and bucked.
“We’re not going to make it, are we?” Julia whispered behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder at her. She’d grabbed another of my shirts, but this one she hadn’t bothered to tie up and it hung loosely on her. She looked in pain and still horribly pale, but there was tenacity in her eyes. I wanted to reassure her, but I didn’t know what to say. I held my hand out to her, which she immediately took. We held on tightly to each other, and the connection calmed me down considerably, smothering my fears. I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I felt that, somehow, we were going to be okay.
We broke through the clouds and suddenly we were in the upper atmosphere. Sunlight streamed through the windows, and I breathed a sigh of relief. “We’re through.”
Andy was pressing buttons and didn’t respond. I focused back on the dashboard and checked the ship’s systems. “Shields are at five percent. Life support is at thirty-five. Weapons are dead. Communications are at twelve percent.” The numbers were bad. Worse than I had anticipated. “The shield failed in a few places. We took some heavy damage to the rear parts of the ship.”
“What does that mean?” Julia asked.
Andy answered. “The ship won’t hold out much longer. I am calculating scenarios. The ship cannot stay in hyperspace for long before all the systems will fail.”
I scratched the back of my neck as I looked at the hyperdrive system. “We’re at twenty percent for the hyperdrive. That won’t be enough.”
“If we divert all remaining power to the hyperdrive, we should be able to reach Esmuna. That is the nearest planet. Hestia is the next closest, but it is too far. We cannot reach it.”
Esmuna was not the ideal place to go, but it didn’t seem as though we had a choice. I’m sure Julia had no desire to go there, but I couldn’t think of an alternative. “We’ve bought ourselves some time. It will still be a few hours before they’ll be able to safely leave the planet. They have no way of knowing which sections of the storm are passable and which ones are not. They’ll have to wait it out. We’ll fly to Esmuna and get alternate transportation from there.”
Aggravation colored Julia’s voice. “Esmuna, the one bloody place in the entire universe that isnotpart of IPF jurisdiction and openly despises the IPF? Of course, my luck would not be any better.”
There was resignation in her voice; she knew we didn’t have a choice. I nodded to Andy. “I’ll begin funneling power now.”
“Oh, wait!” Julia leaned forward and huffed in pain.
“What?” I turned around to face her, concerned.
“Do we have communications? Enough for me to make a call? Once we get to Esmuna we won’t want them to trace our calls, but out here it doesn’t matter.”
