Tina led her group of women through the chaos. In the throng of the crowd, Evelle took her hand. Tina squeezed it. They were going to get through this together.
The merchants and other visitors to the station ganged up on the pirates, demanding access to their ships.
It was strange how so many people had managed to stay at the station, when she knew for a fact that all the ships had been told to leave. It didn’t make any sense.
Then a thought: what if Thor had sent these people? They were no merchants. They were locals helping her out by creating a ruckus. Whether or not this was intentional, the effect was that they had drawn all the pirate guards into this hall.
“We need to go. We need to go or we’ll all die.” Aliz’s face was pale.
“I’m working on it,” Tina said.
“No you don’t understand. We need to go now.”
Three guards stood at the entrance to the passage to the docks. Unlike the other guards, they were not involved in any arguments.
Tina aimed a rivet with her catapult, but it missed.
Aliz pushed past her. “We need to go now.”
“Wait.” Tina pulled her jacket, but Aliz kept going.
“We have to go now.” Her eyes were wide.
Before Tina could stop her, Aliz marched up to the guards. She didn’t even talk to them, but tried to sneak between them.
“Hey, where do you think you’re going?”
Aliz turned around. She hefted the length of tubing over her head and brought it down on the pirate’s head with such force that the casing shattered. Bits of insulation foam flew everywhere. The man crumpled.
There was nothing for it.
Too close to the pirates to hit out, Tina thrust her catapult forward, poking a second pirate in the eye.
Evelle shoved the third man into the wall with such force that Tina could feel the thud as his head hit the metal.
“Run!” Evelle shouted.
They ran. Aliz first and then Tina and Evelle, followed by Margot and the remaining two women and two men.
Around the corner, and then through a corridor until they reached the position of the Manila.
The screen next to the door said one hundred and eight percent readiness. The letters on the display flashed.
“Come on,” Aliz said. “Hurry up, hurry up!”
Tina ran inside following Aliz, turned right and almost tripped over some piece of clothing left there from the fight. An alarm blared inside the ship’s corridors.
“Shut the doors, secure the hatch!” Evelle called over her shoulder.
Up the stairs.
The set of screens in the landing was flashing warnings. Overheating. Irreversible damage imminent.
Tina followed Aliz onto the bridge.
Aliz jumped into the main pilot seat, yanked on her earpiece, and flicked levers up and down. Her lips moved. “Go, go, go, baby, go.” And then to Station Control, “No, I’m not waiting for permission to leave. This is an emergency. Tina! Get the maps, get the navigation module online. Plot us a path that gets us out quickly and isn’t going to put us on a collision course with anything major.”
Tina scrambled to find these things. This ship was so big, everything was strange for her, and in places she didn’t expect it to be. The Alethia had a navigation post, but this one was huge, with several control panels and screens. She located a map of the ship’s immediate surroundings. They were clear on one side, but the access tube hadn’t yet disconnected fully, even if the airlocks were shut.
Tina said, “I don’t know how to disengage the tube. The station needs to do it.”
Evelle said, “Maybe I can—”
Aliz waved her hand, “Take the second officer’s station. I’m declassifying all ship operations. Log into Jackson’s account.”
Evelle took the seat and strapped herself in.
A row of lights on the panel lit up in red. An alarm started blaring.
“Shut that off. Check on core function.”
“Overheating.”
“Time to critical.”
“Four minutes, twenty-six seconds.”
“Status LEC.”
“Ready.”
“REC.”
“Warning. Overheating.”
“LEA.”
“Ready.”
So they continued on for what seemed like a long time.
Tina flicked through the maps, finding the navigation plotting input and planning an escape route. The warning about the access tube would not go away. There were no station workers to disengage the tube.
Then Aliz said, “All systems ready, or as ready as we’re going to get. Hang on. This is going to be a wild ride.”
Tina said, “The access tube—”
“Tough luck. That’s their problem.”
She flicked another switch. “Flight Officer Paduano to crew: secure yourself at your stations. Departure imminent.”
She placed her hand on the main engine control and pushed it up. The floor hummed with power.
Something creaked and hit the outside of the hull with a snap. The access tube.
She pushed up the engine control further.
The ship lurched. They shot forward. Tina was pressed into her seat and the pressure increased and increased as the ship jumped forward and zigzagged. Loose objects flew through the cabin. On the screen before her, she could follow the ship taking the course she had plotted.
They were free of the station.
Chapter Thirty-One
Over the next ten minutes or so, the red flashing warnings on the controls stopped flashing one by one. Aliz pulled back on the engine output and put the main engine on autopilot. Gradually, a sense of calm returned to the bridge.
Phew.
“That was one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever done,” Aliz said. “I’m going to be severely disciplined.”
“That would be unfair. You prevented much worse,” Tina said.
“That’s not how those people think. I risked the ship and left port with much less than a minimum crew. I disobeyed station control. I damaged station structures. Lives may have been lost because of it.”
Tina knew that she was right about all of these things. If someone was upset—and they would be, even if only for the fact that the ship had been captured at all—they would find a way to assign blame or dole out punishment, or both. Besides, loyalty to the crew was drummed into new recruits from the moment they signed up, and the ship had left the majority
