Zephyr rocked under an explosion just outside and Seach had to catch himself before he dropped Devon on the medical bay floor. His hip smacked into the corner of the exam table and he hissed as bruising pain shot through the area. With a grunt and a wayward glance at the wall console he hoisted Devon onto the table and set the commands for it to go to work.

Robotic limbs detached from under the table and immediately set about repairing his son. Seach hesitated for a heartbeat, not liking the pasty pallor of Devon’s face or the odd grayness around his eyes. But he could hear the muffled report of Zephyr’s return fire and knew he had to move. Seach scowled, torn between the need to get them to safety and the desire to stay right where he was until Devon at least opened his eyes or something.

“Zephyr! Get us airborne!” Jorry yelled the command as she rushed into the room.

Relo was slung over her shoulder and he remembered he’d left the man in the docking bay when he’d seen Jorry fall. She limped severely and the sight of her threw him back into motion. He grabbed the cable from Devon’s pack, careful not to disturb the robotic arms as they worked. The floor tilted and he had to brace himself before he crashed into the table again.

“I’ll get the conduit working, you keep those bastards busy until we can jump,” he said to Jo.

She shoved Relo into the stasis tube built into the west wall and slammed the side of her fist into the button to seal him inside. Plexiglas whooshed down, encompassing Relo’s unconscious form just before an icy mist flooded the tube. Seach stared for a moment, his gut roiling in warning.

Relo looked awful.

Well, inside the stasis tube he looked five seconds to dead, which was quite a bit worse than awful if he was being honest.

“Roger that,” Jorry said and turned.

It took a moment for Seach to remember what they had agreed upon but then his mind caught up to the situation again. He would fix the conduit. She would fly the ship.

Seach spared one last glance at Relo, now tinged blue and white with frost in stasis, before moving to follow her out of the bay. They sprinted through the central chamber, Seach close on Jorry’s bootless heels. Her wound wasn’t going to get better until they could get the bullet out but he knew they didn’t have time to address it.

There would be time enough once they made the jump, he promised himself and focused around her limp.

“Captain!” Zoe exclaimed as they burst into the nest.

The girl was equal parts terrified and relieved to see them, he could see it in her face, but she smiled at Jorry anyway. Paul shuffled aside, frantically making room for Jorry at the controls. The tense line of his shoulders told Seach all he needed to know about what was going on outside the ship.

“Best strap in,” Jorry said, clapping a hand on Paul’s shoulder as she passed him. “Zephyr, how long before we breach atmosphere?”

Seach hurried to the hatch just beside the controls and opened it, dropping down into the hole before he could hear Zephyr’s response. It didn’t matter how long they had, what mattered was how quickly he could put that conduit together. The cramped secondary nest made a tight cocoon around him and Seach shuddered, thinking of the air vents and Devon wounded and just how damn close that escape had been.

Grimacing, he shook that thought off and focused.

Devon was alive; wounded but alive and Seach intended to make sure the boy survived the day.

They were all going to survive this day, even that traitorous brat Kenzie, who was locked secure in a little smuggler’s cache near the back of the ship. And then, once they were all safe, he’d let Jorry punch the girl right in the face for getting them in this situation in the first place.

The new conduit was positioned just behind the metal table, near an open panel in the floor that had several wires running to it. Devon had set it up, prepped it for the last bit of tubing so they could make a quick escape. Seach couldn’t remember whose idea that was and didn’t care.

He crouched next to the conduit just as the ship shuddered, another explosion wracking its structure. A distressing screech, like metal scraping along metal, resounded through the secondary nest and he had to brace himself on the table. Seach forced himself to ignore it, to ignore Jorry’s voice relaying orders to the computer, and focused on the conduit.

“Please, God, let this work,” he breathed the prayer and kissed the tubing connector before plugging it into the conduit.

He took the other end and half dove into the open floor panel, hunting for the inlet to connect the conduit to the ship. His eyes took their sweet time adjusting to the dim light but he found three inlets and picked one, praying he was right.

Devon would know better, he thought. Even Jo would know, but he didn’t want Jorry anywhere near this table. She’d already been overloaded, tortured, and shot. If anyone was pushing them through the jump it would be him, not her, and he didn’t care how much it pissed her off.

“Zephyr, give me blue light.”

The lights in the panel switched and cables lit white, signifying that they were operational. He stared at the tubing, willing it to flicker on. When it didn’t he unplugged it and picked a different inlet, praying it was the right one.

A surge of electricity burst through the tubing, curling back to hit his fingers in a painful shock. Seach cursed and jerked his hand back but it was too late. Energy sparked through the whole panel, cables and tubes sizzling and popping in his face. He felt searing heat against his right cheek and turned his head, grunting in mingled pain and exasperation.

“Son of a …” his curse cut short as the panel and all the cables in it powered off.

He opened his eyes to darkness and felt his stomach lock up in dread.

“Well, shit.”

He felt the ship make a dramatic turn, had to grab hold of the lip of the panel to keep from falling all the way inside, and then started pulling dead cables.

~*~*~

“Zephyr, detach all excess gear and prepare to detonate,” Jorry said, letting the flight controls move to make a semi-circle around her.

Holographic screens surrounded her, giving her the ship’s status, current ascent rate, and the approximate location of several ships heading their way. She heard gears whine to life that hadn’t been used before, felt the clunk of heavy metal releasing reverberate through the floor. An image of Zephyr’s external structure flashed just at her left, displaying the parts of her ship she had just ordered dumped in red. Loading bay, upper smuggler ports, port and starboard launching boosters all separated from the Zephyr’s main frame and drifted off.

Thank God I didn’t buy that new loader, she thought and then swung the ship in a steep vertical climb away from the pieces.

“How many Consulate ships are coming our way?” She asked, her fingers flying through commands as fast as she could think of them. She could see the awkward bend of her knuckles, could feel the stiffness in the joints and scowled.

She was going to have to re-break everything so they could be set properly when this was over. Jorry shoved the thought aside. They needed to be pointed toward the Jumper when Seach got the conduit working.

“Six are entering space through Europa’s atmosphere. Twelve have detached from Europa Station and are in route.”

“ETA?”

“First contact in three minutes, forty seconds.”

Jorry glanced over her shoulder at where Zoe was strapped into the pilot’s chair. Her big greenish-blue eyes were round with fear and she was hugging tight to the straps at her shoulders. She looked so small and vulnerable that Jorry frowned, new worries swirling through her mind. Paul stood behind her, clutching the back of the chair in a white-knuckled grip that betrayed the steady calm he was trying to present.

“Seach, how are we doing?”

She looked to the countdown just at her right; two minutes, fifty-four seconds.

“Gimme five minutes,” his voice echoed up through the secondary hatch and Jorry blinked.

Nothing should take five minutes, she thought.

She glared down into the hatch. “What did you break?”

“I’ve got it!” Seach growled in her earwire.

“Five minutes doesn’t sound like you’ve got it,” she growled back.

Two minutes, twelve seconds.

She turned to Paul, grimacing as the bullet lodged in her thigh rubbed against bone. Eventually she was going to have to deal with that, but she focused on Paul instead. “Get to escape vessel Bravo.”

Paul glanced at Zoe, clearly reluctant to leave the girl behind. Any other time Jorry might have admired his loyalty or tenacity, but the countdown read a minute forty-five and she could see Consulate ships rushing toward them through the viewport.

“She’ll be safe here,” Jorry said, turning back to the controls. “You need to be strapped in somewhere Mr. Kelly and we don’t have an extra seat. Now move.”

She pulled up the security feed of the medical bay and took a deep breath. The medical unit was still working on Devon, hinged limbs delicately sewing him up with precise movements. It had already strapped him down in several places to keep him secure but there was going to be several more explosions and she didn’t want to disrupt the surgery.

“Zephyr, give the med bay some extra buffering,” she said. “We don’t want it jostled too much. As soon as Devon’s stable redirect that power to the shielding.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Thirty-two seconds.

Several of the ships exiting Europa’s atmosphere closed in on the excess gear she’d left behind. They were far enough away that the shock wave would only barely nudge them so she flicked the command to detonate, forcing herself not to think about the men who were manning those ships.

That easy for you, is it?

Michael’s voice, angry and belligerent, and Jorry froze, her fingers hovering over the controls.

“Not now,” she muttered.

He wasn’t real. He was dead. This was just a fragment of him left behind, a little piece here to torment her. He would fade in time.

Like hell I will.

The ship rattled, reminding her that she’d just detonated several tons of steel and she refocused, shoving Michael back into the recesses of her mind. Three Consulate ships were caught in the explosion. She saw them veer uncontrollably off course, one back into Europa’s atmosphere and two twirling deeper into space.

“Pulse canons have been fired.”

Jorry scowled, eyeing the display for confirmation. Not that she really needed confirmation, Zephyr wouldn’t lie, but she looked anyway. Four red dots streaked across the console and the display of her ship lit up the places they would strike if she didn’t move quickly. The ship was already taking evasive measures but it wouldn’t be enough.

“Give me manual control,” she said.

The console in front of her split open, lifting two computerized gloves and a wide headband up for her. Jorry took the headband first, slipping it on until the digital glass slid over her left eye, giving her a clear view of outside the ship. She grabbed the gloves next, tugging them into place and flexing her uncomfortably stiff fingers. The gloves were connected to the ship via four large wires, each controlling a different aspect of their flight, and Jorry hadn’t been forced to use them in over thirty years.

She hoped they still worked.

She closed her fists, felt the hum of the controls buzz through her gloves, then opened them again, turning her hands sharply to the left. The ship followed the movement an instant later and she had to lean against the nearest console to keep from losing her balance.

Three of the pulses skimmed past their outer hull but the fourth struck home near the rear of the ship. Zephyr spun around, throwing Jorry off her feet. She flew forward, her left glove snapping off just before she crashed into the viewport. Stinging pain smacked into the left side of her face as her body pressed hard into the Plexiglas port.

Stars spun in her vision, smearing across the port as Zephyr began to pick up speed.

They were out of control, spinning down into the atmosphere again. Stars were replaced by blue fire licking at the outer hull as they descended. Jorry caught the view of Europa’s surface at the corner of her eye, its many bubble-dome communities making bulbous mounds in the landscape.

“Jo?” Seach called through the earwire.

She felt out with her taps, snagging the kinetic energy that was pushing them toward the moon, and pushed herself off the viewport. The centrifugal force of Zephyr’s uncontrolled spinning fought against her but she pushed past it, muscling her way back into the center of the nest. Her left glove was pressed into the control panel and for half a second she feared the connecting wires had been severed. But when she got to the controls she could see that they weren’t and breathed in relief.

“Jo?” Seach called again.

“I’ve got it,” she said, shoving the glove back on.

Zephyr responded immediately, passing manual control back, and Jorry yanked the ship upward. The hologram showed three ships hovering just out of the atmosphere, waiting, and Jorry’s eye twitched. No doubt they were waiting to see if Zephyr regained control, expecting them to crash.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” she muttered at them.

“Pulse canons have fired,” Zephyr announced again.

“Fire back,” Jorry said and swiveled the ship to avoid the newest assault.

A new hum pulsed through the ship, the whir of gears and solid sounds of weapons mounting, turning to take aim. Jorry ignored it, confident that the targeting systems would work, and concentrated on evading five more pulse blasts as they rushed toward the ship. She tilted her hands, veering them off course and away from the jumper and flicked her thumb over the command to spray flak in their wake.

The hologram showed Zephyr spraying several small bits of metal into space from the starboard side and she dipped the ship into a twenty-degree angle, pushing the propulsion to its limits. Two of the pulse blasts missed them, hissing just past Zephyr’s upper hull. The other three ignited in the flak, sending a shockwave that hit the rear of the ship with enough force to shake the consoles in their settings.

“Rear shielding at eighty percent, Captain.”

“Let me know when it hits sixty,” she said and turned her hands again, commanding the ship up and away from the moon.

The eyepiece showed her that the twelve other Consulate ships were now in range. They were creating a staggered pattern, blocking them from a clear shot to the Jumper, and Jorry exhaled through her teeth, hissing her annoyance. She might not need the Jumper to actually jump, but she needed the basic trajectory to be the same or risked running out of fuel before they reached the next planet.

Fuel, she thought with a pang. The longer this battle went, the more they wasted and she wasn’t certain they had enough as it was.

She glanced at the holo-screen, saw the light blue bar creeping its way down, and said a brief prayer to anyone listening.

“You about done down there?” She called to Seach.

“Another minute!”

She ground her teeth together and battled her temper down. She heard Zephyr fire several times, heard the warning alarms blare as the blockade of Consulate ships fired at them. Kinetic weapons this time, rail guns, not pulses, and Jorry closed her eyes to focus on her taps. Even in the vacuum of space a bullet had velocity behind it, and the rails used on those Consulate guns were decidedly larger than a single velocitor bullet.

Jorry mapped out as many as she could, but there were twelve ships with sixteen guns a piece and she was only one person. Still, she stole the energy behind over a dozen rails and reallocated, pushing it all into Zephyr’s main shielding before pitching the ship into an evasive spin.

The alarms continued to blare, alerting her that several of the rails were still on target. She thought to call out a warning, to let Seach know they were about be hit, but opted instead on reallocating again. Jorry felt out for the closest rails and snagged their energy, leaving them floating dead in space as she tried desperately to outmaneuver the remaining rails.

Six rails beat hard against the shielding, rocking the ship with their concussive force. Three more broke through the shields and dented into the hull. Jorry flinched and caught herself on the console as Zephyr shuddered and pitched to the left. The lights in the nest dimmed just as her feet lost purchase with the ground.

“Gravity matrix offline,” Zephyr announced.

Jorry cursed, glancing at the hologram of her ship. Three sections of the starboard side flashed red, indicating where they had been hit. She continued to float, stopped only when the cables connected to her gloves had reached their limit. Her back brushed against the ceiling and for a defeated moment Jorry stared down at the command chair.

Zoe gazed up at her, mouth gaping in horror.

This, she thought with a surge of anger, is why you always wear your boots in space.

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