Chapter 23

Chapter Twenty-Three
Connor barely made it into his crash couch on the bridge before the Lucky Sevens launched. Even sealed up in the bridge compartment, the smell of rocket exhaust was thick—something that had crept in through the cargo hold.
The acceleration pressed him deep into the seat’s old gel padding, which was overdue for replacement. His spine pressed against the frame of the couch, and his saliva pushed against the back of his throat.
It felt like drowning on his own spit.
At least the gel still managed to feel cool, even if the experience always left him bruised and stiff the next day.
His seat was opposite Selen’s, pointed away from her to give him a good look at the flashing lights on the systems console. Normally, he hated not being able to see her, but until they broke free of the planet’s gravity well, the console was his world.
Pressure built against his back. He breathed in desperate gasps.
Flashing lights that may or may not be warning about a system on the edge of failure.
That occupied his thoughts today, not Selen’s face being hidden.
His mind drifted back to the run up the ramp.
She’d pushed him in the small of the back the entire way from the cargo hold, her voice louder than the rockets’ building rumble and hotter than the flames spitting out the exhaust.
“I hope you enjoyed that kiss from your old girl.” That was partway up the ramp.
“You’re going to get us killed.” She’d said that at the bottom of the ladder.
“Your little project stank the whole ship up.” That one was as they ran through the crew quarters to the bridge.
The complaints and attacks had been a venom-laden stream.
But they’d been accurate: He’d pushed everything to the limit.
It shouldn’t have been that way, though.
He still couldn’t make sense of anything after the death of Dr. Litvinenko. From the moment that happened, everything just felt…wrong. Selen should have been able to absorb a failed mission, but she’d become angry and irrational.
They’d been living too close to the edge for a while now.
Mosiah would change that. The man had money, and he’d spent it to ensure the mission would succeed.
Now it was up to the team.
Soft beeping slipped through the rumbling.
The flashing lights—the entire console—became easier to read.
Then the confident banter between Martienne and Yemi became audible.
Connor’s seat motors clacked and groaned until he was fully upright and staring at the secondary command station.
He hacked to clear his throat and sinuses. “Nice work, you two.”
Martienne snorted. “This work, it is hardly done.”
It took a second of squinting at the console for Connor to catch her meaning: A cluster of red triangles were moving toward their green square centered on the weapons control display.
Six triangles.
Connor unbuckled the harness holding him into place. “What sort of ships are we looking at?”
Yemi tapped at buttons that flickered on and off along the width of his control panel. “Yemi sees patrol boats.”
“So they won’t wander far from atmosphere?”
“Yemi says, patrol boats stay within a thousand kilometers.”
That was a long pursuit and a lot of stress on a ship like the Lucky Sevens. If those ships opened fire—
A siren yelped, and Martienne slapped a sequence of switches on the sloped panel above her head. “Missiles!”
The siren died.
Then another blared, and a section of the console flared red.
Selen leaped from her seat and bent over the console. “Losing pressure in the reactor coolant module.”
A new problem.
Connor pressed the intercom button on the bulkhead near the bridge hatch. “Drew, we’ve got a leak in the reactor coolant. Meet me there.”
Before he could get through the hatch, Selen had him by the elbow. “Just so you know, if she gets us killed: I told you so.”
There had been a time where that would’ve been a bleak joke between them.
She wasn’t joking.
He bolted out of the bridge, feeling her heat on the back of his neck as he hurried down the passageway.
Vicente’s broad shoulders poked out of the tight ladder tube. “Hey, hey!”
Connor didn’t stop. “Emergency. Sorry.”
But the big man caught up halfway to the engineering hatch. “Was that the gal from your VR, Boss?”
“Toshiko.”
“What a dish!” Vicente slapped Connor on the back.
“Not now.”
“Nah.” The heavy weapons expert chuckled. “I was just gonna say that what you did—standing up to Selen for Drew. People saw that.”
Crap. The last thing Connor had meant to do was make a scene. “Sorry.”
“What? No, no! Boss, you done good!”
Connor stopped at the engineering hatch, blinking in surprise. “She’s the boss, Vicente. Remember that.”
“Oh, sure. It’s just, ever since that mission went to sh—”
“That wasn’t her fault.”
“Mission goes bad like that?” The big man shook his head. “No one’s fault.”
“Sure.”
“Old man’s ticker gives out? Maybe we shouldn’t take a job like that in the first place.”
“Maybe. Hey, I’ve got to get to work on the reactor.”
Vicente flexed his shoulders and stretched his back. “I’m gonna do an inventory. Y’know, check on Mamacita’s big delivery. Gotta keep her happy, Boss.”
Connor slipped through the hatch and into the anteroom that held protective gear. As he slipped the shielded suit on, he pressed the intercom that connected the upper and lower engineering decks. “Drew?”
A second passed, then the familiar intercom feedback squeal announced someone stabbing the transmit button with their face too close to the microphone. “On the lower deck.”
“I’ll meet you down there. We’re losing pressure in the coolant system.”
“I saw that. I’m getting the toolkit now.”
So she was ahead of him. Good. A senior engineer should be.
He checked his suit’s seals, then entered the engineering section through the shielded inner door. At the first console, he brought up diagnostics for the reactor system.
After a few seconds, a diagram flashed on the screen, showing the reactor coolant pipes and pressure valves. One of the pipes flashed red.
There were spares and patching materials on the upper deck. He grabbed those and headed down.
Drew was already setting tools out in front of the panel the bad pipe was sealed behind. Behind the shielded faceplate, it was hard to be sure, but she looked like a completely different person—clean and bright. “Kind of an odd thing, seeing a pipe like this give out.”
Connor set his gear down. “I told you, Lucky Sevens needs some work.”
“No doubt. But a valve or a joint—that’s what should give. These pipes?” The engineer shrugged.
She pulled the panel with a professional calm and set to work, redirecting the coolant, then taking the pipe segment out and replacing it with the piece he’d brought down.
Working together, they had the job done in a couple minutes. The reactor never crept close too critical.
And they were still alive. They must have avoided the patrol boats.
When they were pulling their shielded suits off, he got a good look at just how baggy her clothes were. The outfit she’d been wearing earlier hadn’t just been filthy but multiple layers thick. Instead of the chubby young and flighty engineer of a few years before, Drew now looked almost skinny—hardened.
She caught him staring and looked away. “Funny thing.”
“Hm?” He looked away, too, embarrassed.
“That pipe?” She nudged the segment with a bright pink shoe that he recognized from years ago. It still fit well enough…unlike the pair he’d stolen off the Sliver assassin.
“What about it?”
“The stress crack? It’s all wrong.” She pointed at it, a cracked but clean fingernail trailing up and down the crack’s length. “Pressure runs the length of the pipe. This? I can’t think of ever seeing anything like it before.”
Connor leaned closer, stomach twisting. He could almost see where a weapon could have been used—an axe, maybe—to do the initial damage.
Drew scratched her cheek, drawing a thin trail of blood where a scab came away. “The thing about engineering is, you think you know everything, but you never can.” She studied her bloody fingertip, then wiped at her cheek, surprised. “I guess you can never really know everything about anything, huh?”
Such a simple statement, but it seemed so true.