The landing was controlled chaos. The ship hit the ground hard. Gear compressed. Engines still hot. The boarding ramp was already lowering before the ship fully settled.
“Move!” Kallum’s voice over the comm. “Thirty seconds!”
We sprinted across the clearing. Brevan ahead. Me right behind. Flinx a black blur.
Weapons fire came from the east. Tarsus’s ground forces. The Mondian unit. They’d found us.
Brevan turned. Fired his last shot. Covering my approach.
I reached the ramp. Ran up. Brevan was right behind me.
The ramp closed before we’d even reached the interior. The ship was already lifting.
“Strap in!” Kallum shouted from the cockpit. “This is going to get rough!”
I found a seat. Locked the restraints. Brevan dropped into the seat beside me. Flinx settled on my lap.
The ship accelerated. Hard. G-forces pressed me into the seat.
Through the viewport, I watched the clearing falling away. The forest. The terrain we’d just crossed. All of it shrinking.
Then weapons fire. Ground-based missiles tracking us. The ship’s defensive systems engaged. Countermeasures deployed.
“Kallum?” Brevan called.
“Busy!” The ship banked hard. Evading. “We have four of his interceptors scrambling. They’ll reach us before we break orbit.”
“Can you outrun them?”
“Can I outrun Tarsus’s private interceptors in a civilian transport?” A pause. “Probably. Hold on.”
The ship climbed. Steep angle. The engines roared. We were racing toward orbit. Toward freedom. But the interceptors were closing.
Weapons lock warnings blared.
Kallum pulled evasive maneuvers. The ship rolled. Dove. Climbed again. Each movement throwing us against the restraints.
A pulse struck our shields. The ship shuddered.
“Shields at seventy percent,” Kallum reported. “We’re not going to make it if they keep hitting us.”
“Options?” Brevan asked.
“Hope they run out of ammunition before we run out of shields.”
Not a great plan.
The ship bucked violently, throwing us against our restraints.
“Shields at fifty percent!” Kallum shouted over the alarms.
We were close. The atmosphere was thinning. Orbit was maybe thirty seconds away.
Sparks rained from the overhead console as a second impact slammed us sideways.
“Thirty percent,” Brevan warned.
“Come on,” Kallum muttered. “Come on.”
