“Boss,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “The cruiser.”
I dropped Qhev’in’s shirt and almost tore my pocket, ripping my frame out. All this time, it had been silent, disconnected from the nexus core on the cruiser. But now…
“Communications are still locked,” Nerus said, working faster than I could function in my haze of panic and hope. “New pilot data. Who is this?” He showed me the code.
“Cora,” I choked out, my throat tight. “She’s… It’s her code.”
Nerus nodded. “Okay. Maybe that’s good.”
Unless they forced the code out of her, he didn’t have to say.
“Where are they going?”
“No pre-logged destination.”
“Shit,” Qhev’in huffed.
“That’s good,” I said. “They’ll get flagged flying in.”
“No,” Nerus said. “They’re still in Eissoini airspace.”
Qhev’in snorted. “You had this guy guarding her, and he can’t even pull a proper getaway?”
I snatched Nerus’s frame to look. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“Looks like they never left,” Nerus sighed. “If it doesn’t ghost again, we can follow them and try to force a landing.”
“Not with Cora on board,” I said. “We have to keep our distance until they make landing. If we can—” hope flared like an explosion in my chest. The cruiser was moving, but it was going slow as fuck. “She’s flying.”
“You’re sure?” Nerus leaned in to look. When he saw it, he grinned. “Yeah, that’s your girl, alright.”
“Get me back to Eissoi,” I said to Qhev’in. “I know where she’s going.”
CHAPTER 42
CORA
“Stupid speed limits,”I muttered as yet another vessel blasted past me. I piloted the cruiser as fast as I could push myself. Which… okay, it wasn’t very fast. But I didn’t feel comfortable handling it at higher speeds, and I couldn’t see the landmarks on the coast below if I was moving at the speed of sound, could I?See, this is why you don’t get flying lessons from your sexy husband who can’t keep his hands to himself. Distracted learning equals poor retention.
My mob wife moment was taking a commercial break. No biggie. As soon as I landed this thing, it was back to being a stone-cold baddie. Xokat was unconscious at the bottom of the steps, where I shoved him after slapping two of the nasty little knockout patches on his neck. I found a strip of them sitting on the table in the breakfast nook, which irked me. That was my spot for nibbling fruit and reading smutty ebooks on my frame. I’d have to put up a sign.No kidnappers allowed. My knee-jerk thought was to hope two patches weren’t too much. Screw him, though, right? I should have stuck the whole strip on him. He kidnapped me, wanted to sell me to those weird moon people, and left me alone and vulnerable with a guy who wanted to killme.Andhe drugged me with this low quality shit. When he woke up,ifhe woke up, I hoped he had the worst hangover.
I tried to call Yiri or Nerus, but Xokat had done something to the cruiser’s controls. I couldn’t make any outbound calls. On Earth, I couldn’t go more than a ten mile radius from my apartment without using GPS, and here I was flying a freaking spaceship with zero navigation assistance. God help me. Finding the Lagoon seemed like my best bet. I thought I could find it better than any of the other possible landing spots Yiri had shown me, and at least I’d be touching down on water, which seemed more forgiving than the lawn at the house.
Please don’t let me hit a ceket.
Jeeze. In less than a day, I’d gone from shocked and borderline traumatized by my husband killing a mercenary formysafety, to killing one man and drugging another, and my biggest worry was damaging my husband’s vintage spacecraft or hurting one of his man-eating alien sharks. Maybe I would be a little more gracious, a little more curiouswhyXokat did this if not for the icky, lingering aftereffects of whatever drug he’d given me. As it stood, the throbbing headache, the queasy stomach, and thedead creep in my bedall left me fully furious.
“Get bent, Xokat!” I yelled down the steps at his unmoving body.
I eyed one of Yiri’s sellah pens sitting on a ledge of the console, and chewed at my bottom lip.Might help my headache, I reasoned.Might help my nerves, too.Picking it up, I found it over halfway full of fresh sellah. Shame to let it go to waste, honestly. Maybe it would even give me the courage to fly this thing a little faster. That made sense, right? Smoke sellah, feel better, fly faster, see Yiri sooner. Win, win, win, win.
The sweet smoke went immediately to my head, numbing the dull ache there. In its absence, an ache high in my ribs became a lot more noticeable. Something became crystal clear to me as Ipiloted Yiri’s flying saucer, my little home on this strange planet, down the rosy Eissoi coast past the hubbub of luxury and wealth that was Covara. I might not be too soft for Yiri’s world, but I didn’t want to face it without him, either. I missed my husband, and I could really use a hug in his big, strong arms.
If I doubted my own familiarity with the aerial view of Yiri’s lagoon, the circle of swimming cekets was the giveaway that I’d found it. From the air they didn’t look so scary, just a wide circle of happy pink fins cresting the water in welcome. I picked out a few of the grandmother cekets among the smaller fins, a feeling somewhere between fondness and relief welling up in my chest. Once I got to the water, I’d be safe as kittens. Even if Xokat sprang up and tried to hurt me, and the dead guy turned out to be miraculously still alive, they wouldn’t dare follow me into the water with my welcoming party. And if Iwasn’tstill having a wild drug-induced dream and the guy really was dead, the cekets could help with that, too.
I slowed to a near stop, hovering slowly down over the water, peering nervously through the bubble to make sure I didn’t clip any grannies or grandchildren when I landed. They seemed to know how much room to give, though. Their swirling circle made a great guide for me to ease into. You know… really,reallyslowly.
With a splash and a moment of wobbling afterward, I set the cruiser down with a whoop of glee.I did it!I flew the cruiser without navs, without help,and landed itsafely, all on my own. Yiri was going to be so proud of me.
