I rolled toward the pilot seat when the second shooter spun around the corner. Their shots hit where I had previously stood. I leapt into the cockpit and the door shut. The blaster shot rattled the door, signaling that they kept it on stun. My best guess was that they didn’t want my guts all over the cabin. The abductors wouldn't want an investigation to lead to their involvement. It’d be better if they tossed my body into the flora where my death would be marked as a horrible accident.
I set my commlink to ping the others. Their response never came. Either my comm was jammed from the same equipment messing with the sensors, or they were under attack too.
“Fuck.”
The door stopped rattling. I jumped into the pilot's seat. They wouldn’t want the ship to appear as if it had been under attack, so I placed my bets on them not messing with our engines. The alarms blared, signaling the assholes were connecting to the internalwiring. Most likely to open my cabin door without doing damage.
Without the preflight checks, the shuttle jolted from my unexpected commands. Nose up, I set us off as fast as the shuttle could manage. There was scuffling in the cargo bay before I put on autopilot to continue our rapid straight-up ascent. The shuttle didn’t have strong enough G’s to knock them out, but it gave me a chance to swing out of the pilot chair. I knelt on the wall behind the chair, threw open the door, and fired into the cabin.
The attacker I shot was nowhere to be seen. The other, however, clung to the seatbelts with one hand, suspended in the cabin, and had wiring attached to their commlink and our system in the other. They wore a blacked-out helmet and suit to match, with no markings to signify who they were.
They released the seatbelt to drop away from my next shot. The wire detached from their commlink, dangling from the wall. They fell to the back of the cabin where they scrambled onto their back to fire. I swerved out of the doorway, reached for the wheel and yanked to the right, the left, the right again. The shuttle groaned defiantly.
They wouldn’t have to blow our engines if I ended up doing so.
I kept a firm hold on the wheel and the seat to keep myself upright. I flipped a switch on the dash so the holo screen revealed the back cabin. The attacker scrambled to find their footing.
“Shit,” I breathed before their suit propelled them forward into the cockpit.
I rolled off the chair to avoid their first shot. The second hit my knee. The nerves went numb well past my waist. They latched onto the wheel, sending us to the left, then leveling us out. We fell to the floor. The attacker hurried onto their feet while I shot under the chair. They screamed as their foot detached from their ankle. They fellto a knee where I aimed for their abdomen and fired until I could see the burn marks on the dashboard through their torso.
“I fucking hate being stunned,” I groaned, lugging myself around the chair to sit on it, bloody and all. Shoving the very deceased jerk aside, I resumed control of the shuttle.
“Roys? Arana? Someone come in.”
Either the attacker’s equipment remained on the shuttle, blocking comms, or they were still in the shit. Only two attacked me, expecting it would be easy to take out a single pilot. The rest of the team would take far more manpower, although the biggest question became, why would they attack all of us? Cocky? Blood thirsty?
Regardless, there had to be a shuttle nearby. They wouldn’t have trekked far through an unknown and hostile environment. They were in this for the money, so they’d take the easiest route. Their shuttle would be better than ours, certainly more weaponized.
I kept the shuttle high, out of their potential scanner range, though that meant I couldn’t use mine either. I kept it on anyway, in case it pinged anything or anyone, and primed the only phasers we had. They were more for show than anything, certainly wouldn’t be able to crack a shield, if the ship had one, but a weapon was better than none.
I surveyed the landscape. It wasn’t until I got closer to our original landing site that a shuttle burst out of the greenery a click to the east—where the team went. I fired, striking a back engine. Their ship maneuvered and my second shot grazed them. The ship didn’t have a shield. I prepared another shot, annoyed that the damn shuttle needed time to charge.
“Don’t shoot! Lucky, do you read? Do not shoot!” Lilea’s labored breath rang over the comms. “The captain, Arana, and Ryker are on board. Shit, please tellme—”
“I heard you.” And it took all my willpower not to scream, to swallow the lump in my throat and steady my voice. “They were taken alive?”
“Yes, injured but alive. Zavir, Iylene, and Tobs need the med bay. They’re, oh stars,” she started speaking in Erkwan, a series of groaning and clicking sounds, followed by a panicked, “They aren’t good. Not good!”
Lilea’s voice cut out. I couldn’t determine if it was her panic or our bad comms. Her affirmation that they were taken alive didn’t settle me because they wouldn’t be that way for long. Arana may get them more money alive. Roys and Ryker, however, were more likely hostages to get alive off planet. They would discard those hostages the moment they could.
“What about the others?” I bit back the urge to mention Maddy. Blood seeped from a wound on my cheek where my teeth gnashed.
“We’re alive,” Maddy replied. Her voice made me shudder. “I’m guessing your comms and tracker cut out too.”
“Yes, but I see you now.” Half a click from where they were meant to be. “And be aware that I have a dead, unwelcome guest on board, plus blood in the cabin.”
“Are you injured?” she growled, and I smiled, feeling like a kid again when Maddy snarled at anyone who looked at me funny.
“My leg is stunned. Nothing an adrenaline shot won’t fix. I’m close to you.” Although all I wanted was to chase that shuttle, to rip through any bastardwho got in the way, and drag Roys, Arana, and Ryker out of there.
Landing the shuttle proved challenging. There weren’t many openings between the flora, so I settled for as near as we could get. After landing, I shot myself full of adrenaline from one of the med packs and dragged the corpse out of the cockpit. I removed their helmet and inspected their comms. If we could hack into them, I wouldn’t be the one to know or ask, but at least we had one.
“Lucky!”
Lilea and Elado broke the tree line with a half-dead Zavir dangling between them. All their exoskins had been damaged and Zavir had clearly put up a fight, his body beaten bloody, knuckles broken and white bone peeking out of ruined seared flesh. Behind them, Maddy became Tobs’ walking stick. The assistant was delirious, blood seeping out of a head wound they had haphazardly tied up. Last were the remaining ragged scientists, with Galya using her abilities to push the supply cart carrying an unconscious Iylene, a blaster wound through their left abdomen to their hip and a bad graze on their right shoulder.
I went to Lilea to help bring Zavir on board. We buckled him in while the others grabbed the med spray from our kits. They couldn’t heal the damage but would hopefully help them last until we reached the habitat. I left the corpse in the corner; in case we could use any of the materials from their suit. None of us spoke about the shuttle that got away and the ones they took. I knew this was procedure, that my job was to get everyone to safety, but I could hardly stop myself from going after them.
