I fumbled over my shoulders with the straps, my heart pounding. “We’re going to outrun them—in a transport?”
Kolt grunted. “We have no choice. Well, the other option is getting taken back to the planet and being thrown into prison again.”
I cursed as I struggled to get my arms through the straps. “Good point. I guess we’re going to outrun Imperial ships in a transport then.”
Kolt stole another look at me, then quickly stood and yanked the straps over my arms and snapped the buckle closed. He hesitated as he loomed over me before cursing again and raking a hand roughly through the back of my hair. He tipped my head back and crushed his mouth to mine before I could even register what was happening. Then he released me and fell back into his seat, fastening his own safety straps brusquely.
I sat stunned, my lips buzzing and heat sizzling all over my skin. “What was that for?”
“In case this doesn’t work. In case…”
In case we crash. In case we get blown from the sky. In case the Zagrath recaptured us. My imagination worked overtime to concoct all the ways things could go wrong.
Even though he’d kissed me because he suspected things might go south, he’d kissed me. He wouldn’t have done that if he’d suspected me of betraying him. He wouldn’t have kissed me if he truly believed human women were treacherous. Would he?
Kolt wasted no time in jerking the ship to one side, his fingers tapping the console as if he’d flown it a million times before, which, maybe he had.
“Can you figure out how to send a transmission?” he asked without taking his eyes from the console. “The communications panel is to the far right side.”
I followed his gaze to a smooth panel on the console and squinted at the symbols. It should be intuitive, right?
“Come on, Skye,” I said to myself as the ship lurched to the other side, and I was grateful to be strapped to my seat. “Youcan do this. This isn’t your first Imperial ship. Sure, it’s the first one you’ve been in that’s actually flying. I mean, I guess the one they brought you to the planet in was flying, but you don’t remember that, so it doesn’t count.”
I caught Kolt glancing at me, and I stopped mumbling to myself, even though talking to myself definitely helped.
Then I remembered one of the sabotage missions on Lexxona had been on an Imperial transport and we’d been disabling their communications. I swept my gaze across the console and found the symbol I remembered from that night, grinning when I spotted it. “Jackpot!”
Before I pressed it, I turned to Kolt. “What do you want me to say?”
He pressed his brows together until a wrinkle formed between his eyes.
“I don’t suppose you remember any Vandar encryption, do you?”
He frowned and shook his head. “No, but I remember something about the last time I was in a Zagrath transport. We’d been led into a trap by a traitor and were attempting to outrun pursuing Imperial fighters.”
“That sounds familiar,” I said beneath my breath.
“Send a message to the horde of the Qeth’rex and say that they should remember the battle for Oldon.”
“That’s it?”
He gave another curt nod and shifted his attention back to the console. “That is it.”
I shook my head as I wondered if it wouldn’t be better to just scream “SOS” into the transmission, but since I wasn’t Vandar and didn’t understand their ways, I’d go along with his plan. Activating the comms, I relayed his message as a general hail and hoped that the Vandar were in close enough range to intercept it.
“Tvek!” Sweat beaded Kolt’s brow as he peered through the front of the transport. “I think more ships are coming.”
“More ships, as in more of their ships?”
I interpreted his grunt as a yes, gripping the armrests of the seat as we tilted sharply to one side.
“We do not have enough fuel to do this for much longer,” he said after another rough jerk of the ship.
I had a sinking feeling that we wouldn’t be outrunning the other Imperial ships, and panic clawed at my throat. It would be terrible if we were taken back to the planet after escaping, and I had a horrible feeling that it would go even worse for Kolt than it would for me.
I cut my gaze to him, feeling a surge of emotion and protective rage. I’d saved the stubborn fucker too many times for him to end up being tortured or executed by the Empire. There had to be a way to escape that we hadn’t thought of yet.
“Are we still close to the planet?” I asked.
