6
Klaxons blared as Veta shook her head.
What the hell happened?
Everything spun all around her. She grabbed for a wall and wiped the sweat from her eye. She was… She…
Tumbling.
The ship was tumbling.
And the ground was coming up fast.
Veta spat every curse she knew and started slamming the controls, trying to stabilize the ship.
“Come on, come on,” she said, one hand on the holographic controls, the other on the hard buttons, trying to make something happen.
Nothing was. All the systems were overloaded, and everything was jamming.
She hit the communications panel.
“Mayday Mayday Mayday. Terran ships. This is—” she stopped herself.
In that second, it dawned on her who shot her ship.
It wasn’t the Rhimodians.
The Terrans shot her. Her backupshot her down.
“Fuck,” she muttered and was about to turn off the channel when a crackle filled the ship.
“Terran escape pod. I have you,” came a deep male voice, with that heavy cadence of the Rhimodians. “Fire your reversing thrusters.”
Hell.
But the world was coming up fast.
What choice did she have? “Working on it.”
The engines weren’t firing.
“Damn,” she muttered. The throbbing in her head got stronger. She worked on bypassing the systems to ignite the thruster.
“Override the—”
“I know how to fly a ship, thank you very much,” she snapped at her Rhimodian assistant. “I just have to—” she finished the override sequence she’d started, trying to bypass the safety relays.
The reverse thrusters ignited.
The ship started to slow.
She flipped her holographic images to show the reverse. It wasn’t clear, some of the cameras must have been damaged. But enough of it was there.
The dragon-like face of the Rhimodian fighter looked like it was trying to eat her escape pod, he was so close. The pilot was easily visible through the front, his face concealed by his silver helmet, he looked like a silver tongue.
Tethers erupted from the sides. They clamped hard, echoing on the sides of the escape pod. The sound made her head hurt.
“Ease back,” he said.
