She holds up her hands. “No, no, sorry. Not the time. We’re good. We’re team.”
“Get in,” I say.
We climb inside.
The shuttle smells like old plastic, stale air, and the faint ghost of fuel. The cockpit is cramped for me, but workable. I drop into the pilot seat, scales scraping against the harness, and slap the startup panel. The systems whine in protest like they’re offended to be asked to function again.
Jordan squeezes into the co-pilot space, already pulling open access panels with the ease of someone who belongs inside machines.
“Power’s low,” she says immediately. “Aux battery’s weak.”
“We don’t need comfort,” I say. “We need ignition.”
“I know,” she snaps, then takes a breath. “Okay. Routing auxiliary through—through the maintenance bus. If I can bypass the safety limiters?—”
“You can,” I say, because doubt is useless right now.
She shoots me a look. “That’s a lot of faith.”
“It’s not faith,” I tell her. “It’s observation.”
The shuttle’s engines cough. The lights flicker. Somewhere behind us, another orbital hit slams into the station and the entire bay shakes; dust falls from the ceiling like ash.
Jordan’s fingers fly, connecting cables, bridging a circuit with a stripped wire she pulls from her kit like she planned for apocalypse maintenance.
“Okay,” she mutters. “Okay. Come on, you junk drawer of a ship. Give me something.”
The power indicator jumps.
The nav console sputters to life.
I grab the controls and feel the shuttle respond under my hands—sluggish, but alive.
“Hang on,” I say, and I punch the launch sequence.
The bay doors begin to open—slow, reluctant—revealing the outside light and the chaos beyond.
Gunfire flashes in the distance. The air outside is hazy with smoke. The cruiser still hangs in orbit like a bad decision.
We lift.
The shuttle rises out of the hidden bay just as a chunk of debris—twisted metal from the main hangar—breaks loose and tumbles through the air in front of us.
I jerk the controls, narrowly missing it.
Jordan yelps. “Jesus?—!”
“Seatbelt,” I bark.
She slaps the harness down, still clutching a cable. “I’m kind of busy!”
“Be busystrapped in.”
We clear the station’s immediate structure—and then the bombardment intensifies.
Chunks of plating shear away above us. A fireball blooms along the tower’s side. The shockwave hits the shuttle like a slap, and alarms scream in the cockpit.
I grit my teeth and pull hard, angling into open air while debris rains down like metallic hail. The shuttle shudders as something strikes the hull.
