An irritating grin curved his lips as he headed toward a particularly nasty looking craft. “What? You turning craven?”
Her stomach sank. “I’m not getting intothat.”
He tsked . . .
And walked past it.
With an infectious laugh, he headed for a door that held a hand-scanner. She watched as he placed his hand on the pad and it unlocked the door that slid open to reveal his fighter.
Relief poured over her as she saw a modest, but safe and clean alternative docked inside.
“You’re such an asshole.”
The humor died on his face as he staggered.
“Hadrian?”
He covered his eye with his hand. “I won’t last much longer.” Hissing, he made his way to the fighter and unlocked it. His breathing heavy, he helped her up the ladder, then climbed in behind her.
“Here.” He handed her the lock-key drive.
Jayne plugged it in while he strapped in behind her.
Reaching around her seat, Hadrian entered the launch code and fired the engines. “Can you fly this?”
She took a second to go over the controls. They were different from her ship, but basically the same. Everything was set up backwards from her ship. Otherwise, it was fairly standard. Controls were controls. “Yes.”
“Good.” He barely spoke that word before he fell unconscious against her seat.
And not just a little bit. He was out in a way that was actually scary.
Wow. Closing the canopy, Jayne put his headset on and prepared the launch. The good and bad thing about where he was docked was that there was no controller. No one to grant any permissions or stop her from leaving. No records being kept about who came and went. But that meant that she had to watch for any and all traffic on her own, and she had no idea how fast this ship was.
In fact, she had never even seen one like it.
Biting her lip, she hesitated. Given that Hadrian was hiding and hunted, it would most likely be fast.
“All right. We can do this.” She took the controls and did her best to ease it up.
It rocketed out.
Fast was an understatement. At the rate it shot forward, it would take her stomach a week or two to catch up. Good news, they would definitely outrun anything sent after them.
Bad news, she couldn’t really read the nav on it. Or any of the computer systems, for that matter.
“Where the hell am I going?”
She wasn’t even sure of the language or alphabet. “Really? Why isn’t this in Universal?”
Because he’s hiding . . .
He wouldn’t want anyone to be able to see where he’d been or locate his name, or any identifying information.
Damn it.
The ship shot through the atmosphere in record time and so smoothly that she barely felt the burn of it. Impressive. Someone had modified the drive to something the likes of which she’d never seen or felt– which made sense given that the Trisani were the ones who’d invented FTL drives and space travel to begin with. It was stunning tech. But since she couldn’t read the heading or settings, she had no way to reset anything, or know exactly what she was doing.
Seriously, what the minsid hell?
