Kristi Helvig - Burn Out

Private death? Was I supposed to be grateful that it was an exclusive event? Next he’d tell me about how this was part of his master plan. I stood and took a step toward him. “James—”

“Step back. Now.” He raised B.K. higher.

I couldn’t believe this was happening. “If Kale doesn’t need me alive, he must know that you can fire the weapons too. You told him. I’m an unnecessary complication—just like Britta was.”

“Pretty much, except I didn’t tell him. He figured it out that day—said we both looked scared out of our minds.” James looked torn, but kept checking the door. As if he thought if he stayed too long, Kale would come bursting through it.

“You’re admitting he killed Britta?”

He confirmed what I’d only guessed. “I knew as soon as I touched the Consulate guy’s gun that it hadn’t been fired recently. Also, that soldier had been dead a while. There was no blood.”

No blood. Of course. I’d noticed the blast holes in the soldier’s chest when I’d run into the room, but there wasn’t any blood gushing from his chest. He’d died soon after the ship crashed.

My heart sank. James knew all this about Kale, yet still refused to go against his commanding officer. “Why are you doing this? What about that time in my room?” I could barely squeak the words out, afraid of the response.

He hesitated, “It’s not that simple. I told you Kale is part of something bigger. I need him to find—”

“So you’re in this for your own gain.” Anger rose redhot inside. “Why should I be surprised? It’s what everyone else does around here. Well, go ahead. Take me out, you burner.” Come on, James, this is the time for you to tell me how this is all an act .

James didn’t respond. At least he had the decency to look ashamed. His jaw clenched and he placed his finger on the trigger panel. I heard the familiar hum as B.K. powered up. Even though it was my gun, it would destroy me the same way it did those boulders or that stack of books. T.O. was the only weapon my father felt the need to design special, since it was a bomb and all. T.O. couldn’t hurt anything at my vibration, but my gun? My gun had no freakin’ loyalty. Yet I still couldn’t make myself pull T.O.’s trigger.

He aimed B.K. at me, then pulled another gun with his left hand, which he aimed at the center of my chest. I guess he wanted to make sure I was really, really dead. “I’m sorry, Tora. This isn’t what you think.”

An alarm sounded overhead and red lights seemed to flash everywhere at once.

James looked around, confused. He flicked on his com system. “What the—”

“James—get back to the control room, pronto.” Kale’s voice sounded through the device.

“What is it, sir?” he asked, lowering both guns.

I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath until the guns weren’t pointed at me anymore. I exhaled in a rush and dropped T.O. back in my bag.

“Consulate ships,” Kale said. “Three of them are on our tail.”

While Consulate ships chasing us was not any better than, say, a gun pointed at my heart, or a well-oiled hatch door, I sighed in relief anyway.

The relief lasted about five seconds, at which point I was flung by an unseen force into the wall next to me. My face smashed into the metal, and James fell next to me. He managed to secure the smaller gun in his waistband, but B.K. fell from his hand. I tried to bend down and reach for it, but couldn’t peel myself off the wall.

I could barely speak, and the words felt as though they were being torn from my throat. “What’s going on?” I asked James.

James struggled to speak as well, yet had somehow managed to get his grip back on B.K. “Hyperdrive.”

He took another breath and looked me straight in the eyes. “We’re running from them.”

THE HYPERDRIVE LASTED ABOUT ANOTHER TEN SECONDS, though it felt like an eternity. I crashed to the floor without warning. “That’s crazy,” I said, more to myself than James.

“Well, normally, you’re supposed to be buckled in during hyperdrive—”

I stared at James in disbelief. “I’m not talking about that. It’s crazy to run from the Consulate. Aren’t their ships faster than Kale’s?” I noticed he wasn’t pointing B.K. at me. Maybe I could wrestle it from him.

“Yeah, their normal speed is faster but they’ve been upgraded, so their hyperdrive was replaced with warp drive.”

“Yeah … and?” I asked. Now it was his turn to look at me like I was a star short of a constellation.

James sighed. “Their regular speed is faster than our regular speed, but it’s not as fast as our hyperdrive. Their only other drive is warp drive, which is way faster than our hyperdrive, just not as controllable. They’d overshoot us by light-years. This only buys us a little bit of time though. They’ll find us.”

James’ com system crackled. “You coming, soldier?”

“Yes, sir … Tora’s with me.” James kept B.K. pointed at the floor rather than at me.

“We’ll deal with that later. Bigger things on our plate right now,” came the response. “Get up here.”

I glared at James. “Shouldn’t we tell Markus and Alec what’s happening?”

James looked matter-of-fact. “No use. They won’t be awake for a while yet.”

I wanted to run, but he gripped my upper arm with his hand and propelled me out the door toward the control room. He yanked me down the hall. “So James, what’s so important that you’re willing to kill for it?”

He gripped my arm even tighter. We neared the control room. He spoke through clenched teeth. “I’ll explain after.”

I laughed harshly. “What? You mean after you kill me, you’ll have a chat with my dead body. Thanks so much.”

He pushed me into the control room where Kale punched various buttons with intensity. He studied some sort of graph by the controls and spoke. “We only have a little time before they track us again. There’s a small planet just ahead that seems to have a strange energy field around it. It’s messing up my readings. If we hide out there, it might just create enough interference that the Consulate ships won’t be able to track us. We can wait until they pass by, and hyperdrive back to a path to Caelia.”

As far as plans go, that didn’t sound like a great one.

James frowned. “You mean land there? If the planet’s energy messes up our systems way out here, who knows what it will do to our ship when we pass through its atmosphere. It could destroy us.”

I gulped. Yeah, what he said .

Kale spun around. “You got a better plan, soldier? We can’t hyperdrive again until the system recharges—they could catch us by then.” Kale scratched his head. “I’m still trying to figure out how they found us in the first place. It’s like they knew where we were.”

James paused a moment. “I have no idea, sir. You’re right. Landing there is our best shot.”

Great. Being pulled apart by strange magnetic forces seemed way worse than a shot through the heart. On the positive side, with every new potential method of death presented to me, the more sure I was that I wanted to live.

Kale punched some coordinates into a virtual keyboard that appeared in front of him. The ship dove lower toward the distant planet. James pointed me toward a seat and he sat in the one next to it. When I pressed a button on the chair, mechanical restraints enclosed me in a tight embrace. The boy I’d thought was my dream guy sat within a foot of me, yet the only thing touching me protectively was a thermoplastic harness. Story of my life.

“Hang on,” Kale called before pushing his own restraint button.

The descent became faster and steeper, and I wondered if I’d actually feel anything at all if the ship suddenly ripped apart. The satchel pressed into my side as we hurtled through space. A roar ripped through my ears when the ship entered the planet’s atmosphere, and the entire ship began vibrating. My heart had pretty much lodged itself in my throat, and I gripped the arms of my chair with white knuckles. The vibrating turned to violent shaking—it reminded me strangely of my mother’s withdrawals when she’d tried to quit the pain meds. Something popped and a piece of plastic flew through the air, inches from my head.