Jeannie Holmes - The Mammoth Book of Futuristic Romance

“Miflin!” She shouted the words and pressed a button that sounded an alarm in the back. She heard a thumping and then a body fall out onto the floor of the bay.

“What the hell! What’s going on?” His voice was thick with sleep.

She already had her helmet on, so her voice came out deep. “Get suited up. We’ve been noticed.”

She heard him utter several swear words, in interesting combinations, but at least he began to scramble around the bay, swearing more as he cracked his head on the ceiling while getting to the clothing storage.

She turned to see him hopping to get into his suit. He called through the doorway. “How long?”

“The first scan was random. It’ll take a little bit for them to hone in on us. I want to be gone by the time they do. I’m firing everything up, but it’ll take a second to get to full charge. Five minutes to anchor release.”

“Great. I have time to pee.”

She rolled her eyes. Just like a man. She busied herself flicking on switches and pushing buttons, getting green lights all the way. At least the time in cold storage on the asteroid hadn’t hurt any of their instruments. She was just about to release the anchor when a red light outside the view port caught her eye.

It was the last thing she remembered . . . other than the pain.

Red light filled the front cabin, spilling under the door to the bathroom. He was just zipping up when he noticed it, and then the scream came. Even with the voice modulator in the helmet, it was high and tortured. He bolted into the cockpit.

El’s helmet was off and her face was . . . smoking under her hands. “Oh, God! It hurts. Oh my God!”

“What happened? Did something explode up here?”

“It’s the weapon. It came from the surface, a red beam. Not diron or laser. Something else. It blinded me.” She turned and grabbed at his flight suit. He finally saw her face. Her eyes were milky white, the lashes and eyebrows charred and falling in ashes onto her seat. “I’m blind , Rand!”

He pulled her out of her seat, supported her as he got her back into the sleep sack to examine her. His hands shook as he got out the med kit and used his teeth to open the package for a shot of morphine that included a high-strength antibiotic. He pressed the pressure needle against El’s suit and heard her gasp as it injected into her arm. “Okay, just stay there for a second. I’m going to go shut down the ship except for the heat back here. The asteroid should mask the signature of this small ship.”

She was crying when he got back. He hated it when women cried, because it made him want to as well. The rough part was . . . she had reason. A pilot without eyes? What the hell were they going to do? His stomach threatened to expel what little he’d had to eat. “Hey,” he said softly, as he approached, touching her hair lightly. “How you doing?”

“We can’t go back, we can’t go forward. How do you think I am? We’re going to die out here.”

He pulled a chair over from the wall. The sound made her jump and look around uselessly. He touched her again as he sat down. “We’ll figure this out, El. We’ve passed the planet now. No ships have launched and no chatter has been picked up by the scanners. We have some time to think before the asteroid comes around again. Tell me what happened.”

She did. There wasn’t much to tell. He ran fingers through his hair. How could this happen? “So you think it was random? Just a test fire or something?”

She shook her head, her senses seeming to come back to her as the painkiller kicked in. “No, I think they know we’re coming. It was targeted across the asteroid ring. They wouldn’t risk blinding their own pilots or the transport ships—” She muttered a string of curse words. “The transport driver. He was a counteragent. But they don’t know which rock we’re on. They’re probably just waiting until we’re out of shipping lanes before they come and destroy the ship.”

“Son of a bitch.” She was right. That was the only way. “So what do you think this weapon is meant to do?”

“Exactly what it did. It blinds people. Even through blast shields. Think about it, Rand. How would we fight back if everyone . . . everyone on the whole planet , was blind?”

Shit. Earthlings would be easy pickings, easily sold as slaves for sex or hard labor where sight wasn’t really required. Maybe the coal mines of Rigel or the diron mines on Pluto. “Why bother with underground lighting if everyone’s blind? Damn.”

“We have to take it out. I don’t know how, but they can’t be allowed to get this weapon onto an interstellar ship. You’ll need to be the pilot. We don’t have a choice.”

He started shaking his head even though she couldn’t see it. He stood up and walked to the bathroom and wet a strip of cloth to put on her forehead. Better not to let her get too overheated in the sleep sack.

“You don’t understand. I can’t fly. It’s not a question of confidence, or knowledge. My brain doesn’t work that way. Not everybody has the skill to fly a ship like El Tyler. It’s rare, like it’s part of your genes or something.”

She laughed, a little high. But not hysterical. More drugged. “Genes. I guess you might say that.

Granddad, Mom and me. The famous Tyler genes.”

“Come again?” He put the cool cloth on her forehead and she calmed down.

“Granddad was E.L. Tyler. He was a pilot. Could fly anything . . . prop planes, jets, helicopters, even gliders. He spent his life in the sky. Until the Parkinson’s set in. The stick started shaking, jerking. When he was called up for duty when the Stovians attacked, he couldn’t do it.”

It all finally made sense. “So you took his place?”

She waved a hand in the air wildly. Definitely feeling no pain now. “Pfft! I was ten when that happened. No, Mom was the next Tyler to pick up the stick. She insisted on going in his place. He said no.

But she was stubborn. She challenged him to a race. Whoever won would go. She picked the planes, he set up the course.” She paused, smiled, remembering. “She won. I was so proud of her. Granddad wasn’t upset. She’d proved herself, and she was good. Damned good. He raised me while she flew. She was Lauren Tyler – still an ‘L’. Only a very few in the upper hierarchy knew. She flew for the next decade. It broke her heart when I became a cop for the Stovians. She tried to convince me to resist, but I couldn’t. It was all about order , y’know?” Now her voice was starting to slur. “All order, until I met you .”

Wait. Huh?

“Remember those kids when we caught you? I broke them out of quarantine, flew them to safety, to the mountain base in Colorado. Then I went home and burned my black uniform. I asked my Mom where to sign up to fly. She was tired. Venus had taken a lot out of her. She couldn’t use one foot anymore. But she challenged me to the course – a rite of passage.”

He felt a smile come on, just a little one. “You beat her.”

She nodded. “I was born Elle, E-L-L-E, not Ellen, and Mom gave me Tyler as a middle name. So still not a lie. El Tyler is a . . . a legend . . . you know.” Her lids drifted closed over the ruined eyeballs. The muscles under the burned skin relaxed as she slept.

He reached down and pressed a gentle kiss against her temple, near the red, blistered skin of her forehead.

He moved the chair to a spot where he couldn’t be seen from the front. More important, where he couldn’t see out, in case they had a mobile version of the weapon. He started to go over the maps on Elle’s reader. He hadn’t really bothered much before, since it was pretty obvious they were going to have to wing it. But she was right. They had to take out the weapon.