“Understood, ma’am,” I answered. “We’re experiencing…uh…technical difficulties with…uh…with our datastore. Please standby. We’ll have the funds transmitted in a minute.”

  I looked at Alter, my expression no doubt displaying every ounce of the panic I felt. “What are we supposed to do?”

  Alter tapped on the display, navigating into what looked like a bank account statement. I glanced from it to her face, watching as her eyes narrowed, her cheeks flushed, and her hands balled into fist.

  “That son of a bitch!” she shouted, barely restraining herself from punching the display. I looked back at the statement, my eyes drifting to the total in the bottom right corner.

  The number had one comma at least. But only two digits on the left side. The line item directly above the totals showed a withdrawal of nearly two million electro.

  Matt leaned forward to get a better look at the screen. “I told you,” he said, shaking his head in disgust. “Rugged.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “Keep took all of Matt’s money,” I said, a mix of fear and anger making my voice shake. “And he took the money that was supposed to pay for the ship’s storage. Is that right?”

  “It looks that way,” Alter said. “We have just enough in our account to take care of regular costs for a week or two, depending on what kind of expenses come up. We definitely don’t have enough to pay for twenty years of storage.”

  “But it’s in the damn contract,” Matt complained. “He’s legally bound to pay the fees.”

  “How could he do this to us?” I said, catching myself when I realized Alter had shared the last twenty years with him, and he had just thrown her under the bus with us. “How could he do this to you?”

  “I don’t know,” Alter replied. “I always believed him to be a man of his word. A loyal servant to the Duchess of Caprum. Honorable and loyal. I don’t know what he’s thinking or planning.” She tapped violently on the display, returning it to the home screen. Picking up her helmet, she yanked it forcefully over head. “I guess this is where our adventure starts.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “If we stay here, they’ll confiscate the ship and put it in the impound yard until the storage fees are settled. You’ll lose the ship and be out on the streets of Hestus, one of the largest cities on Caprum. I’ll lose my home. Or we can launch illegally and take our chances.”

  “I think we should take a minute to consider both options,” Matt said.

  “What?” I replied. “You paid for the ship. It’s ours, fair and square. Keep owes them the money. Keep should pay it.”

  “So, we let them take the ship while we go find Keep. We make him give us back the electro he took from the account, and then we settle up.” He pointed at Alter. “You’re supposed to be some kind of assassin or something. Don’t tell me you can’t find him.”

  Alter flinched at the word assassin as if she had been shot. “I don’t do that anymore,” she said flatly. “But yes, I could potentially locate him given enough time.”

  “We don’t need to start out with a bounty on us. Or a second bounty on us. That’s just nuts.”

  “There’s a problem with that idea,” Alter said. “Once the ship is impounded, anyone with the money can claim it.”

  “Like Duke Sedaya?” I asked.

  “If he gets to it first, yes. Or anyone else who can afford the fee. There are professional dealers who just wait for opportunities to buy impounds at cost. If it takes more than a few hours to track down Avelus, it’ll be too late.”

  I turned my attention to the ship’s exterior when a new light appeared near the wreckage at the end of the row of containers. A small, boxy vehicle floated into view. “Alter, look.”

  “The spaceport authority,” she said. “If they reach the hull they can tag the ship. It’ll be impossible to get anywhere like that.”

  “I think we should take our chances and find Keep,” Matt said.

  “Seriously?” I replied. “Since when are you so passive?”

  “Since being aggressive is a direct threat against my life,” he shot back. “You might already be dying. I’m not quite ready to go that way.”

  “You’re dying?” Alter asked.

  “Well, I think we should launch,” I shouted back at him, ignoring her question. “And Alter’s the tie-breaker. That’s what we agreed.”

  “I’m rescinding our agreement.”

  I laughed. “That shit worked when we were eight. It’s too late. Alter, do we stay or do we go?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “Go.”

  “Better buckle up. Stick and throttle?” I asked.

  Alter smiled. “Stick and throttle.”

  My heart leaped again as I grabbed the control, advancing the throttle. The interior hiss rose in pitch, and the starship began sliding forward. I pulled the stick back too, a sense of weightlessness and imbalance hitting me as the forward view shifted from the spaceport authority vehicle approaching us to the dark sky above it.

  “Shields!” Alter shouted, flipping one of the toggles on her side.

  The entire ship shuddered as I added power and pulled the stick all the way back. The sudden acceleration shoved me back into the seat. A loud tearing sound screamed across the flight deck as we crashed through the metal beams supporting the expanse of rooftop overhead. We pushed through that too, shearing away the metal and revealing a true, blue-red sky dotted with light clouds as we emerged.

  I held the stick steady, the ship rocketing upward as I glanced over my shoulder. The visor cleared all of the obstacles to the rear view, including Matt, allowing me to see the obliterated roof of the warehouse. Other similar structures lined the area around it, while starships of every shape and size dotted the surrounding open space. Smaller vehicles darted back and forth among them.

  “Wooohoooo!” I cried out in excitement, opening the throttle all the way, increasing our velocity. I was flying a real spaceship, launching it towards space. Bounties be damned, I couldn’t think of anything that could be more fun.

  “CUL8T3R, you are in direct violation of your storage agreement,” the spaceport bursar said. “You have been marked for delinquency. Bounty notices are being transmitted now and the Caprum Defense Force has been alerted. As of this moment, both the ship and its crew are considered fugitives in violation of Hegemony law. Good luck out there. You’re going to need it.”

  The comm fell silent, the woman’s last words echoing in my head and sending a fresh shiver through my body, stealing away the exultation I had felt at the starship’s launch. Glancing over at Alter and seeing the resolved set of her jaw gave me a little bit of comfort, but the sudden turn of events was the last thing I had expected.

  Thanks to Mister Keep, only three hours in the Manticore Spiral and Matt and I were already fugitives. So be it. If that was the way things were going to be, then there was nothing left to do but escape.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I fixed my eyes forward, watching the clouds quickly approaching, our rate of speed continuing to increase. Similar to the mechanical limitations of the simulator, the ship seemed to be dampening the gravitational forces acting on us as we accelerated. It was a gentle nudge instead of an all-out jackhammer shove.

  Alter tapped a button in front of her, and a three-dimensional view of the sky around us appeared in the corner of my field of vision.

  “Who is that?” I asked, spotting five red triangles entering the edge of the map.

  “Caprum Defense Force,” Alter replied. “Their goal is to stop us from escaping the planet’s orbit.”

  “Can they?” Matt asked.

  “That depends on how well we fly. And how well we shoot.”

  “I don’t know if I can shoot at them,” I said. “Unless their ships are unmanned?”

  “They won’t have any problem shooting at us,” she answered. “And they don’t care that we’re alive in here. I know it isn’t fair, Ben. I can’t believe Alvus did this to you and to me. But you need to decide right now what kind of person you want to be here. You too, Matt. The Manticore Spiral can be an amazing place, but if you aren’t up for it you will get eaten alive.”

  On the map, the five triangles were gaining quickly, closing the distance between us in a hurry. I didn’t need to ask Alter if we could outrun them. Clearly, we couldn’t.

  I considered her words. I didn’t know if she had just given us a pep talk, a challenge, or what, but I knew she was right. We weren’t in Kansas anymore. We couldn’t judge life based on what we had known or experienced on Earth. I didn’t know what kind of person I wanted to be now. I didn’t even know what my options were. But I was absolutely sure I didn’t want to go down within five minutes of blasting off. And I didn’t want Matt or Alter to go down with me.

  “How do I work the guns?” I asked after a tense pause.

  “You need to access fire control,” she replied. “Raising your hand will activate the command overlay. It will be the largest action item in the cloud.”

  I wasn’t sure what she meant until I released the throttle to put my hand up. Immediately, a group of words appeared between my hand and the exterior view, slightly transparent so I could still see through them. The largest item in the word cloud was FCS. Fire Control System. I punched the transparent image, entering a screen that displayed the ship from the top down, all of the guns I had seen from the exterior highlighted. A turret on either side of the head. above the mouth, another pair tucked under the ears. Currently, they were all set to manual control, with a button below the schematic labeled activate.

  “You can set the guns to auto if that makes you feel better about shooting at the ships chasing us,” Alter said. “But the ship’s brain came from a junk hauler dumped on Demitrus over a hundred years ago, so it isn’t the quickest or the most accurate. You can also split control between pilot and co-pilot, or handle it all yourself.”

  “How do I aim backward on my own?” I asked. “Or rotate the guns?”

  “Activating in manual will open a split screen with a rear view. The turrets will move with your eyes when you follow a target. The thumb trigger will activate the ear guns, the primary trigger the face turrets. Unfortunately, you can’t shoot the batteries individually.”

  “Okay,” I said, barely noticing the view beyond the fire control screen as we exited the clouds and continued launching toward a quickly darkening sky. I tapped on the two rear cannons until the labels beside them changed to ‘co-pilot.’ “I’m giving you the rear guns.”

  “I have them,” Alter replied.

  “What about the shields?”

  “The barrels of the turrets push through the shield barrier. While they hold, the gun positions are the weakest link in our defenses.”

  “What do you mean while they hold?” Matt asked.

  “The power for the shields comes from the Star of Caprum, which is good. That power flows through seventy-year-old nodes spread across the surface of the ship. Too much power to the nodes will burn them out. They’ll need to be replaced to be useful again. Each burned out node leaves a portion of the hull vulnerable.”

  “So there won’t be a single, giant failure?” I said.

  “More like death by a thousand cuts. The end result is the same.”

  As if on cue, a warning tone echoed in my ears and three of the five triangles flashed. A moment later, a three dimensional wireframe of the ship appeared under the map, orange dots showing where the blasts hit. Small green dots appeared in a polygonal arrangement around the hits.

  “The dots are the internal temperature of the nodes,” Alter explained before I asked. “When they rise to dangerous levels the nodes will be in danger of failing and the dots will turn red.”

  “How long will that take?” Matt asked.

  “Long enough for us to get out of here,” Alter replied confidently as a few more hits registered against the same part of the shields. “But it’s better not to fly in a straight line.”

  “Right,” I said, embarrassed that I had forgotten to pilot the ship while she had been explaining everything. I pulled the stick left, the ship reacting agilely and cutting in that direction. Bright beams of energy flashed past the front of the ship, proof that I had dodged a hit.

  “Good,” Alter said. “Keep it up.”

  I yanked the stick back the other way, pushing it forward as I did. The ship turned and dove, and for the first time I caught a glimpse of the defense force fighters on our tail. Similar to the smaller ship in our hangar, they had a lot more sharp angles and a drab gray paint job. The logo of a scepter on a yellow background adorned the fuselage.

  The look only lasted two seconds before the fighters zipped past the ship’s rear. Looking over my shoulder, I watched Alter’s return fire launch behind them, her aim a little off. Unlike the fighters’ energy beams, our guns spat out small, fiery red balls like a machine gun.

  “I’m rusty,” Alter growled, annoyed with herself for missing. “Try to get us headed back toward space.”

  “Got it,” I said, adjusting course to angle toward the space.

  The CDF fighters broke formation, each choosing a different path but all of them staying on our tail, spreading out to make it harder for Alter to hit them. I continued to wobble the stick back and forth, up and down, keeping the ship constantly changing planes and vectors while still rising toward space. My heart pounded a million miles per hour, my mouth completely dry, every muscle in me tense. Even so, there was a part of me enjoying the hell out of the ride.

  Matt couldn’t say the same. As I pushed the ship into another hard evasive maneuver, he slumped back on the sofa, his face tinged a sick green. His hands gripped the edge of the cushion so tightly I thought he might puncture the old leather, his eyes clamped shut as if he could will it all away. I felt bad for him. He had gone through all of this for me, only to be proven right all along. The sale of the starship had been a scam.

  Just not the one we expected.

  Warning tones again filled my ears. A quick glance at the wireframe showed more hits to the same part of the rear, the shield nodes gaining a yellow hue.

  “You need to keep them off our tail,” Alter said, doing her best to line up another shot.

  “I’m trying. This is my first time flying a real starship, you know.”

  I pulled up hard, increasing the approach angle toward space, desperate to clear orbit and escape the planet and the starfighters chasing us.

  “On second thought, hold steady,” Alter said. “Cut the throttle and break to the port side when I give the word.”

  “Okay.”

  I held the stick in place, my other hand on the throttle, ready to cut it on Alter’s command. The map on the HUD showed the CDF ships closing from three directions.

  “Hold it,” Alter said, her voice reflecting her increased concentration. “Hold…it…” She adjusted the cannons and opened fire, sending a wave of fiery blobs across the rear of the ship. “Now!”

  I jerked the stick to port and cut the throttle. The maneuver threw me sideways against the restraints, nearly causing me to lose control. The ship’s frame whined and popped with the strain, and Matt made a gurgling sound that indicated he wouldn’t be able to hold his dinner much longer.

  The CDF fighters behind us tried to evade, but she had covered the entire rear with the energy balls, leaving them nowhere to turn. Three blobs was all it took to sever the wing of one of the craft, four blobs nearly slicing the fuselage away from the other. Both fighters smoked and peeled away from the fight, their continued operation in question as they quickly vanished from the map.

  Alter wasn’t done. The quick change of direction put a third fighter in her crosshairs, and she unleashed more blobs, sinking them into the upper portion of the ship, forcing it to peel away. The last two fighters dodged instinctively, breaking their angle of attack to recalibrate.

  “Get us to space,” she barked. “Punch it!”

  I pulled all the way back on the throttle, shoving me back into the seat again as the thrusters opened up and the hiss turned into a muted rumble.

  “The switch all the way to the left above the throttle,” she said. “Flip it.”

  I reached for the toggle, switching it on. The light roar became a louder growl and we shot forward again as if I had hit the afterburners. The two remaining CDF fighters opened fire again, a couple of blasts hitting the strained shields. But we continued accelerating, putting distance between them and us as we reached the thermosphere. The view outside the ship gained an orange hue as heat built up along the front, the shields the only thing preventing hull rupture. Looking further out into space, I could see other craft of various shapes and sizes in orbit on different planes above the planet.

  “Look at the size of those things,” I said absently, my attention landing on a pair of vessels that had to be at least a mile long. At the same time, I noticed a pair of medium-sized vessels suddenly emit the blue glow of thruster trails.

  “Royal Sentries,” Alter explained. “They won’t get involved in this small matter. But those two corvettes will.”

  The two large ships I had taken particular notice of were gaining speed, their path carrying them toward us on a collision course. “Can we get past them?” I asked.

  “That depends on how well we evade their disruptor cannons. The projectiles are slow and dumb, at least compared to beams, but one hit will disable all the shield nodes, a second will disable the ship and leave us adrift. I can take the stick if you prefer.”

  I looked out at the two corvettes angling toward us from both flanks. I wanted to keep the stick. To be the one to try to get us through the blockade and away to freedom, not a bystander to the action. I was sure I could do it. I had gotten us away from the ground-based defenses so far. And this was my adventure. My…

  I spotted Matt in my peripheral vision. He had fallen unconscious, vomit running down the front of his shirt. All of a sudden I felt like the most selfish turd in the universe. A total asshole. My friend had just given up everything he had for me, and I had let him. And now we were in deep, deep shit and he was out cold covered in his own puke.