Nia sends a message back to her dad letting him know we’re safe at the shuttle. “All we can do now is wait to hear from him,” she says. “And hope.”
So we wait. Every minute seems to drag on forever. I try to get a bit of sleep but it’s not happening. The long hours of waiting and hiding punctuated with sudden bursts of violence and fear is an exhausting way to live.
The ninety-minute rendezvous time comes and goes with no communication from Tony, and Nia gets agitated. “You don’t think Jovi was feeling those awful vibes about my dad, do you?” she asks me.
I blink a few times, having very nearly fallen asleep before she spoke. “I don’t know,” I mumble. “She said people she’s close to. I don’t think that includes your dad.”
“I stuck my multitool’s tracking beacon on his suit before we left,” she says. “He just started moving again.”
A floodlight suddenly sweeps through the canyon a few miles away.
“They’re on the run and they only have just enough time to get here. Not enough to shake the military pursuit first. Which means they’re not coming.”
A message finally arrives from Tony. “Got spotted by a stealth ship, you know what to do honey, take care of our friends and don’t try anything stupid.”
Nia slams her fist against her armrest. “Fucking hell,” she hisses through clenched teeth. Then she gets up and climbs out of the ship. I follow her.
“You’re not doing something stupid are you?” I ask.
“Shut up Jayce.”
We enter the shuttle to find the kids and my mom passing around a bong. The entire place is hazy with cannabis smoke.
“What?” Nia says. “This is not the time!”
“This is exactly the time dear,” Jovi says, as she gets up to put an arm around Nia’s shoulders.
“My dad and the others aren’t going to make it back here in time. They’re leading the military away so we can escape. If y’all fuck this up…”
“Nia, sweetie, we’re here for you.”
She sighs loudly and squirms away from Jovi. “What are all of your abilities? Please, we don’t have much time to figure this out.”
“I can teleport like Nova and start fires with my mind,” Gavin says.
“We’re telepathic,” the twins say in a creepy unison. I forgot their names. “Hector and Hermes,” they add with a smile.
There’s a pause. “Ceto,” Gavin says. “Would you mind sharing?”
The green-haired woman stands up with a sigh and stares into my soul. “I’m a Sith lord.”
“You mean—"
She raises her hand and I start choking.
“Okay, I get it,” I squeak.
“Gavin,” Nia says. “Can you teleport other people?”
“No, and like Nova I can only travel to locations I’ve previously been.”
“If my dad doesn’t make it back, do any of you know how to fly a shuttle?”
“I do,” Ceto says. She raises both hands and the shuttle shakes, then lifts off the ground a couple meters before settling back down.
“I have some actual piloting experience,” Gavin adds.
“Ok, great. So here’s the plan. Gavin, we need you to teleport back to the hideout to create a distraction. There should be a tank of old rocket fuel in the hangar.”
“You want me to blow it up?”
“Exactly.”
“My brother is in the airlock,” I remind him. “Please blow it up outside.”
Nia continues, “We need to give the guys a chance to get off the military’s radar so they can come back here. Then we need to divert the military’s attention as far away as possible. Hector and Hermes, how far does your ability reach?”
“Everywhere,” they say ominously.
“Uh…ok, so could you, theoretically, influence someone at a high level in the military to do something they don’t want to do?”
“It’s possible, but very difficult and violates our code of ethics.”
“Fuck ethics, we’re trying to survive here. Can you convince Daniel Zaveri to intervene?”
“What do you want him to do? The simpler it is, the more likely it will work.”
Nia thinks a moment. “Convince him that he needs to help Tony Ross.”
The twins nod. “We’ll try.”
“And me?” Ceto asks, before taking an enormous bong rip.
“You just…stay here. We need you to, uh, ‘fly’ the shuttle in case Gavin and my dad don’t get back soon enough.”
“Perfect,” Ceto says, as she sinks back into her seat beside my mom and passes her the bong.
“Suit up Gav,” Nia says. “Let’s hurry.”
He follows us back to Nia’s ship and she sends her dad a message about the plan. Then she nods to Gavin and he waves before vanishing right before our eyes.
“Holy shit,” I mutter.
A moment later an enormous explosion lights up the night sky. Another moment later Gavin reappears, breathing heavily and clutching at a gash in his arm that goes clean through his pressure suit. “Your brother got out,” he says, “I very nearly teleported inside him. He had a glowing knife.”
“Did you…” I start to ask.
“I ignited the rocket fuel and got the fuck out. I don’t know if he had time to escape. I’m sorry.”
A message comes back from Tony. “Goddamn it Nia I said don’t do nothing stupid! We slipped by them and are headed your way now. Nice work.”
Nia laughs and high-fives me and Gavin. “Now if Hector and Hermes come through, we might just pull this off.”
After patching Gavin’s suit we return to the shuttle where the bong is still going around. The twins are separated from the circle, seated face-to-face with their eyes closed in deep concentration.
I sit next to mom and she hands me the bong. “Oh, no, I shouldn’t,” I say. “You look happy though.”
“Melvin, it’s like my mind is clear for the first time in years.”
“Really?”
“It’s been horribly foggy. But my new friends showed me a way out.” She gestures toward Hector and Hermes. “Such sweet young men.”
“Wait what?”
The twins stand and face us. “Daniel Zaveri will not help Tony Ross,” they say.
“Fuck!” Nia shouts. “Unless we can get that ship to go far away, they’re going to see us launch and mobilize the orbital defenses to intercept.”
“What if it were to…crash?” Ceto asks.
Nia stares at her. “Are you suggesting…”
“I’m suggesting you get me close to it so I can throw it at the side of the canyon.”
The shuttle is quiet for a moment. “You’re suggesting we kill everyone on that ship so we can escape undetected,” Nia says.
“Exactly.”
A blinding light shines through the windshield.
“Oops, I guess they came to me.” Ceto strolls casually into the airlock and steps outside as the military ship begins broadcasting its ‘we’ve got you now’ message.
A moment later the light disappears with a tremendous crash that shakes the ground. Then Ceto steps back into the shuttle and removes her helmet. “How much time do we have left?
“None, if they sent our location to their bosses,” Nia says.
“They didn’t get a chance,” Hector and Hermes say. “They lost radio contact before they found us due to the depth of the canyon here. We have fifteen minutes before someone comes looking for them.”
“We have ten until the escape window.” Nia sits down; I can see her hands shaking. “We might still pull this off.”
“Warning, there are survivors,” the twins say, and they dive for the floor.
At that moment the windshield explodes into a million shards of glass. Bits of shuttle are flying in every direction as bullets shower the interior. The twins are trying to crawl back toward us and blood sprays everywhere as they’re both hit. I grab my mom and push her to the floor, and she manages to get her helmet on and pressurize the suit by herself before I can help. Nia lands beside me with a moan and then goes still. I can’t see Jovi or Gavin.
Ceto jumps up and the bullets stop dead in front of her. “You hurt my friends!” she screams, and the words come out of her mouth with a shockwave that blows the entire front end off the shuttle. She walks out into the freezing Martian night, wearing no helmet with a cloud of bullets orbiting her right hand. I can just make out the figures of a few men with rifles, who continue firing directly at her without effect. The cloud of bullets around her hand grows, and the men take a step back.
“Nia, we need to get to your ship,” I say.
She doesn’t respond.
“We’ll have to carry her,” mom says. “I’ll help you.”
We carry Nia to the airlock door, and as it opens I glance back to see Ceto lift her hand and fling several pounds of lead back at the soldiers.
We stumble straight through the pointless airlock and climb into Nia’s ship, where Jovi is in the back holding Gavin who lies in a growing puddle of blood. She looks up with a stony expression. “I warned you.”
Mom and I lay Nia beside Gavin. She doesn’t appear to be hurt, until we roll her over and see a bullet hole between her shoulders.
Ceto appears in the doorway, her suit covered in patches of red, still wearing no helmet. She silently climbs into the passenger seat. I hit the button to close the door and pressurize the cabin, and then with mom’s help begin removing Nia’s pressure suit.
Suddenly Nia starts screaming incoherently, so we stop.
“We’ve got you,” I say, holding her hand. It’s strangely limp.
“I can’t feel anything,” she gasps. “I can’t move.”
I immediately realize what’s happening and my stomach lurches horribly. “Don’t try to move, just relax.”
“Melvin Jayce, put me in the fucking pilot seat.”
“You were shot in your spine,” I say. “Your suit sealed over the wound but you shouldn’t be moved at all.”
“Put…me…in the fucking seat.”
With some effort we get her into the pilot seat, as gently as possible.
“Now put my hands on the control panel.”
I do as she says, and she groans. “Fuck it all, the nanobots aren’t responding. I can’t fly.”
We all look at Ceto. She doesn’t respond. I poke her shoulder. She appears to have gone catatonic.
“That happens when she exerts herself too much,” Jovi says. “It lasts a while.”
“Is Gavin…?”
“He’s dead.”
We fall silent. With only a few minutes left until the escape window, we have to hope Tony shows up.
A minute later someone pounds frantically on the door. I peer out the window to see Mace and Newton supporting Clyde between them. No sign of Tony. We get everyone’s helmets on and open the door for them.
“Mace, where is my dad,” Nia demands.
“He didn’t make it.”
“What?”
“We ran into a ground team they dropped to intercept us before they found you. What the fuck happened here?”
“What the fuck happened to my dad?”
“They captured him, he fought…they shot him.”
There’s a moment of stunned silence.
“It’ll be tough to fit everyone in,” Nia finally says, sounding a bit faint. “And one of you needs a crash course to get us off this goddamn planet. Who has the most experience?”
Nobody volunteers. I clear my throat.
“Yes?” Nia sounds extremely annoyed.
“My dad forced me to do a semester at the space cadet academy. I got a decent grade on, uh, piloting, but never operated a real ship. We’d probably end in a literal crash course.”
“Then you better pay attention because you’re going to fly us out of here.”
“I…I can’t.”
“You need to, man,” Mace says. “You’re the only one.”
“Surely I cannot be the one with the most flying experience. All I did was pass a basic simulator course. Can’t you do it, Mace?”
“Nah man I flunked out of pilot school so bad they told me to never operate a flying thing. I get the jitters real bad. Sorry.”
“Okay, I get it. Please, just, stop calling me man, or dude, or anything like that.”
“Do you have something to share?” mom asks.
“No. Well, yes, but not right now. I just need a tiny bit less stress to help me focus and avoid killing us all.”
“Got it ma…er, comrade,” says Mace.
“I know dear,” mom says, “you never did like being a boy.”
“Oh my god am I that obvious?”
“My dad is a crossdresser,” Nia says, and then she starts crying.
“I’m sorry, my stress has only gone up and I’ve learned nothing yet.”
We sit quietly until Nia stops crying. “Ok crew,” she says, “we’re going to escape this cursed place. It will be uncomfortable, probably painful with us all crammed in here, and we’ll have to leave behind the bodies of our friends and family. I can’t guarantee we’ll find safety anywhere, but as the new captain of the smuggler vessel Mama Europa, I’ll always have your back if you have mine. And I really need you to have my back right now. Jayce, you need to get in this seat immediately, and the rest of you, pack yourselves in and prepare to fly.”
Jovi takes Gavin’s body to the shuttle to leave him with the twins, and we move Ceto to the back. Mace gets in the passenger seat and we put Nia in his lap. My mom takes the spot between the front seats.
And I slide into the pilot’s seat of a fusion-drive spaceship for the first time.
After Nia talks me through the startup process and pre-flight checklist, I’m getting overwhelmed and she stops me. “Hey, we did all that stuff. Now forget about it, all you need to focus on now is making us move at the right time.”
“And stop, eventually, stopping is important.” My palms are tingling and sweaty and I can’t stop thinking about what could go wrong.
“When we get out of the atmosphere we’ll send an emergency signal to Mama E and she’ll catch us. Your job is to get us through the planetary defenses in…exactly two minutes as the gap opens. She’s a forgiving ship, not too different from the simulator you learned in.”
“The rocks are gonna be a lot less forgiving though.”
“They should be staying behind us.”
I take the yoke in my hands. The rubbery grip is worn smooth from thousands of hours in the hands of experts. I feel totally unprepared and inadequate for this moment and I hate that feeling more than anything.
“Sixty seconds. Switch on the main engine now.”
I do so, and I can feel the energy of the tiny sun at the heart of the ship’s fusion drive pulsing through every molecule of my body.
“My eyes feel weird,” mom says.
“You’re uncomfortably close to the resonant frequency of eyeballs,” Nia says, “give it a tiny bit of throttle. Thirty seconds now. As soon as we reach zero, point us straight up and give it maximum burn.”
All of my skin is itchy. I swear I can feel the air vibrating against my face. I grip the yoke tight and run through the launch procedure in my mind over and over. Fire vertical thrusters, at ten meters off the ground pull back hard, when inclination is ninety degrees push throttle to maximum. Keep the fucking planet behind you.
“Ten seconds…eight…seven…six…five…four…three…two…fire thrusters, and go!”
The initial hop off the ground almost breaks my teeth. When we’re pointed straight up I hit the throttle and the acceleration is like nothing I’ve experienced. The commercial shuttles I’ve been on launch a bit more slowly for the comfort of their law-abiding customers. We fugitives are pushing gravitational forces to the human limit just so we can leave the planet before being detected by the military.
The first several minutes feel like an eternity of chaos, and I just focus on keeping my field of view filled with open space. Solid land is the enemy, the empty void is where I want to go. Is it though? Well, I’m hurtling deeper and deeper into it anyway. Hoping there’s something for me on the other side, wherever the hell that is.
Finally Nia shouts, “Cut the main engine! We made it, we’re out of satellite range. Now send the emergency signal and Mama will come get us.”
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