Joston
Lasson is hugging Chlo so hard I’m hoping he doesn’t break her, but, then, she seems to be hugging him even tighter.
“Aym—?” Nik says, his voice cut off by a blast the likes of which I’ve experienced only in a vid. Not even Joston Parst himself was ever the cause of an explosion of this magnitude.
“Niya!” I say, but it’s obvious that the comms are all dead.
“Are those the rebels’ cannons?” I say to Chlo, who breaks her embrace with Lasson.
“I hope so,” Chlo says.
So do I. I love a good fight, and this seems like the best kind, the kind where an overbearing, cruel monarchy is overthrown. I want to join this bunch of renegades immediately. I figure I’ll donate the Marinax’s number three transport raft and help them out in any way I can.
There’s just one problem: transport raft three was parked on the roof of the palace’s outlying wing. The very wing where now a thick cloud of dust and smoke has formed.
“We have to get out of here,” says Lasson.
“The raft,” I say, looking up.
“Joston, it’s gone,” Chlo says, even though I suspect that myself. But it’s only a suspicion. Not a fact.
“We’re going to have to make a run for it,” Nik says, back in charge.
“Let’s head for the airfield,” I say, but Chlo says, “Niya’s house.”
“Niya’s house,” Nik says, succumbing to his own interests. He probably thinks that Niya and Aymee went there.
I’m still in favor of the airfield. We’re going to have to get off Engra somehow, and the airfield is our best chance—before I return to help the rebellion, that is. I’ll bring back a better ship than a little transport raft with me, and . . .
An s-car screeches to a halt in front of us, and I hope I’ll be able to tell which side its occupants are on, because I’ve already got three quarters of a plan of how to overpower them, take the s-car, and get to the airfield. The plan starts with my hand on the weapon I’ve got tucked into the back of my waistband.
But when the s-car’s hatch opens, a female gets out, and now that I see who’s driving, I rush toward her, pick her up, and hold her close to me.
“Damn you, Niya, you scared me nearly to death,” I say before I start kissing her. The feel of her lips on mine, her body close to me . . .
“There’ll be plenty of time for that later,” Aymee says from the passenger seat. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Aymee?” Nik says. “How are you?”
“Holding steady,” Aymee says, “although I don’t know for how much longer.”
“Get in,” Nik says to everyone, and even though there’s hardly room in here for four, everyone manages to squeeze in until I’m left outside with just Niya.
“I’m driving,” I say.
“You know how to get there?” Niya says.
“You’ll show me,” I say just as another bomb blast deafens us. The smoke thickens and all the palace lights go off.
“Get in,” Nik says, “and let Joston drive. At least he can see in all this.”
Niya obeys Nik—if only she’d obey me so easily—and I jump behind the driver’s seat, pull down the hatch, and we speed away.
“Airfield, right?” I say to the group.
“Yes,” says everyone.
I accelerate while Niya leans forward and points so I can take the fastest route.
“We’re almost there,” Niya says after a few minutes of wild turns, dodging barricades, and pushing this sorry s-car to its unimpressive limits.
“Stop!” Aymee says, then she screams, and it’s a noise I hope I never hear again—except she does it one more time, this time even worse than the last. Louder, and more agonized.
I am not going to stop.
“Joston, turn here!” Niya says. “Here!”
I turn, the s-car barely keeping steady. There’s a battle going on behind us, we’re almost at the airfield, who the hell knows how dangerous it is out there, and I’ve got momentum on my side.
I am not stopping. Even for Aymee. Out in the open, we don’t stand a chance. She can have her baby in the s-car. And, judging by her latest set of vocalizations, she just might.
“Chlo!” Aymee says.
“I’m right here,” Chlo says. “You’ll be fine.”
“I am not fine!” Aymee says. She pants for a moment, then, between pants, says, “Joston fucking Lynar, I am going to kill you right after I kill First Officer Niklas Arca.”
“Good thing I’m being spared,” Lasson says. I’ve always admired him.
“Me too,” Chlo says. “Think how awful it’d be if we’d rescued you and then Aymee killed you. What a wasted effort that would have been.”
“Stop making jokes!” Aymee says. “This is serious.”
That’s when I see the airfield. That’s when everyone sees the airfield. Can’t miss it. The place is lit up brighter than the palace was, and, as I speed by, I see that the front gates are closed.
“Go around to the side,” Niya says, pointing again, but we quickly learn that all the gates are closed.
“Emergency procedure,” Niya says.
“Are you going to stop now?” Aymee says.
I pull over into an unlit side road and stop the s-car.
“Satisfied?” I say to Aymee.
“No!” she says, or rather, screams. “Make it end!”
I open the hatches and everyone except Aymee gets out.
Nik pulls Aymee’s seat back as far as it’ll go and Chlo crouches down on the driver’s seat and does whatever it is that doctors do when babies are being born.
I’d rather not know the details.
And I hope to hell that Aymee never makes good on her threats to Nik, although I admit that I’d love to see her try to get his hand to rot off, à la Joston Parst, and I say so to Niya, who tells me to shut the fuck up. Don’t I know when I’m witnessing a miracle?
“Don’t babies get born every day?” I say.
“That doesn’t make it any less of a miracle,” Lasson says.
It’s very quiet. Aymee has stopped screaming. Chlo has stopped encouraging her. I just landed a transport raft on the roof of the Engra Palace and we’ve barely escaped with our lives, but this silence is terrifying me.
Breaking the void, a new, different sound arises: “Waaaaaa!”
A wave of fear, relief, and love pours through me. I reach for Niya’s hand and we hold on to each other.
“It is a miracle,” I say, whispering into her ear.
Then I slip my arm around her waist and hold her to me. Over her head I see Lasson wipe the tears from his eyes, and it’s only then that I sense my own tears.
It is a miracle.
And it’ll be another miracle if we can get out of here before it’s too late.