ANDERS

I could hardly process what had happened. I had fucked Gwen. Not all the way, but close enough for me. She was still letting me kiss her. I felt as though I were floating ten feet off the ground. Something I had only dreamed about was now real. I had held Gwen in my arms.

And she liked it.

I couldn’t escape the nagging thought that it wouldn’t last. Gwen might see me as a fuck buddy, and it would all end with her leaving me.

All women did, in my experience. I knew it hadn’t been their choice. The virus had taken them. I had to savor every second of her presence while I had her. If these feelings were temporary, all the more reason to enjoy them to their fullest.

Meanwhile, we had to get the pirates off our tail. Their leader must have given them hell for chasing us this far from the transport. I briefly wondered how they were tracking us, but soon I had no time to think. They were within firing range and had already hit us.

“Shields up,” I called out.

“Already done.”

“Too bad we didn’t get them up a few minutes earlier.” I focused on the fighter on the port side and tried to get a targeting lock.

“I would have had them up sooner if someone hadn’t distracted me.”

All three fighters fired simultaneously. Our shields blocked their hits, but when I checked, they were down to seventy percent power. It was time to go on the offensive.

I locked onto a fighter and fired. Its shield shimmered in space. It looked like it wasn’t damaged, but if I hit it enough times, I would bust through and land one on the hull. They were playing the same game as us. I just had to be faster. I locked and fired as fast as I could, going into an intense zone of concentration and focus where I hoped I could make magic happen.

The fighter I hit fell back, and I knew its shields must be about to collapse. The other two moved to flank us, shooting at the sides of our ship and weakening our shields.

I doubled down, firing as quickly as the weapons allowed. My fingers moved so fast they were nearly a blur. The statistics on my screen showed they were weakening, but it wasn’t going to be enough. I couldn’t keep up if it was two against one.

“They’re beating us.”

“What about your off-the-charts skills at blowing up shit?” she yelled back. “I thought you knew how to shoot the bad guys.”

I pressed my lips together. Gwen was infuriating. “I do, but there’s two of them and only one of us.”

“You’re just making excuses.”

I shook my head. I had to even the odds. If I fired a missile at one ship, it would keep them busy for a moment while I focused on the other. Before I could finish the thought, the missile was out of the launch bay and chasing the enemy on the right. The fighter veered away, and I imagined I could see one of their pilots shooting at it.

I turned my attention to the second ship and fired until I broke through its shield. Then I aimed carefully and blew out its fuel cells. The ship immediately dropped back. Both damaged ships were almost off my screen. But the third starship had destroyed the missile and was on our tail again.

Narrowing my eyes, I let my mind float, allowing my reflexes to follow the erratic movements of the evasive ship. I managed to get a lock but lost it when Gwen steered violently to the right. I cursed, trying to get a lock again.

“A steady hand would be nice.” My eyes focused on the sole remaining fighter.

“Would you rather have us hit that asteroid?”

Asteroid? I had been so focused on my problems that I had lost track of the forward monitors. They were full of rocks flying toward us at high velocity. Most of them looked small and relatively harmless, but the one she dodged must have been big enough to do some real damage.

I groaned. “You took us into an asteroid belt?”

“Are all your gaming skills failing now that you’re out in the real world?”

“I’m going to have to hold my fire.” I tried talking through the problem. “I can’t get a lock if we’re moving around so much.”

“You’re going to be waiting a long time.” I turned my head to look at her. She was busy with her console, keeping her eyes on the screens without glancing in my direction.

“Why?” I frowned.

“We’re going through the asteroid belt, not around it.”

“Wait a second.” The fighter fired another shot at us. Our shields were so weak that our ship rocked to one side. “We can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because no human pilot has ever flown through an asteroid belt without being turned into space junk.”

“As a matter of fact, you’re right. Most human pilots can’t fly through asteroid belts.” Gwen glanced at the pirates behind us. She looked like she was trying to remember something. “I heard a rumor about one special pilot who could beat the machines. I wonder where he is. We could sure use him right now.”

I stood up. “I’m good, but this is suicide. Do you really think I can do this?”

She looked deep into my eyes, standing up and coming over so we were nose-to-nose. “Actually, I do.”

She moved to the port console because she knew I preferred the starboard side. We both sat down.

Could I do this? Theoretically, yes. But was I willing to risk our lives on a possibility? I had made many mistakes in my life. If I screwed this up, we’d be dead. I looked over at the woman I loved. She believed in me.

Another shot rocked the ship, and a red light started flashing on one of the monitors. The shields were at five percent. They wouldn’t be able to protect us against another hit until they recharged.

“I’m on it.” Gwen jumped up and headed to the repair station.

If I didn’t succeed, they were going to kill us. I sat down at the console and put on my game face. I could do it. I was a master at piloting and even better than a computer. We weren’t going to die out there if I had anything to say about it.

* * *

GWEN

Anders steered us into the asteroid belt as I ran a maintenance diagnostic. The computer identified the problem, and I gave the system permission to make the necessary repairs. After a minute, the red light stopped blinking.

We were moving at maximum speed. Our ship was at the edge of the field. The asteroids were all either small, easy to avoid, or not a danger.

I checked the monitor. The fighter was still tailing us.

“Buckle up. I hope you have a strong stomach.”

“I’ve done a few simulations.” I held up three fingers. “In the centrifuge after breakfast, I walked away by myself. I never blacked out. I wasn’t even dizzy. ”

I smugly smiled until I realized Anders wasn’t looking at me. His eyes were fixed on the monitors in front of him.

“I wasn’t kidding about strapping in. You have to be ready. This might be worse than the training simulators.” His face held no trace of a joke when he met my eyes for only a moment.

“You’re starting to scare me. Whose idea was this, anyway?”

“We’re going to do this, but there’s zero room for error.”

I nodded, determination coming over me. “I’m up for it.”

“That’s good. If we make even one mistake, we’re dead. We’re coming into the central part of the asteroid belt now. Reduce speed by fifty percent.”

A class four starship was a complicated piece of machinery. Two pilots split the responsibilities. One directed the ship, and the other was in charge of speed, repair, and defense.

Since Anders was steering, he was in command and could give me orders. But I had autonomy over my tasks. I didn’t need to ask or tell him what I was doing.

I started slowing down as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Our lives depended on how well we worked together. Anders maneuvered easily around the first few asteroids, not asking me to adjust our speed at all.

“They’re still gaining on us,” I reported after taking a quick look at the rear monitor.

Anders couldn’t answer me. He was already in a trance like state.

The asteroids started coming in earnest. We were able to dodge the majority, and suddenly we were in the thick of things. Asteroids were everywhere. Anders stopped trying to avoid any collisions except with the huge rocks that would smash our ship to bits.

“Cut velocity by half again.” I moved to comply as quickly as I could.

There were silent explosions every few seconds as smaller asteroids hit the hull and blew up. Our shields didn’t have enough strength to protect us from anything.

“Hold on.” Anders was shouting now, and it startled me. Suddenly we were sideways, and a massive asteroid blew past, narrowly missing us. We dropped straight down, avoiding the second asteroid in our flight path. With a quick turn, he steered us around and flipped us over a massive one, then he drifted to the right, avoiding a smaller rock. I marveled at his reflexes and unwavering concentration.

I couldn’t relax while Anders weaved an intricate path through the asteroid belt. My nerves were on edge, but unbelievably, we were getting through.

After we had been tumbling through the asteroids for five minutes, he spoke again. “That wasn’t too bad. We’re getting to the nasty part now.”

He was right about it being nothing like the gravity simulator, the bane of every starship pilot trainee’s existence. The simulator was a powerful centrifuge that reproduced the pressure of flying into a planet’s atmosphere and moving at extreme speeds through space. Most trainees hated it and got sick. I never had.

I wasn’t planning on throwing up this time either, but the movement was pretty intense. I tried to focus on whatever Anders was telling me to do. Otherwise, I might pay too much attention to the ship’s motion and lose control. I concentrated on staying calm and doing my job as the ship lurched from side to side, then accelerated straight up and looped around. The speed alone was dizzying. He hadn’t asked me to slow down at all. He was racing through the blanket of asteroids like it wasn’t even there.

It was incredible and a little bit of a turn-on. I pushed any thoughts of romance away. There would be enough time for that if we managed to survive. I held my tongue a thousand times, wanting to shout a warning, but I knew that speaking would break his concentration.

He veered to the right and moved the ship in a circle then banked steeply in the other direction, making a path around five giant asteroids. We were moving faster for some reason. Anders threaded in and out between the enormous boulders. Despite the inertial compensators, the force pushed me back in my seat.

Was he trying to get style points?

I noticed that we were matching the speed of one of the biggest asteroids I had seen so far. He flew beside it, then over it. I couldn’t believe what he was doing, but before I could blink, he had landed us on the huge rock.

“Deploy clamps and stabilizers.” After he gave the order, he sat back in his chair and let out an enormous sigh.

I scrambled to attach us to the ground. Once the ship was stable, I turned to face Anders. He was slumped back in his seat with his eyes closed and his hands over his face.

“Did you just land us on an asteroid going at nearly the speed of light?” I still couldn’t believe it. It was supposed to be impossible. There’s plenty of room for a ship to touch down, in theory. But the logistics of matching velocity and deceleration were thought to be too much for pilots, even with the help of a computer.

“I think we did.” He was breathing heavily as if he had just run a marathon.

“I guess the rumors about that pilot were true.”