After a few hours, Bain left the cavern to scout.
“They’re back at the river,” he said when he returned. “But I don’t think they know we’re in here.”
“Small miracles,” she answered, soldering wires to a circuit. Her stomach rumbled and she clutched it, squeezing her eyes shut tight, trying to tell her body it could wait until the voyage was over. She’d brought everything she could think to, except for snacks.
Bain was a big help, too. He managed to do the heavy lifting and the extra pair of hands was useful when she needed to hold something steady and secure it in place. There was no way she could have put the ship together without him.
And now that it was ready, she just wanted to stay.
“Do you think she’s space-worthy?” Bain asked as she stepped back and surveyed the ship as a whole.
“Only one way to find out,” Lina answered, pulling the door open. It creaked loudly, echoing in the massive cavern as the stairs fell to the ground with a solid thunk.
She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders, her eyes following the stairs up into the dark tunnel of the ship. Then, she turned to Bain, blinking away tears.
“Thank you for everything. I couldn’t have done it without your help. Really.”
His arms engulfed her, and Lina wanted to melt into his chest, to draw his breath into her lungs to keep that little piece of him with her. She took a deep breath, savoring his intoxicating scent.
“It was my pleasure,” he said. Then, after a moment of silence, he added, “You can still change your mind if you want, you know.”
She nodded slowly. “I know. But I can’t. I have to go.”
Bain blew out a breath and smiled. “I knew you’d say that. Well, I suppose we should get going then, huh?”
It took Lina a second to process what he’d said. “We?”
“Of course,” he said. “You’re crazy if you think I’m not taking you home myself.”
“But…” It was one thing for her to go flying into uncertainty in a ship they weren’t even sure would fly or hold together under a planet’s gravitational pull. It was another thing entirely for Bain to join her.
If she’d made an error constructing the ship, she’d rather it only be her in danger. If this ship was a death trap, she’d rather Bain not be caught in it.
“What if it’s… You could die,” she said, unable to phrase the worries racing through her mind. Mom probably already expected the worst after Lina was sucked into the transporter. Of course she wanted to go back and soothe her worries, but if she never made it, nothing really changed. And the Mabnoans wouldn’t ever expect to hear from her again either, since she was going back home where she planned to stay. If she just happened to explode in empty space, there would be no one to even notice. But Bain… Well, his absence would certainly be missed.
“So could you,” he said, arching an eyebrow.
“That’s not the point,” she retorted, hands going to her hips. Explaining it to him would take too long and he’d just keep arguing. How could she make him see that he needed to stay here, with his people?
“Of course it’s not,” he said.
“You’re the prince, you need to stay here.”
“There’s a queen and a princess. The kingdom will be fine. It’s not a matter of whether we’ll die in this strange assortment of metal you’ve created. It’s a matter of me seeing the woman I love home safe and sound.”
Lina’s mouth dropped open and a slow smile stretched across Bain’s lips until she snapped it shut.
“You… you mean that?”
“Of course I do,” he said.
“You really want to come with me?”
“You’d have a harder time convincing me not to.”
She grinned and kissed him and grinned some more.
“But if we want to go, we should probably do it now. I’m sure my mother’s discovered my absence and will be putting two and two together any moment now.”
“Of course,” Lina said, nodding. She took his hand and led the way up the stairs to the dark cockpit, her heart racing, every fiber of her being thrumming with nervous excitement. They might never even make it out of this cavern if she hadn’t done things correctly.
She flipped a switch and was happy to see the lights come on all around the ship, lighting up the control panels and bringing the electric engine humming to life. The technology of this ship was incredible. She’d not even thought about fuel, but following the blueprints, she discovered that one of the parts she’d discarded was a generator or sorts. She couldn’t really say how it worked, but she was glad that it did. Her scheme wouldn’t have gotten far when she realized she didn’t have gas.
Bain went to the door and pulled the set of stairs up with great effort, the rusted hinges creaking the whole way.
“Safe and secure,” he said.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Lina reminded him, trepidation still sending icy fingers tiptoeing up her spine. This was it. This was the real test.
“Hey,” Bain said, stepping forward to slip an arm around her waist. “It’s going to be fine.”
She smiled even as the ball of anxiety in her chest tightened and grew. “You’re right.” Then, after a moment’s pause, “But… just in case…” She lifted up on her toes and kissed him. Not the quick happy kiss of before, but one that went to the core of her very soul, pouring in every unspoken word, every emotion she didn’t have a name for. “I love you too.”
He smiled and pulled her closer to him, giving her the nod that she should go ahead.
“Alright,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Let’s see what this thing can do.”
She took control of the steering column and pushed the ship forward, down a long tunnel that opened up near the sea. When they first started working down here, that tunnel had been collapsed, but it was clear now and gave them a way out.
The ship didn’t respond to her steering at first, but then it jerked forward, rattling on unbalanced wheels, jostling them about as it bounced over the unmaintained runway.
“Maybe we should have pushed it,” Bain said, each word punctuated by another violent bounce. At this rate, the trip out of the caves would tear the ship apart before they ever got to test it.
But then, there was light at the end of the tunnel. The soft lilac glow of sunset over the ocean. The ground smoothed out and the ship managed to not bounce so much. Maybe they were going to make it out after all.
The ground turned to sand and water lapped at the landing gear, but Lina turned her attention to the sky.
“Here goes nothing…” she said. Bain squeezed her shoulder and she sucked in a breath, hitting the buttons necessary for the launch sequence that was laid out in the blueprints. How did she ever think she was going to do this without his help? Yet again, she was struck by how lucky she was to have him. To have found him. And she was so glad he was here at her side now, even if she didn’t know what awaited them in the stars.
The ship was filled with an ear-shattering rumble. It sounded like an earthquake of metal, screeching and groaning, the whole ship vibrating uncontrollably. Lina watched the hull of the ship, waiting for it to be torn apart by the forces within, but her welds seemed to be holding.
All of the sudden, she was thrown to the back of the ship, Bain tumbling with her, landing on top of her. The ship shuddered and lights flashed and the ungodly cacophony seemed loud enough to make her permanently deaf.
And it was never going to end. The horrible noises kept coming, even while she and Bain were pinned to the back of the ship, even as she watched the sky rush toward them through the windshield. What was she thinking, entrusting their lives to this bucket of rust and bolts? How did she ever think that this was safe?
A terrible whining howl pressed in, even louder than everything else and Bain’s hands instantly moved to cover his ears. Lina couldn’t do that though. That noise was worse than all the others and she needed to figure out what it was before they were ripped apart in the atmosphere.
She extracted herself from the tangle of Bain’s limbs, clawing her way up the floor against the overwhelming force of gravity. The howl grew louder and louder and then something flew by her face. A piece of paper. It fluttered past and stuck to the wall, flapping madly as the pressure tried to suck it through the hull.
For the moment at least, the noise was lessened, but if she didn’t patch the hull immediately, there’d be no hope of surviving the oxygen-less vacuum of space.
She braced herself against the wall, using her foot against a nearby cabinet for leverage as she fished out her tools and set to doing the quickest, dirtiest patch job she’d ever done. The sky grew darker and darker as the ship struggled to escape Mabnoa’s gravity and time was running out. Already there were warnings at the controls about oxygen levels and the intense depressurization.
Come on, she growled in her head, fighting to get the weld tight before it was too late. Surely the old civilization had some kind of tape or something for problems like this, but their ships likely weren’t constructed so shoddily either.
Please, she prayed, nothing in the windshield now except the vast emptiness of space.
But when she held her hand over the patch, she didn’t feel anything. The wind wasn’t howling through the crack anymore. Dare she hope it was fixed?
In fact the whole ship had stopped its violent rumbling and Bain had picked himself up off the floor, now able to move freely.
At least, until the gravity was gone.
Like a switch had been flipped, they both began to drift in the cabin of the ship with nothing holding them to the floor.
“Are you okay?” Lina asked. Bain was rubbing the back of his head with a wince, but he nodded.
“I think maybe next time I’d prefer a harness of some kind?”
She nodded, her own body already blooming with the aches and colors of many bruises. “That was an oversight.”
“Are we good now?” he asked. For the first time, Lina heard uncertainty in his voice. He’d always sounded so confident. So sure that she’d be successful. But now he could see how close they’d been to complete destruction and they’d hardly left the planet. His confidence was visibly shaken.
“Yeah, I think so,” she said, pushing off the wall toward the controls. “Grab onto something.” With the flip of another switch, gravity was back on and they both fell to the floor with quiet oofs.
Bain picked himself up and walked carefully toward the front of the ship, like he was worried his footsteps might go through the floor, or rock the ship off-course.
Of course, his only experience with ships was the ocean, so it made sense that he would worry about rocking the boat, so to speak.
“We should be safe,” she said, reiterating the point. “At least until we get to Earth’s atmosphere.”
But even as she said that, Lina knew that the ship falling apart wasn’t their only danger. They had other things to worry about. Things Bain didn’t even know of. Things he definitely deserved to know about.
“Well, that’s not entirely true,” she said, bringing a worried expression to his face. For a moment he’d seemed reassured. Now, not so much.
“I need to tell you what your mother told me. About why you can’t leave the planet. About why you isolated.”
“Lina, you can’t. It’s forbidden for me to know until I’ve accepted the duties of the throne.”
She frowned, turning the ship slightly so that the glittering marble of Mabnoa was visible. “If you haven’t noticed, Bain, those rules are a long way away. And this might actually be relevant.”
A deeper frown marred his handsome face, furrowing his brow. He went to the windshield and stared for a long time, silent.
Hard to believe it’s all down there. Everything I’ve ever known. Everywhere I’ve ever been. It looks so tiny.”
“It is.”
He turned to face her, his eyes wider, his brows lifted, then finally he nodded. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Even by the standards of the universe, it sounds like we’re small.”
Bain stared some more and Lina desperately wished she knew what was going on in his mind. Was he regretting coming with her already?
“Alright,” he said with a sigh. “Tell me everything.”