Page 36 of Into The Rift

When we first arrived for our meeting, we’d watched him on closed circuit cameras as the guard let him out of his cell before he went in for the meeting. The king had wanted to overhear any conversation he might have with his grandmother. I’d taken close note of the code the guard had tapped in, and I replicated it now on his door. It was a simple but important number, from a date in Tygerian history and easy to remember—it was the date of the peace treaty between the Axis and its enemies of the Alliance. Every school child learned it when they were young.

I put in the code and the door slid open. Niko had been sitting on his cot, staring into space. He looked up at me, surprised to see the door open and even more surprised to see me standing there.

“What are you doing here? Does anyone know you’re here?”

“No. I’ve come to help you escape. The king is unforgiving, and he’s angry. This isn’t going to end well for you. I think he’ll try to have you executed in the morning.”

“I figured as much. But what do you mean, you’ve come to help me escape? Where exactly do you propose I go?”

“I’m going to give you the access codes for a ship you can steal.”

He stared at me and blinked a few times. “I-I must have misunderstood you.”

“No, I mean it. I have the access codes for my grandparents’ striker. The one they arrived on. You simply have to get it away from the ship and then fly it into the rift before they can catch you.”

“Oh, is that all I have to do? And how do you imagine I can manage to do that?”

“I thought I’d pull the emergency alarm. It’s late and most people are in their quarters and undressed. By the time they’ve thrown on clothing and made it out of their rooms, they’ll be in some confusion and disarray. You’ll run to the striker and leave the docking portals and then race toward the rift. It’s a fast ship, if you’re not familiar with it, small and sleek. If your luck holds, you’ll be in and on your way before they can marshal a response.”

He stared at me like I’d just proposed he blow up the ship with all hands onboard, including us.

“Don’t look like that. It will work, I think. And once you’re inside the rift, you can make our way to your planet.”

“No. It’s out of the question, princeling. Don’t get me wrong—I can’t thank you enough for trying to help me, though I think you need to leave now and take pains not to let anyone know you were ever here. I can’t fathom that this would even work, but if it did, they’d take it out on my grandmother.”

“No, I don’t think they would. She’s a foreign queen and they have an alliance with her husband. But we don’t need to stand here and argue over this,” I said, glancing back down the corridor. “Come quickly and be on your way before one of the guards comes to check.”

He stared at me, his eyes wide, and then he seemed to come to a sudden decision. He rushed over to me and took my hand in his. A reckless look came over his face and he grinned. “I guess I have no other choice. I think this is doomed to failure, but all right then—let’s do this.”

He pulled me to the door and looked both ways before stepping out into the passageway. I nodded over toward one of the many alarms affixed to the walls, and then I boldly went up to it, smashed the glass and pressed the alarm. Immediately, a loud blaring noise began, so loud I wanted to put my hands over my ears to shield them.

Fire was always an extreme, life or death kind of emergency onboard a ship in space, as the options were extremely limited, so an alarm was definitely cause for deep concern. I grinned at him, but he surged forward, took my arm, and began to drag me down the passageway with him. I gave out a muffled squeal and he headed down to the next level, where the shuttle ports were located. By this time, he’d picked me up, carrying me tucked against him, one hand over my mouth. The striker was located on one of the shorter arms of the docking station, and he raced toward it, not meeting anyone along the way. My weight and my struggles against him didn’t slow him down in the least.

I could imagine that it was pretty chaotic elsewhere on the ship, as the crew determined whether it was a false alarm and then got everyone back into their quarters. They would have seen me pulling the alarm by now on the cameras that were all over the ship and know that I helped him. They’d think I was escaping with him.

He was able to make it down the dock and up the ramp to the ship without seeing a soul, and when he got to the striker, he quickly used the access codes I’d given him to get inside.

He tossed me into the co-pilot’s seat and pointed a finger at me. “Stay still and you won’t be hurt!”

I jumped to my feet immediately and he threw me back down. He tore a long strip off my shirt and tied my arm to an arm of the seat, holding me in place with one hand on my chest. He was so strong. Yelling and cursing at him, I fought him hard, but it was no use. He wrangled my other arm down when he finished with the first one and tied it as well.

The ship was small and very compact. The console sat up front with two large chairs in front of it, usually occupied by the pilot and the co-pilot. He threw the bag I’d brought for him in the small space behind the seats, intended for a bit of storage, and slipped confidently into the pilot’s seat.

“Stop struggling,” he told me. “You’re only going to hurt yourself.”

To my surprise, he didn’t say more, but strapped himself in and started the engines.

“No lights until we clear the docking ports,” he told me, his eyes gleaming.

“Let me go! I was trying to help you!”

“And I appreciate it, princeling. We’ll be noticed in a moment or two, but by the time they come after us, I hope to be long gone.”

He maneuvered the striker slowly out of the dock but then a voice come over the audio system, and it was harsh and demanding.

“Attention on the ship,” said the voice in Tygerian. “Identify yourselves!”

“Fuck that,” Niko said softly.

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