Page 96 of Chosen By Swift

He smiled as she passed right back out, not even the slightest bit bothered by the idea of a bumpy flight. He had been reading everything he could about pregnancy and had learned even more from Wendy who had been happy to tell him all sorts of interesting and slightly horrifying details about pregnancy and childbirth. She had warned him that Alys would be extremely tired for the next few weeks.

According to Wendy, Alys would be sick to her stomach and exhausted until she hit her second trimester. Alys would apparently get a slight reprieve for a few weeks, but once she hit her third trimester, she would be miserable. He had assumed Wendy was joking at first, but then Polly, Jack’s wife, had started telling horror stories about her third trimester experiences. He had come away from that discussion racked with guilt for what he had done to Alys.

Of course, when he had apologized later that night, Alys had laughed and kissed him. She promised him that she knew what she was signing up for when they made love, and she was willing to suffer through the awful parts of pregnancy to have his children. It was one of those moments that left him in awe of her and loving her more than he ever thought possible.

Swift took one of the seats in the small cabin. He might join Alys in the bunk later, but for now, he wanted to sit and think. The last few days had been wildly emotional, and he needed to process all of it.

At least, that had been the plan, but at some point, he must have nodded off. He woke suddenly, startled out of sleep by the jarring sensation of falling. He hit the floor ass first and grunted at the impact. It took him a moment to realize he hadn’t fallen out of the chairby accident. No, the entire ship was tilted and dark.

“Alys!” He scrambled to his feet, grabbing hold of the bolted down chair for balance. “Alys!”

Except she wasn’t in the bunk. The harness was unbuckled, and the wrinkled blankets were cold to the touch. She had beengone for a while. But where? And why hadn’t she woken him?

The bathroom? Had she been nauseated again? Or needed to relieve herself? She wouldn’t have woken him up for that, not after passing the shared bathroom in the corridor on their way to the cabin.

“Shit.” He turned toward the door and forced it aside. The lights were beginning to dim, and the power systems on the ship were failing. He recognized the signs of sabotage. Panic gripped his heart, squeezing tight as he fled the cabin in search of his mate. “Alys! Alys! Where are you?”

“Swift?” Her voice was muffled. “Swift, I’m here! In the bathroom! The door is stuck!”

“Hang on!” He slid to a stop in front of the door and grabbed a hold of the frame to keep from falling. The ship veered sharply side to side, and he gritted his teeth as he reached for the manual emergency door release. He finally managed to slam his fist into it, and the door slid open. He barely had time to react before Alys was falling out of the bathroom into his arms.

“What’s happening?” she cried, wild eyed and clutching at his shoulders.

“I don’t know.” He did, but he didn’t want to scare her any more than she was. He didn’t see any blood on her face, but she might have other injuries he couldn’t see. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. I was washing my hands when the lights went out and the ship dipped to the left.”

“Come on. Stay close to me.” He kept a tight hold on her hand as he rushed down the corridor toward the flight deck. When they neared the cockpit, he spotted one of the engineers on the floor. He was rolled up against the wall and both of his arms were bent at strange angles.

“Is he dead?” Alys asked in horror.

“Yes.” He didn’t have to get down and take a pulse to know that the twist in the man’s neck was fatal. “Don’t look.”

He tugged hard on her hand and dragged her away from the gruesome scene toward the cockpit. He realized the door was ajar, and his stomach sank. There were no voices coming from inside. All he could hear were the alarms.

Not wanting to leave Alys behind, he dragged her into the cockpit with him. His stomach dropped as he realized both pilots were dead. They had been shot in the back of the head with some sort of low energy weapon. There were no exit wounds on their faces. It had to have been some kind of projectile or pressurized air? He wasn’t sure, and he didn’t have time to scrutinize their injuries.

He turned his focus toward the controls and the navigation screen. The sabotage program that had been illicitly installed in the ship’s software had done its job. One by one, systems were failing. He attempted to regain flight control, but the system was dead. It quickly became clear that the ship was little more than a falling rock.

“Swift? Can you fly it?”

“No,” he admitted, “but I can try to stabilize it.”

He used the manual levers and switches and dials to adjust what control he could over the ship. He managed to level out the ship and found a way to bypass the system to engage some parts of the autopilot. He couldn’t fly the ship, but he could at least keep it from tumbling into a death spiral and ripping apart.

Satisfied they weren’t going to die in the next few minutes, he reached for the emergency radio. It was the only system that seemed to be still working. “Mayday. Mayday. Mayday.” He glanced at the pilot’s console for the flight identifier. “Dagger X1-616A is going down. Repeat. Dagger X1-616A is going down.”

“ATCValiantto 616A, we copy. Advise situation.”

“Sabotage. All systems are down or failing. Ship is unrecoverable. Flight is locked into an uncontrolledreentrytrajectory. Pilots Vector and True are KIA. One engineer KIA. One engineer MIA.”

The flight controller replied back with a copy of his transmission. “Proceed to escape pods and advise of jettison.”

Swift’s gaze moved to a flashing red warning, and he inhaled sharply. “Negative. Escape pods have been jettisoned. I repeat. Escape pods have been jettisoned.”

“Understood. Advise emergency jump procedures must be followed. Suggest choosing exit over water if possible. Activate rescue beacons beforeleaving the ship.”

“Swift?” Orion’s voice broke across the radio. “How much time do you have? We havenot read yourflight’s navigational information.”

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