Page 44 of Bela's Bounty
CHAPTERSIXTEEN
Bela
The explosion rocks the shuttlehard,and I’m slammed against the side so violently that I see stars burst behind my eyelids. Skylar’s frightened screams sound far away, and it’s like I’m dragging myself through tar as I try to turn in my seat to make sure she’s okay.
Treto’s arm is still braced across my chest, keeping me mostly pinned to my seat.
“Put your harness on!” he growls without taking his eyes off the screen in front of us.
It takes me a second to register what he means, but then my arms go to the straps on either side of my seat. With shaking fingers, I buckle myself in. Only then does he move his arm back to the control panel.
Bright flashes of light flicker across the shuttle’s view screen, and it takes me a moment to realize it’s laser beams.Shit!Someone’s firing at us and, judging by the explosion, not all their shots are missing.
Treto’s face is tense as his fingers skim across the control panel, causing the shuttle to tilt back and forth, up and down, as he does his best to avoid most of the lasers.
Most.Not all.
Another hit sends the nose of the shuttle tilting down sharply, and if it wasn’t for the harness, I would have been sprawled across the control panel.
“Skylar?” I shout.
“I’m okay,” she says shakily. “I found a jump-seat, and I’m buckled in.”
Oh, thank goodness.“Hang on, alright?”
“I am—” Her sentence ends in a shrill scream as the shuttle nose dives and then begins to spin.
Clutching the sides of my seat, my fingers biting into the plastic padding, my heart lurches into my throat until I feel like I might choke on it.
Oh god. Are we hit? Are we plummeting to our deaths? Is that even possible in space?
The shuttle comes out of its spin and then immediately goes into a summersault, putting us behind the ship that must have been firing on us.
A rapid fire of red lasers shoots from somewhere under us, hitting the ship over and over until it falls away, trailing smoke. Only then do my hands relax, just a bit, and I let the breath I’ve been holding out in a rush of air.
We made it! We’re not dead. We—
Another hit comes from our right side, and Treto begins evasive maneuvers all over again. With every bit of his attention locked onto what he’s doing, I take a moment to really look at what’s going on around us and… there are more ships after us than I realized.A lot more.
How are we going to get out of this? Then my stomach sinks because those ships look a lot sleeker than our rusty minivan, and they are a helluva lot faster too. Treto’s pretty skilled, and we volley laser fire back and forth, but our ship is taking more hits than we’re landing. How much more can we withstand?
I get the feeling this isn’t like science fiction, where there is some kind of invisible shield to protect us. Two more hits rock the shuttle, knocking us one way, then the other, and then an alarm starts to blare. That last hit must have hit something vital, because now there is a shudder radiating through the shuttle.Oh, god! We’re gonna die.
A sudden calm comes over me that slows my rapid heartbeat and calms my breathing. Prying my fingers from the seat, I reach over and touch Treto’s arm. His muscles are tense beneath my fingers, and I feel them as they ripple beneath his smooth scales. My fingers curl until I’m holding on to his arm, and when I look up, I notice he’s watching me back. The expression on his face is unreadable, but I get a faint sense of… sorrow.
“It’s okay,” I whisper, dragging my thumb back and forth across the smooth, scaled skin on his arm. “We tried.”
I try for, what I hope, is a smile. I want him to know I’m not angry. That I don’t blame him. After all, maybe it’s better this way.
I think of Skylar, and my heart aches. What kind of life will she have if we’re captured and sent back to the pleasure station? I don’t wish that for her. Besides, death in space should be fast, right? At least that’s how it’s portrayed in the movies. It’ll be like being flash frozen. Alive one moment and then just… not.
The burn of tears starts behind my eyes, and I try to blink them away while holding my eyes on Treto. When I feel one escape, slide down my cheek, his expression contorts into something I can only describe asone of rage.
The slitted nostrils flare under his flattened nose, and his upper lip curls, revealing his sharp fangs. With a sharp shake of his head, his attention goes back to the screen, and his hands move with more purpose. The maneuvers, his banks and spirals, become more precise. We start to land more hits, crippling another ship. And another.
But no matter how many we take out, another takes its place.
When the next hit comes, the lights flash red, and warning lights light up across the console, announcing that something critical was hit.
