The Mammoth Book of Futuristic Romance

One

“There’s a good chance you won’t survive this mission.” Navigator Rand Miflin heard the words and struggled not to roll his eyes or snort at Commander Berell.

He leaned back in a chair not meant for comfort. “When have I ever been expected to survive? The Stovians are out for blood.”

Berell gave a little shrug and stood up against the backdrop of curtains carefully drawn to conceal a ravaged landscape. There was no denying the truth, but it was still hard to look at. Rand continued. “Earth is the first ‘backward’ planet that ever returned fire against them. We pissed them off.”

And the emperor of the planet Stovia had responded with overwhelming force – wave after wave of troops and weapons that had turned every other conquered planet into a quivering mass of easily sold slaves. But Earthlings had learned far too quickly for the Great Leader’s taste, thanks to captured technology.

Earth was on the verge of winning. It had been nearly a full month since humans had seen diron blasts redden the atmosphere.

“True, but this is different,” Berell said. “The starfighter team taking on this job is going straight into the maw of the monster.”

Rand felt his heart speed up a little, and he leaned forward. He wasn’t sure if it was excitement or fear, but he’d lost the ability to separate the two reactions long ago. “You have my attention.”

Berell paced the length of his office, hands clasped behind his back. “We need a navigator who can . . . think on his feet, Miflin. Steer the ship through unknown obstacles in a foreign, hostile environment.” He paused for effect. “The ship will be striking a target in the center of Asort, the capital city of Stovia.”

“That . . . wow.” Rand tried to come up with a response that would let his dropped jaw do something useful. “That’s going to take one hell of a pilot.” Could he navigate it? Yeah, probably. But no pilot he’d ever met would be able to follow his instructions quick enough to keep them both from getting very dead, very fast.

Berell smiled. “I don’t think that will be a problem. If you accept the assignment, your pilot will be E.

L.Tyler.”

As if on cue, the door opened. The short, broad man who entered wore a full zero-g suit, including a laser and a bullet-scarred face shield that hid his features. The helmet alone spoke of firefights most pilots could only imagine. Rand felt a rush of fear flow through him. Captain El Tyler was a legend. And not just a run-of-the-mill hometown legend, but a freaking galactic legend. Everyone from schoolkids to five-star generals spoke of him in hushed, reverent tones, like those reserved for dead presidents on old paper money, hall-of-fame rock stars and five-time winners of the Super Bowl. He’d been the primary sty in the emperor’s eye for twenty-plus years. One-on-one starship dogfights, five to one, ten to one. He’d taken every job and had come back. Not always with a ship, and not always untouched, but never on his shield.

Not only had Rand never met El Tyler, he’d never actually met anyone who had met him. Wow.

Rand stood in a rush, nearly knocking over the small table next to his chair. He held out his hand and stammered a greeting. “Captain Tyler. Wow. What an honor, sir.” Then, to his great embarrassment, words just started coming out in a rush and he couldn’t seem to stop. “I am such a huge fan! I’ve read stories of nearly every battle you’ve fought. The Venusian ring conflict, the Pluto stronghold attacks, and even that chase through the Sirian asteroid belt last month. That was amazing! I even dug up why everyone calls you ‘El’ instead of E. L. It’s just such an honor.”

And through it all, while he gushed his praise and held out his offering hand, Tyler just stood there, palms on hips, not even acknowledging his existence. Finally, after a long moment, Rand dropped his hand, feeling both like a fool and a chastised child.

The gravelly, metallic voice from behind the blast-shield cut Rand to the bone. “I don’t know what you were thinking, Commander. I can’t possibly fly with Miflin.”

As Rand was about to open his mouth to protest the slur to his skills, Commander Berell growled what sounded suspiciously like an order. “You can and will, El. Miflin’s the best, and you damned well know it. Don’t make me pull rank.”

“He was a smuggler, Walter – for sale to the highest bidder. He can’t be trusted.”

Rand felt his cheeks grow hot. But he couldn’t deny his past. It had certainly been thrown in his face enough times. “That’s behind me now. I’m in this for the long haul. I’m loyal to the Terran rebellion.”

Now Tyler turned that shield to stare blankly at him. Rand could see his own head reflected in the mirrored surface. His face was a mix of emotions: angry, embarrassed, betrayed by a childhood hero; a thousand things. He adjusted his muscles until the expression that stared back in the reflection was calm and cold. But the words from behind the helmet quickly twisted them again. “For how long, Miflin?

You’ve been loyal for what – six months now? I have stains in my coffee mug older than that.”

“People change, El.” Berell’s voice was soft but matter-of-fact. “You did. I think it’s time to show him how much. I’ll vouch for him.”

That made Rand’s brows rise. How had El “changed”? He thought he knew everything about El Tyler’s past. Perfect student, jet-fighter pilot in the last war between two minor Middle Eastern countries – back when there were only Americans, French, Greek, Iranians and other nationalities. Before the Stovians. Before the real world war began. But he’d never heard even a hint about any sort of shady past.

There was nothing to change there, that he’d heard of.

“If one single word of this gets out, Miflin—” Tyler reached up and touched a spot on his helmet Rand hadn’t noticed before. The voice behind the shield suddenly altered. It became higher-pitched, lighter.

“Well, let’s say nobody who matters will ever fly with you again . . .”

As Rand watched in amazement, the hands reached up and pulled off the helmet. Then Rand’s mouth gaped so wide he could feel air on the back of his tongue. Blonde hair, the color of a sunflower, flowed down and down, past a heart-shaped jaw and a slender neck, to the heavy armor of a suit that he now realized obviously didn’t fit a woman’s slender frame. Worse, it wasn’t just any woman. Officer Ellen Grayson was the cop who’d finally caught him and put him in jail. A cop, by the way, who had worked for the Stovians, after they’d taken over, before the rebellion started.

It couldn’t be. The great Captain Tyler . . . a woman? No. There was no way El Tyler could be the same person as this cop. “You’re not El Tyler.” And he could prove it. Before he realized it, he was five steps forward, sticking a finger in her face. To her credit, she didn’t flinch. “You were a beat cop, flying patrols, when the real Captain Tyler was running raids on the Stovians’ moon base. You’re the same age as me – too young to have been the pilot at the Pluto armory attack.” Also too gorgeous. Damn, she had looked good in her tight black planetary police uniform. The shapeless mess she had on now wasn’t worthy of that figure.

Her voice was calm when she responded. “Like the commander said . . . people change. Sometimes legends have to change, too.” He wasn’t sure how to take that comment, and neither she nor Berell elaborated. She paused and then accepted a glass of water the commander was holding out. “But you can be sure that I am El Tyler. I did fly in the Sirian asteroid battle and I kicked butt. And I am the best damned pilot you’re ever likely to meet.” She drank the water slowly, giving him time to think.

Did he trust her? No. But Berell did. And as much as he hated to admit it, she was the only one who had ever managed to catch him. If he had anyone to thank for being in the resistance, it was her.

Damn it.

“Fine. I’ll do it. Just tell me where and when to be.”

Commander Berell gave him a short nod and held out his hand to shake Rand’s. Grayson, aka Tyler, didn’t say a word. But he could swear he saw her smile before she put the helmet back over her face.

Two

Why had she agreed to this? Every warning signal in her head, plus several more scattered through her body, told her it was a bad idea. Yet here she was, squished less than a foot away from the most dangerous man she’d ever met.

“Cozy, huh?” Rand Miflin whispered inches from her ear. The rush of warm air against her skin made her shiver. “Been waiting to get this close to you for a long time.”

She didn’t respond. Couldn’t. After a long pause, he changed tack to try humor. “Should we have mentioned to the supply sergeant we’re more than four feet tall?”

A safe topic. Good. El likewise kept her voice low enough not to be heard by any passing sound-

detectors. The words came out in a gravelly baritone. “I know it’s uncomfortable. But making the run in a Jupiter Javelin is the only chance we have to get close enough to Stovia for this to work.”

Miflin grunted and struggled to extend his leg into a space not meant for a six-foot male. “Yeah, yeah. I read the briefing too. It’s the only ship small enough to fit into the hold of the grain transport that makes regular runs to the planet. It’s dense enough from the heavy metals that it’ll look like an asteroid on scanners. But I do actually need to have feeling in my feet and hands in order to operate the equipment.”

He unlatched his restraints and crawled clumsily out of his seat. “I’m going to wiggle back to what’s considered the lavatory on this heap. Don’t . . . wander off while I’m gone.” He chuckled at his own joke while El rolled her eyes.

As soon as he disappeared through the tiny doorway, she was able to take her first deep breath in the last hour. She hadn’t dared to breathe normally while Rand was in the cockpit. That cologne he wore affected her just as badly as it had when she’d first met him. The vital-sign monitors would pick up her racing heart if she wasn’t careful. She wished she could have lied and told him the Stovians had “human sniffers”, so he couldn’t wear the subtle, musky fragrance.

How in the hell was she going to concentrate on this mission if she couldn’t think when he was close to her?

She raised her arms slightly, bumping the propulsion-indicator readout. A sigh escaped her. It wasn’t just Rand’s presence that was bothering her. The whole mission was risky, and probably suicide. It was better if she didn’t dwell on it. She had to think positive. I can do this. It’s only two days. I just need to concentrate on the details. It’s a critical job . And it really was. The fate of Earth and every colony in the solar system hung in the balance.

She looked up automatically when a tone sounded above her. Miflin crawled through the doorway just as the transport’s captain came over the com. “Captain Tyler? We just entered the wormhole. You’ll have about five hours to stretch, talk and get something to eat before we enter the Polaris system. You’re free to turn on the signal jammer. I’d rather not hear the details about why you’re here. Bridge out.”

“Well, at least he’s honest.” Rand shrugged one shoulder as best he could, and started to crawl backwards. “Let’s get out of here into the main hold.”

El pressed a button on the console before taking off her helmet and crawling out of her seat. One foot was completely numb. Even the pressure suits weren’t enough to keep the blood flowing to all her limbs.

At least Javelins had the advantage of mostly using hand controls. The only problem would be if they crashed. After a dozen more hours in the cockpit she didn’t know if she’d be able to walk away. A beep sounded, indicating the signal jammer had finished its search of all available wavelengths, and had implemented a countersignal. They could now talk without being overheard.

She stepped down the gangplank to the overwhelming smell of wheat. When they’d arrived on the transport she’d closed her eyes and imagined she was back in Kansas, standing in her father’s wheat field right at harvest. There was nothing quite like the scent of fresh-cut wheat. Her father had told her stories about wheat grown under blue skies and sunshine, instead of underground in hermetically controlled hydroponic farms housed in towering salt caverns. Maybe one day she’d have her own farm. Once the planet belonged to the humans again.

“You’ve got your eyes closed again. Thinking about a better place to be?” She opened them. Rand was sprawled on a beach lounger, eating a steaming ration of what smelled like beef stew.

“This bubble makes me nervous. There’s more than a hundred tons of wheat surrounding us, held back by nothing but a thin sheet of plastic. One nick and we could be crushed.” El shivered.

He looked up and around and then shrugged. “Then I wouldn’t run with scissors.” She felt her frown deepen when he smiled broadly; that damned infectious smile. He motioned to another antique metal-and-

fabric lounger, folded up and leaning against the Javelin. “Pull up a chair and have some dinner. You got the Chicken à la King, and you’ll be happy to know that no chickens were harmed in the making of the dish. Yum.”

He really had pulled out a ration and started the heater inside. But as hungry as she was, she couldn’t help but distrust him.

He noticed her staring with suspicion at the innocuous brown bag, and let out a small noise. “No, I didn’t poison it. I’ll trade if it’ll make you happier.”

She stared him down for a long moment. “Yeah, actually, it would.” She held out her hand for the beef stew. “I’ll take yours.”

It took him aback. His sapphire-blue eyes showed honest shock. “Wow. You really don’t trust me. I thought you were just objecting to the commander because you were afraid of being alone with me. You know, the whole sexual thing we’ve got going on.”

She felt her face settle into a sneer and couldn’t seem to stop it. “What thing? Why in the world would I be afraid of you? Besides your obvious odors, that is. I really don’t trust you.” It was such a reflex to deny it. She’d done it the last time they’d met, too.

What was wrong with admitting she was attracted? But no. There were too many good reasons not to get involved with someone like Rand Miflin. He was a criminal. There was no getting around that he didn’t think the rules applied to him. People like him didn’t change their basic nature. Sure, he was charismatic, and he even might believe he was being loyal, but there had to be something in this for him, and that made him dangerous. “Now, are you going to give me the stew, or do you want to admit you’re trying to sabotage this mission?”

He shook his head and straddled the lounger. “From making you dinner to a Stovian saboteur in less than a minute. Screw this.” Dumping the plastimetal fork into the bag, he tossed the meal at her hard. She barely managed to avoid wearing the stew, but tried to school her features so that she didn’t look as embarrassed as she felt. He stood up and stalked to the top of the gangplank.

“Don’t you want the chicken?” She didn’t move from where she stood. She wasn’t positive he was above punching her.

“Why would I? It’s poisoned, right? I’m going to go inside and try to get some sleep. Shame there’s only room for one to do that without using a zero-g bag. You can stay out here with the wheat.” Before she could react, he pushed the code in the wall and the door slammed shut.

Terrific. Just her, a half-container of stew and a hundred tons of wheat. The moment she thought it, the transport made a course correction. The bubble bulged on one side and the top pressed inward until it was nearly touching the ship. Oh, not good.

But there was no way she was going to give in to her fear. The ship would actually withstand the weight of the wheat. It was the lack of air that would kill them if the bubble broke. She opened the one-

way vents on her suit that sucked in oxygen to special bladder compartments. If the bubble failed, she’d at least have a day’s worth of air to give the crew time to dig her out.

El moved the lounger until it was underneath the turanium gangplank, and pulled from a leg pocket the ancient device with the mission details. It would take forever to load. She took a bite of beef stew and grimaced. Probably no cows were harmed either.

A flash of credits appeared on the screen, a melding of a hundred long-defunct company logos in miniature, merged into one larger logo. Who would have thought old analog technology would completely befuddle the best encryption breakers of the Stovian high command? Bits and bytes, competing proprietary codes – hiding things in plain sight. It had been brilliant of the resistance to teach pilots a slew of early proprietary computer language. Xerox, Savin, Altos, Silex and a dozen others. Sort of like twentieth-century pilots learning Morse code.

She was going over the known maps of Stovia for the tenth time when she heard the door above her whoosh open and heavy boots take a few steps. “You really going to stay out here the whole time? I figured you’d be banging on the door to come in long before now.”

El turned off the viewing pad and crawled out from under the gangplank to stretch. “You figured wrong.

I need to learn these maps backward and forward in the time we’ve got. It doesn’t matter whether that happens inside or outside the ship.”

That seemed to interest him. “So you weren’t scared? Not worried you’d be suffocated by the wheat?”

She couldn’t help but shrug as she dragged the lounger out from underneath the plank and folded it.

“Every second of every day I might die. Why be more scared of one thing over another? I took the precautions I could.” When Rand raised his brows, seeming to question her, she elaborated. “Being under the gangplank would give me a few seconds of shelter to put in my breathing tube and turn on my distress beacon. I’ve already stored up about a day’s worth of air in the suit, which also gives me some crush protection. That’s as good a chance as I’d have in the ship.”

He was leaning against the doorway, just watching. She could feel his eyes on her, looking her up and down. It was as though his gaze was hands, flowing over her skin, making her shiver. Finally she couldn’t stand it anymore and glanced at him. He pursed his lips and nodded. “Clever. I wondered what the suit was about – other than to hide your figure. Pity. It’s a hell of a figure.”

Had he ever noticed her figure? She honestly couldn’t remember him ever commenting on it. She’d sure noticed his. Broad shoulders, narrow waist and oh, those sultry blue eyes and those dimples.

Mmm-mmm. “I could say the same.”

He froze and so did she. Crap! Had she really said that out loud? Eek! There was a long pause where neither said anything. Finally, she needed to break the silence . . . with something safe. “Part of the suit’s bulk is the KevSix breastplate. Disrupts nearly every ranged weapon on the market – including the Stovian pulse rifles.”

His voice was flat when he responded. “KevSix has only been on the market for about a year.”

She sighed. Even though he’d dropped the subject in Berell’s office, that discussion wasn’t over. “Two for me. I’ve been the guinea pig. After all, whose rifle sight am I not in?”

There wasn’t any way for him not to acknowledge that point, so he did with a slightly reluctant tip of his head. But then he dropped the bomb. “Rifle sights for a few years, sure. But twenty?”

She opened her mouth but was saved from responding when the captain of the transport announced, “We’re about to come out of the hole. Two minutes to all quiet. Five minutes to launch.”

It didn’t give them much time. At least it was obvious Rand had done his homework too. He grabbed the loungers that El passed him and stowed them quickly and efficiently. There was economy of motion as he waved her inside the ship – not out of courtesy but because she had to be seated in order for him to get into his part of the cockpit.

She turned on the air scrubber first. If there were any error signals, the whole trip was off. There was no way they’d have enough air to make it to the return ship without the recirc filters working. After a long moment where both of them held their breaths, green light filled the tiny space. Her butterflies settled just a bit.

Now it was time to figure out whether they could save the human race.

Three

Did she have the right stuff to pull off this mission? Rand didn’t know. Admittedly, Grayson had surprised him by staying cool under fire when he’d locked her out of the ship. But she shouldn’t have admitted a weakness. It had almost been as though she was asking him to test her. Or had she expected it?

Had she lied about her fear of being crushed? She didn’t seem particularly upset. Was she playing him?

I just can’t tell . And that bugged the crap out of him. It also bothered him that he couldn’t find any evidence that she wasn’t El Tyler. He had checked every record the night before they left, asked everyone he knew without actually mentioning Grayson’s name. But while everybody presumed Tyler was male, nobody had ever officially seen the pilot without a helmet. “Like it’s glued on,” said his best source when he’d asked if Tyler’s face had ever been seen. “Never outside the Joint Chiefs chamber, and maybe not in there either,” the head of the Captain Tyler fan club claimed. Asking her would do no good. He’d already made the accusation and she’d insisted she was the man himself. Worse, Berell had insisted it too, and he respected the hell out of Berell.

So, fine. There were ways to learn the identity of a pilot. There were certain flying techniques that nobody had ever mastered as well as Tyler. He just had to figure out a way to force her into the maneuvers.

The add-on timer glued to the panel a scant meter from his nose flickered on and started the silent countdown from a hundred seconds as they plugged their grav suits into the vital sign monitors and adjusted the visual feeds into their helmets. When it reached zero, the lower hold doors opened and they fell into black, unforgiving space, where no human fighter ship had ever been. As they floated in the wake of the gravity fields of four planets, he watched as the grain ship’s bay doors closed. The moment they latched, he knew the captain had pulled a level to release the air from the bubble. The wheat had probably already collapsed into the space where they’d been, leaving no evidence of their presence in the hold but a plastic floor liner that wouldn’t be looked at twice when they offloaded.

There was no going back.

Well, at least not until they met up with the ship again on the return trip . . . if they lived that long.

He held his breath as the passive scanners pulled in signals from ships of all sizes as they brought supplies to the starving Stovian people. The war with Earth had taxed resources probably more than the emperor would like. Rumors had begun that food was being rationed on Stovia for the first time in the home planet’s history.

A green light signaled the all-clear and they could speak again. He raised the face shield and his eyes adjusted to the darker space of the cabin. “Okay, so what’s the plan?” He turned his head and still whispered just because it was habit. “We’ve got enough fuel for about fifteen hours.” When he breathed in again, he caught a whiff of shampoo and sweat from the heavy helmet.

Grayson likewise raised her face shield, so her voice was back to a pleasant alto. “From the maps I’ve reviewed, take a course of 190.818 at sixteen degrees for about three hours. I’ll be using the grav fields to steer as much as I can. That way we can save fuel and also not have the thrusters appear on scanners.

Your job will be to keep us on course, so stay sharp.”

He barely managed not to choke. She was insane. Absolutely crazy. “We’ll use the thrusters more by trying to navigate only on gravity fields. Every time you move the stick, you’ll go a thousand feet farther than you planned and have to hit the engines. We’ll run out of fuel before we even get there. You planning on committing suicide?”

She reached backward awkwardly and pushed down his face shield. “Look in the lower left corner of the display.”

He did. There was an object there, about ten times the size of their ship. “So? What am I looking at?”

“Asteroid. When I first met with the transport captain, he said there was a small asteroid field that circled Stovia, similar to Saturn but not as wide. He suggested that if we stayed in the wake of the biggest one, we could get within a few thousand kilometers of the planet and we’d look like just another dead rock in the sky.”

So . . . crazy like a fox. “That’s going to be a tricky bit of flying. You’ll have to be within a few football fields of the surface of the asteroid to pull it off.”

She turned her head and smiled. The white of her teeth turned green under the lights from the dash. “I can fly it if you can nav it. Easier than the Sirian belt firefight in April.”

But the closer they got to the asteroid, the harder this whole mission looked. The asteroid appeared smooth and quiet from a distance, but close up was a tumbling, shifting mass of spiked ice and rock.

Pieces the size of an aircraft carrier would occasionally break off and collide with a dozen other bits of rock before settling into an uneasy orbit around the planet. Yet the closer they got, the more stable Grayson’s vital signs were. Her heart rate was slow and steady, her blood pressure what he would expect from a person sitting in a rocker with a cat in their lap.

She abruptly cranked the stick up and to the left and simultaneously hit the left thruster. Left on left caused the ship to spiral, and then another deft movement of her wrist caused them to do a neat flip around a frozen rock the size of a house. They landed back at nearly the exact spot they had started. The “Tyler Tip” – the one move that couldn’t be faked. He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t just experienced it.

“You really are El Tyler.” There was awe in his voice, and damned if he couldn’t figure out how to keep it out.

“Yep.” It was all the gravelly voice uttered before she went back to twitching the stick in ways that looked effortless, but Rand knew better. He was the one navigating, fingers moving on the antiquated keyboard to enter directions on the fly. Nothing about the Javelin was effortless. It was a heavy, cludgy ship that few pilots would even take on. The gravitational fields were affecting it in weird ways.

He started swearing quietly under his breath as another small stone hit the ship’s hull. “There are just too many of them, El. All I can do is get out of the way of the biggest ones.”

The next words out of her mouth stunned him. “I think we’re going to have to land this beast.”

“Land? Land where?” They were in an asteroid field. There weren’t a lot of stable spots to navigate to.

He turned his head as much as he could and stared at the side of her head.

She raised her hand enough to point out the front port. “Right there. It’s not the biggest one, but it’ll have to do.”

He laughed. He couldn’t help it. “Good one. Of course, landing sort of requires that you’ll remain in one place with the power off.”

“Oh, we will. Just steer me to the flat surface on this rock when it comes around again and I’ll do the rest.” She dropped her face shield. Her vital signs might be stable, but he wasn’t so sure about her brain.

Still . . . the one thing that made Tyler a legend was thinking outside the box. He (or she) managed things that normal people wouldn’t even contemplate. And hey, if he had to go out of this life, it might as well be doing something very cool. And riding an asteroid was something nobody had ever done.

He watched the screen in front of him while tapping on the keyboard to line up the ship with the correct pitch of the rock.

Tyler’s gravel bass came over the mic in his helmet. “You don’t make notes, do you? Most navigators I’ve met scribble with one hand and enter the numbers with the other.”

He responded without looking up. “It’s all eyes and fingers for me. I don’t know that it actually goes through my brain. I see and my fingers just start moving. Always been that way, even when I was a kid.”

“Yeah, I get that,” she said. “For me, my eyes sort of convert images into numbers. I was a master at paint-by-numbers. I even used to make them for my friends. I knew a guy in grade school who could sketch outdoor scenes, and I’d add numbers based on what I saw. Got in trouble for it when a girl who couldn’t paint won the talent show with one of our paint-by-numbers. The principal considered it cheating.”

“Why didn’t you become a navigator, then? Or why don’t you do your own navigation?”

She gave a little laugh. “Because I can’t both navigate and fly at the same time. I can do one or the other. Just not both . . . at least not fast enough to handle all the vectors. What about you? Why don’t you fly?”

A snort erupted from him, sounding like a sneeze in his ears. “No dexterity, I’m afraid. I crashed the simulator so often that the techs banned me from the unit. I was actually messing up the software. I don’t have a light enough touch. I go through keyboards pretty fast too. I even—”

“Hold that thought. We’re coming up on our point. Bring me in flat so my nose is pointed toward the sun.”

“You sure the nose is the best thing? Shouldn’t we have the port wing toward the sun?”

Her voice snarled back. “Don’t distract me! Just give me the figures.”

He could see this ending badly, but his fingers flew over the keyboard to create the directions to land the ship. “Okay, start the touchdown in fifteen seconds, and . . . mark.”

Rand’s world narrowed to the sensation of movement from delicate blasts of the thrusters and the image of the rapidly approaching asteroid, lit only by the reflection from the nearest planet. They were about to touch down when something caught his attention from the corner of his eye. A large rock was breaking off from the asteroid. It wasn’t big enough to hurt them by itself, but it could definitely throw their trajectory off enough to crash. “Wait! Veer off. We’ve got a bogie to the left.”

“No. We’re too close. There’s nowhere to go where we won’t hit something. I can do this.”

Crap. She was right. The closer they got, the more small objects were traveling in the wake of the asteroid that they hadn’t noticed further back. His fingers hit the keys so hard as he typed that he could feel the vibration of the panel on his legs. Left, then right, up, over, twist. El moved the ship in ways he didn’t know it would travel – totally dispelling the ‘cludgy’ rap the Javelin had from other pilots.

They hit the flat surface with a bounce and scrape and El scrambled to stop their forward movement before they shot right into an outcropping the size of an apartment block. “This isn’t the way I wanted to do this!” Her voice was about an octave higher than normal. She reached forward in a rush and opened a panel he hadn’t noticed. She slammed her fist down on the blue button underneath and he heard a muffled explosion underfoot. “Hang on!”

He was so tightly packed into the navpit, he couldn’t imagine he could move. And yet he did. The ship made such a sudden stop that his head whiplashed against the inside of his helmet when it hit the neck support, making his teeth slam down on his tongue. “Ow!”

They had stopped, and he wasn’t quite sure how. He watched the view port as their aspect shifted, turning the ship upside down. But they didn’t drift. Then it occurred to him. “Harpoon anchor?”

She nodded. “Modified. It’s an unstable platform, so we had to make it a tripod with quick-release breakaway.”

Rand grabbed at his keyboard as it started to drop to the ceiling. He was starting to notice his head trying to keep up with the movements of the ship. “Upside down is going to be a problem. Another ten or so rotations and we’re both going to be too dizzy to fly out of here if we need to.”

“Agreed. We need to shut down and turn off the gravity. Then we’ll be in the middle, and the ship can turn around us. It’ll save on fuel – maybe enough to be able to take a second run at the weapon if we miss the first time.”

He nodded, anxious to get out of the cramped navpit and move his legs. “We should try to get some sleep in the zero-g bags. It’ll probably be four hours before we’re close enough to the planet to risk charging the weapons.” And five hours until what would be the most challenging nav job of his life.

Damn, what a rush . . .

Four

“It must be here somewhere!” She reached up and clenched a flashlight in her teeth while she dug through the tiny cabinet, turning over every box, and every container with one hand, keeping her balance with the other. Nothing.

She moved to the next one, tossing things behind her to float in mid-air.

Miflin’s voice held both amusement and resignation, in nearly equal parts. “Give it up, Grayson. They only packed one zero-g sleep sack. They’re bulky. We would have found the other by now.”

She grabbed the flashlight to shine it into the very back corner of the space. “Don’t be ridiculous. This is a two-person ship. They wouldn’t pack only one sack.” Nothing in cabinet number two. She pulled her way to the third.

He continued to connect the hooks to the wall latches, with near indifference to her growing panic.

“Hey, here’s a clue. Did you notice there’s only one set of wall latches?”

She stopped and turned her head, her arm still deep in the bulkhead. “What?”

He pointed to the wall, and then patted above and below the single sack before batting away a rolled-

up length of rope that floated near his head. “Only one set. Just one plug for a heater, too. I guess we’re supposed to sleep together.” He grinned. “Unless that would bother you, of course.”

It was hard to deny her discomfort with a dozen containers of food and medicine, along with fluid packs, floating around the room. “Hardly. They probably expected the pilot and navigator to sleep in shifts. Someone is normally supposed to watch the position of the ship, after all.”

“But normally the ship isn’t attached to a hunk of ice in space with the power off. If we sleep in shifts, one of us won’t survive the trip. Want to flip coins to see which of us freezes to death?”

It was sad that freezing to death was a viable option to crawling into a heated sleep sack with Rand Miflin. “You sleep first. I’ll get the rest of these supplies stowed and go over the maps again.”

He waggled a finger and kicked off from the wall, keeping a free hand up to protect his head. He wound up inches from her, close enough that her heart started to pound. “Oh, no. You forget – I’m not a pilot. I’m not going to get stuck out here after you freeze, not even knowing how to release the anchor from this rock.

I swear I’ll keep my hands to myself. We can even bundle up back to back. But we are both going to get in that bag. Even if I have to tie you up to do it.”

The amusement had left his eyes. He was dead serious. She’d never met a navigator who truly couldn’t fly. She’d presumed he was just downplaying his skills, but maybe he wasn’t kidding. And, admittedly, she didn’t want to freeze. A quiet, anonymous death wasn’t something she’d ever envisioned. “Fine. But I’ll hold you to your promise.”

Stupidest thing he’d ever agreed to. The sensation of her legs twined around his as she snored softly made him crazy. Yeah, they’d started with their backs touching. But he hadn’t been asleep for twenty minutes before he’d felt her hands all over him. He’d been both aroused and delighted – until he’d discovered she was sound asleep.

Damn it.

Apparently her subconscious mind was the only one willing to act on what she felt. Even helping her into the bag had made her crazy. She would make a low noise at the lightest touch but then deny she had.

He’d presumed she’d give up on the charade once they were zipped in, but all she did was turn her back and not respond to a single thing he said.

If only she could keep her hands to herself. He’d been accused more than once by dates of being all hands. But he had nothing on El. Her hand slipped out of his again to travel toward his belt. He gasped at the sensation. Crap. He grabbed her hand again, and held it tight in sheer self-defense.

Stupid agreement.

Oh, the hell with it. That was it. He let go of her hands, raising his arms until his palms were under his head. One of her hands slipped under his shirt, started lightly scratching nails down his skin. He had to steady his breathing and interlock his fingers to keep from pulling her against him. When her other hand reached around his neck to tickle his ear, he let out a small moan.

He waited, enduring the torture until her hand left his chest, moving down until it was snugly locked over his raging erection.

Now.

“Grayson,” he whispered. When she didn’t respond, he said it louder. “Grayson!”

She woke with a start but the sack was tight enough against them that her hands didn’t immediately move. “Huh? What?! What’s wrong?”

He moved his head down until he was whispering in her ear. She shivered visibly. “Unless you plan to ravish me, move your hands.”

She froze, consciousness finally arriving as she realized her position. One leg was wrapped around his, her arm around him, finger skimming his ear, other hand fondling him. And he was absolutely innocent of wrongdoing. “This isn’t how it looks.”

He chuckled and she winced. “Oh, don’t worry. I can’t see a thing. But the things I can feel are amazing.”

She struggled to move to a safe position, but there was nowhere to go. He finally turned in the bag until he was facing her, nose to nose. He wormed his hand until he could push the hair away from her panicked eyes. He whispered softly. “Give it up, Grayson. Just let it happen.” He leaned forward, pressed his lips against hers and she let out a little squeak. But she didn’t stop him and he pushed forward, opening her mouth with his, letting their tongues tangle. God, she tasted amazing.

He ate at her mouth, let his hands roam to touch her silky skin. Arm, stomach, soft breast. There was no hope of sex, of course. There simply wasn’t enough room to move. All he wanted to do was break down her barriers. Just a little.

They both came up gasping for air. The chill in the main bay actually felt good against his superheated skin. He grinned at her. “Now maybe we can both get some sleep.”

He closed his eyes, but before they were fully shut he saw the surprise on her face.

Five

How was she supposed to sleep? Her entire body was aching, wanting more than her mind was willing to do. And Miflin was just snoring away.

Why had he kissed her? Worse, why had she let him?

Because you wanted him to, stupid. Since the first day you met him. There had been something about him, even then. A ne’er-do-well rake; that’s what he would have been called in an earlier age. He smiled and women melted. Except her. She was the tough one. The perfect cop who had no emotions. More like the perfect patsy for a brutal overlord.

Miflin had managed to charm her, despite her carefully constructed walls – his black sense of humor, the fire in his eyes when he talked about getting the “product” to its destination. And then she’d found out he was smuggling kids, getting them out of town before the Stovians arrived. She’d been shocked by the stories she’d heard, watched the terrified looks on the kids’ faces when she’d sworn she’d get them back to their families. But they hadn’t wanted to go home. Everybody there was already dead.

That was when she’d made her decision. The world didn’t need more orphans. Order at the cost of lives wasn’t what she wanted for her career.

So, really, it was Miflin who had caused her to defect, to change sides and join the resistance. But he hadn’t followed. He’d stayed a freelance smuggler. And that had annoyed the hell out of her.

It wasn’t easy to get out of the sleep sack without waking him. But the timer in the cockpit had gone off.

It was time to start getting the ship ready to launch. She was sleepy when she slipped into what passed for a bathroom. There was no standing up straight and barely enough room to extend one arm. But at least she could clean off, brush her teeth and relieve herself.

Then it was to the cockpit to start the engines. The planet was massive in the view port. It looked similar to Earth but with rings of thick, dark clouds and far more land mass. It was surrounded by satellites bearing weaponry she didn’t recognize. Damn. How are we going to pull this off?

It was when she was powering up the port thruster that the alarm sounded on the overhead panel. The passive sensor had come in contact with an active scanner.

Damn it. She couldn’t decide whether to fire everything up and risk them showing up on scanners but in position to slip away, or shut everything down and try to pass by unnoticed. The problem was if they went much farther with the asteroid, they’d be right back at square one – waiting until the rock passed by the planet again on the next orbit. Except they didn’t have that much food or water. It had to be now.

“Miflin!” She shouted the words and pressed a button that sounded an alarm in the back. She heard a thumping and then a body fall out onto the floor of the bay.

“What the hell! What’s going on?” His voice was thick with sleep.

She already had her helmet on, so her voice came out deep. “Get suited up. We’ve been noticed.”

She heard him utter several swear words, in interesting combinations, but at least he began to scramble around the bay, swearing more as he cracked his head on the ceiling while getting to the clothing storage.

She turned to see him hopping to get into his suit. He called through the doorway. “How long?”

“The first scan was random. It’ll take a little bit for them to hone in on us. I want to be gone by the time they do. I’m firing everything up, but it’ll take a second to get to full charge. Five minutes to anchor release.”

“Great. I have time to pee.”

She rolled her eyes. Just like a man. She busied herself flicking on switches and pushing buttons, getting green lights all the way. At least the time in cold storage on the asteroid hadn’t hurt any of their instruments. She was just about to release the anchor when a red light outside the view port caught her eye.

It was the last thing she remembered . . . other than the pain.

Red light filled the front cabin, spilling under the door to the bathroom. He was just zipping up when he noticed it, and then the scream came. Even with the voice modulator in the helmet, it was high and tortured. He bolted into the cockpit.

El’s helmet was off and her face was . . . smoking under her hands. “Oh, God! It hurts. Oh my God!”

“What happened? Did something explode up here?”

“It’s the weapon. It came from the surface, a red beam. Not diron or laser. Something else. It blinded me.” She turned and grabbed at his flight suit. He finally saw her face. Her eyes were milky white, the lashes and eyebrows charred and falling in ashes onto her seat. “I’m blind, Rand!”

He pulled her out of her seat, supported her as he got her back into the sleep sack to examine her. His hands shook as he got out the med kit and used his teeth to open the package for a shot of morphine that included a high-strength antibiotic. He pressed the pressure needle against El’s suit and heard her gasp as it injected into her arm. “Okay, just stay there for a second. I’m going to go shut down the ship except for the heat back here. The asteroid should mask the signature of this small ship.”

She was crying when he got back. He hated it when women cried, because it made him want to as well. The rough part was . . . she had reason. A pilot without eyes? What the hell were they going to do? His stomach threatened to expel what little he’d had to eat. “Hey,” he said softly, as he approached, touching her hair lightly. “How you doing?”

“We can’t go back, we can’t go forward. How do you think I am? We’re going to die out here.”

He pulled a chair over from the wall. The sound made her jump and look around uselessly. He touched her again as he sat down. “We’ll figure this out, El. We’ve passed the planet now. No ships have launched and no chatter has been picked up by the scanners. We have some time to think before the asteroid comes around again. Tell me what happened.”

She did. There wasn’t much to tell. He ran fingers through his hair. How could this happen? “So you think it was random? Just a test fire or something?”

She shook her head, her senses seeming to come back to her as the painkiller kicked in. “No, I think they know we’re coming. It was targeted across the asteroid ring. They wouldn’t risk blinding their own pilots or the transport ships—” She muttered a string of curse words. “The transport driver. He was a counteragent. But they don’t know which rock we’re on. They’re probably just waiting until we’re out of shipping lanes before they come and destroy the ship.”

“Son of a bitch.” She was right. That was the only way. “So what do you think this weapon is meant to do?”

“Exactly what it did. It blinds people. Even through blast shields. Think about it, Rand. How would we fight back if everyone . . . everyone on the whole planet, was blind?”

Shit. Earthlings would be easy pickings, easily sold as slaves for sex or hard labor where sight wasn’t really required. Maybe the coal mines of Rigel or the diron mines on Pluto. “Why bother with underground lighting if everyone’s blind? Damn.”

“We have to take it out. I don’t know how, but they can’t be allowed to get this weapon onto an interstellar ship. You’ll need to be the pilot. We don’t have a choice.”

He started shaking his head even though she couldn’t see it. He stood up and walked to the bathroom and wet a strip of cloth to put on her forehead. Better not to let her get too overheated in the sleep sack.

“You don’t understand. I can’t fly. It’s not a question of confidence, or knowledge. My brain doesn’t work that way. Not everybody has the skill to fly a ship like El Tyler. It’s rare, like it’s part of your genes or something.”

She laughed, a little high. But not hysterical. More drugged. “Genes. I guess you might say that.

Granddad, Mom and me. The famous Tyler genes.”

“Come again?” He put the cool cloth on her forehead and she calmed down.

“Granddad was E.L. Tyler. He was a pilot. Could fly anything . . . prop planes, jets, helicopters, even gliders. He spent his life in the sky. Until the Parkinson’s set in. The stick started shaking, jerking. When he was called up for duty when the Stovians attacked, he couldn’t do it.”

It all finally made sense. “So you took his place?”

She waved a hand in the air wildly. Definitely feeling no pain now. “Pfft! I was ten when that happened. No, Mom was the next Tyler to pick up the stick. She insisted on going in his place. He said no.

But she was stubborn. She challenged him to a race. Whoever won would go. She picked the planes, he set up the course.” She paused, smiled, remembering. “She won. I was so proud of her. Granddad wasn’t upset. She’d proved herself, and she was good. Damned good. He raised me while she flew. She was Lauren Tyler – still an ‘L’. Only a very few in the upper hierarchy knew. She flew for the next decade. It broke her heart when I became a cop for the Stovians. She tried to convince me to resist, but I couldn’t. It was all about order, y’know?” Now her voice was starting to slur. “All order, until I met you.”

Wait. Huh?

“Remember those kids when we caught you? I broke them out of quarantine, flew them to safety, to the mountain base in Colorado. Then I went home and burned my black uniform. I asked my Mom where to sign up to fly. She was tired. Venus had taken a lot out of her. She couldn’t use one foot anymore. But she challenged me to the course – a rite of passage.”

He felt a smile come on, just a little one. “You beat her.”

She nodded. “I was born Elle, E-L-L-E, not Ellen, and Mom gave me Tyler as a middle name. So still not a lie. El Tyler is a . . . a legend . . . you know.” Her lids drifted closed over the ruined eyeballs. The muscles under the burned skin relaxed as she slept.

He reached down and pressed a gentle kiss against her temple, near the red, blistered skin of her forehead.

He moved the chair to a spot where he couldn’t be seen from the front. More important, where he couldn’t see out, in case they had a mobile version of the weapon. He started to go over the maps on Elle’s reader. He hadn’t really bothered much before, since it was pretty obvious they were going to have to wing it. But she was right. They had to take out the weapon.

When she woke up, four hours later, ready for another morphine shot, he had a plan. It was reckless, insane – complete suicide.

In other words, the perfect fit for a legendary smuggler and a legendary hero.

Six

“Okay, explain that to me again?” She thought she must have heard wrong, because the idea was insanity.

“We’re going forward with the mission. You’ll fly and I’ll navigate. Then we’ll land, hijack a ship capable of handling the wormhole, and go home. Easy-peasy.”

She took the cloth off her forehead and flicked her eyelids over the milky orbs. It made her wince.

“Somehow in that plan did you think how to get around the fact that I’m blind?! Are you insane, Miflin?”

“Not insane at all. In fact, it’s the perfect defense.” He pushed back the chair, scraping it across the patterned metal. “They’ve thrown all their eggs into one basket. They’re planning that this weapon is the be-all and end-all. Don’t you see, Elle? They’re presuming that the beam was all they needed. They didn’t send any follow-up ships because they didn’t think they had to.” He wished she could see his excitement.

“That’s our in. They presume a blind pilot can’t fly.”

“And they’d be right, Rand. I can’t fly.”

He nodded his head and took her hand in a tight grip. “No, but see – you can. Maybe only you. It’s paint-by-numbers, all over again. I’ll give you the numbers, you paint the picture. Like an instrument landing.”

She held up a hand, trying to raise her body to a sitting position. Confusion was mixed with alarm on her face. “Wait. You want me to pilot the ship by listening to your navigation commands?”

“Why not? You said yourself . . . you think in numbers. The commands go from your eyes to your hands.

Why not from your ears to your hands? But you’ll have to trust me. Have to trust that I’ll give you good data. I will. I swear I will, on the blood of everyone on Earth who’s fought and died.”

She mulled it over for long minutes and then finally responded. “Blind precision flying through surface defenses, and in dogfights? You’re crazy.”

“Yeah. I am. So are you. Smuggling kids through a blockade, fire fights in an asteroid field. We’re both certifiable.” She tipped her head, acknowledging the truth, so he pressed on. “Face facts, Tyler. We’re dead anyway. The oxygen scrubbers will only last a week without servicing. We have food and water for two days, three with recycling. There’s no way back if the transport captain is one of the bad guys. But if we pull it off – wow. We save the planet. We buy time for the resistence to prepare.”

“And we send a message,” she said after a pause, her neck muscles tightening, her face focused as though she could see him through the fog. “We can bring the war to you. We can find you, attack you.

Maybe they even think we have a countermeasure to their superweapon. They probably don’t have enough data on Earthlings anyway.”

Rand found himself smiling when she smiled. Reckless, talented, gorgeous – with or without blue eyes. “I could fall in love with you, you know.”

She reached out a hand. He took it. “If we survive this, I just may let you.”

Elle sat in the cockpit, face shield down, meaningless. It hurt like fire, but she’d felt worse. She closed her eyes, which was redundant, but it helped her focus. She imagined the panel in front of her. She reached out and toggled a switch. The left thruster fired up on low. Damn. It should have been the right one, on high. She concentrated, tried to dredge up the flight here, through the asteroids – concentrating on the numbers on the display while her hands went to practiced spots.

“Give me coordinates, Rand. Any coordinates.”

“It might help if we weren’t still attached to the asteroid.”

She let out a harsh breath, tried not to swear like her grandfather. “Just do it, please. I need to see if we can do this before I discover I can’t get back here.”

“Okay, then. Good point. Let’s go with . . .” He started typing hard. “197.824, left pitch 8.7, arc length

14.3.”

“Skip the pitch and arc. The order of the numbers will tell me what they are. Just stick with initials for direction: 197.824, L 8.7, A 14.3. So . . . let’s try this.” She let the numbers fill her mind, let them flow through her to, as Miflin said, “paint the picture”. The stick moved without her meaning to. The ship lurched, strained against the anchor. “Was that a real coordinate?”

“Yep, our first one,” he said with far too much satisfaction in his voice. “Give ’er hell, Captain Tyler.

Sir.”

She smiled and pulled the anchor release. It didn’t retract the anchor. It severed the connection at the ship. She felt the shudder as the ship eased away from the asteroid. She answered Rand’s question before he asked it. “Less weight. We’ll be able to maneuver quicker without it.”

He tapped her shoulder lightly and she turned her head. “The rock’s spinning again. We should probably get out of here.”

One nod and she felt her hands dance over the controls. The thrusters reversed and she pulled up on the stick sharply. They tumbled and she felt the ship respond to the outcropping passing by the hull. “Tell me where to go next.”

He did. Coordinate after coordinate, she stared where the screen would be and the numbers appeared in her mind as though her eyes were seeing them. He abbreviated easily after a few minutes. “184.2, L 87, A 14.2; 184, L 6, A. 9; 1922, L 13.3, A 12.” She let her hands move, and soon it was as though she could see – at least as well as she normally could through the blast shield.

“Entering the planet’s atmosphere. Remain on this course. Keep the nose steady. I’ll let you know when you can let go.”

She hated atmospheres. The stick vibrated wildly. Heat began to radiate through the cockpit. It would pass, but it made the blisters on her face sting, burn, made her skin melt and crackle even through the shields. “Damn it, Miflin. It hurts. I can’t concentrate.”

Rand reached back and put a hand on her shoulder. “Keep it steady, Elle. Just a few more minutes.

We’re nearly through. Don’t let go. I can’t do this for you. This is yours.”

She wanted to let go. To put her hand to her face to shield her wounds from the heat. “I can’t keep this up.”

“You can. Trust me. Just another minute.”

Did she trust him? Could she? “What’s in this for you?” The drugs were wearing off and her eyeballs were swelling again. Her lids wouldn’t close over them. She feared if she forced them, they wouldn’t go up again. She needed distraction. “Tell me.”

There was a long pause. It felt like forever as her face and hands crackled and crisped. “At first, it was the rush. I’ve always been an adrenaline junkie. Then it was the money. People who want to move things without suspicion will pay nearly anything. I tried the ‘straight and narrow’ route. Had a steady job with low pay and no future. Drove me nuts. So, you’re right. I was for sale to the highest bidder.”

Close now. She could feel the shaking lessen, but now was the most dangerous part. If they hit the stratosphere wrong, or the concentration of gases was too different from Earth, she could ricochet off, and they’d tumble and break up. Rand tightened his hand on her shoulder. His wrist was probably cramping from the angle. She asked him. “What changed?”

“There’s always a line. A line you can’t cross. To me, the line was kids. Who knew? Someone paid me to drive a freighter. I was told to ignore noises in the back. But I couldn’t. They’d sealed them in without enough air holes. I broke it open. Not a one was more than ten. I didn’t know where they were supposed to end up, and I didn’t care. I dropped off the grid with them. Took them to the Mars colony’s orphanage. I knew a group of nuns there who would care for them. A day later I joined the resistance.”

Her muscles were getting so tired. “We must be going in wrong. It shouldn’t take this long.”

“It’s a thick atmosphere. Hang in there. Nearly done. The clouds are getting lighter.”

“So you joined the resistance to escape the wrath of your former clients?”

His voice turned hard as diamonds. “My clients were part of the Stovian high command. I discovered they preferred . . . veal for banquets.”

Elle couldn’t help but shudder. Children as food. “So that should make me trust you?”

“To stop Stovia from turning our whole planet into a slaughterhouse? Oh yeah. You can trust me.” He took a deep breath and let it out slow.

Her voice took a teasing edge. “Not doing it for me?” Why the hell did she ask that? But it was spoken. She couldn’t figure out how to take it back.

He tried to keep his voice light, but failed. “That, too. How would you get out of here if not for me?

Breaking through the clouds now. Vector to 249.868, 14.87, 6.0, and stay straight as an arrow. Asort dead ahead, if the maps we have are accurate.”

Dead ahead. Hopefully that wasn’t prophetic.

The shaking of the stick stopped abruptly and the air began to cool. She let out a harsh breath she didn’t know she was holding, and ripped off her gloves. She’d need finer control of the stick in the air. Rand patted her head and then let go to put his hands back on his keyboard. “Tell me where to go.”

He did, and even described the scenery as they flew – so far with nobody noticing. “Weird trees here.

They look like giant ferns. No, more like big stalks of celery. They’re mostly brown and withering.

Atmosphere sucks. Sort of like what they used to talk about in history books about the industrial age.

Smog. Thick. Don’t know if it’s breathable to humans. At least, it can’t be healthy.” After a few minutes of silence, he started up again. “I think I see the place, up ahead. The complex is huge. How many bombs do we have, again?”

“Ten. Five bunker-busters and five diron fault-expanders.” She reached forward to where the bay door-releases were located. Good. She recognized them by feel.

“Ten? On this tiny thing? Where?”

“It’s why we don’t have a galley or cargo bay. They were converted to munitions storage.” One pull per release. If the complex was big, they might want to make two runs. Diron to shake things up, and then the bunker-busters to destroy anything underground.

The warning alarm sounded. “Uh-oh. We have company,” she said. They were being targeted. “Move to atmosphere flight. Altimeter reading? Speed?”

“Thirty-five thousand feet, seven hundred knots. Shit! Incoming missile! Hard left roll. Now!”

She cranked the stick over and felt the ship slip into a barrel roll. The sizzling sound of a light missile went past her left ear. “Whew. That was close.”

“Not as close as this one! Tyler Tip to right on two, one, mark!”

Her grandfather had taught her an old propeller-plane trick called an “Immelman”. It was very close to a Tyler Tip, done in the atmosphere. The ship performed, just barely. She hadn’t had the chance to test the Javelin in heavy air. It was sluggish, not nearly as light as in space. “That was too close. Let’s get this done.”

He gave the bearings and she dipped and wove around the towering trees, using Rand’s rapid-fire coordinates. Her world narrowed to following the commands while trying to listen for the sound of the other planes outside the ship.

More enemy ships were launched as they got closer. “Get ready. Don’t think about anything but releasing those bombs.”

Now, why did he say that? His voice sounded strained. “Rand? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” His voice cracked. He was lying. She moved one hand back and touched his face. It was wet . . . and slippery. “You’re bleeding. What happened?”

“Shrapnel came through the panel. All the instruments are working. I’ll be fine. Just do your job. Don’t worry about me.”

Of course, the moment he said that, she started to. “What’s your condition? If it’s serious, we’re breaking off until we can get you stabilized.”

“I’m . . . okay. Just . . . a . . . little hard to—” He gasped. “Breathe.”

The compartments had separate forced-air systems. So long as hers kept forcing air toward her helmet, she’d be fine. She reached up and yanked the cord on her suit, then handed the tube backwards. “Here.

Don’t argue. There’s almost a day’s worth of air here if you don’t go crazy.”

He pushed it away. “Can’t. Need . . . to . . . talk, to direct . . . you.”

Damn it. He was right. “But I can’t afford for you to pass out, either.” She pulled off her helmet and immediately her chest seized up from the horrible air quality. “Trade . . . me . . . helmets.” Her head started to pound from the lack of oxygen.

Again Rand tried to wave it away but she insisted, pushing her helmet with the good line backwards. “I don’t have to . . . talk. I . . . can use . . . my suit.” With that, she plugged the mouthpiece behind her lips and tossed the helmet entirely over her head.

After a long moment, she heard his voice again. “Damn you, Tyler. You can’t afford to be low on air.”

She just shrugged, not that he could see her. There wouldn’t be any more talking until they were back in space. Then they could make repairs – provided they made it past the Stovian armada. The one nice thing was that the Javelin had speed. Once they dropped the weight, it would outrun anything the Stovians had.

She struggled not to pull air from the tube. It wasn’t a forced-air system. But the toxic atmosphere had nearly overwhelmed her lungs. It was hard not to start coughing, and that could ruin her suit. She put her arm out of the cockpit and waved her hand in circles, telling Rand to speed it up.

It wasn’t just the fuel, but her eyes were starting to swell again. This time, they were swelling inward.

Probably the low oxygen wasn’t helping. Her head was pounding. She tried not to be scared. What would happen to them . . . to Rand, if she passed out? She had to keep it together. She could collapse when they got away. They had to get away.

“Prepare to release.” Rand’s voice was hollow, sounded strange to her ears. Was it just the helmet’s modulator, or something else? Worse, she couldn’t ask. She fingered the control for the five-hundred-

pounders and stretched her hand so her pinkie could flip the diron bomb controls. “On my mark, Elle.

Five – four – three . . .” The pounding in her head was getting worse, all the way down one side to her neck now. But just a second longer. She could do this. “Two – one – MARK!”

She flipped both triggers and felt the Javelin soar upward like a deployed parachute when the weight dropped. The roar of turbine jets deafened her right ear as they shot upwards past the pursuers. She paused for a second to pull the air tube from her mouth. “Was it a hit?”

“Hit,” came the weak reply. “Good . . . job, E—” Rand’s voice stopped. She reached back and shook his shoulder.

“Rand?” No response. “Rand!” She had to put her air tube back in. But how was she going to be able to navigate back into space? Especially with followers? She thought back to the directions he’d given before they started darting through the trees. All she could do was pray and hope that the ship was already high enough in the atmosphere that there were no structures to hit. She pointed the nose up, put the thrusters on full, and threw off her restraints. They’d make it out or they wouldn’t. But she had to find out how bad Rand’s injuries were.

It was hard work to get him out of his seat. Dead weight was no picnic to move. Once he was in the rear cabin with the helmet off, she gingerly felt his face. He had a nasty cut over one temple that still had a piece of metal embedded. That was probably what had knocked him out. But could she remove it without damaging him further?

The ship shifted then, and something bounced heavily off their shield. Probably a smaller satellite.

Hopefully nothing bigger was in the way. But if there was . . . No. she’d stay with Rand. Keep him safe until . . . She grabbed the piece of metal and pulled, praying it wasn’t in too deep. It was stuck, but not in the bone, and came out easily, followed by a rush of blood.

Elle felt around in the med kit, hoping something would feel familiar. She couldn’t think of anything in there that would hurt him, so she just grabbed what she hoped was an antibiotic and painkiller. Same as he’d given her. Or maybe a blood coagulant. She ripped open a package and fingered the trigger as she put it against his arm. She wouldn’t think about what would happen if she failed. Mostly, she shouldn’t care about anything other than the mission. Again her breathing tube was yanked out. “Damn you, Rand.

Why in the hell did you make me care about you?”

A strong hand reached up and grabbed hers before she could push the plunger. “I could ask the same about you.” His voice was weak but steady. “How about you don’t give me a shot of estrogen, though.

Okay?”

Crap! Was that what she’d grabbed? She let him take away the plunger and heard him rip open another package. The soft whoosh of the shot came to her ears and then another package was ripped open. She felt pressure against her arm. “Two for you. Anti-inflammatory and another painkiller. Then put your oxygen back in.”

A voice came from the cockpit, causing both of them to turn their heads. “Javelin One, do you copy?

Captain Tyler? This is the ESS Discovery. We’ve been instructed to grab the ship and get you home.

We’re being pursued, though, so we only have a minute if you want to hitch a ride.”

Elle’s heart started to pump wildly. Home? She pulled the helmet off Rand’s head and moved forward to the cockpit, toggling the radio. “Javelin One, Discovery. You’re welcome to grab us. Our controls are damaged, though. Can you collect us as we go by?”

After a pause, her heart soared. “Ten-Four, Javelin One. Prepare for forced capture. Strap yourself in tight.”

Rand was right behind her, pushed her forward into her seat. He managed to climb back into the navpit.

She gave him back the helmet. “But people will see your face,” he said.

“You can give it back once we’re on board. Or maybe Captain Tyler died. I don’t know that there’s any way I’ll ever fly again.” She tried to make it matter-of-fact, tried not to think of the implications. He covered her hand with his.

“You’ll fly again. They’re doing amazing things with implants. Until then, I’ll be there, making sure you get whatever you need.”

“What about the rebellion?” she asked softly. “The rush and the money?”

She could hear the smile in his voice as she put the oxygen tube back in. “Oh, I’ll be supporting the rebellion. With your permission, I’ll be ensuring the next incarnation of the Legend of El Tyler.”

She reached back and clasped his hand. They felt the pull of the ESS Discovery and strapped themselves in for the long ride home.