Page 141 of Star Bringer
“Maybe you should take your own advice,” Max shoots back with a raised brow.
Before I can tell him to fuck straight off, theStarlightjumps again—and this time I end up taking a header straight into Max. We land in a heap on the floor while Gage lolls about, blissfully unconscious, strapped into his chair.
“We need to stop fucking around and get out of here,” Merrick growls as I try to stand up and nearly go flying again as theStarlightdoes yet another fancy maneuver.
I land on the floor next to Rain this time, and fuck it. Just fuck it. I start crawling to the captain’s chair, determined to get there before who the fuck knows what else happens.
But the torpedoes are coming so fast and furious now, one after the other, that even crawling is difficult as theStarlightdoes the most bizarre evasive maneuvers I have ever been witness to in an attempt to avoid them.
“Why isn’t she flying away?” Rain asks, sounding like she’s going to cry.
“Because those are Corporation catamarans bearing down on us,” Max answers grimly. “The fastest ships ever made. No way we can outrun them.”
“Yeah, well we should at least try,” I shoot back. “This damn sentient spaceship and her fucking agenda. I knew she was going to be trouble. I just fucking knew it.”
“What about her solar-flare-beam thing?” Kali asks. “Can we fire that?”
“Which part of ‘we’re not in control of this fucking ship’ do you not understand?” Beckett snarls at her. “We can’t do anything!”
“Yeah, well, we better start doing something, or we’re all gonna die.” Max looks over at me. “Any suggestions?”
“Besides blasting them out of the whole fucking system, which she seems incapable of doing?” I growl. “No, I’ve got nothing.”
Another torpedo slams into us, just to the right of the nose, and the whole fucking ship shudders like it’s about to collapse in on itself. An alarm goes off—the same one from our first day on board, when Gage pressed the big red button. Something tells me pressing it now isn’t going to turn the alarm back off this time.
“We need to know what that is,” I shout to Beckett to be heard over the alarm. “Can you pull up the video feed—” I break off because she’s already doing it.
“Is anything vital breached?” I ask as she whizzes through the pictures.
“It doesn’t look like it, but that alarm means something.” She blows out a long breath. “And if this keeps up, it’s only a matter of time. We have to—”
TheStarlightemits a sound that can only be described as a high-pitched, mechanical scream. It chills me to my bones and has all of us whipping around, trying to figure out where it came from.
“What the hell was that?” Merrick demands.
I turn to the pilot. “Beckett?”
“I don’t know.” She sounds frantic. “I don’t fucking know. This ship isn’t telling me anything, and it’s not doing anything I want it to do. I don’t know what—”
Another high screech echoes through the bridge. And then theStarlightfinally—finally—starts to fly.
Chapter 55
Beckett
“No, no, no, no, no!” I shout as I realize what’s happening. The relief I felt when theStarlightstarted to fly dies an instant death as I realize she’s not trying to outrun the ships after all. No, she’s flying straight toward them.
“Umm, shouldn’t we be turning around?” Rain asks in what is probably the politest voice used on this bridge since this whole clusterfuck began. “Why are we flying toward the scary spaceships when we should be flying away from them?”
“Good fucking question,” I mutter as I do the same thing I always do to make theStarlightturn. It doesn’t work.
I try again. Still doesn’t work.
“Beckett?” Ian asks in his best captain voice. “What the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know.” I push the buttons that help with turn maneuverability. Nothing. I pull back on the control that handles her speed, trying to slow her down. It makes her go faster.
As does pushing on the control.
