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I turn my back to the Halifax.
I ignite my jetpack, soaring straight to Glory ’s airlock door, still open from when I left my ship, desperate and dying.
That part was real. My air tank was almost empty by the time they bothered to pick me up.
But I could have recharged it if I had to.
What can I say? I love a dramatic entrance.
The breach in my ship is real. But the explosion—the one I set —did not compromise the electricals or the life support. I made sure of that. I couldn’t risk something as nebulous as a random mayday; I needed a real distress call, a real problem. I may have exaggerated it a tiny bit, but I was counting on no one looking too closely. Rian sent out drones to inspect the damage. Had he suited up and looked for himself, he might have seen more than I wanted him to.
As soon as I go through the hole by my own ship’s airlock, I use the grab bars to pull myself into the main body. The power’s offline, which means the gravity generator’s not on. I’m still floating, going from point to point through my ship.
When I get closer to my cockpit, I go through the bulkhead doors, then turn around and seal them.
The back half of my ship is still breached. Can’t properly fix that hole now. But the bulkhead door seals the front half entirely. The massive steel door bisects my ship, and it’s easy enough to just close the door, lock it, and boot up the power and start the process of repressurizing and re-oxygenating this part of the ship. It doesn’t take long. Soon enough, my boots hit the floor. By the time I’m strapped into my pilot seat, Glory ’s ready to fly again.
This is the dangerous bit, I think. Leaving.
I pull off my helmet and take a deep breath of the oxygen that had been stored in the tanks, waiting for me to come back home.
There’s a communication signal hailing me. Halifax is reaching out.
Rian wants to talk.
What else is there to say?
He already knows that I stole the data off the cryptex drive. And soon enough, he’s going to figure it out on his own that the reason why I could leave now is because I already have the key.
I check it, just to be sure. And it’s right there, locked in the bridge box. That is a safe place to store something.
I get my engine running. Halifax might try to chase me, sure, but it’s been running cold, letting the shuttle do the work. And my Glory is small and nimble. And I’ve already got an encrypted portal code locked and ready.
I veer out of orbit around the planet, away from the salvage site. I was here before the crash even happened, as arranged. I watched as the crew evacuated on their escape shuttle, made sure they met with their contact and got out of the system after they set the ship to crash-land onto the planet. It hadn’t been a great choice of crash, but it was the most viable planet along the route. Considering most of the universe is black void, having a land-based planet on the route at all was a lucky break.
The cryptex key was always going to be the hard thing to find. It’s tiny, innocuous, and uncrackable. The crew had told me before about where they suspected it was going to be hidden, but they hadn’t been sure. That was the problem with something this high-security. This valuable. The crew hadn’t been consulted on where everything was hidden. They hadn’t even been told of what they were carrying.
But I knew. And when I told them, and when I paid them—using my client’s money, of course—the crew let me convince them to take an alternative route home.
It took me three days to track the key down, longer than I’d anticipated.
Long enough for the Halifax to show up before I’d gotten my hands on the cryptex drive. At least I’d been on the ship when I got the warning that they were in range. It gave me time to breach my own ship’s hull, put on a suit, and wait to be saved.
I glance at the blinking light that signals the Halifax trying to open communication with me.
I turn off the comms.
“One goal,” I whisper, blinking rapidly.
My hands settle over the controls of Glory .
“Full speed.” My voice is stronger this time.
I soar away through the stars.