Page 30 of Marked
“Told you to run diagnostics,” Tanika said while she crossed her arms over her chest. She appeared rather haughty as she stared back at Alaric. If anyone had mastered resting bitch face, it was this lady, and my respect for the definitely-not-real-hologram girl grew tenfold.
“What’s going on?” Alaric said, pushing forward in his chair and looking over the screen in front of him. His forehead furrowed with concern as he studied the lines of code. The longer I watched, the more his brow crinkled with distress until Tanika finally decided to answer.
“I don’t know. Would have if I’d run the diagnostics,” she retorted.
“Please run them now,” Alaric commanded, although now there was a certain edge to his voice that I’d heard many times before. I licked my lips and sat back as the ship rattled again, watching the show. I wished that I had popcorn right now so that I could fully enjoy it.
“As you wish,” Tanika said with a certain fake cheeriness, and her eyes rolled back eerily in her head. Her eyelashes fluttered and about thirty seconds later she opened them once again.
“The anti-gravity compressor has an air leak,” she replied. “All other systems are in working order though.”
“Can it be fixed? Do we need extra parts?” Alaric asked.
“It’s more complicated since we’re in the air now. I can send a drone down below to fix it. It should take a minute. It would have only taken about ten seconds if you’d just let me run the diagnostics when we were on the ground,” Tanika muttered, and her eyes fluttered eerily once again.
The ship rattled once more, harder this time, a violent tremor that sent a jolt of panic straight through my chest. A second later, it dropped, a stomach-lurching freefall that made my breath catch in my throat.
My fingers dug into the armrests, knuckles turning bone white as I clung to the seat like it was the only thing keeping me from being ripped out into the black void beyond.
Another violent shudder rocked the ship, metal groaning as if it were protesting the force tearing at it.
My stomach lurched, the unmistakable weightlessness of freefall hitting me for a brief, horrifying moment before the ship stabilized—only to lurch again, worse than before.
It felt like turbulence, but wrong . This wasn’t an airplane gliding through a storm; this was something else entirely.
My breath came fast and shallow, my pulse hammering as the ship continued its rapid ascent.
Every second felt stretched, every violent shake of the hull another reminder of just how small we were, how fragile.
I swallowed hard, squeezing my eyes shut as the ship rattled once more, metal shrieking around me.
A minute was a very long time when you were hurtling toward death with nothing but an infinite, uncaring void waiting to swallow you whole.
“Update on the drone’s progress, Tanika?” Alaric pressed.
“Thirty more seconds,” she said.
“Do we have thirty more seconds?” I blurted, unable to keep my own panic from my voice.
Tanika turned her icy pale eyes to me and sighed. “You’re not going to fall out of the sky,” she snapped, rolling her eyes at the same time. “Maybe next time you’ll let me run diagnostics before you demand I get my ship off the ground.”
Alaric glared at her and in that moment, I was very glad he wasn’t looking at me that way.
The ship dropped again, and I cried out with fear, feeling my stomach pitch down straight to the tips of my toes.
The entire vessel vibrated hard, forcing me to grit my teeth as I struggled to handle the sensation of the floor being ripped out from under my feet.
I gripped the armrests so hard that my fingers hurt as the ship rattled once more, jolting me from side to side.
Tanika smiled as the ship leveled out and began to pick up speed.
“Air leak repaired,” she said, her tone rather flippant. “We should probably deal with the Ghengra shields now.”
“The what?” Alaric muttered as he did that thing where he dragged his palm over his face again. He was clearly unused to anyone talking back to him and especially new to the fact that he couldn’t even lay a single hand on this bratty woman because she wasn’t even real.
I snorted at the entertainment and Alaric turned his dark eyes on me.
Quickly, I turned my eyes to the viewing window and acted like I was far more interested in the view down below instead.
I could feel him watching me long after that though, and I couldn’t help but squirm in my seat knowing that he was.
“Ghengra is equipped with a large shield around its atmosphere. It prevents unexpected ship entries, but it also happens to be trapping us inside right now,” Tanika replied.
“Are there entry and exit points nearby?” he asked, his brows furrowing with concern.
“The nearest one is not far, but it is heavily guarded,” she warned.
“What kind of firepower do you have at your disposal, Tanika?” he asked, and I gazed at him as he studied the screen still in front of him. It changed to show a bunch of diagrams that appeared to be the technical specifications of the ship’s artillery.
He grinned widely.
“I knew I made a good decision by picking this model,” he muttered to himself, before turning back toward Tanika. “Fire the twin phase emitters and the particle beams at full power at the same time once I give the order. Tell me when we are within the firing range of the exit point.”
“That’s a lot of energy. We risk overheating, and that will take much longer to repair than the air leak we had before,” Tanika replied, her attitude completely nonexistent. She looked nervous now actually.
“Either my plan works, or we crash into smithereens once we collide with the shield. If we make it through, we’ll deal with whatever comes with it,” he smirked.
“Fucking risk takers. They’re the worst,” Tanika muttered.
“Buckle yourself in, Kendra. It’s going to be a bumpy ride,” Alaric exclaimed.
I gazed out and far above us, I could see what appeared to be a glossy sheen between our ship and the great void of space. It flashed once, revealing what appeared to be an interconnecting grid pattern of hexagons across the entire surface.
It must be the shield Tanika was talking about. The ship hurtled towards it, and I could feel myself growing more anxious as we drew closer. With a nervous breath, I closed my eyes, not wanting to see death coming.
“Ten seconds to firing range,” the hologram said, her voice rising in panic.
“Hold,” Alaric instructed. Several more seconds passed, and I opened my eyes to see a glowing silver circle in the middle of the shield.
Silver rings rotated outward from the center, swirling around and around in a dizzying pattern.
The more I stared at it, the more it appeared to be made of steel instead of a glowing disc of light.
“Four seconds,” Tanika replied, increasingly more edgy than before. Her voice drew my attention away from the exit point.
“Prepare weapons. Hold until I say to fire,” he demanded.
“Two seconds,” she said, now clearly more rattled than earlier as we approached the shields.
“ Fire! ” Alaric roared, his voice a raw command that sent a surge of electricity through the air.
Tanika’s eyes rolled back for the briefest second, her form flickering as the ship responded. Then, everything exploded into motion.
Pillars of brilliant green energy erupted from the front of the ship, blinding in their intensity, illuminating the dark like twin suns being born.
The force of the weapons firing sent a deep, bone-rattling vibration through the floor beneath me, a rumble so powerful it felt like the ship itself was growling.
Another blast followed, then another, each shot shaking the entire vessel as we threw every ounce of firepower we had at the massive shield blocking our escape.
The beams hurtled forward, streaks of raw energy crackling like furious lightning, smashing into the shimmering hexagonal barrier that had imprisoned us on this godforsaken planet.
For a terrible moment, nothing happened. The shield held.
And then, it cracked.
The interlocking grid of hexagons pulsed once, twice, before a brilliant white-hot fissure split across its surface.
A violent explosion of energy erupted outward, sending jagged fragments of the shield spiraling in all directions.
The glow intensified, flashing so brightly I had to throw up my hands to shield my eyes, but I felt it more than saw it—the moment it finally shattered.
The entire construct collapsed , breaking apart like a crumbling glacier, its pieces disintegrating into molten debris that rained down in fiery streaks.
The ship kept firing as we barreled toward the wreckage, smashing through what remained of the once-impenetrable wall keeping us trapped inside Ghengra’s gravitational grip. But there was no time for relief. Because the second the shield disintegrated, the wreckage came for us .
“ Engage our shields! ” Alaric bellowed, his voice laced with a rare sliver of urgency.
“ On it! ” Tanika snapped back, and then her eyes rolled back in her head, taking control of the ship once again.
A shimmering force field flickered into place just as the first chunk of debris hurtled toward us.
It struck with a deafening boom , the impact rattling the ship so violently that I nearly jolted out of my seat.
More followed—twisted shards of metal, glowing remnants of energy, the skeletal remains of the very barrier that had once held us captive.
They crashed against the shield in rapid succession, hammering us from every angle, each collision a thunderous explosion that sent jolts through my bones.
I gritted my teeth, gripping the armrests as the ship shuddered beneath the relentless onslaught.
For one terrifying second, I wasn’t sure if our shields would hold.
But then, the worst of it passed. The rubble thinned. And suddenly, there was nothing in front of us but endless open space.
I sucked in a breath, my hands still shaking as I lifted my gaze. Through the front window, the void stretched vast and endless, an ocean of darkness speckled with brilliant, unblinking stars. The sheer immensity of it stole the breath from my lungs.
We had done it. We were free .
“Stabilize a course for Earth. Run a full detailed diagnostic on all systems,” Alaric instructed.
“I thought you’d never ask,” Tanika muttered, the look of relief on her holographic face obvious.