Page 5

Chapter

Five

Tivek

T he ship pitched wildly as another explosion rocked the hull, sending tremors through the metal floor. Alarms wailed and an acrid stench burned my nostrils as I clutched Morgan against me to shield her from falling equipment.

I managed to stand and pull her up with me, yanking open the door. “Hold onto me!"

The corridor outside rocked beneath our feet, the artificial gravity fluctuating with each new impact. Emergency lights flashed crimson, casting everything in a hellish glow.

"All hands, brace for impact!" Ariana's voice crackled from the cockpit, strain evident in every syllable. "I repeat, brace for impact!"

Morgan stumbled as the deck plates buckled. I caught her around the waist, half-carrying her as we staggered toward the jump seats behind the cockpit. The walls seemed to close in around us, the ship groaning like a wounded animal as its structural integrity weakened.

As we emerged from the corridor, the ship was in chaos. Commander Vyk gripped the back of the pilot's chair, his knuckles white as he leaned over Ariana's shoulder. Torq was frantically working the weapons console, his face illuminated by the rapid flicker of warning indicators.

"Get strapped in!" Vyk barked without turning to look at us. "Now!"

I guided Morgan to the nearest jump seat, my fingers fumbling with the harness as I secured her in place. Her face was pale in the flashing lights, but her jaw was tight with determination.

“What hit us?" I demanded, sliding into the seat beside her and fastening my own restraints. "Enemy fire?"

Vyk shook his head, twisting his head for a beat to reveal a scowl. "Unknown. Ariana?"

"Mine field," Ariana gritted out, her hands dancing across the controls as she fought to stabilize our descent. "Cloaked. No signatures until we were right on top of it. Once I thought the coast was clear and we hadn’t been detected, I took us out of orbit around that planet. It was smooth sailing until, well, it wasn’t.”

I exchanged a glance with Vyk as he glanced over his shoulder, both of us reaching the same conclusion simultaneously.

"If there's a mine field..." I began.

"Then we're near something they want protected," Vyk finished, his eyes narrowing. "Possibly our target."

Torq abandoned the weapons console to secure himself in a jump seat. "Can we still make it to the planet?”

"We're losing structural integrity,” Ariana said, her voice taut. "Engine two is offline. We need to land—now."

The viewport before us revealed the dark vastness of space, punctuated by the looming gray orb of the Kronock planet we’d been studying for so long.

"Can you get us to the surface?" Vyk pressed, bracing himself as another shudder ran through the ship.

Ariana's laugh was brittle. "Oh, I can get us to the surface. The question is whether I can do it without turning us into a fireball.”

“I guess we aren’t making a stealth approach?” Torq asked.

“Oh, they’ll know we’ve arrived,” Ariana said. "I might be able to get us down in one piece, but our invisibility shielding is toast. We're looking at a crash landing in an uninhabited region, but at least there’s minimal Kronock presence."

I felt Morgan's hand slip into mine, her fingers cold against my palm. She wasn't visibly trembling, but I could sense the fear she was fighting to control. I squeezed gently, offering what comfort I could as the ship rattled around us.

"I'm sending an encrypted SOS to the academy," Ariana announced, her fingers flying over the shiny console. "If we're going in hot and hard, we'll need backup."

"The Kronock could intercept," Vyk warned, though he made no move to stop her.

"No choice," she replied grimly. "If the ship's too damaged to get airborne again, we're stuck without any way off. Besides, our presence is no longer a secret.”

The thought sent ice through my veins. The last thing any of us wanted was to be trapped in enemy territory without any way to leave.

"Entering atmosphere in thirty seconds," Ariana called out. "This is going to get rough."

Torq muttered something under his breath that sounded like a string of colorful Drexian curses.

"Fiona will not react well to the SOS,” Vyk growled, though I caught the flicker of tenderness beneath his gruff exterior. “There will be no way to stop her.”

The ship began to vibrate violently as we hit the outer atmosphere. Friction heated the hull and bathed the cockpit in an orange glow. Smoke began to seep through ventilation shafts, carrying the bitter taste of burning steel.

I glanced at Morgan beside me, struck by how beautiful she was, even in the face of danger. How many others had I watched crumble under less pressure?

"Brace yourselves!" Ariana shouted as the ship lurched downward, the controls fighting her every command. "Engine one failing!"

I pulled Morgan's head to my chest, shielding her with my body as best I could while still restrained in my harness. “I won’t let anything happen to you,” I whispered fiercely in her ear, echoing my words from earlier.

She nodded against my shoulder, her breath warm against my neck.

The viewport filled with swirling clouds the color of bruised flesh, occasionally parting to reveal glimpses of the planet's surface rushing up to meet us. Steel-gray landmasses jutted from murky oceans, while twisted spires of stone reached skyward like grasping fingers.

Alarms shrieked as systems failed in cascading sequence. Ariana fought the controls with everything she had, but she was not winning the battle. We were falling too fast and too hard.

"Impact in ten seconds!" she called out. "Hold on!"

I tightened my grip on Morgan, my other hand braced against the bulkhead. The ship screamed around us, metal wailing as atmospheric drag ripped at the damaged hull.

Through the front of the ship, I caught a glimpse of the barren expanse that was pockmarked with craters belching steam. No sign of Kronock structures and no indication of the prison that supposedly held my brother.

Were we too far off course? Had our intelligence been wrong? Would we die on the barren planet before we even had a chance to complete our mission?

The thought of my brother languishing in a cell somewhere while I failed him sent a stubborn surge through me. No. We would survive this. We would find him. We would all go home.

As the surface of the planet rushed up to meet us, I closed my eyes and pulled Morgan closer.