Page 1 of Thruster (Hunted Relics #9)

"Nobody move. Engines off." My father is stern, quiet. There's worry in his voice. I can hear it over our channel. I don't think he likes the situation around our small fleet of rebel ships. I don't either. As much as I was looking forward to our salvage mission today, I am looking more forward to living through it.

“Solcrue approaching, parallel to belt…spinward. Ten klicks. Shadow-up.”

I switch off my radio, scanners, and engines, making myself a husk of vulnerable life in space. It's terrifying to play possum when I know if my engines won't restart, I'll freeze or suffocate. No one will know I'm dead unless they search and find me. And if I'm found by the enemy, I must be the sacrifice.

My mother has already met that fate. It’s why the moment we’re old enough, we pilot our own ship—to increase the fleet size and to limit the number of casualties if we are found.

It is an agonizingly lonely existence.

Just me. My ship. Space. Nothingness.

The enemy.

I watch through my cockpit windows as a Solcrue berserker and five Skysprinters ease through space just outside the asteroid belt where we’ve been hiding on the outer rim of the Solcrue system. They’re looking for us and any others who dare challenge their authority over the galaxy. There are a few of us. Fewer every day.

I don’t shut down my thermal ignition booster. Solcrue vessels fade from view, but I’m no fool to their tactics. If I need to flee, any delay could be deadly.

There are twenty-three of us hiding in the shadows of the belt. Few would dare enter this mess. We have learned to navigate it over the last several years. But I am tired of feeling like a mouse trapped in a maze of floating rock, wondering when a passing snake will finally catch me.

Solcrue burned the Sol system, then built a new one here on the backs of their human ancestors. My grandparents served them. I’d rather die than give up my freedom.

These days, I might just get my wish.

Earth Minor has become a slave planet, save for one city where Solcrue cannot survive. I hate that I can’t go home. But we don’t have the numbers or the resources for a rebellion. The resistance has gone quiet since the jailbreak.

Wiggling my feet in my spaceboots on the floor of my small, homebuilt fighter, I try to remember what it was like to spend days on solid ground, get sand between my toes, play in the grass, and smell clean air instead of the metallic scent of space.

And gravity. I think I miss that most. The physical training helps, but I’m afraid of what will happen if I ever return to a terran surface after so many years in space.

A beam of green light passes over a nearby asteroid from somewhere behind me. I'm tucked in the cave of my asteroid, not far from my younger brother's and my father's. The moment I was big enough to reach the controls, my mother helped me build my first ship, and my father assigned me a post.

The swiveling lasers sweep closer and closer. A Skysprinter hovers down beside my cave, the cockpit windows visible from where I sit in the dark. They scan inside.

Oh, shit!

I duck down in the cockpit and listen to my com feed open to their channel. All I hear is a single tone before the nose of my ship blazes with green light. A blast slams into my ship. My body lurches forward as my ship is launched backward. The harness straps dig into my shoulders.

I have to do something, or I’m going to smash my rear thrusters and be useless. There’s no time to call the fleet or warn them. I grab my controls, tap my thermal ignition booster, and light up my engines. Their revolutions rise. The hum fills my cabin. But they aren’t ready for launch.

I’m running out of cavern space to slide.

Come on!

The moment the thrusters' generation status is in the green, I slam the throttle forward. This maneuver has a high risk of smashing hull panels, so I slap the ceiling lever for my bumper panels. They whine as the hydraulics unfold my shields around the ship. I race faster toward the exit. Selecting my close-range grenade launchers, I fire at the enemy vessel.

I could've taken the hit, sacrificed myself, and hoped the Solcrue wouldn't find the rest of us. But where there's one, there's more. The enemy and us.

And where’s the fun in being the sacrifice? I want to kick some scrawny green ass before I die!

The ship darts away in a blaze and smashes into an asteroid. Not knowing how many more are outside of my rock, I flip on every scanner I’ve got. The moment I’m free, I dive deep into the belt, away from my father’s fleet.

A Solcrue mothership hovers below. It is a massive vessel with room for thousands. My navigation fills with alerts. We are surrounded on every side by the enemy. It has been a long time since our last confrontation. But we’ve never been as outnumbered as this.

The problem with radio silence is that no one will know what’s happening until the fight passes them. So my plan, our plan, is always to lead the enemy away from the group and hope they follow, hope they think I’m the only one, and pray that the others are never found. Except I don’t know if that’s going to work this time, not with so many combatants of such capability.

I’ve got to try.

I slide open the cover in the compartment to the right of my seat, grab the handle inside, and pull my special ammo control console up beside me. I hide it during day-to-day operations to avoid the risk of accidentally blowing myself up. It still terrifies me to have a high payload in my ship. But I never waste what I salvage. If it can help me get revenge for my mother and older brother, I will find a way to use it and deal with it.

I target an area with a squadron of Solcrue Skysprinters and make a quick dart through the belt toward them. Selecting my MRAT, multi-round automatic targeting, system I fire one missile and dive into the protection of the asteroid belt again.

The weapon peels apart into fifteen smaller missiles in two seconds and takes out twelve ships. Three are duds or just targeted the same vessel as another round. I still don't know quite how the user had programmed them. But they're decently effective with smaller fighters.

Asteroids disintegrate near my tail. The mothership fires up at me, turning the belt to gravel, sand, and fire. The explosive force pushes my ship dorsal-first into an approaching asteroid. I bash into it. My harness catches me painfully hard before I’m whipped backward, ass-first, toward another.

“Ah, fuck!”

There’s no time to get my bearing. I crawl my hands to the controls and push my engines hard to avoid a rear-end collision. But as I rocket forward again, momentum carries me on a course back toward the enemy.

“Might be our last mission, Pup,” I say to the little gold plastic dog glued to my dash. It wears a smile on its strangely shaped face. “Miss you, Haakon.”

Haakon said dogs were always loyal. They never betrayed their families. As much as I want to fly far away from here, I'm going to honor his memory, his loyalty, and his sacrifice by taking out as many of the enemy ships as I can.

I charge back through the debris field, hoping it’s still an unpredictable move. The moment I’m through, I fire at the mothership with the only canister of shield disruptors I’ve managed to build, plus a chaser combo of a high-impact shape charges—that should blow a cone-shaped hole in the hull—and my barrel of grenades.

There’s no time to look back and see if it works, though the flash of green that ripples around the hull is encouraging.

Two Skysprinters are hot on my tail as I dive back into the belt. They're fast, but I'm faster. Trouble is, I can't fire at them unless I'm outside. It would just waste more ammo and send it pinging wildly around. So I get as far ahead of them as I can, bank hard, dive beneath a larger asteroid, and circle back.

As they exit the belt, I target them and fire. They return my attacks from behind far better shields. My ship takes two hits out of many, but it's enough to knock out a thruster in the belly of the ship. My ship wobbles. The stabilizers compensate for it, but I have reduced capabilities.

Swearing, I hide back in the belt and work my way toward the other side, weaving between the rocks. A blaze of light cuts through the darkness of space. Then another until the world around my ship is a weave of gunfire through shattering asteroids.

I lose my controls. Engines won't redirect. Scanners become blotted. And space outside my ship clouds with metallic dust. Bashing into an asteroid sends me in a transverse spin out of the belt. A rogue asteroid, likely from a different collision, knocks me back into the tumultuous clouds.

There’s no way I’m dying with weapons still on my ship!

Using my bow's vents, I blow some dust off my windows and try to shake loose some of the debris. I'm vulnerable, a sitting duck as my grandfather would say. Whatever a duck is .

With scanners struggling to lock on, I know I’m on my own and switch to manual targeting. The berserker approaches, firing at me as it tries to protect the massive crew ship. It’s another big target, easier to hit, less likely to damage, but I’m in no position to outrun anyone. I tap my suit’s wrist controls and seal up my helmet, anticipating this going sideways fast. When I’m as close as I can estimate, I unload everything I have.

“Kelta!” My younger brother calls over the radio. “Get out of there!”

I choke up as reality hits. “I can’t! I’m dusted!”

My guns continue to fire at my fingertips. The berserker’s heading toward my position. “Engines are clogged on asteroid shit! I’m sorry, Reidar. I drew the short straw this time!”

I scan for him but don't see my family anywhere. No one from our fleet is visible. They’re always better at hiding than me.

The berserker’s guns glow in preparation to shoot.

“Be good to Dad. Make lots of babies with Eira. And tell them Auntie Kelta loved them.”

“Don’t say that, Kelta—”

I’m almost out of ammo. My engines can’t take me away from the Berserker’s path fast enough. It’s almost caught up to me when a blast from a Skysprinter slams into my bumper panels, disintegrating them and knocking me toward the mothership.

The berserker’s shot lances through the sky, clipping a wing. I have no controls left. The burning engine of the damaged mothership shimmers with heat and grows in size like the hungry rings of a round mouth full of teeth and angry menace.

I try to eject, but my screen won’t send the command. Prying open the manual release, I grab the handle, but it’s jammed, too.

Damn gravel!

I steady myself at the controls, realizing my end has come. My fate is in the hands of the universe now. If it doesn’t kill me before I’m under the engine, I’m taking it out.

I’ve got one explosive left. My fuel tank.

I am the ignition.

I draw a handgun and point it back at my tank. It will take a few rounds, but I’ll make it happen.

Yet as I drift toward the radiant engine bigger than my entire ship, a pit of ink flashes to life between me and destiny.

“We’ll find each other again, Kelta. Be strong.”

It’s my father’s voice. He’s opened his secret portal in front of the enemy. I look out my dusty window and see him peering up at me. In his eyes is regret, a prayer, and hope. He can send small ships to other places, and because he can, he will never go himself. Someone has to protect the portal generator.

“Dad, don’t send me away!”

“I’m not losing another child. Solcrue do not get to take any more of my family from me.”

“Don’t do this!”

The starboard wing disappears into the ink.

“Dad!”

“I can’t send you to any friends. There’s only one other option. Be strong, Kelta. I love you. Your mother and Haakan would be proud.”

I thought I was alone before, but if he’s not sending me to meet up with another rebel fleet, I fear where he is sending me.

The swirling dark water swallows my ship, and I’m spit out over a large green planet, tumbling toward the surface instead of a blazing engine. No one follows me.

When I glance back, the portal swirls into nothingness like water down a drain. Beneath my ship, streaks of light fill the atmosphere, and dread grips me.

More Skysprinters?

Solcrue storm the skies above the planet like little black and neon green hornets. The ground rotates by my window and back again. I need to get control.

Forcing a shutdown is the only way I can think of to break free of the dust and gravel.

My systems seem eager to switch off. Lights blink into darkness. Eerie silence fills the cabin. Gunfire sparkles on the surface. And it strikes me how pretty something so deadly can be. It makes me sick to think it could ever be beautiful. But I like shiny things. I can't help it.

I’m just hoping this thing starts.

My head spins until I’m on the edge of nausea. I restart the engines by memory, keeping my eyes closed. I hear the string of beeping tones that let me know my ship is operational. The drone of the engines fills the cabin again.

Yes! I counter the spinning by launching straight and finding the pattern clearer in the larger arc. I get myself headed toward the planet, away from the battle.

Then I see the motherships.

Three have the planet surrounded. One was bad enough.

I groan in my seat until an unexpected hit sends my navigation and systems flashing blue and my ship racing toward the surface completely dark.

Shit . “Shit. Shit!”

I'm thrown head-first into the battle. Atmosphere wraps sunlight and shades of blue sky around my ship. Reentry is not something my vessel was designed to excel at. It shakes and rattles, fighting gravity, air pressure, and the sheer heat of the friction.

A blazing yellow rocket flies below my ship, then a Skysprinter behind it. A Cyborg Security Patrol ship is right on the Skysprinter's tail, lighting it up. But in the seat is not a scaly, scrawny, enemy Solcrue. It is a muscular gray man, metal, with blue eyes like fire. He looks up at me as I fall.

The rumors suddenly aren’t rumors.

That was a Titan!

Titans are here!

And with everything going on, I’m so excited that I forget about my impending doom and wonder if my father knows where he sent me. He must know!

A fire starts in my cockpit, in the dash, not far from Pup.

Now I’m definitely screwed!

Smoke fills the cabin. I can't see how I'm going to land in one piece with scanners down and black clouds in my vision. I'm flying blind. I tap the auto-landing sequence, but it doesn't engage.

“Sorry, VAL. You’re on your own.”

I break the plastic dog off of the dash and reef hard on the manual ejection handle. My seat punches skyward. The windows break free. But I’m upside down. My chute is quickly snagged and shredded by my tumbling ship. It catches me and flings me around. Pup disappears in the chaos.

No!

My last gift from my older brother is gone.

I tear myself from my harness, kick away from the seat, and tumble toward the planet's surface. Air whips around me, ripples my suit, and pushes my arms and legs around. It's chaos, and yet I laugh like a crazy person because I feel air again.

I try my reserve chute, the one built into my suit, but it refuses to open. When it finally does, my relief is momentary.

Enemy fire turns it to ash.

I fall faster again, my stomach in my throat.

Damn it!

It’s going to be one deadly landing.

At least it will be fast.

And I’ll have made it back to solid ground.

A bit morbid, but… A sad laugh escapes me.

The golden dunes shimmer below. It’s soft and smooth from up here, but I doubt it will be forgiving. As my end nears, I think of Haakon dying in a blaze as he took out a Solcrue cruiser filled with dignitaries that had just ordered the annihilation of an entire fleet of innocent human workers.

I always wanted to die like him…with purpose.

My father took that from me.

Now, I die for nothing.

A heavy gold light crashes into me. A whooshing drone fills my ears, as my body takes a hit. Heat scorches my skin.

“Gah!” I push away from the pangs.

I've been judged, and Hell awaits.

“I’m sorry!” a rumbling voice says.

I blink and look up into gold eyes filled with regret. Lights wink out over shoulders and flesh the color of the sun. We descend. He lands and leans forward, setting me on the ground.

A Titan caught me? I’m too in shock to get my tongue to work.

When he straightens, I get a full-body view of the Titan: gold skin, engines, and hoverpads all over his toned body, and a net of black armor hugging him like a spider's web.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he adds.

I look down at the burned rings in my space suit and the way they smoke. My skin stings, and my heart pounds so fast I can't feel much of anything else—not the sand, the breeze, or whatever has caused the trickle of blood down my forehead.

I am tired of feeling out of control and running contingency operations. It seems like we're never going to win. I left one battle and found myself in another. Part of me wishes I had died just so I could be done with this.

But I'm glad I didn't as I study the muscled CyberTitan that's saved me. His name badge gleams in honey-yellow hues when he scans the forest behind me.

Thruster, huh?

Sounds dirty, but makes sense.

Movement behind him draws my attention to an approaching soldier with a gun pointed at us. It doesn’t look like Solcrue, but CSP. Cyborg Security Patrol became Cyborg Submission Patrol, during the war. They betrayed us, hurt Titans.

Mom hated them.

There's no time to think if I want my savior to live. I clamber up, take the gun from the Titan's belt, and fire three shots. The kickback is oddly less than in space. Gravity is strong and pulls me to the ground as the soldier falls.

"Hey," the Titan calls to me. He shakes my shoulders. But I am suddenly exhausted. The world of yellows and blues. Bright light blends into a mass I'm not used to and makes me squeeze my eyes shut.

Something presses against my neck. It’s cold at first, then heats me from the inside. His hand is warm against my cheek. “Stay with me.”

My heart races and my skin tingles beneath his touch. He is so very hot—a creature of metal made to look unbelievably human. Even the subtle way his eyes squint like he's concerned makes me certain he is not the machine the media labeled his kind to be. He flew to me and rescued me like a superhero in an old-fashioned story.

He looks like an angel. Now, he’s healing me, leaving me with one question.

“Are you a god?”