Starflight (Starflight, #1)(62)

“How do I shake him?” she asked. A glance at the nav screen showed the shuttle still trailing her. “I’m going as fast as I can.”

Doran placed a steadying hand on her shoulder. “You can do this; I promise. I’ll talk you through it.”

She drew a deep breath and blew it out slowly.

“On my mark,” he said, “pull up as hard as you can and come full circle. Don’t look out the window or you’ll get disoriented. Watch the screen, okay?”

Solara nodded.

A few moments later, he shouted, “Now!”

With both hands, she gripped the wheel and tugged it all the way back, never taking her eyes off the nav screen until she’d completed a full rotation and the shuttle was upright again. As soon as she leveled off, she discovered the pirate craft in front of her.

“Now be ready,” Doran said. “Because he’s either going to do the same thing or circle around horizontally. When he does, I want you to use the nose of the shuttle to clip his outside wing—not hard, just a love tap.”

“A love tap?”

He nodded. “Any harder than that, and we’ll go down with him.”

Gritting her teeth, Solara stared at the craft in front of her for the slightest change in his trajectory—anything to betray his next move. When he veered right, she was ready. Her hands took charge as if operating independently of her brain. She steered sharply to the right and dipped the shuttle just enough to bump his wing, then pulled a hard left as his craft barreled out of control.

When she circled back around, the pirate shuttle was upside down in the sand.

Doran gave a loud whoop and ruffled her braids. “You’re a natural!”

She laughed while her fingers trembled from the adrenaline surge. Tears flooded her vision, but they were the happy kind. Her body simply needed a release. Doran seemed to understand. Instead of telling her to calm down, he rubbed her neck. Then he finally said, “Thanks for saving my pretty hide, Solara,” and her tears turned to laughter.

After making sure no one else had followed them, she descended into the great smoky valley and found her secret hiding place.

“Let me guess,” he said. “Now we wait for the coast to clear?”

Solara cut the thrusters and rubbed her palms together. She was still shaking. “We should disconnect the battery while we’re here. Even with the engine turned off, we’ll emit a low-enough electrical pulse—”

“To trip a scanner,” he finished, nodding with an appreciative grin. “I’m loving your criminal mind right now.”

She rolled her eyes while levering open the hatch. “Careful, you’re speaking Jackass again.”

“It was a compliment.” Doran unlatched the hood and held it open while she unplugged the battery and fuel cables. “I wish I had your instincts. They’re a lot more useful out here than the business classes my dad made me take.”

“I wish I had your calm under pressure,” she told him, wiping grease on her pants. “A solution’s no good if it comes five minutes too late.” As soon as she spoke the words, she remembered how she’d once called Doran helpless, and she realized with a stitch of guilt how wrong she’d been about him. He had plenty of skills, just different from hers. That was what made them such an effective team. “But speaking of instincts,” she said, returning to the problem at hand, “what’re we going to do about Kane? I don’t have any proof that he turned you in, just a gut feeling. That won’t convince the crew.”

“It’ll be our word against his,” Doran agreed. “We have to dig up some dirt on him. Until then, we can’t let him know anything’s wrong, or he might destroy the evidence.”

“I’ll check the ship’s outgoing transmissions as soon as we get back. If he deleted a record, I’ll be able to tell by resetting the log.”

Doran blew out a breath, shaking his head in a way that said he didn’t want to talk about Kane anymore. “I guess you’re stuck with me for a while longer.”

“All the way to the fringe,” she said, not bothering to hide her smile. “Just my luck.”

She was grateful for the extra time with him. The journey to the fringe was four rings out from their current position inside the tourist circle, so that meant Solara would have several more weeks in Doran’s company. Thinking about it sent a gradual warmth through her limbs until the shaking stopped.

The sensation lasted until the sun went down.

It was amazing how quickly the oppressive desert heat vanished, leached from the cave’s dark stone walls as the first shadows crept in. The temperature plummeted, and she began shivering again. At least she had a jacket. Doran had left his on the ruined ship, along with a sack of fuel chips and everything he owned.

She told him to search the shuttle for an emergency pack while she checked for activity outside. Taking a seat at the mouth of the cave, she peered at the night sky, expecting to see the orange glow of thrusters. Nothing glowed in the heavens except for two moons and a ribbon of stars twisted into a nebula. But though the activity seemed to have died, the criminal instincts Doran loved so much warned her to stay put for a while longer.

“I found something.” Doran’s voice echoed from the rear of the crevasse, where the absence of starlight made it impossible to see his discovery.