Starflight (Starflight, #1)(90)
“I’m okay,” he reported. “A little banged up, but nothing major. Kane, when this is over, I’m going to have your baby!”
Still grinning, he waited to hear Solara chime in with a laugh or for Kane to quip that he’d settle for a month of galley detail instead. No one answered.
He tapped his link again, wondering if the impact had shattered it. “Can anyone hear me?” He pushed onto one elbow and scanned the moonlit horizon for the shuttle. “Kane? You all right?”
The link crackled to life, and he detected Renny’s voice. “Copy that, and glad to hear it,” he said. “From the suit trackers, it looks like Kane went down about half a mile north of you. Sit tight while we check it out.”
“Is he okay?” Doran asked.
When he didn’t receive a response, he sat up to peer at the sky for the North Star, then remembered that he wasn’t on Earth. His only hope of finding Kane was to reach a vantage point high enough to spot him at a distance. The act of standing up told Doran he’d twisted an ankle. He limped his way uphill and scanned the terrain in every direction.
No luck. He would have to wait.
Figuring he’d be easier to spot here, he took a seat on the ground and let the adrenaline work its way out of his system. With nothing but the whistling wind to fill his ears, the thoughts he’d banished an hour ago began creeping back in—questions about his parents, his newfound brother, and, most of all, his future. But Doran wasn’t ready to face any of that yet, so he turned his attention to the sky and studied what was left of the orbiting pirate ship.
A great crack divided the rear of the hull from the rest of the ship, but if the emergency systems were operational, there should be survivors within the sealed-off areas. He was thinking about the best way to reach them when a shuttle engine roared nearby. He glanced over his shoulder to flag it down. Solara must have stolen one of the pirate crafts.
The shuttle landed, and he limped down the hill to meet it. As the side hatch opened, an unfamiliar pair of boots swung into view, definitely not Solara’s. They were attached to a man of average height and built like a bull. His chest was so broad that it stretched the silvery fabric of his thermal suit to its limits. Doran stopped in his tracks. The man seemed to be alone, though judging by the array of gadgets hanging from his belt—two curved blades, three pairs of cuffs, and a coil of electrified rope—he didn’t need backup.
Multiple restraints, Doran thought, taking a backward step and feeling along his hip for the pistol that wasn’t there. A bounty hunter, or maybe a slave trader.
But then the man turned his head, and the light from his shuttle glinted off something inside his helmet. Metal studs dotting the skin at his temple—prefrontal cortex blockers.
Doran scrambled up the hill so fast he fell to the ground, where he frantically kicked and clawed his way over the ice to put some distance between them. His hand flew to his throat, but much like the pistol, his cyanide pendant was locked away on the Banshee.
A dozen gruesome scenarios played out inside Doran’s head, all of them ending in his death. Which wouldn’t be an easy one. His fingers trembled so hard it took three tries to press his com-link. “Renny,” he said, voice cracking. “If you can hear me, get Cassia out of here—and do it now. One of the Daeva found us.”
Solara and Gage were on their hands and knees, searching for extra weapons in a hidden storage bin beneath the floor when Renny’s voice came through the cargo hold speaker.
“We’re almost there.”
Solara glanced out the nearest porthole into the blackness, wishing Doran was safe on board. He’d said he was fine, but his com had gone silent since then. “If the shuttle’s not too banged up,” she said, “I can find Doran while you guys tend to Kane. Or maybe the captain can—” She realized her mistake and cut off while a lump rose in her throat. She kept forgetting the captain was gone, and each reminder was an icicle to the heart.
After that, she fell silent and went back to her work of searching the compartment. Gage didn’t try to strike up a conversation. He seemed to know that now wasn’t the time to talk, not with two crew members unaccounted for. And he was right. The words and grief could come later, after they’d safely reunited the family.
Family.
She hadn’t realized it until that moment, but that’s what the people on this ship were to her. At some point during this haphazard journey, she’d fallen in love with a bespectacled kleptomaniac, a star-crossed seducer and his displaced princess, and, most of all, an infuriating blue blood who used to call her Rattail. She’d learned that home was a fluid thing, and whether on a planet, on a satellite, or on a rusted bucket of a ship, this crew was her home.
She refused to lose another one of them.
When the Banshee landed, Cassia was the first person down the ramp, already suited up with the medic bag tucked beneath one arm. Solara fastened her helmet and jogged after her. In the time it took Solara to reach the crash site, Cassia had already climbed onto the shuttle and was peering through the windshield.
One look at the craft told Solara it wasn’t flight-worthy. Its nose had crumpled like an accordion and the passenger-side wing was bent at a ninety-degree angle, indicating that Kane had gone down headfirst when he’d lost control.
There seemed to be no movement inside.
Solara glanced at the moonlit stretch of landscape in the distance. Doran was out there somewhere. A sense of urgency churned in her stomach, but when she looked at the shuttle, she couldn’t make her feet move. If nothing else, she knew Doran was alive. She couldn’t say the same for Kane.