The Girl Who Dared to Think 7: The Girl Who Dared to Fight

When the pod finally came to a jerky stop, I was certain it meant that we had slid right to the edge. It felt like we had used up every bit of space the farming floor had to offer, and that any second, I would feel gravity pull us downward as the pod plummeted to the Wastes below. The certainty was ice under my skin, dread in my heart.

“Liana?” Dylan groaned from behind me, coughing. I heard something metallic shift, and there was a sharp jolt underneath us that jerked me in my seat.

“Don’t move,” I said, my eyes popping wide open. If there was a jolt underneath me, then that meant that we had stopped on the greenery’s roof—and were about to crash right through it, the weight of the pod and the damage it had caused to the glass undoubtedly making the support struts bend and break. The slightest misstep would send us all falling through.

I looked out the window and saw that we were lying on our left side. A quick glance down showed me a glimpse of darkness framed by shattered bits of brown glass, confirming my theory.

“We have to get out of here without jostling the pod too much,” I said softly, slowly shifting my position in the seat and harness to reach up to the door. “We broke the glass over the greenery.”

Dylan cursed, but I ignored it as I carefully stretched my weight forward, bracing it all on my hip and keeping the lower half of my body as still as possible. My fingertips brushed the handle of the door, and I carefully wrapped my hand around it, pulled down, and then slowly started pushing it back, trying to keep as still as possible.

It was halfway open when it hit something. I froze, but the hit was enough to jostle the pod slightly. There was a groaning sound beneath us, and I held my breath and closed my eyes, praying to whatever god was listening that the panes and supports holding us didn’t snap.

For several heartbeats, the entire pod quivered—and my stomach clenched, the image of us dropping five stories to the greenery below carving its way across my mind. But when no drop came, my eyes snapped open, and I let out my breath.

“Okay, Dylan,” I said shakily, craning my neck to look at the girl. “You go first. Use your lashes to pull yourself to the hole, and then crawl out carefully. Try really hard not to shake the pod.” I wanted Dylan to go first because of the balance in the pod. If I went first, it could tip too far back toward Rose and Dylan, and likely send them crashing to the floor below. We needed less weight in the back before I could move.

But Dylan, being Dylan, had to choose right then and there to pick a fight about the order.

She pressed her lips together, a flash sparking in her blue eyes. “You should go first,” she said, and I rolled my eyes. I did not need her doing this hero schtick right now; my reason for wanting her to go first wasn’t based on anything other than our mutual survival. “You know the most about what’s going on. You have to be the one to carry on, get to the Citadel, and—”

I groaned as theatrically as I dared and gave her a bored look. “Rose is four hundred and fifty pounds of awesome, and you’re a hundred and eighty, unless I miss my guess.”

Her eyes narrowed to slits. “One seventy.”

“Fine, whatever,” I snapped, not really caring if she weighed a hundred and seventy tons at this moment. She was being bullish and missing the point. “If I move before you’re out, the entire pod is going to shift. I can’t get Rose to go first, because when she makes for the door, the glass below us will probably buckle and break. So that leaves you, sweetheart, like it or not. Think of it as going up to make sure we’re not wandering into a trap.”

Dylan blinked at me, a surprised smile forming on her face. “Sweetheart?” she asked, and it was my turn to blink, suddenly confused. I hadn’t intended to call her sweetheart, or anything, really. In my head, I had intended to say, “So that leaves you, like it or not.” Bewildered, I looked at her, and then felt a high-pitched giggle in the back of my mind.

A flash of anger washed over me.

“Tony!” I snarled, looking away from her. “Is this really the time for practical jokes?”

I’m sorry, he replied, but his voice was filled with mirth, telling me he wasn’t actually contrite. You were just all intense and gruff, and I couldn’t help it!

I groaned again, and to my surprise, I heard Dylan start to chuckle. “Even without the ‘sweetheart,’ you still have a point,” she announced. I looked down to find her unhooking her harness. Rose was carefully holding an arm across the woman to keep her from falling farther to the side when the harness came off.

Dylan gingerly planted a foot on Rose’s leg, shrugged her shoulders from the straps, and then pulled a lash end out and started spinning it up in her hand. She flicked her wrist, and a second later I heard the tink of it hitting. A second one followed, and Dylan expelled a deep breath, and then slowly began reeling herself up, carefully navigating around the pilot’s chair as she did so.

I tried not to hold my breath as she painstakingly climbed out of the hole, doing her best not to rattle or shift the pod, but at several points, the area beneath us creaked and groaned as she moved, making me clutch at my harness in terror.

As soon as her legs were clear, there was another groan, followed by a series of thumps and a small squeak. Then silence, telling me she had gotten off the pod.

“I’m clear,” she called a second later, confirming my suspicions.

“Awesome,” I called, feeling slightly breathless and lightheaded from the experience. I pushed it aside and started shrugging out of my harness, bracing my weight completely on one hip. “Do you think you’re going to be able to make it?” I casually asked Rose while I worked.

Her purple eyes stared at me for a second, and then she nodded slowly. “I believe so, but as soon as I move, this thing will break through. I will have to be fast, and there is a chance I might miss. My safety is irrelevant, however. You must go first.”

I gave her a sheepish smile as I carefully pulled a lash end from my sleeve. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Rose, but I was planning to. You’re in an armored death machine; if anyone can survive the fall, it’s you.”

She cocked her head at me, and then nodded. “A fair point, I guess,” she replied uncertainly. “I still would much prefer not to fall.”

“Me too,” I said, spinning the line and looking away to throw it. “So let’s both of us promise, here and now, not to. Besides, I’m certain that you can make it.”

The end hit just to the left of the door, and I quickly threw the second one, aiming for the door itself, on the opposite side of the gap. It connected, and I used the hand controls to retract the small bit of excess line I had created for the throw, and then began giving my weight over to it, letting it pull me up.

The pod shifted slightly, rolling some toward Rose’s side, but I didn’t stop, carefully pulling my legs out from under the dashboard and lightly stepping on the arm of the seat. The pod stopped moving a second later with a slight groan, but I was already reaching for the edge of the door, grabbing it, pulling myself up, and dragging myself out. There was another long groan beneath me, making my heart beat furiously, and I sped up my actions, knowing that if the pod started to fall, I needed to be clear of the door so Rose could escape. Getting my legs under me was the trickiest part, as the entire pod was beginning to shake, but as soon as they were under me, I carefully stepped over the sheared-off edge of the pod’s hull, which was smoking slightly, and leapt toward the crimson figure standing a few feet away.

Dylan caught me before I could stumble, and I turned around, terrified that I had dislodged the entire pod in my haste to get off of it.

It was moving, the entire thing wobbling back and forth. There was a tinkle as more glass shattered, and Dylan and I danced back a few steps as cracks began to snake toward us.