Hotbloods 6: Allies

Ronad looked over my shoulder at the holograph. “Perhaps she’s out of range. Can you widen the map at all?”

I searched all across the compass for anything that might be a button, pressing every indentation and groove I came across, but nothing widened the range of what we could see. There was one indentation that turned the holograph off and on, and another that moved the dial of canisters around, but nothing made the map bigger. If there was a way to do it, it was beyond the realm of my human skills, especially without an instruction manual.

“May I?” Ronad asked.

I handed the compass to him, hopeful that he could see something I couldn’t. He lifted it and turned it over in his palms. The holograph danced off the floor and the walls with every curious inspection he made, but nothing he did made any difference. The celestial map continued to bear only two green dots, and a few faint silver dots that revealed the closest planets and stars. I bit my tongue as he handed it to Angie to take a look, knowing she had as much right to examine it as anyone.

You’re just stressed, Riley. It’s the adrenaline from the escape, that’s all it is. Calm down, I told myself.

“This is just stupid! We already know there are two humans on the ship. If we can’t expand the map, what’s the point of it?” Angie yelled. “All we’ve done is draw more attention to ourselves, and we’re no closer to finding Lauren! This is hopeless!” Tears glittering in her eyes, she threw the compass across the room. It hit the wall with a crack, and the celestial holograph disappeared with a wobbly blink.

“Angie!” I yelped, rushing over to retrieve the compass. When I pressed the indentation that seemed to be the on/off switch, the holograph reappeared. A relieved sigh left my throat. I turned back to my friend with a cold stare. “What did you do that for? Just because we can’t figure something out doesn’t mean it’s a hopeless case!”

“Face it, Riley—you stole a useless piece of junk, and now there are probably authorities on our tail, wanting to throw us all in prison!” she fired back.

I narrowed my eyes at her. “It isn’t useless. We just need more time with it.”

Ronad stepped between us, physically putting himself in the line of fire. “My guess is the compass tracks people a reasonable distance, but it can’t have an unlimited range. No device is powerful enough for that, unless you have a fixed point or a specific beacon to search for.”

“We have a specific beacon: Lauren!” Angie retorted.

“Yes, but in terms of the device, you’re looking for a vague human needle in a haystack of our universe’s infinite vastness.”

“So, you agree with me, then. The compass is useless!”

I shook my head vigorously. “It isn’t useless! If Lauren were here, she’d try to—”

“Well, Lauren isn’t here, is she? She’s lost out there, on her own, and now we might never find her because you…” She trailed off, but I knew what she was going to say. She was going to say I’d gotten them into more trouble by stealing the compass. Even though I was beginning to have my own doubts, the unspoken echo of it in my head made my heart clench.

“Because I what, Angie?” I pressed sadly.

She dipped her head, refusing to look at me. “Because we lost her,” she said, after a pause. “There’s nothing we can do about it now that the trail has gone cold. We just have to keep searching and hope something comes up soon.”

The lie was written across her face as she met my gaze again. She’d wanted to blame me; I could see it in her eyes. Our stare broke as we heard shouting from the cockpit. It sounded urgent.

“Bash?” Angie called out. We raced toward the cockpit.

“A Fed ship is trailing us!” he yelled as we entered. “It just put on its warning lights.” A string of expletives followed, though I didn’t recognize all of them.

“What does that mean?” I asked, moving over to the copilot’s chair to lean over Navan’s shoulder. The monitor on the control panel was going haywire, red lights flashing everywhere.

“It means we’re going to get pulled over!” Bashrik barked, flashing me a perplexed look. “What did you have to go and steal something for? We needed credits, not wishful freaking thinking!”

“They might fly past. Maybe they won’t bother us,” I replied defensively, feeling a little ganged up on after the awkward encounter I’d just had with Angie.

Mort snorted from his seat on the far side of the room. “Yeah, and maybe I’ll dress in drag and give you all a warbling rendition of ‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody,’ à la Angie.”

“Wow, so you think they’re going to fly past us, too?” she shot back, grinning. The pair of them had become alarmingly good friends since leaving Vysanthe.

He had just started singing the first lines of the song when the loudspeakers crackled to life. A message was coming through, sidelining the main comms system. It appeared they didn’t need us to reply—they only needed us to listen and obey.

“Please pull into the nearest port-planet, where your vessel will be boarded, and you will be scanned. I am picking up six lifeforms, so please do not try to run or hide,” a clipped voice announced. “Your ship has been registered as stolen from the planet of Vysanthe, and you are to be apprehended under Section 2341-C of the Universal Federal Code of Peacekeeping Law.”

“Couldn’t they think of something snappier?” Mort murmured, laughing to himself. I supposed he thought he could pretend to be someone else and run away while the rest of us suffered the consequences of what I’d done.

“Shut up!” Bashrik hissed, silencing the smug shifter.

Navan glanced at Ronad. “I thought you took out all the cameras and trackers.”

He shrugged anxiously. “I thought I did, too!”

“Maybe they’ve put out alerts at every port-planet, to check for Vysanthean ships and ship-codes,” Navan reasoned. “With Brisha more or less taken out of the game, and the Titans having destroyed a lot of the North, I’m guessing her military must be keeping tabs on deserters. They’ll want to retain every ship they can. Otherwise, they’ll have nothing left to retaliate with.” We’d heard snippets about the state of the coldblood planet during our search for Lauren and the notebook, piecing together whatever we could from the news that came in. It seemed Gianne still held the upper hand after the Titan onslaught, though Brisha was hanging on, determined to fight to the bitter end.

“Can we outrun them?” I asked doubtfully.

Mort whistled. “You’re just full of terrible ideas today, aren’t you, sweet cheeks?”

I glared at him. “I don’t see you offering up any suggestions.”

“You also don’t see me stealing from port-planet pawnshops.”

“Very clever,” I muttered.

“’Tis my specialty.” He held out his hand to Angie for a grisly high-five. She reluctantly conceded, and the floppy skin of his palm collided wetly with hers, drawing a disgusted look from Bashrik, who wasn’t dealing with this new friendship particularly well.

“We’re running low on fuel. There’s nowhere we could hide, even if we could outrun them for a while,” Navan said, reaching out to take my hand. It was all the comfort I needed.

“How about a shootout? I’m pretty handy with the big guns,” Ronad offered, before flashing a warning look at Mort, who raised his hands in innocence.

Navan shook his head. “Our guns are still on the blink. If we use them, we risk frying the whole system and ending up dead in the water.”

“If we do nothing, we’re already dead in the water,” I countered.

“Even if we could use the guns, the Fed firepower is way stronger than what we have on board. They’d decimate us in minutes,” he replied, giving my hand an apologetic squeeze. “There’s nothing we can do but follow their orders.”

“Do we go back to Pulsyde?” Ronad wondered.

“No, it’s easier if we press on to Wander. It’s not far, and it might give us a chance to think about what our next move is,” Navan replied. “Bashrik, can you set a course for Wander?”