CHAPTER 39

The only thing more boring than waiting for action behind the controls of a ship was waiting for action and not being behind the controls of a ship.

Chin perched upon hand, Eli gave a glum sigh and leaned his elbows on the Cavalier’s console, staring out the cockpit canopy at the swirling morass of sand and dirt.

“Hey,” said Prentiss, glaring at him. “Off the controls.”

Man, she’s a lot of fun. Eli put his hands up and leaned back in the co-pilot chair. Andres might not be a one-man party, but he preferred the big man’s stoic nature to his compatriot’s needling.

I never thought I’d miss being down in the fray, getting shot at. But being up here, while the rest of the team was in the midst of an operation, was making him anxious. He pressed his palms against his thighs. This really sucks.

And all the while, the memory of the gun that Tapper had stashed beneath the console ate away at him, like a bird pecking at seed. Was it still there? Had Xi’s people found it and removed it? It wasn’t as if they were going to advertise that fact to him, and checking too soon risked blowing any advantage he had.

Not that he was even sure about using it. He hadn’t fired a weapon since basic training; there wasn’t a lot of call for sidearm usage amongst starfighter pilots. The idea of pointing a weapon at someone still made his hands twitch, transporting him to the debacle that had been the Battle of Sabaea – his last engagement as an Illyrican fighter pilot, and the only time he’d ever taken a life. Just the thought sent his stomach into free fall.

You don’t have to use it. They just have to think you will. The thought rang hollow in his own head.

Anyway, this wasn’t the moment. Not yet.

Andres’s bulk filled the cockpit hatch. “Anything?” he rumbled.

Prentiss answered a short shake of her head. “Still out of contact. The interference is blocking most communications. We’ll have to trust they’re still on the timetable.” She pushed back from the controls, stretching her arms over her head. “I gotta hit the head. Keep an eye on… things?” Her eyes on Eli left no room for interpretation about what she meant.

“Sure,” said Andres, as she disappeared into the corridor and he took her place.

The seat creaked a little under his bulk, looking like a doll’s chair beneath him. At least he didn’t spend all his time giving Eli dirty looks; the man seemed strangely at home in his stillness. Despite everything – and maybe it was the Stockholm Syndrome talking – Eli had found himself kind of liking the big, quiet man. He seemed… transparent, for lack of a better word. What you saw was what you got.

“I have to ask,” Eli said suddenly, leaning back as far as the co-pilot chair would allow. “How’d you end up working for Xi anyway?”

Andres didn’t answer immediately, his eyes still on the sandstorm outside. For a few moments, Eli figured he might just say nothing at all, but finally a few words escaped, as though pried loose with a crowbar. “Needed a job.”

“Well, sure, I mean, we all have to eat,” Eli pressed him. “But why her?”

He shrugged. “She was hiring.”

“I see you’re really the introspective sort.”

For the first time, Andres’s eyes – blue flecked with gray – turned towards Eli, studying him as though he were an unfamiliar insect species. “It was that or prison.”

Now we’re getting somewhere. Eli opened his mouth, a barrage of questions ready to rain down on the man, when a voice crackled in his forgotten earbud, so loud and screeching that he visibly winced.

“…hope you’re copying… pickup in about… –fteen minutes… leave … channel open… hope you can make it… lot of trouble.”

Andres eyed him, only the faintest hint of suspicion in his eyes. “What’s wrong with you?”

Eli pressed a hand to his cheek. “Uhhh, bit my tongue.” But his mind was already off and racing: Taylor’s message was heavily broken up, but she’d found a way to get through, and between the fact that she’d chosen this moment and that ominous bit about trouble, things looked like they were hitting the proverbial fan.

His pulse ramped up suddenly, and he felt the old fighter pilot awareness kick in as his vision widened, looking for threats. Prentiss was still out of the room, leaving only Andres to watch him. Not exactly a fair fight, but if Tapper’s gun was still there, it would lend him an edge.

If there was a time to act, it was now. But he was only going to get one shot at this. Maybe literally.

Eli rolled his neck, as if working out a kink, and hoped that Andres wasn’t picking up his quicker breathing or the sweat beading on his forehead. Maybe I should profess my love for him. That would explain it and probably throw him off for a second.

The bigger problem was that Tapper had put the gun near the pilot’s seat, figuring that it would be in reach if Eli had needed it, but they hadn’t counted on someone the size of a small horse being in the way. Which meant Eli either had to get him to move, or – much less plausibly – go through him. And something told him that Andres wasn’t going to fall for the old “look over there” trick.

OK, Brody. Think. You may not be a combat badass like Kovalic, but you’re still in a cockpit. There was an array of controls that could cause all sorts of distractions, but most of them would take too long. He needed something quick, simple, and decisive…

Eli had, in the past, conjectured that being a good pilot came down to there being a subsystem in one’s brain that directly connected impulse to reflex, bypassing any conscious thought. So he was as surprised as Andres when he suddenly grabbed the co-pilot yoke, slamming it forward and putting the ship into a dive.

For the first time in their brief acquaintance, Andres’s stoic demeanor cracked. His eyes widened as the acceleration pressed him backwards, the compensators taking a moment to react to the sudden change. He struggled forward against the force, making a grab for the pilot’s yoke.

That was all the opportunity Eli needed; he’d braced himself for the maneuver and, as Andres reached for the controls, he darted towards the pilot’s seat, hand scrambling underneath until it closed on the weight of the object secured there.

The big man managed to level the ship out, but by the time he did, Eli was already back in the co-pilot’s seat, a safe distance out of the big man’s reach, pistol pointed directly at him. Despite the sweat from Eli’s palms, he kept the weapon steady.

Andres spared a glance in the direction, looking if anything less concerned about this change in events than Eli’s madcap maneuver of a moment ago. He gave a noncommittal grunt that, in another circumstance, Eli might have described as impressed.

“Sorry,” said Eli. “I’d say it’s not personal, but, well, it kind of is? Your boss did blackmail me and all of my friends into committing a crime for her. Wait, why am I explaining this to you?”

“What the fuck is going on?” echoed a voice from down the corridor.

Shit, Prentiss. Part of Eli had hoped that the sudden dive might have taken the woman unaware, maybe even knocked her out, but that was apparently asking too much of the universe. He could see the calculation in Andres’s eyes: in a moment, Eli was going to have to choose who to shoot first, and whatever he did – or didn’t do – was going to be telling.

But there’s another option.

Keeping the gun trained on Andres, he reached over and slapped the cockpit hatch control. There was just enough time to see Prentiss rounding the corner, her anger transmuting into shock, as the door slid closed between them. Eli hit the lock button and keyed in his security override, careful to keep one eye on Andres. An alert flashed on screen, indicating that the door was sealed.

For what felt like the first time in the minutes since he’d gotten Taylor’s message, he let out a breath and felt himself relax.

“You’re not going to shoot me,” said Andres. His eyes had narrowed in thought.

So much for relaxing. “Yeah, you think?”

“You could have, right then. Shot me. Shot Prentiss. But you didn’t.” He nodded at the console, where the door lock indicator still showed. “Took the coward’s way out.”

Eli flushed at the word, but tamped down the flare of anger. “You’re probably right,” he said, forcing his voice into a casual tone. “But this?” He lifted the weapon. “It doesn’t make you brave.”

“You haven’t thought this through,” said Andres, shifting in the chair and giving the impression of a coiled snake about to strike.

Eli grinned. “Yeah, I don’t think we’ve really met.” And with that, he swung back to the controls and hit the Cav’s throttle.

The ship jumped forward and Andres hesitated. That was all the opportunity Eli needed; he tossed the gun to a surprised Andres and grabbed the yoke with both hands, pointing the ship’s nose directly into the sandstorm.

“What the hell are you doing?” Andres fumbled with the gun, then managed to level it at Eli. But his eyes kept shifting to one side to look out the canopy at the encroaching mass of sand and dirt.

Eli felt the yoke start to buck in his hands as they reached the outer edge of the whirlwind, and the ship danced from side to side. He spared a glance at Andres, then slowly took his hands off the controls, which started jerking around of their own accord, and folded his arms over his chest. “Go ahead, shoot me. But I hope you can fly this thing on your own.”

The big man’s eyes were bouncing back and forth like ping pong balls. “Prentiss,” he grunted.

“That hatch is sealed with my personal security code. Maybe you could override it, but you don’t really have that kind of time.”

The ship sheared sideways suddenly, throwing them both off balance. Andres windmilled his arms, trying to stay in his seat. Eli barely managed to hold on.

Andres looked at him, then out the canopy at the brown mass and, with a muted growl, slapped the gun down on the console, where its magnetic holster stuck with a snap. “Fly the damn ship.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” said Eli. “I’ll just be needing that chair, if you don’t mind.”

“Can’t you do it from there?”

“Do you really want to argue right now?”

The ship yawed crazily to one side, then the aft dipped and they both bounced up and down. There was a thump from out in the hallway with a muted curse that sounded like someone might have just rebounded off a bulkhead.

“Fine,” said Andres, lurching to his feet and grabbing the back of the seat to keep himself steady.

Eli flung himself into the pilot seat, shrugging into the safety harness. “I wouldn’t just stand there,” he advised. “You’re going to want to buckle up.”

With a stifled sound that might have been a moan, the big man stumbled to the co-pilot’s seat and got himself strapped in as Eli seized the yoke and started flipping switches on the control panel. He settled into the seat, readjusting the settings Prentiss had messed with and feeling the familiar long-worn grooves and indentations, the one spring that poked you right in the underside of your left thigh.

“Don’t worry,” said Eli, reaching out to pat the console reassuringly. “I’m back.” He glanced over at Andres, hands white-knuckled on the chest straps, and grinned. “Hey, don’t worry. I grew up here. My Aunt Brigid was a pilot – showed me the ropes when I was barely taller than her knee, and sandstorms were the first thing she taught me to deal with.”

Andres seemed to relax a bit. “Yeah? How?”

“Easy: just avoid them at all costs.” And with that Eli turned the Cavalier’s nose directly into the storm and accelerated.