Chapter 7

After kicking loose the Ariane,they rode in silence down the gravitational slope: thermosphere, mesosphere, stratosphere. He had double-checked that the Lifters were quiet and safely strapped into acceleration hammocks before he’d aimed the Mod18 down the path of Karina’s flight plan. They slid within fifty klicks of the Aussie dome: the shining silver that shrouded any view of the nations within and meant instant death to any who approached.

Brody had never told that story of his own Lift to anyone. Only his aunt and the man who’d rescued them with his cargo vessel, flying well into range of the I-Beam to pull them out, knew the whole awful truth.

The Mod18 skipped off the upper atmosphere at barely fifty kilometers above ground. At this low of an altitude—due to the curve of the horizon—they were flying below the I-Beam Zone. Barely.

The mass of the northern Himalayas lay spread beneath them. He’d never thought he would see them in his lifetime, especially not so close. The jagged peaks, holding some of the world’s last few glaciers, glittered like corridor signs guiding their way.

The Mod18 was never designed for an Earth reentry and definitely not a landing. He kept the spacecraft in a slow roll so that no one area took the brunt of the massive overheating. Alarms were triggering every few seconds. It took both of them working as fast as they could to deal with them.

Overheated nose plate, he rolled slower across the back to give it a few more seconds of cooling.

Primary computer core shut down, Karina force-fed the flight plan into the backup.

At the bottom of their passage, they were little more than a meteor across the Tibetan night, a herald in a land where no one and nothing survived to interpret their passage.

Forever and nineteen minutes later they clawed back up into Low Earth Orbit over the Hawaiian volcano that had finally made sure there was no more Hawaii.

He checked in with the crew and passengers. They hadn’t lost anyone in the blazing passage.

Karina didn’t speak once on the long flight back up to Luna’s L2 and the British habitat can. Medical and immigration took the passengers from them: shock, limping, tearful thanks.

Soon it was just the two of them and Mod18 at the end of the long, quiet row of Stinger-60s.

“She’s a good old girl. She’s fits in better now,” Karina patted the nose of the Mod18. She had a soft smile that he barely recognized. He turned away because it hurt to see it, knowing it would never be for him.

Brody looked down the row. Five immaculate, well-maintained, stealth-black Stinger-60s. And his reentry-scorched Mod18. The NAS logo was long gone and the last of the white paint showed through the char only in a few well-protected spots.

He nodded in agreement, not sure of what to say next. What to do. Karina the Queen Bitch who had started on the flight with him wasn’t the woman who now stood close beside him. A lot of crews had quit before he’d learned that he had to be the only one to go down through a Lifter’s hatch—there were some things that were too hard to ask others to face.

Yet Karina hadn’t hesitated. But neither had she spoken afterward. She hadn’t been his to lose, but still he wondered if he’d lost her anyway.

“I’ve been thinking,” Karina’s voice was soft and he couldn’t read anything in her dark eyes when he risked looking at her once more.

“I suppose that’s better than running away from me as fast as you can,” which is what he’d been waiting for. He leaned back against his ship because it grounded him in what was important. If she ran, he might just run after her, all the way to the Night Stalkers, and Lifters be damned. He crossed his arms over his chest, the only thing that kept him from reaching out for the impossible.