Spaced Out

Engage

Reesa cuffed Lily by the collar of her barriersuit. The lieutenant-technician hauled her across the docking claustra towards Goshan's fledgling. Though she kicked and flailed, Lily couldn't escape the Verakian woman.

"I'm not getting in that thing!" Lily hollered over the squeal of her boots dragging over the tile.

"You have to."

"Why?"

"Because when you piloted it to the manta," Vortrand interrupted, "you established a neural bond with it." He hopped from his perch on one of the fledgling's flank flaps.

Instead of his usual uniform trousers, gray shirt, and jacket, Vortrand wore a navy colored barriersuit. Starcollide clung to his lean frame. Armor plating beneath the suit protected his torso, back, and the not insubstantial bulge at his crotch. A belt fastened low on his waist carried static and corrosive liquis cartridges. An L-Striker hung at his hip. In the snug garb he looked lithe and strong and Lily couldn't stop staring.

"What are you goggling at, Abadie?"

A scathing comment almost erupted from Lily when Reesa cut in front of her. Yanking the collapsed helmet from the compartment at Lily's back, Reesa flicked her wrist and popped the headgear into shape. She shoved the helmet onto Lily's head, fastened it to the collar of her barriersuit and swatted Lily over to the captain.

Vortrand wedged on his own helmet then snatched another liquis bandolier dangling from the flank flap. He tossed it to Lily who buckled the large ammunition belt around her hips. Blue liquis cartridges ringed her lower half. She frowned at them then at the juvenile manta.

"Can't you use one of the other fledglings?" The question bounced off the insides of her helmet. She didn't think anyone heard her until Reesa's voice invaded her head gear. The talk-rounds' audio feed patched into the helmet.

"Neither of them are sprint capable yet." The Verakian woman waved at the two other juvenile mantas secured in port fissures puckering the claustra's west wall. "Still growing."

"Can't the manta land on Riklim?" Lily asked as Reesa fitted an L-Striker into the holster attached to her ammunition belt. Vortrand answered her.

"Adult mantas cannot travel planetside. Low orbit is the furthest they can safely venture from void space."

"But I don't know how I flew this thing to begin with."

"Which is why we're taking it for a test coast and sprint before we plot any vectors to Riklim. Now, get over here and get on board."

Starcollide gloved fingers tangled in front of Lily. Booted feet angled inward. The last time she boarded that fledgling Goshan died and crumbled in her arms. Flagettes bored into her body. The fledgling hijacked her brain. She had a barriersuit this time, so the flagettes shouldn't hurt her but what if they did? They wanted in. Back under her skin, back in her mind, taking over her thoughts, making them—