“Did you leave the headlights on?” she snapped.

Thorne harrumphed and crouched against the ship. Footsteps grew louder.

“Or it could be the auto-control system,” Cinder mused, racking her brain. She’d never worked on anything larger than a podship before, but how different could they be? “Do you have the override key?”

He blinked at her. “Yeah, let me just pull it out of my prison-issued pocket and we’ll be on our way.”

Cinder glared, but was silent as an officer passed two aisles away.

“Stay here,” she whispered. “Keep trying to get in and take off as fast as possible.”

“Where are you going?”

Without answering, she slinked around the side of the ship, a blueprint already streaming to her retina display. She found the access hatch and pried it open as quietly as she could, before crawling up into the ship undercarriage, contorting her body to avoid the wires and cables that crammed the space. She pulled the hatch shut behind her with a dull click, and found herself encased in darkness. The second interior door was more difficult to break into, but between the flashlight and her screwdriver she was soon wriggling out of the insulating layer and into the engine room.

Her flashlight beam zipped across the massive engine. She found the computer motherboard on the blue lines overlaying her vision and squirmed toward it. Pulling the universal connector cable from her hand, she snapped it into the main computer terminal.

Her flashlight dimmed as her own power was diverted. Pale green text scrawled across her eyesight.

DIAGNOSING COMPUTER SYSTEM, MODEL 135V8.2

5% … 12% … 16% …

Ten

Thorne jumped at a clang overhead.

A man’s voice followed—“Hear that?”

Thorne crouched down between the ship’s landing feet and flattened himself against a metal beam. “Captain is king,” he whispered. “Captain is king, captain is ki—”

A subtle hum pulsed over his head. Pale running lights flickered on near the ship’s nose.

“Captain is—?”

Gears started to rattle before he could finish. The hatch opened, the ramp lowering onto the concrete. Heart leaping, Thorne dodged out beneath it, just in time to avoid being squashed.

“Over there!”

A flashlight beam fell over Thorne as he swung himself up onto the descending ramp. “Rampion, close hatch!”

The ship didn’t respond.

A gun fired. The bullet pinged off the ship’s overhead light. Thorne ducked behind one of the plastic crates that filled the cargo bay. “Rampion, close hatch!”

“I’m working on it!”

He froze, glancing up at the pipes and tubes that lined the ship’s ceiling. “Rampion?”

The following silence was punctuated by the clang of the ramp on the outside concrete, the thumping of booted feet, then the ramp creaked again and started to rise back up. A shower of bullets lodged into the plastic storage crates, pinging off the metal walls. Thorne covered his head and waited until the ramp was closed enough to block the bullets’ path before shoving himself away from the crate and running toward the cockpit.

The ship vibrated as the ramp slammed shut. A volley of bullets pinged against the hull.

Thorne scrambled toward the emergency lights that framed the cockpit, shoving aside unopened crates. His knee smacked something hard and he let out a string of curses as he collapsed into the pilot seat. The windows were dirty and all he could see in the dark warehouse were the faint lights of Alak’s office and the flashlight beams darting around the Rampion, searching for another way in.

“Rampion, ready for liftoff!”

The dash lit up with controls and screens—only the most important ones.

The same sterile feminine voice came over the ship’s speakers. “Thorne, I can’t set the automatic lift. You’re going to have to take off manually.”

He gaped at the controls. “Why is my ship talking back to me?”

“It’s me, you idiot!”

He cocked his ear toward the speaker. “Cinder?”

“Listen, the auto-control system has a bug. The power cell is on the fritz too. I think it can make it, but you’re going to have to take off without computer assistance.”

The words, too dry in the computer’s tone, were punctuated by another round of bullets against the ship’s closed hatch.

Thorne gulped. “Without computer assistance? Are you sure?”

A short silence was followed by the voice again, and Thorne thought he could detect Cinder’s screeching despite its monotone. “You do know how to fly, right?”

“Uh.” Thorne scanned the controls before him. “Yes?”

He squared his shoulders and reached for the controller that was attached to the ceiling. A moment later, a slash of sunlight cut across the warehouse as the roof opened down the middle.

Something pounded against the ship’s side.

“Yeah, yeah, I hear you.” Thorne jabbed the ignition.

The lights across the dash dimmed as the engine thrummed to life.

“Here we go.”

Another crash echoed from outside the hatch. He jogged a few switches, engaging hover mode, and eased the ship off the ground. She rose up smoothly, the magnets beneath the city pushing the ship easily as a dandelion seed, and Thorne exhaled a long breath.

Then the ship warbled and began to tilt.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, don’t do that!” Thorne’s pulse raced as he leveled the ship.

“The power cell is going to die. You have to engage the backup thrusters.”

“Engage the backup wha—oh, never mind, I found them.”

The engine flared again. With the sudden jolt of power, the ship lurched to the opposite side and Thorne heard a crunch as she rammed into the next ship. The Rampion shuddered and started to slip back toward the ground. Another rainfall of bullets beat against the starboard side. A drop of sweat slid down Thorne’s back.

“What are you doing up there?”

“Stop distracting me!” he yelled, gripping the controls and righting the ship. Overcompensated. The ship tilted too far to the right.

“We’re going to die.”

“This isn’t as easy as it looks!” Thorne leveled her out again. “I usually have an automated stabilizer to take care of this!”

To his surprise, no sarcastic comment was spat back at him.

A moment later, another panel lit up. MAGNETIC CONDUCTORS STABILIZING. POWER OUTPUT: 37/63 … 38/62 … 42/58 …

The ship settled calmly beneath him, once again trembling in midair. “Right! Like that!”

Thorne’s knuckles whitened on the controls as he arched the ship’s nose up toward the open roof. The engine’s purr became a roar as the ship soared upward. He heard the last ricochet of bullets and then they fell away as the ship broke free of the warehouse and was flooded with the light from the yellow sun.

“Come on, darling,” he murmured, squeezing his eyes shut as, without resistance, without wavering, the ship left the protective magnetic field of the city behind, drew on the full power of her thrusters, and speared through the wispy clouds that lingered in the morning sky. The towering skyscrapers of downtown New Beijing dropped away and then it was only him and the sky and the endless landscape of space.

Thorne’s fingers stayed clamped like iron shackles around the controls until the ship had erupted from Earth’s atmosphere. Light-headed, he adjusted the thruster output as the ship slipped into natural orbit before prying his hands away from the controls.

He slumped, shaking, back in the chair. It took him a long time to speak, waiting for his heartbeat to slow to a manageable pace. “Good work, cyborg girl,” he said. “If you were hoping for a permanent position on my crew, you’re hired.”

The speakers were silent.

“I don’t mean a lowly position, either. First mate is available. Well, I mean, pretty much every position is available. Mechanic … cook … a pilot would be nice so I don’t have to go through that again.” He waited. “Cinder? Are you there?”