The elevator opens, and Nyx steps into the room she’d seen on the security cameras earlier. It looks like a small house, with a kitchen, living area, and a bed in the corner. There aren’t decorations of any kind, and it looks like no one has used it in years.

  Other than the destroyed front door, it looks comfortable.

  To the side, they see techs setting at workstations.

  Someone hands them their bags back, “Just personal possessions. You’re cleared to have these back.”

  Cai thanks the soldier, then heads over to the workstations, “I’m guessing this is where I’ll be connecting to?”

  Nxy checks her bag and takes out her own wrist computer and puts it on her arm where it sits next to her bracelet, which she imagines as Cai and her siblings sitting next to each other.

  They walk to the terminal, and Cai taps his computer to the console, “Cai Halley requesting access to the communication network.”

  The console flashes a few times, “Access granted.”

  Cai holds up his wrist computer, “Donati, scan the area around and inside Sandel Colony for suspicious thermals. Possibly a hidden launch bay.”

  Cai’s wrist computer lights up with both sensor and video feeds.

  Nyx sighs and walks to a window, “Is that bein’ burnin’?”

  She sees several pillars of smoke in the distance. The dome is filling with smoke, and she hears occasional popping in the distance.

  She also notices that the streets are empty.

  “Huh…” Cai says, “I’m tracking the soldiers in the power armor and their paths don’t make sense. Like, why did they just blow up that house?”

  Nyx looks over and sees an aerial view of the two soldiers as they march through the streets, shooting at Sandel’s police and military.

  “They’re definitely causing a distraction.”

  The captain, whom Nyx finds standing next to Cai nods, “That’s what command thinks. They also haven’t seen any of the escaped lab personnel.”

  “I’m guessing you’re already looking on the ground.” He zooms out, “Let’s see... If I had a secret base and needed a way to escape, where would I put it? I’m guessing a hidden ship? Probably underground.” He zooms out more, “No anomalous heat signatures outside. Same with electromagnetic readings…” He scrolls back to the dome, and Nyx sees all of it, including the damaged section sealed off only by flimsy clear tarps.

  Cai zooms in on the damaged section of the dome, “Hey. Say you were running a secret lab under the colony of people that you see as an enemy. Would you care if you destroyed their colony when you escaped?”

  Nyx looks from the image to Cai, “What ya be meanin’ They gonna be blastin’ through it?”

  Cai shakes his head, “They already did. Destroy the fabricators and the food supply, and they can’t repair anything until they rebuild the tools they need from scratch? I’m assuming the pirates stole a lot of supplies and tools?”

  The captain taps on his wrist, “Fugitives suspected to be heading to the damaged section of a dome. Suspect a hidden silo or doors that hide a getaway vessel.”

  Cai zooms in on a section that’s wide open. It’s a large concrete slab with various supplies resting on top, “Here? Honestly, I’m not getting anything right now. If they’ve EM shielded it, we won’t know until they open the doors.”

  “Okay. Keep watch. Let us handle the rest.”

  Nyx sees there are already two uniformed security moving through the ruined hydroponics equipment and warehouses, and a couple of flying drones soon join them.

  Nyx jumps as a group of people enters the room. They’re all women.

  One of them turns to the captain, “The children are below?”

  “Yes,” the captain replies, “to the right. And good luck. They’re terrified.”

  The women thank him and then enter the elevator.

  They see a large group of people on the screen rush from a building after the officers pass by the building, “There!” Nyx yells. She recognized Gwen, Dr. Yang, and a few others.

  Soon, smoke comes from the building they’d left.

  The captain notices, “Fire in one of the remaining hydroponics. We have eyes on the fugitives. They left the building just before heading southwest. They just entered a small warehouse.”

  Cai gives the captain the number of the burning hydroponics building.

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  The officers in the area stop, then turn to face the direction the commander just said on the comms.

  Cai taps his chin, “Do you think they hired the pirates? The Donati and that lab might be the only ones who have working ones in the Sol area. La La Land’s were sabotaged, which is why I came back. Then the attack here, which took yours out and stole or destroyed the spare parts needed to fix yours. And then the dome? Why would they?”

  Nyx gasps, “To be escapin’?”

  “Yeah. Any construction outside the dome would be obvious, right? But with cleanup and the reconstruction of the hydroponics buildings? Easy to sneak in some secret remodeling?”

  The captain grunts, “Speculation. We’d notice if someone built a ship in our home.”

  Nyx recalls Heidi had been the one they’d talked to. How she had sent them into an ambush. She was the secretary to the governor. If they had someone there, where else did they have people?

  Nyx stamps her foot, “That Heidi bitch was bein’ in yer own dum government!”

  The captain pauses at this, “Damn, you’re right. We’re interrogating her now, but she hasn’t talked.”

  Cai smiles at Nyx, “You’re right, Nyx. If they had someone as secretary, they probably had people in places where they could…”

  There’s an explosion in the distance.

  They all ran to the nearest window in the direction the explosion had come from. They can’t see anything from here as the building across the street blocked their view to it, but they can see a rising pillar of ash and smoke rising and that it’s being sucked through holes in the temporary sheets covering the broken part of the dome.

  The captain curses under his breath.

  Cai raises his arm, and the video feed shows a warehouse now erased, and where it once stood, the ground is opening.

  “Command, we have visual of a secret hangar believed to be an escape vessel for the fugitives.”

  “Roger that. We have visual as well. Teams are already on the way. ETA, three minutes.”

  Cai enlarges a different feed from the Donati, “I’m getting thermals. There is a ship, and they’re powering it up.”

  Nyx looks at the video feeds, but she can’t see through the dust and smoke on the video. The one that she assumes is thermal shows the outline of a ship in bright colors, and they’re getting whiter.

  Cai shakes his head, “The Donati estimates only one minute until launch.” He takes a breath, “Donati. Secure for atmospheric entry. Target the FTL emitters, thrusters, and only engines if the targeted ship hasn’t lifted off yet. Return to orbit afterwards if the target isn’t stopped, or land if it is.”

  The captain whistles, “You’re gonna drop your ship down and fire on them?”

  “Have to. The Donati only has a mining laser. Even with Mars’ thin atmosphere, it doesn’t have the range to hit from orbit.”

  “Makes sense.”

  Nyx climbs out the window and onto the roof, five floors up, and looks to the sky.

  Cai leans out the window, “Donati is coming from the east.”

  Nyx and the captain look east. There’s a flash as the Donati does a short-range FTL jump, and soon it’s a ball of fire in Mars’ atmosphere.

  Nyx looks down to watch the Donati’s feed and sees smoke coming from inside the silo with the ship.

  Cai chews on his lip, “Sparks, we can’t disable the engines without killing people until they reach orbit.”

  They look towards the part of the station the ship is launching from and hear a loud roaring as the sound of the fusion engines reaches them.

  The ship opens fire on the film above with the ship’s laser, and it’s quickly sucked up and out as the air in the pressurized dome escapes.

  The captain swears under his breath, “We should return underground!”

  Nyx feels the breeze as the air moves to escape through the hole, but she watches instead of moving.

  The ship’s FTL emitters suddenly melt and fall off.

  The Donati is just a speck overhead and no longer glowing, so it’s turned to point the mining laser down.

  Nyx grins, “Spark yeah!”

  As the ship lifts through the hole in the dome, Nyx sees spots glow, then bursts of gas as thrusters burst from the Donati’s attack. Then, an engine goes out.

  The ship’s laser turns to the Donati as it lists and loses power from one of its four fusion engines.

  “They’ve got a lock.”

  The ship is no longer in the dome, so Nyx jumps from the roof and hits hard, but not enough to hurt her.

  The Donati flips, the heat tiles facing the escaping ship, and Cai grins, “Don’t bring lasers to a fight with an explorer.”

  The air is thinning, and Nyx feels lightheaded, “Cai, let’s be gettin’ goin’.”

  He shakes his head, “I’ll lose connection if we do. I’m waiting until the last possible moment.”

  Nyx moves next to him and nuzzles his arm as they watch. The ships pass each other, though still specks to each other at this point as the Donati comes down from a different angle.

  The Donati spins, and Nyx sees that the Donati’s next target is the laser.

  The other ship does the same, and each ship targets the other’s laser turret. The other ship has now deployed a railgun as well, and fires.

  Cai grimaces, “Okay, so not just lasers.”

  The Donati fires its fusion engines, which throws off the incoming rounds by mere moments.

  The Donati’s sudden movement proves decisive as the other ship’s laser can’t focus long enough on one spot to punch through the turret’s armor, but the Donati’s does and the enemy’s laser stops firing.

  Nyx looks up to see the bright light of the Donati’s fusion engines coming in fast. She can see the other ship’s engines too, growing more distant by the second.

  Another of the ship’s engines goes out, “Got a second engine, but they’ll still make it to orbit. Barely. Gonna chase ‘em and knock out the railgun.”

  Nyx hears another ship’s engines and looks to see a small ship lifting from the spaceport. If the escaping ship was half the Donati’s length, this was no taller than the Donati’s engines, and Nyx recognized it as a small cargo transport the Gaper liked to hunt.

  Cai tsks, “So much for chasing them. Gonna have to give the Donati a hard landing because we had to waste time rotating the Donati. Let’s hope the landing gear don’t give out…”

  Nyx watches the Donati as it nears the ground, but the air is getting so thin that it’s getting hard for her to concentrate, “Cai…”

  Nyx tugs on his arm.

  Cai looks up, and she can see he’s feeling it too in the way he’s having trouble focusing.

  The captain notices too, “Okay, let’s hurry to the elevator.”

  They stumble to the elevator and watch the Donati land as they wait for it to return to the surface.

  Nyx watches the numbers below the image and realizes they’re the Donati’s speed as they’re dropping as it decelerates too slowly for comfort.

  The Donati hits the ground hard, and it bounces as the landing legs crumple, and even the nozzles on the engines bend. It lands again, thrusters firing to keep it upright.

  Nyx winces at the impact, but soon the ship settles near the colony and she breathes a sigh of relief that nothing major seems destroyed.

  Cai groans, “Gonna need to replace the nozzles and the landing gear.”

  Nyx wobbles as the elevator reaches the surface.

  Cai is using the wall to hold himself up when the captain grabs both of them

  The captain’s voice sounded muffled and distant in the thinning air, “Try to stay awake.”

  Cai passes out, and Nyx barely hears the doors open as her vision fades.