Renegade Runner by Nicole Conway (ebook reader with highlight function .txt) 📗

more my heart raced. Seeing something like that made it utterly impossible to deny; I was a long way from Earth. Definitely not in Kansas anymore.

Er, well, Florida. I’d never even been to Kansas.

“Meh. Not great. One of the rounds pierced the main power cell for the left engine. It’s leaking coolant and every time I try to get in there to patch it, some of the loose cables catch my hand.” Phox sauntered over to nudge my side with the toe of his boot.

“But you can fix it, right?”

He muttered under his breath, probably a string of profanity aimed at me. Fortunately, I couldn’t hear it. “Yeah, yeah. Probably. But I’m gonna have to climb all the way into the engine block from the inside of the ship. It’s gonna be a major pain in the ass, and we really don’t have time for—”

“Uh, Phox?” I stiffened, tightening my grip on the rifle.

“What?”

“There’s … um, there’s something coming this way.”

“WHAT?” He dropped into a crouch, muscling me out of the way so he could peer through the scope.

I leaned away, trying my best not to touch him as he invaded my personal space. For crying out loud, didn’t he have any sense of boundaries?

“Get up. Right now. Get in the ship and seal the door.” His voice came like a low, ominous growl from deep in his throat.

“Why?” I stared down the end of the rifle. Far off in the distance, all I’d been able to see was another plume of dust swirling in the air. Probably from the thrust of another runner craft. But why would they be coming all the way back to the starting line? “What is it?”

“Brawlers,” he rumbled again.

Okay, that did not sound good. “What does that mean?”

Phox was already breaking down the gun and starting for the edge of our ship. “Brawlers are basically bounty hunters. They don’t run the race to win, they just want to rack up points by hunting down and destroying other runner teams. Usually, they get paid off by the bigger-name, professional teams. People like Faulbender pay them loads to knock off the smaller, less-funded runners so there’s no chance of someone scoring a longshot, underdog victory. Gives them less to worry about while they vie for the top of the scoreboard against the other professional teams.”

Faulbender? Something about that name sent an eerie, prickly chill up my spine. I knew I’d never heard it before, though. So why did it feel so familiar?

There wasn’t time to ask about it now.

My heartbeat sped into overdrive as we climbed down and dashed for the open door of our ship. Despite Phox’s stature and much longer legs, I could keep up with his dashing pace pretty easily. He skidded to a stop just outside the ship’s open bay door, waving me in with his expression drawn taut with rage. The string of glowing blue ammo vials clattered against his chest.

Suddenly, I screeched to a halt. My mind raced. I looked at him, at the gun, and in the direction of the oncoming enemy.

This wasn’t going to work.

I set my jaw, meeting Phox’s bewildered stare. “We can’t just hide.”

“Oh, yes, we absolutely freaking can. Get your ass in here, human!” He was already storming my way, his shoulders hunched and fists clenched like he intended to drag me in by force.

“No. I mean what happens if we hide? They blow our whole ship up? What if they decide to just damage it enough that we lose power and roast alive when the sun comes up?”

Phox froze just a few feet away, studying me as his look of rage slowly dissolved into frustration. His mouth scrunched like he’d tasted something bitter. He didn’t reply, though. I guessed he hadn’t considered that.

“We can’t hide. But maybe we can fake them out.” I rushed past him into the ship.

“Hey, what are you—?”

“Just help me, idiot! We’ve got to get anything we can’t stand to lose—the ammunition, supplies—and put it outside the ship. Right now!” I yelled as I began throwing our other ration packs and medical goods into one of the extra surface survival suits and tying it up like a bag. “How much more of those exploding-blue-goo rounds did you find?”

He appeared right beside me and rummaged through his assembled stockpile of the slender blue vials. I knew he’d found quite a few for the rifle, more than he could fit on that fancy belt still strung across his chest. But would there be enough?

“So, what’s the angle here, human?” He bit the words through gritted teeth. “They’re gonna see that we’re not in here.”

“No,” I snapped, steeling my nerve. “They’re gonna see that you’re not in here. I’m going to wait until I’m sure they can see me. Then … Then we’ve got to act fast.”

“And do what, exactly?”

I leveled a firm glare up at him through my heat-frizzed, filthy bangs. “That depends. You’re pretty good at punching inanimate objects. How’s your aim with that gun?”

He gaped for a second, as though he was wondering if I’d lost my mind. At last, his jaw went slack as he let out an angry, snarling noise and turned away. “You’re insane, you know that?”

I took in a shaky breath. Yeah. I knew. This was a terrible idea.

But waiting locked inside the ship for them to come and kill us while we cowered in fear was an even worse one. No way was I going down like that. Not if I had a choice.

If this was how I was supposed to go out, then I’d at least make them work for it.

15

BAIT, SWITCH, BOOM

I stood facing the scorching wind, studying the approaching runner craft that blazed straight for me at full speed. No—not just one. There were two of them flying together in close formation. My stomach turned, wrenching into a thousand painful knots. I wasn’t expecting that.

But it didn’t change anything at all about our plan. Steady. I just had to stay