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The kiss was long and passionate, but eventually, they pulled away from one another. “Hey, you’re making both our hearts race, that’s going to use up our oxygen a lot faster,” teased Cora.
“Yes, but it’s also going to keep us warmer,” he retorted, going in for another kiss.
He could feel his head going dizzy when they broke again, and it had nothing to do with the passion of their kiss. He checked the screen, and the Jorvlens were still circling, like the flies on Jorvla. Maybe there was an evolutionary link. Go away, damn you, he thought.
His hand hovered over the start button that would both save their lives if they ran out of oxygen yet doom them, too, if they started the craft before the Jorvlens left. Cora was going limp in his arms from hypoxia and cold, and Levi’s teeth were chattering when the Jorvlen pods finally gave up and flew away. He assumed they thought they crashed into the floating debris.
Still, he waited, just in case. He could feel his head going woozy, and then, all of a sudden, he suddenly felt warm and comfortable.
With all the will he had, he hit the start button and smiled as the life support fired back up.
They’d done it. They had the stone and had escaped the Jorvlen pursuit as far as they could tell. Having the stone could make all the difference in the war raging between the two sides. However, if they took down the cartel, the Jorvlens would be starved of their lifeblood, the one that gave them their ill-gotten profits and subdued half of the universe on a poison that was too dangerous to sell.
Chapter 35
Cora felt like she’d been holding her breath the whole way to the refueling station. Flying around the galaxy in a stolen pod—a Jorvlen one, no less—felt like having a target painted on her back. She couldn’t wait to get back into a proper ship, even though she knew the next part of their mission was just as dangerous as the last if not more so.
Something about being back in their own ship—albeit a borrowed one—she knew would put her at ease.
“For your trouble,” said Levi to the dock worker who’d brought the zoomer around. It was the same one who’d parked it for them when they snuck onto the Imperial Surfer.
A small chime rang out on the worker’s comm, and his eyes widened when he saw the tip Levi had sent him.
“Thank you very much, sir,” the worker said, practically bowing.
“Don’t mention it.” Levi grinned. “And don’t mention this, either,” he added, jerking a thumb at the Jorvlen pod they were dumping at the refueling station.
The dock worker got the idea, nodding conspiratorially as Cora and Levi climbed aboard.
“So, you have the coordinates for the Motley factory. Right, Cora?” Levi asked as he strapped himself into the pilot’s seat.
“Yep,” Cora replied, pulling up the files she’d found on the Jorvlen mainframe.
With everything else they’d gone through, she’d barely had a chance to look over the documents properly. When she saw the coordinates, something tugged at the back of her mind, as though she registered something familiar but couldn’t quite place it.
As soon as she typed the coordinates into the ship’s control panel, though, she realized why it jogged her memory.
“Routing to the Ora’Ve star system. Planet Egshur, Sircu Island,” said the AI.
“Oh my gods,” said Cora, staring wide-eyed at the control panel. “That’s exactly where they took me from. The precise location.”
It took almost a whole day to get to Egshur, and in that time, Cora and Levi confirmed that the facility she’d wandered into by sheer chance had to be the Motley factory they were looking for. Sure enough, when they approached the small island, the AI directed them right into the wild forest behind the resort where Cora and her family had been vacationing, only now it was cloaked in the dark of night.
“I wonder if they’re still here,” she said as Levi brought the zoomer down softly onto the resort’s landing pad. “Maybe they’re sleeping right below us.”
She desperately wanted to reunite with her parents and her brother, knowing they had no idea if she was even alive. Levi gave her a compassionate look as they sat for a moment in the ship.
Cora felt at once paralyzed and restless, not knowing if she should look for her family first or continue on the mission as planned. As she thought about it, though, Levi’s comm rang with a strange chime—one Cora hadn’t heard before.
Levi glanced down, and his face turned pale as he did.
“Oh, no,” he groaned. “There’s a bounty on our heads.”
“What?” Cora managed to utter, incredulous.
“The Jorvlens put word out among the bounty hunters that there’s a reward for our capture and the return of the stone,” Levi replied. “Luckily, I know a lot of them through PAPS, and they’ll leave us alone. Others aren’t so friendly, though.”
Cora felt her chest contract, but at least this made her decision clear. They had to finish the mission before it was too late. If they succeeded in taking down the factory, she might still be able to reunite with her family. If she saw her family first, though, they’d probably be caught before they could finish the job they came to do.
