The Resistance: The Interstellar Trials, #2

By Kate Sheeran Swed

How do you escape when there's nowhere to run? 

 

Reggie Sylvester and her friends are fugitives from the tyrannical rage of Admiral Xavier, which is no longer contained to the New Fleet. Without crops or fuel for their shuttle, though, they won't last very long alone in the black. 

 

When they learn the Resistance is still alive and well – and fighting back against Xavier's First Fleet invasion – Reggie hatches a plan to increase their allies and join in the fight. 

 

But her new friends don't trust her motives, and the feeling's mutual. If they can't find common ground before the clock runs out, they'll be thrown to Xavier's mercy – and the entire fleet will burn right along with them. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spells & Spaceships Press
• Release date: Apr 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215484197

Kate Sheeran Swed

Kate Sheeran Swed loves hot chocolate, plastic dinosaurs, and airplane tickets. She has trekked along the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu, hiked on the Mýrdalsjökull glacier in Iceland, and climbed the ruins of Masada to watch the sunrise over the Dead Sea. After growing up in New Hampshire, she completed degrees in music at the University of Maine and Ithaca College, then moved to New York City. She currently lives in New York’s capital region with her husband and son, and two cats who were named after movie dogs (Benji and Beethoven). Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in the Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide Volume 5, Electric Spec, Daily Science Fiction, and Andromeda Spaceways. She holds an MFA in Fiction from Pacific University. You can find her on Instagram @katesheeranswed.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

My bunk on the shuttle is soft. Not as soft as the beds on the Aurelius—though I’d trade comfy pillows for a dictator-free environment any day—but definitely softer than a blanket roped to a steel beam between the hulls of an interstellar spaceship. Which I know, because that was how I slept for the first seventeen years of my life.

Still, the shuttle bunk is comfortable enough—and I’m tired enough—that I actually managed to fall asleep after the hellscape of the last few days. Step one, collapse. Step two, pass out.

My friends and I just escaped a rigged tournament run by the dictator of the New Fleet. And when we tried to escape to the First Fleet, aka freedom central, we found he’d taken over their ships, too. All of them.

That kind of near-death experience will really take it out of a person.

Which is why, when the shuttle lurches, I lurch out of bed right along with it. Because I was so tired that I forgot to strap in, which just goes to show how life as a tournament champion has made me as soft as their beds.

The bed is soft. The floor is not.

Luckily, a couple decades of hiding out in the rafters of a spaceship has trained my body to tuck and roll into a fall, so I manage to avoid snapping my arms when I hit the deck.

Heart slamming into my ribcage, I stagger to my feet and throw the door open as the ship lurches again, like it’s doing a dramatic down-swing on a trapeze. Despite the unstable footing, other doors are opening, Lo and JJ sticking messy-haired heads into the hall to find out what the hell is going on.

Keeping one hand on the wall, I head for the pilot’s deck. It’s a straight shot down the hall, and thank Earth for that. I do not think I’d have a chance at making it up or down any ladders right now.

Noah Ramsay is strapped into the pilot’s seat, with Louisa flying co-pilot. Her injured leg’s stretched out in front of her, but she’s responding to everything Noah says with precise movements and clipped phrases I don’t really understand.

I don’t speak pilot.

It’s easier to focus on Louisa than on Noah. He hasn’t said much to me since I betrayed everyone back on Aurelius. And lied about who I was. And gave up the Resistance movement to Xavier.

I mean, I made it right in the end, mostly. Still, I can’t blame the guy for keeping his distance. I guess.

Great idea, JJ says, appearing behind me with Lo a step behind. Let’s all be unstrapped on the pilot’s deck while we’re being attacked.

How is it different from being unstrapped anywhere else? I ask, because I honestly can’t help myself. JJ and I have an uneasy truce after clashing hard on Aurelius, and after I tried to sacrifice myself to save everyone—until she saved me, instead. But still, the girl is so easy to bait.

JJ flaps her hand at Noah and Louisa. We could slam into the pilots and knock them out. We could break something important.

As if to illustrate her point, the ship dips sharply, leaving my stomach behind, and I narrowly catch myself from crashing straight into the back of Louisa’s seat. She’s right, Noah says, though as the pilot I feel like he could’ve warned us there. Strap in.

We follow instructions and belt ourselves into the auxiliary seats along the back wall. The shuttle’s three other passengers—Eric, Sierra, and Frank—are smart enough to stay in their cabins for whatever this is, I guess.

The ship does a spiraling maneuver that makes me think of a ballerina doing slow pirouettes across a stage. Or into a tank of water. This is a luxury shuttle—Xavier’s actually—and I’m not great with ships and mechanical stuff, but I’m pretty sure it’s not meant for evasive maneuvers.

Not sure what we’re evading, exactly, but it seems clear that’s the situation. And it’s hardly paranoid to think Xavier would be sending ships after us.

The shuttle spirals, and finally I see our opponent: a silver, needle-nosed fighter, the hull shining bright enough to match the stars behind it. The ship edges up to our right side like it’s trying to herd us somewhere, and it feels like one wrong twitch will catapult us straight into it.

Xavier sent a ship after us. Louisa says it through gritted teeth, though it can hardly come as much of a surprise. "It reads as an Aurelius ship."

You can tell that? I ask, although I’m not sure who else would want to chase us down. Xavier’s just staged a massive coup, which means he’s the one in charge. Of the entire fleet.

JJ shoots me an eyebrow-raised look, like really? and I know I’ve asked a ‘silly New Fleeter’ question, or maybe just a ‘silly girl who grew up off the grid without any schooling’ question. Either way, it’s probably something they’ve all known since they were old enough to read.

Kindergarten, day one: how to trace a small vessel back to its ship of origin.

I think I just bored myself to sleep.

But whatever. A girl can’t stumble through life without asking any questions. That’s the kind of thinking that leads to exiting an airlock by mistake when you were just looking for the bathroom.

All fleet vessels have transponders, JJ says. The fighters, the shuttle buses, all of them. They match with their home ships so you can tell where visitors are coming from.

Yeah, that’s a pretty blatant ‘First Fleeters get to run free and visit each other, and basically do whatever they want’ kind of fact. I can’t see a New Fleeter knowing that—except maybe Resistance-raised Lo—but Eric and Sierra aren’t here to confirm.

He only sent one ship, Lo says. That’s good, right?

Noah gives his head a shake. Only takes one to shoot us down.

That’s grim talk for Noah. Sounds like something I’d say.

He punches a button, and we swerve. Hard. I feel the speed slam into my chest for a second, but then we slow again. When Noah curses, I figure he probably meant for us to keep going at that speed a bit longer.

It’s like trying to fly a jellyfish, he says. I’ve never seen a real jellyfish, but I catch his drift. Like I said, this thing’s a pleasure cruiser. Not a racer.

The ship’s above us now—relative to where my head is, anyway. I can see it through the window, which Noah is soundly ignoring. He and Louisa are locked on their instruments, all the blinking dots and pinpricks on the dashboard. Which leaves the rest of us to freak out at what we can see happening with our own eyes.

I’m not sure what the dash can tell them that’s better or faster than a visual signal, but I’m not about to question it.

Going hot, Noah says. I’m going to try speed again.

I do not have time to ask what ‘going hot’ means before a flash from the bottom of the needle-nosed ship sears straight through my eyeballs. That’s what it feels like, anyway. In the same instant, Noah punches that same magical button and we careen away from the attacking ship.

Lightning bolts dance across the backs of my eyelids when I blink. A little warning would have been good there. Though JJ’s eyes are closed, so I guess she understood what ‘going hot’ meant. I don’t know how, since New Fleeters do not shoot at each other, but I can ask her about that later.

If we survive this. There’s another flash from above, and this time the shuttle dips a second too late. An alarm starts beeping on the dash, and a metallic groan joins it from somewhere in the back of the shuttle.

In case you were wondering, that is not the kind of sound you want to hear when you’re on a spaceship. Even I know that.

I think they’re shooting to disable, Noah says.

That metallic groan seems to belie that statement, but OK. Why would they do that? I ask.

I don’t know. Good publicity? He bites the words at me, like I’ve said something terrible. I’m pretty sure he’d respond like that to anything I said. It’s not that I can blame him after all the lying and betraying I did, but if he’s got a problem, he can at least let me apologize.

Not that I’m feeling it at the moment.

Going hot, Louisa says.

This time, I shut my eyes.

And this time, the flash is much, much brighter. Noah spits out a curse, and I’m slammed back in my seat again as he maneuvers us out of danger.

I risk opening my eyes in time to see the needle-nosed ship explode. One second, it’s like a bullet in a bowl of ink; the next, it’s a bubble of debris and fuel, lighting up the dark with a sphere of fire.

Noah blasts us forward calmly, reading instructions to Louisa about fuel and trajectories and whatever else, and for a few minutes we’re just white-knuckling our armrests. We can’t outrun the shrapnel; it’ll go until it hits something.

We just need to be really, really freaking lucky.

Our ship shudders, a chorus of alarms rising up to join that first one, and the lights flicker violently.

JJ gasps, and it’s no wonder. During the war that split our interstellar exploration fleet in two, we lost nine ships—and only a couple of those went down because they were attacked directly. The rest succumbed to unavoidable storms of debris from the ships that did get hit.

Just like the explosion from needle-nose back there.

But needle-nose was significantly smaller than the murdered fleet vessels, and it is back there. After a tense moment, the shuddering stops, the lights even out, and I can see the wave of debris jutting out past us and into the black. We got hit—we couldn’t not get hit—but the lights are still on, and some of the alarms have quieted.

More crucially, we are not currently sucking vacuum.

The fleet must be behind us, or below us, I don’t know. Direction in space is confusing. Yes, I grew up here. I still find it baffling. I mean, they designed our ships with ‘up’ and ‘down.’ Add millions of years of DNA memory, or whatever it is that tells my brain it should be stuck to the surface of a rock, and it makes sense that I’d get a bit turned around.

The point is, the fleet ships will be facing their own wave of debris, but they should have time to deal with it. Not that I’d care if Xavier got hit in the face with a rogue piece of metal, but everyone else deserves to live.

Yes, even his minions. Which is one of many reasons why that needle-nose ship’s explosion is… disconcerting? I mean, I’ll do anything to survive when it comes down to it, but I’d really rather not kill anyone.

There’s also the question of who exploded them, and whether they’re coming for us next.

What did you do? JJ’s leaning forward, the belt straining to hold her back. Like she might shove Noah out of the pilot’s seat otherwise.

Noah lifts his hands off the dash, and even though I can only really see his profile, I can tell from the press of his lips that he’s gone pale. You get to know people pretty quick when you’re fighting for each other’s lives. We don’t have weapons. I didn’t do anything.

I believe him, but I also find it hard to believe our ship doesn’t have any weapons. This is Xavier’s shuttle; he’d be sure to protect it. JJ’s studying the dash with narrowed eyes like she’s thinking the exact same thing.

Then who was it? Lo asks. There’s a light in her eyes that says she’s hoping it’s her friends. The Resistance, here to save the day.

There’s another ship, Louisa says, and I follow her gaze out the windshield to where another fighter’s bobbing along in the black. My first absurd though is that it doesn’t look friendly. Not sure what I’m expecting. A white flag? Smiley faces painted on the side?

Source? Noah’s voice says he’s snapped back to pilot mode, but his hands are shaking on the dash. I’m pretty sure we can’t trust that magic button to rocket this shuttle-slash-jellyfish away from another attacker.

Louisa swallows. "Polaris."

Which unfortunately isn’t any better than Aurelius. Because even though Polaris is a First Fleet ship, Xavier’s controlling it at the moment. He’s controlling the entire fleet now. Which is just great, since he’s an evil megalomaniacal tyrant. I wish I were exaggerating.

Why would they take out their own ship? JJ asks.

We’re about to find out. Noah’s voice is grim as he hands the controls to Louisa and rises out of his seat. We’re being boarded.

CHAPTER 2

I don’t know much about ship engineering. I just know that this one’s got a set of swiveling airlocks—I’ve been up close and personal with them several times, most recently about a day ago—and that right now, they’re twisted horizontally. Which basically just means that our would-be boarders can walk straight onto our shuttle instead of sliding down elevator-style.

Like pirates. I know, I’m ridiculous. But I bet we’re all thinking it.

Eric meets us at the airlocks. He lost his handheld tablet on Polaris, but he’s scrounged up another one here. Looks nicer than the last one, too. Or shinier, at least. He’s cradling it with one arm while typing madly with the opposite. Someone needs to make that boy a portable rack that hangs around his neck or something. His hair’s all tangled, his glasses crooked on his nose like maybe they got broken in all the weaving and dipping.

Half our systems are down, he says. What the hell happened?

We’re being boarded. Noah doesn’t quite answer the question, but I get it. Time is limited here. "Can you