Stellar Debts and Spicy Jets

The hangar bay was an absolute disaster zone of sparks and screaming metal. Felix didn’t care about the structural integrity of the Rusty Pelican; he cared about the three inches of clearance between his landing gear and the blast doors that were rapidly closing.

"Come on, you bucket of bolts, don't you dare stall on me now!" Felix shrieked, his knuckles white as he jammed the ignition sequence.

Behind him, the hangar’s automated defense turrets hummed to life, firing red-hot streaks of plasma that melted the floor plating exactly where he’d been parked seconds ago.

"Is this it? Is this where I die for a gambling debt I couldn't pay?" Felix yelled at the console, ignoring the way his heart was trying to hammer its way out of his ribcage. "Just fly!"

The ship roared—a gut-wrenching, unrefined sound of straining turbines—and shot forward like a greased pig. As they cleared the bay, the ship bucked violently under a glancing blow from an interceptor’s laser.

"Whoa! Whoa! Too much tilt!" Felix shouted, wrestling with the stick. He banked hard, scraping the hull against the docking pylon before they burst out into the cold, empty vacuum of the docking bay exit. "Clear. I’m clear. Suck it, Vane! You’re not getting your credits today!"

He let out a manic, breathless laugh, wiping sweat from his forehead. It was only then, as the ship leveled out into the dark drift of the sector, that he noticed the muffled, rhythmic thumping coming from the cargo bay.

"Great. Fantastic. I didn't even get to check the manifest," Felix muttered, spinning his chair around. "Hey! Whatever you are—or whoever you are—back there, keep your hands off the crates. If you break anything, it’s coming out of your hide, not mine."

The thumping stopped. A moment later, the cargo door hissed open, and a figure stepped into the cockpit light. It wasn't a crate. It was a woman with eyes like sharpened glass and a posture that screamed 'I kill for fun.'

"Manifest?" the woman snapped, her voice like velvet dragged over gravel. "You absolute moron. Do you have any idea whose ship you just hijacked?"

Felix froze, his hands still hovering over the controls. "Uh, some guy named Vane? I didn't—I thought it was empty!"

"Empty?" The woman strode forward, her boots clicking menacingly against the metal floor. She didn't look like a passenger. She looked like a predator who had just realized she was in the wrong cage. "I am Odette. I was waiting for my extraction team, not a frantic, under-qualified pilot with a death wish."

"Odette? As in... the Odette? The mercenary legend?" Felix felt his face drain of color.

"Save the fan-girling for the morgue," she snarled, reaching for the primary control console.

"Hey! Don't touch that!" Felix lunged forward, but she was faster. She shoved him aside with a terrifyingly casual flick of her wrist and began tearing into the wiring beneath the dashboard. "What are you doing? You’re going to kill us both!"

"I'm trying to override your pathetic navigation, you idiot! We're drifting straight into a blockade patrol. Move, before I pull you out of that seat by your ears!"

"I'm the pilot! My ship, my rules!"

"It's a hunk of scrap! Your 'rules' are currently flying us into an asteroid field!" She yanked a bundle of wires, and the ship groaned in protest.

"You're making it worse! Stop it!"

"Don't tell me what to do!"

Suddenly, the console emitted a high-pitched, soul-shattering screech. Red lights flooded the cockpit, pulsating in time with a siren that sounded like a dying banshee. The navigation screen flickered, went black, and then locked tight.

"Great. Brilliant," Felix screamed, his voice cracking. "You fried the primary board! We’re locked in manual!"

"Oh, shut up and fly, you pathetic coward!" Odette roared, grabbing the side of the pilot’s chair and leaning over him.

"I can't fly if the gyros are misaligned! The whole ship is going to spin like a top!"

"Then use the thrusters! Are you a pilot or a glorified taxi driver?"

"I’m a guy who’s having a very bad day!" Felix retorted, his hands dancing over the controls, his panic shifting into a desperate, frantic precision. "Hold on to something! We’re going through the belt!"

He slammed the throttle forward. The ship screamed, dipping into a dive as they hit the outer edges of a dense asteroid field. Rocks the size of small houses blurred past them, glowing with static electricity.

"Left! Hard left, you idiot!" Odette shouted, her face mere inches from his, her hair brushing against his cheek as they banked sharply.

"I see it! I’m not blind!"

"You're sweating all over the controls!"

"Maybe if you weren't screaming in my ear, I’d be cooler!"

The ship shuddered violently as they skimmed a jagged boulder. Felix shoved the stick, and the Rusty Pelican performed an impossibly tight barrel roll. The G-force pressed them together, pinning Felix into his seat and Odette against his chest.

For a second, the chaos silenced. Their eyes locked—his wide with terror, hers burning with an intense, volatile fire.

"Listen to me," Odette hissed, her breath warm against his skin. "If we make it through this, you’re going to wish you’d just let Vane kill you."

"Yeah, well, let's survive the next ten seconds first, sunshine!"

Odette pulled a short-bladed combat knife from her holster, her eyes glinting with a dangerous promise. "I'm going to carve you out of this seat myself."

But before she could move, the ship’s internal power grid groaned one last time and gave up the ghost. The hum of the artificial gravity generator died with a pathetic whine.

The weightlessness hit them instantly.

Felix floated upward, his legs tangling with Odette’s. She drifted up with him, their bodies colliding in the confined space of the cockpit. Because there was no gravity to hold them, they didn't just bump—they drifted into an incredibly compromising tangle.

Her legs wrapped around his waist, pinning him, while her chest pressed firmly against his. The knife hovered, useless, between their faces, and for a heartbeat, the danger of the asteroid field, the debt collectors, and the impending death seemed entirely secondary to the sudden, suffocating intimacy of floating in the dark with an enraged, legendary mercenary.

"Well," Felix squeaked, his voice cracking as he looked down at their tangled forms. "This is certainly one way to handle an argument."

Odette stared at him, her gaze dropping to his lips before flashing back to his eyes, her expression shifting from lethal fury to something much more complicated and altogether more dangerous.