Page 206 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

Then gravity changes its mind, and I strike a slanted walkway hard enough to drive the air from my lungs. I roll, slam into a railing, and catch it before my body tips over the side. Below me, a launch cradle flickers through smoke and emergency lights. A shuttle rests on a tilted platform, its hull battered but intact, surrounded by collapsing gantries and dead support arms.

Anita stands near the shuttle ramp.

Not aboard.

Near it.

Looking up at me.

My anger arrives with such relief behind it that I nearly cannot separate them. “Anita!”

She points toward a maintenance ladder half-collapsed below my walkway. “Come down!”

“Get on the shuttle.”

“No.”

Ghar Vek’Talan, I tell myself, this is not the time to admire her stubbornness.

I admire it anyway.

Brakk appears on the ramp behind her, waving both arms. “She came back for you! I tried to stop her using reason, volume, and light physical obstruction. None worked.”

Anita glares at him without looking away from me. “You are very obstructable.”

“I am compact, not ineffective!”

The walkway under me tilts. I push myself up, every wound protesting, and move toward the ladder. Halfway there, a reality ripple tears through the cradle. The ladder stretches downward into impossible distance, then snaps back too short. The platform between me and Anita breaks, creating a gap filled with churning white light.

Anita steps toward it.

I roar, “Do not!”

She stops, but only because the edge crumbles beneath her boot. Ghar, remain calm, I think.

I fail.

“Back up,” I order.

“No! You can’t cross that.”

“I can jump.”

“You are bleeding from places I’m not emotionally prepared to count!”

“I have made longer jumps.”

“Were you half-crushed by cosmic masonry at the time?”

“No.”

“Then shut up and let me think.”

The shuttle groans behind her as another support arm collapses onto the platform. Sira appears at the ramp, gripping the frame. “Anita, the launch cradle is losing alignment. If Brakk cannot lift off soon, we will be dragged into the crustal shear.”

“Give me thirty seconds,” Anita says.

“We may not have thirty seconds.”