When my rotation brought me back around, I saw Mayan remained in her seat, her expression dead serious. A flush of scenarios flooded my brain and the guffaw I’d started with turned to irrational giggles. I couldn’t stop.

Mayan scowled at me.

“Fuel,” I said to her between uncontrolled sniggers. “How the fuck are you going to fuel her?”

Mayan looked back at the shuttle. While I tittered, she stood and rushed past me.

Before I could stop her, she ran a hand behind the front cockpit window and a soft chime pinged loudly into the room. A light flashed under the white paint, hidden until now, followed by a whoosh and a shot of compressed air. I watched as the smooth body of the fuselage cracked and the emerging opening widened into a complete door that was gradually lifting high enough to walk through. Mayan didn’t look back, but stepped in.

I ran after her. Inside, I caught up to her peering over the pilot controls, punching buttons on the consoles. A few lights were responding, some systems coming on line. She paused, her hand holding the pilot’s headrest while she peered to read the instruments.

“She should take the older rocket fuel,” she mused.

I huffed out loud at the obvious and ridiculousness of that statement. They didn’t even make that stuff anymore.

“The hovercrafts were first designed to use the same thing, but it was too corrosive and volatile to be used in atmo, so they converted them.” She punched a few more things. “It’s been converted,” she said and turned to look at me with a wide grin.

I stared harder.

She rolled her eyes. “To plasma, dummy!”

I rocked backwards in surprise. Plasma wasn’t new, and still widely used. Power packs were getting lighter all the time, too. Sloth used electric power and its appetite was huge. It took two power packs, each weighing fifty-six pounds each.

As if reading my mind, Mayan pushed past me to move toward the back. I followed but only half-way and called her back, where I knelt in the middle of the passenger compartment and grabbed a silver handle that was flush with the floor. I remembered it from the technical drawings and while only my dad had ever been in it; I knew it was an access hatch to the power plant.

Mayan reappeared over my shoulder. “Ooo,” she said, and her ponytail flipped over her shoulder and tickled my nose. “These will do.”

I batted her hair out of my face and looked closer. Ten power packs were neatly bedded in the small compartment.

“God only knows the last time these were charged, Mayan,” I reminded her.

She nodded, but leaned back to sit on her knees and wiped her palms on her jeans.

“Yep,” she agreed.

I could see she was calculating something.

I watched her eyes darted around me at the cockpit, and then back to the rear of the craft. “But we still can.” She bounced up, but I stayed down, still holding the hatch open to gawk at the enormous power display I was sitting over.

I didn’t know aerodynamics, rocket telemetry or any sort of energy conversion speak that could calculate what Star Hunter would need to generate enough thrust to fly in earth’s atmo. But obviously, fully charged, she could.

“Mayan,” I called, but she was back in the cockpit, now sitting in the captain’s seat. I closed the hatch and returned to her. “How would we charge them?” I asked, coming up to lean over my hands that gripped the twin seats.

Again, she was flipping switches and pushing things. The vids were scrolling data and different buttons flashed. Finally, she leaned back and lifted a nail to chew between her teeth. It was a long moment before she answered.

“They’re recharged in the solar radiation outside our atmo, usually. Here, we’d plug them in. I think we even have the converters in the mech hangers. I’m sure the hovercrafts still use them, too. But according to the ship’s readouts, she’s not that empty.” She looked up at me, but pointed to a vid screen that had stopped scrolling and now just displayed an enormous amount of numbers, along with a complicated-looking graph.

I exhaled loudly in exasperation.

“I could—”

“What was that?” I interrupted. Bouncing fast from my monkey lean to stare upright out of the open shuttle door. We’d both frozen, even holding our breath.

I’d heard a loud bump, like something heavy falling over. The warehouse was empty, there was nothing to fall over. Both of us stayed still and listened. A full minute went by and I relaxed. Turning back, the console screen still showed numbers flying by, well in the green.

Another loud bang and I moved fast out of the shuttle.

Careful to not grind my feet on the decrepit concrete, I walked lightly to the door, but waved at Mayan to stay in the shuttle. I saw her nod, move back to disappear and then reappear in the cockpit window, her eyes barely over the edge of the glass frame.

Another bang, this time followed by the telltale sign of a drone communique.

“Shit.” I mouthed to myself and stilled again.

As far as I knew, the security drones didn’t have solid, penetrating radar cameras, only infrared. They did, however, have ultrasonic hearing. I was close enough, so I leaned over and switched off the LEDS. Now in total darkness, I could see the very low light of the cockpit lights inside the shuttle, glowing through the windscreens.

Mayan’s terrified face watched me from the corner of the glass. She waved at me to come inside, but I wasn’t sure I could without making more noise.

Another bang told me this was a drone that had somehow gotten into the warehouse and likely was stuck trying to get out. It was close enough now that I could hear the whir of its turbines as it floated across the indoor space.

“For fuck's sakes,” I said under my breath. I looked around and back at the ship. Mayan’s stuff was still on the counter. If we could hide, it would be found and if anything inside could be used to ID her, she’d be in trouble. I tiptoed toward it and picked it up very slowly. Turning, I moved again on tiptoe across the short space, back into the shuttle.

“We need to close the door and then I can shut it down. The engines are cold. It won’t think anything of it, if it has any sort of recognition program at all!” Mayan whispered to me.

I looked at the open hatch. Its mechanism was quiet, but quiet enough was a really big risk.

In all my twelve years coming here, they had never found me. Not once and not even close. Sure, I’d seen the big drones through the skylights overhead, heard them, and the old street walkers, autonomous mechs that used to patrol the streets, but they hadn’t been in use for five years. The manned hovercrafts were less common too. About once a month they’d show but never came close or gave any indication they suspected this warehouse.

Mayan was right. We could hide in the shuttle. The skin of the craft was extremely durable aluminum-titanium alloy and insulated against radiation. It would shield us from infrared and any damage to the paint booth if the drone bot got agitated. They were supposed to be programmed to arrest human violators, but I’d heard rumours of the bots destroying them in ‘accidents’ of programming malfunction. Not a rumour I wanted to test.

Another bang and this time, the walls of the booth shook. I dashed forward and hit the fuselage where the light of the door was still lit. It whooshed and slid down, closing finally with a tight fitting squeak that sounded like a healthy vacuum seal.

My shoulders pinched like my face, but I kept totally still.

Behind, Mayan lightly tapped things and soon the tiny glow from the front went black, save one very faint blinking blue light under the console.

We waited.

Another loud bang, but it was muffled inside the shuttle.

“If we had to, how long would it take to fire this thing up?” I asked, trying to control my voice to not show panic.

“Too long,” she replied, still sitting in the captain’s chair. It was a bad choice. The bot could spot her through the window if it got in.

When I waved at her to come away from it, she bent to duck out.

We moved together to sit on the floor in front of the first row of passenger seats, our backs against the partition wall that separated the two compartments.

Mayan pulled her knees up. “We’ll be fine,” she said in a whisper.

“This is bad,” I replied in disagreement.

For over an hour, we heard more banging, but still nothing tried the booth.

I was starting to fear it was a matter of time. If the bot was stuck, it would call for rescue. It might incite an inspection to figure out why it got in and got stuck. Readings it took could be analysed and maybe it had heard or seen something.

Not to mention, the heat was stifling, and I was beginning to doubt the idea of hiding in a sealed compartment.

Mayan’s head rested on my shoulder.

I wiped another sweat ladened forearm across my brow. It had been a long time since I’d heard a bang, but I couldn’t be sure anymore. The shuttle blocked all minute sound.

I decided to risk it.

I leaned Mayan back, and she slumped the other way against the wall.

Taking a big breath, I palmed the door sensor and waited for it to whoosh and lift again. It was quiet as before. The air was cooler, if still hot, but it was a good call that I opened it to change out the shuttle’s enclosed space. I lifted my wrist pad and hit the screen to give a bit of light to show me the door and a clear path. Carefully I walked around the sitting area, trying to be sure I missed bumping into anything.

Before turning the lock, I looked back. I could see Star Hunter’s outline. Bright white as it was, and huge, it stood out to collect something of the light from somewhere. If I opened the door and came face to face with the red IR eyeball of a security drone, it would be the last thing I saw. But I would run it away from Mayan to give her the chance. And maybe I’d be remembered by someone who would say I wasn’t a complete jerk.