Renegade Runner Nicole Conway (christmas read aloud txt) 📖

I rolled to a stop somewhere out in the open. Sprawled on my back, I lay motionless while my ears rang and my vision swerved from a total white-out to sketchy shades of gray. Everything hurt. My back. My head. My arms and legs. The metallic flavor on my tongue was probably blood, right?

Little by little, my thoughts started to clear. Had it worked?

Up. I needed to get up and see.

A dark shape stepped into view, looming directly over me.

“P-Phox?” I gasped shakily.

A heavy boot stomped on the center of my chest, pinning me to the ground. The figure leaned down, scarlet sunlight glinting off a shiny black helmet.

I let out a hoarse yelp. W-What?

“You clever little bitch,” a deep voice snarled over me, its gravelly tone tinged with halting gasps of pain. Through a gaping hole in the helmet’s glass cracked visor, I caught a glimpse of a big, bloodshot green eye with a vertical pupil narrowed to a hair-thin slit.

Stepping off my chest, he seized the front of my suit and pulled me in, brandishing a black, curved knife in his other hand. “Bet you thought you’d get all of us in one shot, eh?” The figure coughed out a halting, broken laugh as he dragged the point of his blade lightly from my chin, down my throat, to the neck of my suit. “Now I get the bounty all to myself, and before that, I get to do whatever I want with you.”

He bore in harder, like he was about to cut my suit off. Or my head. The bite of the knife against my throat strangled the breath from my lungs. My body shook, seizing between terror and agony as I stared blearily up into that leering green, reptilian eye. His other hand grabbed one of my thighs.

Oh my god, no!

My temper caught, blazing through my veins like hellfire and making everything seem clearer for an instant. It was all I needed. I drove my knee into his groin with all my strength.

The figure yowled and let me go.

I hit the ground on my rear and whipped around to start crawling away as fast as I could. If I could just get back on my feet, maybe I could run fast enough to—

A hand snatched my ankle and yanked me back.

I screamed and kicked, clawing at the ground. Pain exploded through my leg and I pitched, flopping onto my back as I cried out. The knife … It was sticking out of my calf!

“That’s right!” he bellowed as he yanked the blade free and reared back to stab me again. “Let’s hear that pretty little scream again! Come on!”

“Hands off, asshole.” Phox’s voice boomed over us a millisecond before his huge hand grabbed the helmeted figure’s arm at the shoulder.

With a monstrous roar, Phox flung him off me. He whipped my attacker around by the arm like someone slinging a towel before slamming him down against the ground with a CRACK.

Phox didn’t give him a chance to recover. He lunged like an animal, snatching off the figure’s helmet and cocking a fist.

I shut my eyes and looked away. I couldn’t watch. But it didn’t help much. I heard everything—every squishy, gory, crunching blow as Phox hit him again and again.

Then there was a horrible, empty quiet. Was it over?

I listened, hearing nothing except the crackle of flames in the distance. The stinging fumes of burning fuel filled my nose, and I told myself that was why my eyes wouldn’t stop watering.

Footsteps thumped toward me, moving swiftly. Without a word, Phox slipped his arms under my back and knees, lifting me off the ground. I stole a glimpse at his face, still twisted in a look of pure rage, with a spray of crimson from one cheek to the other. My heart lurched. I bit down hard to stop my chin from trembling and ducked my head down so he wouldn’t see.

One of the enemy runner craft had been too close to the blast. Phox’s shot at the already compromised power cell—which we’d wrapped most of our extra plasma rifle ammo around—had left the entire area a big, smoking crater. Both our salvaged ship and the closer enemy one were aflame, throwing up plumes of fire that lit up the dull red sky.

Good god. My plan had worked a little too well. I … I was lucky to even be alive.

Thankfully, the second ship was still intact, with a few dings and scrapes to show for our efforts. It took Phox less than five minutes to drop me off in the back and load up the few stowed supplies we’d buried nearby. With the bay door closed and the high-speed engines humming happily, Phox strapped into one of the two seats in the cockpit and punched the throttles.

We left the smoking, smoldering disaster site in a swirl of dust, zipping over the desert landscape and leaving the starting line far behind.

16

MISDIRECTED

Phox pushed us through the entire night, his steely gaze focused out the sloping windshield of our most recently stolen ship with his jawline hard and a vein pulsing against the side of his neck. His blood-spattered knuckles were blanched as he gripped the steering wheel and never said a word.

Was he angry? Scared? Still hyped up from adrenaline?

Probably all three.

Outside, the alien world slid by, revealing more strangeness with every passing minute than I’d ever dreamed possible. Our ship flew so smoothly, it didn’t feel like we were going fast at all. But when I asked, Phox insisted we were clipping along at about three milia. Over two thousand miles per hour. I couldn’t even begin to wrap my mind around that as I sat, watching the landscape slide past in silent wonder.

The bleak, rocky terrain gave way to steep canyons studded with clusters of huge, white crystals that jutted out like ice. Some were huge—as big as I was. Others were teeny and sparkled in the scarlet sunlight like quartz.

They weren’t ice