Space Race (Space Race 1) by Nathan Hystad (book recommendations for young adults .TXT) 📕

Our faces almost touched, and she laughed with joy. I probably held a moment too long, and Holland cleared his throat as Jade and I stared at each other from inches apart.

“Guys, can you focus?” the kid asked, and Jade stepped away, grinning widely.

“How long will this take?” I asked.

“I expect the Core to begin—” Jade was cut off as the Core itself started to glow along the edges.

“We did it.” I gazed at the drive, silently willing it to hurry up. “What happens if we couldn’t do it? Would the Board send someone in?”

“Hopefully before the air supply ran out,” Jade griped.

Jade was cleaning up, and I helped her. The Core pulsed slowly, then faster with each passing minute, until it was solid. “When can we use her?”

“We have to give it a while, but we should be able to forward some power to the maps. Let’s see where everyone else is on the challenge,” she said.

“You mentioned there would be a few different solutions to bring her to life. What are the chances one of the teams did it in the same manner as us?” Holland asked her as we jogged to the bridge.

“There are better and less risky options, but I went for speed. I have no clue what the other technicians will choose,” Jade responded.

Luther was spun around in his chair, grinning at us. “Way to go. I heard the hum of the Core.”

Jade crossed to his dash console, and he gave her room while she crouched under the desk, pulling a panel from beneath it. A second later, the screen shone. “Now try it.”

Luther did so as she evacuated the tight space, and only two of the teams’ icons appeared. One was Sage, the other Luna Corp.

“They haven’t started to fly yet, but they’re operational, putting them on the radar, and we aren’t. Which tells me they’re slightly ahead,” Jade muttered. “Damn them. How could they have done it any faster?”

The screen buzzed, a line cut in the center of it for a second, sliding away. Luther knocked his knuckles on the dash. “What was that?”

“Probably the ship rebooting,” Jade suggested.

It happened again, jogging loose a memory from years ago. “Wait. Early in my tenure with Sage, a drone approached my freighter. It wasn’t on the radar, so it couldn’t be tracked. My dash did the same thing, and only when I ran a complete visual playback of the hull’s external cameras did I see the bastard. Apparently, it was a competitor trying to scan me for product listings, but Sage adds an additional layer of protection against a breach of that nature.”

Jade’s gaze flickered to the main viewer, which was still dark. “What are you suggesting?”

“That someone’s trying to hack our network.”

“Why would they…?” Holland stopped and turned toward R11’s empty console. “You think?”

“Jade, see if we can get the external cameras on.”

“It’ll delay the boot,” she said.

“I don’t care! The Board is trying to hack us, and if they find the communication from Paedra…” I didn’t have to say any more. She rushed from the room, likely returning to Engineering.

She came back a couple of long minutes later and nodded at Luther. “Try it now.”

The map continued to stretch and morph. “I thought these ships were protected from assaults like this,” Luther said while attempting to switch programs. An image from outside Pilgrim appeared, and I saw Oasis in the distance.

Jade puffed her cheeks out. “They are, but not when the network is down. When the ship powered off, we became vulnerable.”

“Meaning?” Holland couldn’t stay still; he was fidgeting with his hands nonstop.

“Meaning they can access the information for a short window between us powering the Core and full system restart. They have about ten minutes.” Jade focused on the screen, showing different camera angles, and we saw it on the fifth feed. “There it is!”

The drone was black, no distinguishing lights indicating it was operational.

“How do we stop them?” I asked. “If they find that message…”

“What if this was all a ruse?” Luther spun slowly to face us. “What if this leg of the Race was only a distraction?”

Holland looked ready to burst. “Hacking us?”

“Yes. Have you ever heard of something like this in a Race before?” I asked, and they all said they hadn’t. “Right.” I shoved a finger toward the drone trying to steal our data. “Then we have to stop this thing.”

Jade smiled in the dim glow of the console. “I have an idea, but we’d better be quick about it. I judge the network will restart within a couple of minutes, and that’ll let them upload everything we have, including the translation efforts R11 completed.”

She ran to my chair and opened a hidden compartment. The thruster dash to the right of my seat blinked on, and she rerouted the camera feed near the drone. It was above the wing, and she used the controls to lift the duo flaps up. I rarely employed those. They were almost a worthless feature, unless I was within a planet’s atmosphere and lost command of the Core. Then they might save our lives.

Jade increased the leveler, the screen starting to flash red.

“Little archaic, right?” I asked.

“The flaps? Yeah.”

“That’s because they’re hiding something. I wish I’d thought of this sooner. Bryson had a lot of tricks up his sleeve, and this wasn’t one of the secrets he’d shared with me. But I accessed the blueprints and figured it out pretty quick.”

I was losing my patience. “Figured what out?”

“He added an extra shield layer to the wings, and if I do this right, it can cause a disturbance to anything within the vicinity.” Jade didn’t explain any more; she just went to work, using the keypad to issue her commands. We watched the camera feed as the wing pulsed blue, and the flap sparked before shooting a beam of crackling azure lightning at the drone. It ignited, a fire quickly snuffing, but we saw the power coursing through its circuits.

The cabin’s underside lights came