“From what I’m seeing, it looks like Sector 2.” Miko grabbed the old and yellowed manual to double-check the coordinates that were popping up in rows of green numbers across her controls. “Yes, definitely somewhere in 2.”
Shiori finally turned and groped for Miko’s unoccupied chair beside the navigation console. A thin line of blood trailed down the center of her forehead and curved along the side of her nose.
Damn it. She must have hit something when she’d fallen. She was conscious, though, and looked calm, which was more than I could say for myself.
Miko reached out to steady her grandmother and helped Shiori into the navigator’s chair. Shiori wiped the blood away when it dripped to her chin, leaving a smear of red across the back of her hand.
Miko shot her grandmother worried glances while still dealing with our most pressing issue—locking down our exact location in the vastness of Sector 2.
I tore my eyes away from them.
“Fiona, can you do the honors?” I pulled the first aid kit out from under my console and handed it to our resident scientist. I could fix Shiori up myself, but Fiona could do it better.
Using sterile compresses and saline solution, Fiona started cleaning Shiori’s cut and wiping the blood off her face, all the while telling the blind woman what she was doing in a quiet voice. Shiori was really a grandmother to us all, and Fiona treated her with a gentleness she showed to no one else.
While she worked, I turned my mind back to our new location, a goodhalf a galaxy awayfrom where we’d just been, give or take a few solar systems. Sector 2 wasn’t beaten and battered like the Outer Zones, but it wasn’t exactly a thriving hub of civilization, either. I’d only been here twice before and had never lingered. I didn’t know the Sector well, and I was still a little bowled over by recent events. Ideas weren’t coming to me clearly. A big part of me was still stuck on the fact that we weren’t dead. We were possibly the only living beings to know that the Black Widow did not, in fact, kill you. It spat you out in Sector 2.
The hypothetical wormhole had just gotten real. I was pretty sure we should keep that to ourselves. Having a handy escape route only we knew about was like winning the galactic lottery or raking in all the chips from the biggest game of poker ever played. This could be our future ace in the hole.
I glanced out the windows, still uneasy for several reasons. A random Sector was fine. LeavingDark Watch 12and Captain Bridgebane behind was more than fine, but it was too bad we didn’t have enough power left to get us back to a place we really knew.
“What’s in Sector 2?” I asked, hoping someone else’s brain was already up and running better than mine. “We need a place that can sustain life and has a bright enough sun to recharge theEndeavor.” Unfortunately, there weren’t that many. Asking for a sunny, habitable planet was a tall order.
“Flyhole,” Jaxon suggested.
“Full of criminals,” Shiori declared from behind Fiona’s ministrations.
Well, technically speaking, so was theEndeavor, but no one mentioned that.
And Flyhole wasn’t a planet. It was a spacedock orbiting a barren moon. It had decent sunlight, though, and would have what we needed for repairs, just not at an acceptable price. Also, theEndeavorwas as likely to be stripped by space rovers as restored to working order.
Fiona deftly patted down the sides of the sterile tape she’d used to seal Shiori’s cut, her steady hands those of someone who’d patched up plenty of people.
“Good as new,” Fiona said.
Shiori murmured her thanks.
“What about Nickleback?” Fiona asked, straightening as she tossed the bloody compresses into the trash.
Nickleback. Nickleback. What do I know about Nickleback?
Oh, right.“Isn’t that the place with the giant carnivorous spiders?” Another one of the Overseer’s science experiments. The modified arachnids had been supposed to help aggressively control the growing pest population on one of the galaxy’s more productive crop planets. If I remembered correctly, it had worked for about a dozen years. Then the spiders had begun to breed into something bigger, scarier. Now natural selection was at work, and the humans on that planet weren’t coming out on top.
“Oh, yeah.” Fiona grimaced. “Forget Nickleback.”
A bright electrical snap from my console sent me jumping back so fast I slammed into Big Guy’s solid frame. My controls went utterly black for the first time ever. Every whir, bump, and groan that was the constant music under my fingertips went silent, and my throat tightened so abruptly it closed.
Holding my breath, I looked over at Jaxon’s control panel. It was still functioning, thank the Sky Mother.
I exhaled slowly. I needed to get theEndeavordocked and resting fast, or she was going to die on us. And if she died, we all died, too. There wasn’t enough light from the distant stars to impact our solar panels, and the ship’s energy core would eventually drain completely. We’d end up floating. The air-renewal apparatus would shut down along with all the other systems. Without any power, we’d suffocate. I’d seen ghost ships like that, and I’d rather blow up than have a gradual, helpless death be my fate.
I cleared my throat. “Jax, you’ve got control.”
He nodded, and my brain started storming for answers again about where we could go—in a radius we could actually reach.
“Air. Water. Sunlight. Supplies. New parts,” I muttered. What had everything we needed to get us rolling again?
“Albion 5,” Big Guy said.
