He just shook his head.
Fine. His choice, although I had no idea why. Maybe he was as wanted by the Dark Watch as we were.
“Power up, Jax, and get ready to punch it. Miko, set us ninety degrees to the left.” Portside was nothing but the Black Widow. Devoid of all light, the huge, empty circle interrupting the stars looked like a bottomless pit and gave new meaning to the oft-used expression “endless Dark.”
I turned away from the window, my stomach knotting. I feared the unknown as much as anyone else.
Focusing on my friends again didn’t help. I had zero expectations for an afterlife. I’d never see them again. This was it.
I cleared the lump from my throat. “Strap in. Don’t strap in. It doesn’t really matter at this point,” I said.
We’d never been much for emotional speeches, so I didn’t give one. Shiori unbuckled herself from the captain’s chair, got up, and felt her way to Miko. The two women stood side by side near the navigation controls, holding hands. Fiona and Jax stayed close together. I was alone. Except for Big Guy. He stayed pretty close.
My gaze returned to the black hole, as if drawn by its massive gravitational force. Twenty-six years, and it hadn’t been a bad life, even if a lot of it hadn’t been fun. I’d wreaked more havoc on the galactic government than most rebels could manage in five lifetimes. With the help of my crew, I’d kept the Outer Zone colonies from true starvation for years. And everything else I ever had, I gave to the kids on Starway 8. I didn’t regret a thing.
And I was a Novalight. I wouldn’t go out like a sigh in the Dark. I’d go out like a fucking bomb.
I reached for the external com and opened the line to Bridgebane. “Your boarding crew has thirty seconds to detach. After that, I’m taking theEndeavorand yourvaccinesinto the Black Widow. Everyone on this ship would rather die than see that serum back in the hands of the Galactic Overseer.” I lifted my finger but then pressed firmly down on the button again. “By the way, this is Quintessa, and you can tell my tyrant father that I hate his fucking guts.”
I pulled my hand off the com. The line went dead, then blinked red again.
“Quin?” Bridgebane said.
I counted down in my head.Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight…
“Let’s talk, Quin,” my uncle said. “Give me the lab, and I’ll see what I can do.”
Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen…
“I saved you, Quin. You owe me.”
Five, four, three, two…
I turned to Jax, seeing the Black Widow looming through the wall of windows behind him. I felt a lurch and hoped it was the boarding cruiser beating a retreat.
“Quin!” Bridgebane yelled over the com.
A second later, the Dark Watch frigate fired on us. The resulting jolt nearly knocked me off my feet. Silent alarms flared all over my controls—pressurization compromised in three zones. Another blast like that, and they could disable us enough to hold us in place.
I gripped my console to steady myself. TheEndeavorwas a good ship. It was too bad I had to take her out.
Each beat of my heart felt like an explosion inside my chest.
Some ends are just a new beginning…
My mother’s words to me, when she’d gotten so sick. Too sick for anyone to save her.
The Black Widow stretched before us, ready to snare us in her web. Nothing escaped a black hole. Not light. Not matter. Maybe not even a soul.
Slowly, I exhaled. Some ends were just the end.
“Hit it, Jaxon.” I nodded crisply to my first mate.
Jax looked at me one last time. Our eyes met, and seven years of shared history struck me in a bittersweet rush. Then he grabbed Fiona around the waist and threw the hyperdrive switch with a cosmic roar.
I inhaled sharply. Everything blurred. My bones crunched, and my chest folded in on the thousands of things I’d still wanted to do as theEndeavorshot toward the event horizon—and the end of us all.
Chapter 3
